What I have found is, when it comes to sleepover culture, I am a total amateur. The real professionals of this genre are ten-year old children.
Like Flizz. She jumps up in the middle of a Chinese park and shouts I've got a good idea! Let's swap sisters! One of yours can come to us and I can come home with you!
I am out of my league. If I put up any opposition it boils down to a half-open mouth and look of dementia.
Because I am from an old folk's perspective, where sleepovers cannot be spontaneous! Surely they have to be organised, parental signatures obtained, release forms issued, a timetable drawn out, somehow with monthly planning, and maybe a meeting or two arranged with spreadsheets and power point demonstrations.
Give me a week or two and I can think of reasoning in detail why no sleepover can be accomplished for the next three Saturdays in a row, and probably all of next year.
I am motivated by fear, of course. I am almost frozen with the terror of imagining the freak accident that causes damage to someone else's child. Maybe I will inadvertently push them off the balcony or bury them under a tree. What then?
Or they will have a wretched and miserable time of it, go home and exclaim Thank God I'm home! Mother you will never know the state of their floors!
If I had been honest and said those things in the Chinese park, I know it would have been pointless. Flizz would have pooh poohed them. She is a home ed child, which means she has already experimented with throwing herself off the balcony and who gives a damn about the floor?
But I am still of the old guard, edgy and uncertain. Flizz's ten-year old confidence makes it a little better: the new wave of sleepover cadets are clearly capable enough to arrange solutions for themselves without the unnecessary complications dreamed up by elderly doddering parents.
So that's what we do. Squirrel gaily scampers off with Flizz's mum, and Flizz jumps on a bus and comes home with us. It doesn't matter, she says, that she has no jimmy jams because we are sure to have a spare pair (gulp, the two available pairs are probably cut up for dolly dresses). The toothbrush doesn't matter either, she says, because you can buy those anywhere. And so what if she's wearing the same clothes again tomorrow? She looks indifferent at me as I raise this last weed of a thought before loudly asking me Is there something wrong with you?
So there, I was taught a lesson. We had a sleepover and it all went well. I did not accidentally assault, poison, or damage someone else's child. She didn't give a damn about the floors. There was only a slight ruckus between me and Shark which probably sent Flizz home saying God, that woman ought to chill.
And I never want to hear again, thanks, how home ed children are socially isolated, how they never see friends, how they never do ordinary kid fun stuff. We deal with certainties in our world. Where, clearly, friendship does not wait on parental organisation, scheduling, or the next free Saturday in the upcoming month.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Monday, 12 December 2011
The rat
I should have remembered to tell you about the rat.
This is my reward for choosing to live on an island with snakes and frogs and things that live. The creeping jumping slithering scurrying things lived here first.
The experience was all horrible. I may have forgot because there are things I don't want to remember.
About 2am, rat scrabbled a way into my bedroom and that was THAT. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa in terror, fully dressed and sitting mostly bolt upright, clutching a plank of wood. Apart from the two hours I lost when my eyes closed down, I was ready. Me or rat. No way was it going to gnaw through me without a fight.
When morning came, I never had seen rat. Not tail, whisker, nor brown shape slipping between table and door. But I was no better in my mind. The problem was, I never saw rat leave. By daylight, I hunted all over, and there was no rat to be found. Only a small broken grill on the laundry room floor. Nevertheless, the following night I tried again to stay awake with all the lights ablaze, stationed on RAT GUARD DUTY.
The rat has not come back. Apart from the horror left marked on my soul, its only lingering impact is on Dig, like he has the final laugh, because when I grip someone by the arm and, a little hysterical and wild-eyed, tell them This story is true! Once I slept with a RAT! he smiles, and looks rather pleased.
This is my reward for choosing to live on an island with snakes and frogs and things that live. The creeping jumping slithering scurrying things lived here first.
The experience was all horrible. I may have forgot because there are things I don't want to remember.
About 2am, rat scrabbled a way into my bedroom and that was THAT. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa in terror, fully dressed and sitting mostly bolt upright, clutching a plank of wood. Apart from the two hours I lost when my eyes closed down, I was ready. Me or rat. No way was it going to gnaw through me without a fight.
When morning came, I never had seen rat. Not tail, whisker, nor brown shape slipping between table and door. But I was no better in my mind. The problem was, I never saw rat leave. By daylight, I hunted all over, and there was no rat to be found. Only a small broken grill on the laundry room floor. Nevertheless, the following night I tried again to stay awake with all the lights ablaze, stationed on RAT GUARD DUTY.
The rat has not come back. Apart from the horror left marked on my soul, its only lingering impact is on Dig, like he has the final laugh, because when I grip someone by the arm and, a little hysterical and wild-eyed, tell them This story is true! Once I slept with a RAT! he smiles, and looks rather pleased.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Can you trust the children?
Term end approaching!
It is inevitable, isn't it? The piteous infant mewling. The forlorn cries expressed from some of the miniature offspring, their wails now only of exhaustion, relief, and gratitude, so glad school is over.
Come return in January, so despairing will be the sighs from some of them, they will cause a minor typhoon in the tropics.
Inevitable then, how you flirt with the idea of making school stop for a time in 2012. Who wouldn't? But because the school closes its doors to your fantastic idea of flexi-schooling (more fool them) you might wonder about the fearful route of home education.
But I am here to help! Even if this post is only for the two of you. One day I shall change the idea of primary education in England for a generation. I will have children led by artists, geologists, scientists, archaeologists, musicians, foresters, old lady lace makers, philosophers, librarians, poets and dancers. All kids will be equipped with fields, woods, all outdoors, and I will have them playing, creating, making stories, music, art, staring at the sky, and bloody well being left alone to climb trees and build their own social system.
That caters for the up to age 7s nicely. And I will ban anyone with a clipboard within 200 miles of them. Yes, that too. I have a magic wand somewhere. When I find it, I will use it.
Until then, bad luck. If you really do choose home ed in 2012, then alongside your must-have character list of bloody-mindedness, teeth-grinding determination, and the hahaha of false confidence, you will need strategies to deal with insecurities, fears and the neighbours.
Join the club. If you have any words of wisdom about my favourite fears in the land of home education, then let's have them. We have a lot of fear swilling about and we could do with some suggestions:
1. Fear what we're told will happen to Tinkertop if she is removed from school will all come true.
2. Fear that Tinkertop will end her days sleeping on a park bench. Illiterate, unemployed, alcoholic, pregnant, on drugs, crazy. All by next Thursday and it is YOUR FAULT.
3. Fear of social exclusion. Whatever that is.
4. Fear that your family, relatives and friends will never speak to you again, never help you, and never lend you money. Ever again.
5. Fear of not being able to do it. And when you do it, that it is the wrong it.
6. Fear of being with your own kids. Locked in the house. All day long. And they have scissors.
7. More fear, of generally disabling variety, about life. Things like never being able to buy shoes or have sex ever again. (True. At least round here.)
8. Fear of the weird people in home ed. You know, the ones who knit their own hair because they don't believe in commercially grown cotton.
9. Fear of the Ed Psych, Social Services, EWO, the LA, the PCSO, truancy patrol, all schools, forced adoption services, family law courts, the headteacher you don't even fancy, in fact everyone in any remote position of authority, including the parking attendant who works at Netto and Miss Timms the ballet teacher you have previously despised.
10. Fear of missing out, but not sure what constitutes out.
11. Fear that after one week Tinkertop will come to the crushing conclusion that any school is better than your attempt at reading a book aloud with all the voices.
12. Fear that you won't like the person you have to become to do it. And Tinkertop won't either.
So I can address all of those issues.
Just not today, that's all. Because today I am busy. A large group of us home ed mummies and daddies must get together in a dark room to watch a panto.
This panto is put on by our kids, aged 6-15. They found a script on the Internet, then sorted the whole drama themselves; beginning to end, costumes, props, learning the lines, rehearsals, direction, dramatic action, who controls the light switch and what to do about yeaughh! - the kiss - when NO WAY are you kissing him, no matter how good looking he is.
Thus we have Beauty is a Beast. A total and complete cross-cultural, mixed-age, mixed-sex group, call-it-education SUCCESS. Not one parent did DIDDLYSQUAT for this over the last three months, except one who booked a rehearsal room on a weekly basis, made tea for the parents of the panto stars, and sat in on rehearsals for 30 minutes in case two siblings punched each other. (NOT MINE.)
So yes, I can address all those fears you might have if you are considering home ed in 2012. But as you can see, the children can do it so much better.
All you got to do, is trust them.
It is inevitable, isn't it? The piteous infant mewling. The forlorn cries expressed from some of the miniature offspring, their wails now only of exhaustion, relief, and gratitude, so glad school is over.
Come return in January, so despairing will be the sighs from some of them, they will cause a minor typhoon in the tropics.
Inevitable then, how you flirt with the idea of making school stop for a time in 2012. Who wouldn't? But because the school closes its doors to your fantastic idea of flexi-schooling (more fool them) you might wonder about the fearful route of home education.
But I am here to help! Even if this post is only for the two of you. One day I shall change the idea of primary education in England for a generation. I will have children led by artists, geologists, scientists, archaeologists, musicians, foresters, old lady lace makers, philosophers, librarians, poets and dancers. All kids will be equipped with fields, woods, all outdoors, and I will have them playing, creating, making stories, music, art, staring at the sky, and bloody well being left alone to climb trees and build their own social system.
That caters for the up to age 7s nicely. And I will ban anyone with a clipboard within 200 miles of them. Yes, that too. I have a magic wand somewhere. When I find it, I will use it.
Until then, bad luck. If you really do choose home ed in 2012, then alongside your must-have character list of bloody-mindedness, teeth-grinding determination, and the hahaha of false confidence, you will need strategies to deal with insecurities, fears and the neighbours.
Join the club. If you have any words of wisdom about my favourite fears in the land of home education, then let's have them. We have a lot of fear swilling about and we could do with some suggestions:
1. Fear what we're told will happen to Tinkertop if she is removed from school will all come true.
2. Fear that Tinkertop will end her days sleeping on a park bench. Illiterate, unemployed, alcoholic, pregnant, on drugs, crazy. All by next Thursday and it is YOUR FAULT.
3. Fear of social exclusion. Whatever that is.
4. Fear that your family, relatives and friends will never speak to you again, never help you, and never lend you money. Ever again.
5. Fear of not being able to do it. And when you do it, that it is the wrong it.
6. Fear of being with your own kids. Locked in the house. All day long. And they have scissors.
7. More fear, of generally disabling variety, about life. Things like never being able to buy shoes or have sex ever again. (True. At least round here.)
8. Fear of the weird people in home ed. You know, the ones who knit their own hair because they don't believe in commercially grown cotton.
9. Fear of the Ed Psych, Social Services, EWO, the LA, the PCSO, truancy patrol, all schools, forced adoption services, family law courts, the headteacher you don't even fancy, in fact everyone in any remote position of authority, including the parking attendant who works at Netto and Miss Timms the ballet teacher you have previously despised.
10. Fear of missing out, but not sure what constitutes out.
11. Fear that after one week Tinkertop will come to the crushing conclusion that any school is better than your attempt at reading a book aloud with all the voices.
12. Fear that you won't like the person you have to become to do it. And Tinkertop won't either.
So I can address all of those issues.
Just not today, that's all. Because today I am busy. A large group of us home ed mummies and daddies must get together in a dark room to watch a panto.
This panto is put on by our kids, aged 6-15. They found a script on the Internet, then sorted the whole drama themselves; beginning to end, costumes, props, learning the lines, rehearsals, direction, dramatic action, who controls the light switch and what to do about yeaughh! - the kiss - when NO WAY are you kissing him, no matter how good looking he is.
Thus we have Beauty is a Beast. A total and complete cross-cultural, mixed-age, mixed-sex group, call-it-education SUCCESS. Not one parent did DIDDLYSQUAT for this over the last three months, except one who booked a rehearsal room on a weekly basis, made tea for the parents of the panto stars, and sat in on rehearsals for 30 minutes in case two siblings punched each other. (NOT MINE.)
Well, we proud parents photographed each other,
waiting for the final show. We did that.
waiting for the final show. We did that.
So yes, I can address all those fears you might have if you are considering home ed in 2012. But as you can see, the children can do it so much better.
All you got to do, is trust them.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Lunar eclipse
Wake up in strange mood, then realise what it is. The lunar influence!
That explains it. A burstingly ripe, round moon, waiting to be combined with the soft embrace of the deep shadows of the earth! What intimacy of life's rhythm is to be shared with we women keepers of eternity, this very night!
I look down at my helpless arrangement of limbs and torso that last enjoyed action in 1876. If only the pull of the moon were true! If only I could be all plumped up with voluptuousness once more, lose twenty years, and have anyone give a damn!
Then the moon at its most full and beguiling would be worth something! I would steal it and keep it, along with its life force, in the cupboard, then never again would it seem I have taken the crumpled body of the peat bog man to wear for my own.
But I cannot go about stealing moons. Someone would notice. Anyway, it wouldn't work. The moon cannot make something from nothing. I couldn't even get propositioned yesterday in Wan Chai! Maybe the rates are too high. I mean, a thousand dollars? Is that too much?
Whatever. When darkness came, we crowded together on the roof, nursing hot chocolate, cameras, and a grudge about the torch.
We watched in awe. The soft embrace of the earth was beautiful to see. It made the moon blush red.
Have people no modesty? Some of them even filmed the encounter.
That explains it. A burstingly ripe, round moon, waiting to be combined with the soft embrace of the deep shadows of the earth! What intimacy of life's rhythm is to be shared with we women keepers of eternity, this very night!
I look down at my helpless arrangement of limbs and torso that last enjoyed action in 1876. If only the pull of the moon were true! If only I could be all plumped up with voluptuousness once more, lose twenty years, and have anyone give a damn!
Then the moon at its most full and beguiling would be worth something! I would steal it and keep it, along with its life force, in the cupboard, then never again would it seem I have taken the crumpled body of the peat bog man to wear for my own.
But I cannot go about stealing moons. Someone would notice. Anyway, it wouldn't work. The moon cannot make something from nothing. I couldn't even get propositioned yesterday in Wan Chai! Maybe the rates are too high. I mean, a thousand dollars? Is that too much?
Whatever. When darkness came, we crowded together on the roof, nursing hot chocolate, cameras, and a grudge about the torch.
We watched in awe. The soft embrace of the earth was beautiful to see. It made the moon blush red.
Have people no modesty? Some of them even filmed the encounter.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Santa will be very happy with me
I negotiate with Dig to triplet-mind Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, while I travel to Hong Kong island to do the Christmas shopping.
Success!
That may have been the success of the day, it is true.
But I am never downhearted! My achievements can be yet dragged - kicking and screaming - from what merely appears to be abject misery and failure.
Here then are my achievements on the Christmas shopping front. I am in celebratory mood.
1. I attempt the ordeal in Wan Chai, hot-spot for prostitution and plumbing. I am trying to think of something like an achievement for that. Maybe it is that I was never mistaken for either a prostitute or a plumber in the entire afternoon.
2. I pass a lot of shops selling taps. I realise that you can get anything you want, tap-wise, in Hong Kong. Gold dolphins arising from shells? No problem. I become an expert on taps. (Not on prostitution.)
3. I recover my bearings after becoming hopelessly lost and wandering aimlessly in the wrong direction because I cannot read a map. It only takes an hour!
4. I never bumped into anyone (not counting the handbag incident), and I never had to walk with my fist stretched out in front of me aimed at face-height, like I do in Mong Kok.
5. I found the art supplies shop despite having scribbled over the address, and I was brave enough to enter the little door at street level, where the concierge ignored me.
6. I managed to get a lift going in the right direction. Better still, this time I did not end up on floor 35 for the karaoke bar, where I did not need to frantically press buttons in the manner of a total imbecile who cannot use a lift. At floor 15, a crowd of Chinese people did not get in, cramming in a space for 10, and forcing the lift back up to floor 35 before trying to take me hostage to sing Cantonese love-pop songs. (It is taking me some time to recover from that afternoon, actually.)
7. The art supplies shop was open.
8. I did not spend Dig's monthly wage on paper, paint, sparkly things, and glue.
9. I have acquired a lot of Chinglish schedulers (pointless but irresistible), and an assortment of pretty craft items that will prompt the children to fantastic craft (pointless but hopeful.)
10. I never told Dig that I found the exact same items $44,256 dollars cheaper and three shops down the road from the ferry pier. Neither did I mention that if I had just bought the stuff there I would have saved five hours of his child-minding time while I wandered blindly about Wan Chai becoming a tap expert and wondering if at any point I might be mistaken for a plumber or a hooker.
Success. I can barely wait for Christmas Day.
Success!
That may have been the success of the day, it is true.
But I am never downhearted! My achievements can be yet dragged - kicking and screaming - from what merely appears to be abject misery and failure.
Here then are my achievements on the Christmas shopping front. I am in celebratory mood.
1. I attempt the ordeal in Wan Chai, hot-spot for prostitution and plumbing. I am trying to think of something like an achievement for that. Maybe it is that I was never mistaken for either a prostitute or a plumber in the entire afternoon.
2. I pass a lot of shops selling taps. I realise that you can get anything you want, tap-wise, in Hong Kong. Gold dolphins arising from shells? No problem. I become an expert on taps. (Not on prostitution.)
3. I recover my bearings after becoming hopelessly lost and wandering aimlessly in the wrong direction because I cannot read a map. It only takes an hour!
4. I never bumped into anyone (not counting the handbag incident), and I never had to walk with my fist stretched out in front of me aimed at face-height, like I do in Mong Kok.
5. I found the art supplies shop despite having scribbled over the address, and I was brave enough to enter the little door at street level, where the concierge ignored me.
6. I managed to get a lift going in the right direction. Better still, this time I did not end up on floor 35 for the karaoke bar, where I did not need to frantically press buttons in the manner of a total imbecile who cannot use a lift. At floor 15, a crowd of Chinese people did not get in, cramming in a space for 10, and forcing the lift back up to floor 35 before trying to take me hostage to sing Cantonese love-pop songs. (It is taking me some time to recover from that afternoon, actually.)
7. The art supplies shop was open.
8. I did not spend Dig's monthly wage on paper, paint, sparkly things, and glue.
9. I have acquired a lot of Chinglish schedulers (pointless but irresistible), and an assortment of pretty craft items that will prompt the children to fantastic craft (pointless but hopeful.)
10. I never told Dig that I found the exact same items $44,256 dollars cheaper and three shops down the road from the ferry pier. Neither did I mention that if I had just bought the stuff there I would have saved five hours of his child-minding time while I wandered blindly about Wan Chai becoming a tap expert and wondering if at any point I might be mistaken for a plumber or a hooker.
Success. I can barely wait for Christmas Day.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Carbon Chemistry for kids
It isn't often I recommend any paid-for course or curriculum, is it? Mostly because, until now, we haven't followed any.
Well, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have now followed one - just a weeny one - and I want to recommend it.
Hmm. I feel strangely guarded about recommending any 'learning product' to the home ed community.
I'm not sure why. Maybe because the community is so diverse, any recommendation is likely to be pointless. Or perhaps I just don't want to cause any fuss.
I know it seems a modest enough thing to do - recommend a course - but in my experience the home ed world is filled with individuals who have very strong opinions about hearing things like this. Usually they are more than willing to share those opinions. Vigorously. It's what I sometimes love and hate about this community, you wonderfully irritating people.
I mean, if I chose to recommend a paid-for curriculum on a discussion list for example, and I picked the wrong list, the reactions I might get are various.
Contempt might be one of them. Someone will tut here is an example of trying to turn an income from need. Education is already free, and people are always trying to make money from it.
Someone else will caution how any course is all very well but you have to watch the American ones. They seem normal, yes. Really the author has an underlying political goal to promote a Christian right-wing agenda.
The woman who is bonkers might pop up at that point to say the author is actually a follower of Satan. Evidence, right there in Chapter 3. What's more, you can find videos on YouTube to prove it. (Someone usually suggests psychiatric help.)
Another voice will pip up then that if you're following a structured curriculum, why don't you go live in the offices of the Local Authority? And didn't you know it would all be for nothing, because all exams are pointless?
That suggestion might be added to by someone hinting darkly that if you follow a structured, paid-for, local authority sanctioned curriculum today, then the government will make it law for everyone tomorrow.
Finally, someone will brightly add their autonomously educated son has 15 A Levels and an offer at Cambridge.
At that point everyone agrees it's a totally individual choice and a wonderful way to conduct an education.
All of which is a long way of saying, I'm not recommending this weeny course on any home ed discussion list. Fortunately, I have a blog.
I can say Boo. Our Carbon Chemistry Co-op is finished. The final workshop was held today. I am forlorn without the Carbon Chemistry Co-op. It has been brilliant. Big smackeroos to our weekly host Kriss, and to author Ellen McHenry.
I thoroughly recommend it.
The course, the experiments, and especially the coming together of a dozen kids once a week to follow the structure and create a chemical chaos. It stood up well to their assaults.
Well, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have now followed one - just a weeny one - and I want to recommend it.
Hmm. I feel strangely guarded about recommending any 'learning product' to the home ed community.
I'm not sure why. Maybe because the community is so diverse, any recommendation is likely to be pointless. Or perhaps I just don't want to cause any fuss.
I know it seems a modest enough thing to do - recommend a course - but in my experience the home ed world is filled with individuals who have very strong opinions about hearing things like this. Usually they are more than willing to share those opinions. Vigorously. It's what I sometimes love and hate about this community, you wonderfully irritating people.
I mean, if I chose to recommend a paid-for curriculum on a discussion list for example, and I picked the wrong list, the reactions I might get are various.
Contempt might be one of them. Someone will tut here is an example of trying to turn an income from need. Education is already free, and people are always trying to make money from it.
Someone else will caution how any course is all very well but you have to watch the American ones. They seem normal, yes. Really the author has an underlying political goal to promote a Christian right-wing agenda.
The woman who is bonkers might pop up at that point to say the author is actually a follower of Satan. Evidence, right there in Chapter 3. What's more, you can find videos on YouTube to prove it. (Someone usually suggests psychiatric help.)
Another voice will pip up then that if you're following a structured curriculum, why don't you go live in the offices of the Local Authority? And didn't you know it would all be for nothing, because all exams are pointless?
That suggestion might be added to by someone hinting darkly that if you follow a structured, paid-for, local authority sanctioned curriculum today, then the government will make it law for everyone tomorrow.
Finally, someone will brightly add their autonomously educated son has 15 A Levels and an offer at Cambridge.
At that point everyone agrees it's a totally individual choice and a wonderful way to conduct an education.
All of which is a long way of saying, I'm not recommending this weeny course on any home ed discussion list. Fortunately, I have a blog.
I can say Boo. Our Carbon Chemistry Co-op is finished. The final workshop was held today. I am forlorn without the Carbon Chemistry Co-op. It has been brilliant. Big smackeroos to our weekly host Kriss, and to author Ellen McHenry.
I thoroughly recommend it.
The course, the experiments, and especially the coming together of a dozen kids once a week to follow the structure and create a chemical chaos. It stood up well to their assaults.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Not so cruel
I think a lot about Britain.
I hear the old place is set for trauma on a new scale, as this week it is to be destroyed by weather. Not enough then, to be squeezed in the grip of the Heartless Tories, froze to death in the winter dark, and generally forced to suffer under the iron fist of Christmas Shopping.
Because we are bathed in a warm golden sunshine here in Hong Kong, and I have a bedroom view of green woolly mountains, I sometimes feel it is incumbent upon me to do that expat thing I see done in the comments following British national misery news. Where someone with a name like Imaluckybleeder cheerily pops up under the latest crisis to gloat that the sun is shining where they live, they have a cold beer, and they couldn't give a toss because they hated Britain anyway.
It is unnecessary, isn't it? My heart and my sympathies lie really in England, even though the sun is very warm and the mountains very beautiful. So I would like to reassure the people of Britain that a temporary expat life is often not as wonderful as Imaluckybleeder suggests. Crap local beer aside, here is the misery from this particular exile. Let this hand hold with yours.
1. La famille Grit is soon to be living in Hong Kong without income. This is a remarkable feat of financial management and household planning. I would like everyone to think of us as smart-arsed tax evaders as we swank it up in one of the world's most expensive cities. In actual fact we are mostly incompetent, and will probably be living from now until March on Pot Noodle.
2. My stomach ache is worse. Next week, thanks to a contract ending, Dig loses his comfortable access to medical services. This means, until we return to Blighty in March, we will officially be in Hong Kong as tourists. Since I might be heading for full-scale Ebola by the weekend, I have clearly timed my need for expensive medical treatment, perfectly.
3. The phone camera is bust. The damn thing won't switch on. I have done the usual: left it alone to consider its options, prodded it, shouted at it, bashed it on the table, and threatened it with fire. It ignores me and mocks me with its little blank screen. Obviously it wants to die. Whatever, let the little bastard suffer, see if I care. It has pictures of Squirrel from today's home education outing. Cycling with a group of kids at Kowloon City Park.
4. We are at the brink of war with the neighbours. Give it a couple more days and we shall actually be at war; I shall be pouring bleach into their balcony plant pots and they will be shovelling dead geckos through the letterbox.
War is happening because when Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play, the neighbours complain. At first I was sympathetic - they have A BABY - but then I wondered if they were ringing the doorbell right at the off because they simply don't like the sound of kids playing and want to shut them up. Maybe they want to complain because they feel like it. Maybe the baby won't play with Mr Froggy so it must be our fault. Even Dig, who does not usually take my side over anything, is beginning to be a little fed up with them.
5. I have done nothing for Christmas. NOTHING. Apart from procuring two moose heads in a wreath. It will all be as last minute as last year. The only gift items I can think of for the dear daughters is an envelope full of cash apiece. But given the circumstances we are soon to find ourselves in, I'll be asking for a loan come January.
I hear the old place is set for trauma on a new scale, as this week it is to be destroyed by weather. Not enough then, to be squeezed in the grip of the Heartless Tories, froze to death in the winter dark, and generally forced to suffer under the iron fist of Christmas Shopping.
Because we are bathed in a warm golden sunshine here in Hong Kong, and I have a bedroom view of green woolly mountains, I sometimes feel it is incumbent upon me to do that expat thing I see done in the comments following British national misery news. Where someone with a name like Imaluckybleeder cheerily pops up under the latest crisis to gloat that the sun is shining where they live, they have a cold beer, and they couldn't give a toss because they hated Britain anyway.
It is unnecessary, isn't it? My heart and my sympathies lie really in England, even though the sun is very warm and the mountains very beautiful. So I would like to reassure the people of Britain that a temporary expat life is often not as wonderful as Imaluckybleeder suggests. Crap local beer aside, here is the misery from this particular exile. Let this hand hold with yours.
1. La famille Grit is soon to be living in Hong Kong without income. This is a remarkable feat of financial management and household planning. I would like everyone to think of us as smart-arsed tax evaders as we swank it up in one of the world's most expensive cities. In actual fact we are mostly incompetent, and will probably be living from now until March on Pot Noodle.
2. My stomach ache is worse. Next week, thanks to a contract ending, Dig loses his comfortable access to medical services. This means, until we return to Blighty in March, we will officially be in Hong Kong as tourists. Since I might be heading for full-scale Ebola by the weekend, I have clearly timed my need for expensive medical treatment, perfectly.
3. The phone camera is bust. The damn thing won't switch on. I have done the usual: left it alone to consider its options, prodded it, shouted at it, bashed it on the table, and threatened it with fire. It ignores me and mocks me with its little blank screen. Obviously it wants to die. Whatever, let the little bastard suffer, see if I care. It has pictures of Squirrel from today's home education outing. Cycling with a group of kids at Kowloon City Park.
4. We are at the brink of war with the neighbours. Give it a couple more days and we shall actually be at war; I shall be pouring bleach into their balcony plant pots and they will be shovelling dead geckos through the letterbox.
War is happening because when Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play, the neighbours complain. At first I was sympathetic - they have A BABY - but then I wondered if they were ringing the doorbell right at the off because they simply don't like the sound of kids playing and want to shut them up. Maybe they want to complain because they feel like it. Maybe the baby won't play with Mr Froggy so it must be our fault. Even Dig, who does not usually take my side over anything, is beginning to be a little fed up with them.
5. I have done nothing for Christmas. NOTHING. Apart from procuring two moose heads in a wreath. It will all be as last minute as last year. The only gift items I can think of for the dear daughters is an envelope full of cash apiece. But given the circumstances we are soon to find ourselves in, I'll be asking for a loan come January.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Let's not scare the middle-class readers
The best place today is over here.
Enough material to keep this blog going for months.
I tutted and eyeball-rolled, of course, about the general tone and direction of the article. But I'm kind. It's the Guardian. And I'm giving the writer the benefit of the doubt; Jeevan probably wrote this piece for the paper's tender and delicate middle-class audience. Surely he knows what education is really out here. He only assumed the voice character type naive!
I say, everyone! Isn't it astonishing what some parents will do?!
Maybe it's right to keep the Guardian readers dipping their toes into the shallow end, Jeevan. Don't let them over the boundary, or near the deep end, thick with the radical unschooled working classes! These people will blow your mind!
It was a bit irritating, the oooh-aren't-we-daring, middle classness; the lurking fears on 'losing out', 'missing out' and blahblah how 'families will have to work hard to ensure they're up to speed with the curriculum in later years'.
There, you let it out. The National Curriculum is the middle-class code book of Acceptable Knowledge. Go beyond the boundary at your peril.
But I was grateful too for the article, because it brought out this fantastic comment, which I totally adored. I'm almost tempted to hunt down SwissedCottage and give them a big smackeroo.
But say they're a little bit right! Because when a family takes a child out of school, their approach will probably promote that family's values and culture. So yes, you could say a middle-class family will seek to raise a middle-class child, like a Jewish family will raise a Jewish child. What? Did anyone know that?
But I'm not so sure you can say the same about ideas.
Once you come out of school, out here in the real world, what we learn comes from people in society. Guess what! There are different social groups out here!
Learning out of school is the most astonishingly egalitarian experience. You meet all sorts. Everyone is a teacher for your child. And, unlike school, you can't control the ideas people come with; you can't say what your child will learn or not; you can't predict or measure what your child will take away from any experience or interaction in the real world.
In my experience, learning outside the boundaries has been far more socially broadening than at school, where the intake can be narrowly focused. Out here you can rub shoulders with the family who live in the rough side of town, and the family who live at t'Hall, and both of you have got to help each other's kid build that space rocket.
See? Ideas are even stronger than class. Ideas that bring people together, regardless of whether we wear clogs or Manolos. Ideas about education, freedom, about learning, of choice, and autonomy.
With those ideas, people can tear up the middle-class code book. Yes, I know! We can even think dangerous ideas.
Now I've let out one of the secrets about knowledge! But shhh. We don't want to give anyone the vapours. Better not tell the Guardian readers.
Enough material to keep this blog going for months.
I tutted and eyeball-rolled, of course, about the general tone and direction of the article. But I'm kind. It's the Guardian. And I'm giving the writer the benefit of the doubt; Jeevan probably wrote this piece for the paper's tender and delicate middle-class audience. Surely he knows what education is really out here. He only assumed the voice character type naive!
I say, everyone! Isn't it astonishing what some parents will do?!
Maybe it's right to keep the Guardian readers dipping their toes into the shallow end, Jeevan. Don't let them over the boundary, or near the deep end, thick with the radical unschooled working classes! These people will blow your mind!
It was a bit irritating, the oooh-aren't-we-daring, middle classness; the lurking fears on 'losing out', 'missing out' and blahblah how 'families will have to work hard to ensure they're up to speed with the curriculum in later years'.
There, you let it out. The National Curriculum is the middle-class code book of Acceptable Knowledge. Go beyond the boundary at your peril.
But I was grateful too for the article, because it brought out this fantastic comment, which I totally adored. I'm almost tempted to hunt down SwissedCottage and give them a big smackeroo.
Sounds like the newest craze for upper-middle class yummy mummies - perhaps something to fill the day for the ladies-who-lunch crowd? Their Tarquins and Saskias will be learning about artisanal cheeses and mid-20th century interpretive dance, whilst the Shanes and Jodis on the estates learn about whatever is on Sky TV...It perfectly picked up the tone of the article, yet missed the point of learning outside school completely.
But say they're a little bit right! Because when a family takes a child out of school, their approach will probably promote that family's values and culture. So yes, you could say a middle-class family will seek to raise a middle-class child, like a Jewish family will raise a Jewish child. What? Did anyone know that?
But I'm not so sure you can say the same about ideas.
Once you come out of school, out here in the real world, what we learn comes from people in society. Guess what! There are different social groups out here!
Learning out of school is the most astonishingly egalitarian experience. You meet all sorts. Everyone is a teacher for your child. And, unlike school, you can't control the ideas people come with; you can't say what your child will learn or not; you can't predict or measure what your child will take away from any experience or interaction in the real world.
In my experience, learning outside the boundaries has been far more socially broadening than at school, where the intake can be narrowly focused. Out here you can rub shoulders with the family who live in the rough side of town, and the family who live at t'Hall, and both of you have got to help each other's kid build that space rocket.
See? Ideas are even stronger than class. Ideas that bring people together, regardless of whether we wear clogs or Manolos. Ideas about education, freedom, about learning, of choice, and autonomy.
With those ideas, people can tear up the middle-class code book. Yes, I know! We can even think dangerous ideas.
Now I've let out one of the secrets about knowledge! But shhh. We don't want to give anyone the vapours. Better not tell the Guardian readers.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Nearly a perfect fantasy day
It isn't often I can do exactly as I like.
Wait. Stop there. I would like to claim 'exactly as I like' means indulging in thrilling conduct. Dangerous, dirty, and unbecoming. If memory serves me right, that behaviour might have implicated silk, heels, and two-seater sports cars.
Regretfully, I think that ended. I didn't give permission. When kids arrived, those days left.
Parental life now diverts me, i.e. I do grocery shopping, laundry, and self-piteous whining, alternating with heavy-duty staggering across deep and sinking badlands of responsibility. I am wearing old shoes and odd socks. I may have grown a beard.
My fantasies out of this mire - into the lightness of leisure and pleasure zones - sadly reveal how limited my expectations and ambitions have become.
Fantasy, to do exactly as I like, is now the impossibility of enjoying a few hours without continuous interruption, in solitary peaceandquiet. Maybe loafing about the house with no imperative to deliver food into anyone's mouth except my own. Better still, no-one to disrupt my cupofcoffee + packetofbiscuits.
Tiptop fantasy number one also adds the indulgence of reading what I'd like, writing when I'd like, listening to music without needing earphones, and being able to stare at pictures going past my eyes on the iplayer without niggle of guilt that I should be doing something with someone else that is educational.
Well, surprisingly, I do enjoy some of my fantasies today. Mostly thanks to a stomach ache and feeling of nausea, but still. Enough to hole me up on the island, provide me with a Get Out of Jail Free card, a perfect excuse not to have to face three million Chinese coming at me with high heels in Wan Chai, and another reason to evade the responsibility of Christmas shopping in the art supplies shop, at least for a while longer.
I spend my feeling-a-bit-off-day loafing about the house, wearing an old tunic with a coffee stain down the front, and ignoring the children in a professional manner by saying I am not feeling well, go and ask your father.
Thus I get to listen to some early music, watch an episode of The Killing, and read from Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French (funny) to Leslie Chang's Factory Girls (not funny).
Of course I do not manage all my fantasy intact. (It possibly also shows why I never achieve anything of substance and would be foolish to set my ambitions higher than a daily blog post.)
In the writing of these few miserly words, I have been interrupted 17 times; eight of which were demands for food, mugs, laundry, and scraps of paper. Two of the more irritating interruptions included my apparently necessary involvement in a fight over who is the more horrible sister (Shark or Tiger?) and the impact a husband can have, when he comes into the room, announces 'it is too bright in here' and proceeds to switch all the lights off.
Wait. Stop there. I would like to claim 'exactly as I like' means indulging in thrilling conduct. Dangerous, dirty, and unbecoming. If memory serves me right, that behaviour might have implicated silk, heels, and two-seater sports cars.
Regretfully, I think that ended. I didn't give permission. When kids arrived, those days left.
Parental life now diverts me, i.e. I do grocery shopping, laundry, and self-piteous whining, alternating with heavy-duty staggering across deep and sinking badlands of responsibility. I am wearing old shoes and odd socks. I may have grown a beard.
My fantasies out of this mire - into the lightness of leisure and pleasure zones - sadly reveal how limited my expectations and ambitions have become.
Fantasy, to do exactly as I like, is now the impossibility of enjoying a few hours without continuous interruption, in solitary peaceandquiet. Maybe loafing about the house with no imperative to deliver food into anyone's mouth except my own. Better still, no-one to disrupt my cupofcoffee + packetofbiscuits.
Tiptop fantasy number one also adds the indulgence of reading what I'd like, writing when I'd like, listening to music without needing earphones, and being able to stare at pictures going past my eyes on the iplayer without niggle of guilt that I should be doing something with someone else that is educational.
Well, surprisingly, I do enjoy some of my fantasies today. Mostly thanks to a stomach ache and feeling of nausea, but still. Enough to hole me up on the island, provide me with a Get Out of Jail Free card, a perfect excuse not to have to face three million Chinese coming at me with high heels in Wan Chai, and another reason to evade the responsibility of Christmas shopping in the art supplies shop, at least for a while longer.
I spend my feeling-a-bit-off-day loafing about the house, wearing an old tunic with a coffee stain down the front, and ignoring the children in a professional manner by saying I am not feeling well, go and ask your father.
Thus I get to listen to some early music, watch an episode of The Killing, and read from Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French (funny) to Leslie Chang's Factory Girls (not funny).
Of course I do not manage all my fantasy intact. (It possibly also shows why I never achieve anything of substance and would be foolish to set my ambitions higher than a daily blog post.)
In the writing of these few miserly words, I have been interrupted 17 times; eight of which were demands for food, mugs, laundry, and scraps of paper. Two of the more irritating interruptions included my apparently necessary involvement in a fight over who is the more horrible sister (Shark or Tiger?) and the impact a husband can have, when he comes into the room, announces 'it is too bright in here' and proceeds to switch all the lights off.
Sunday, 4 December 2011
The start of another expensive new hobby
Do you girls know how many pairs of shoes I could have bought? Do you?
Saturday, 3 December 2011
French, typically
I should have known.
I should have known that the French Animation Film Festival would not involve cute, tongue-in-cheek plasticine, Ã la Wallace and Gromit. It would automatically require animated scenes of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.
But it is French. Meh. I shrug, Gallic style. What elze can one draw in ze cartoon?
Thanks, La Femme à Cordes. I sit squirming while Tiger sensibly covers her eyes. This is acutely annoying, mostly because her continued interest in animation is a prime reason why we are here.
Naively, I see Animation listed in the French film festival catalogue and buy the tickets there and then. I assume we'll be safe; cartoons never deal convincingly with sex or death. Duh. No-one told the French that rule, obviously.
Incidentally, to guard myself against accusations of prudishness (which I probably am; it's my age), I would have hated La Femme à Cordes, even if I carried only the burden of my own adult consciousness into the cinema. It seemed to be a narrative of schlock disturbing images making not much point beyond demonstration of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.
Anyway, enough of that one.
The star of the show, and what captured my eye, was Georges Méliès Le voyage dans la lune (1902), restored as a hand-tinted colour version.
That is one splendid film, and our first science fiction movie, so chew on that, Avatar. It is so gloriously and endlessly worthy of study - not least for the pointy wizard hats and dolly birds gaily waving off the space rocket. And the exploding aliens are simply brilliant. Judge for yourself in black and white.
Now if you have nothing else to do of an afternoon but update your French animation, then try Chienne d'histoire, a story created beautifully with watercolour, illustration and collage - even if it does deal with dog slaughter - and the gorgeous and tender Le silence sous l'écorce. Happiness. Death. Snow. It'll make you cry.
Damn Frenchies.
I should have known that the French Animation Film Festival would not involve cute, tongue-in-cheek plasticine, Ã la Wallace and Gromit. It would automatically require animated scenes of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.
But it is French. Meh. I shrug, Gallic style. What elze can one draw in ze cartoon?
Thanks, La Femme à Cordes. I sit squirming while Tiger sensibly covers her eyes. This is acutely annoying, mostly because her continued interest in animation is a prime reason why we are here.
Naively, I see Animation listed in the French film festival catalogue and buy the tickets there and then. I assume we'll be safe; cartoons never deal convincingly with sex or death. Duh. No-one told the French that rule, obviously.
Incidentally, to guard myself against accusations of prudishness (which I probably am; it's my age), I would have hated La Femme à Cordes, even if I carried only the burden of my own adult consciousness into the cinema. It seemed to be a narrative of schlock disturbing images making not much point beyond demonstration of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.
Anyway, enough of that one.
The star of the show, and what captured my eye, was Georges Méliès Le voyage dans la lune (1902), restored as a hand-tinted colour version.
That is one splendid film, and our first science fiction movie, so chew on that, Avatar. It is so gloriously and endlessly worthy of study - not least for the pointy wizard hats and dolly birds gaily waving off the space rocket. And the exploding aliens are simply brilliant. Judge for yourself in black and white.
Now if you have nothing else to do of an afternoon but update your French animation, then try Chienne d'histoire, a story created beautifully with watercolour, illustration and collage - even if it does deal with dog slaughter - and the gorgeous and tender Le silence sous l'écorce. Happiness. Death. Snow. It'll make you cry.
Damn Frenchies.
Friday, 2 December 2011
How to colour hair the easy way!
1. Come to the ill-founded conviction that a crumpled face will surely be rejuvenated ten years by colouring the grey hair sprouting from the top.
2. Read all hair-related horror stories, avidly, for months. Absorb the terror of each one, slowly.
I coloured my hair and died. My mother coloured her hair and she died. Hair colouring ate my face. Superhaircolour says they are sorry after face-death misery left children motherless.
3. Peer nervously into all retail outlets selling hair colour. Think, When I am desperate and going slightly mental, so maybe death will no longer matter, I will buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.
4. Stare enviously at other women. But they have coloured their hair! They are STILL ALIVE.
5. Reach a point on a Monday morning when life or death doesn't matter. Impulsively run out to buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.
6. Stare at box fearfully. It is a box of certain death. 200 sleeping tablets and a bottle of Whisky would be easier.
7. After six weeks, tentatively open box. Learn instructions by rote.
8. Ignore box for another two weeks. Plenty of time to prevaricate! Pray grey hair turns brown without assistance, and that crumpled face magically becomes age 20 again! Try and delude self with, I am so busy! I haven't had a moment!
9. Pluck up courage for skin allergy test. Dab fluid, awkwardly, on inside of elbow. (Rats, now I have to wear long sleeves because otherwise it looks like one of the children thumped me.)
10. Stare in horror as chemical foams on skin. Expect to die now in a severe allergic reaction. Grab children in terror. Scare them by whispering, slightly hysterically, Mummy loves you. You know, don't you? Feel the urge to confess. And it was me who ate the stash of chocolate Squirrel hid behind the bread bin.
11. Within 24 hours, forget about the patch test and wash arm. It is a shower! Who can wash with one arm sticking out the door?
12. Try the patch test again. This time, wash with one arm sticking out the door.
13. Decide it is impossible to prevent water dribbling between armpit and elbow. Stop to plan and think logically:
i. Colour hair when hairdressers are open. Thus, when severe allergic reaction kicks in, there is time to run screaming to them for an antidote.
ii. Colour hair not at rush hour, when A&E is accessible.
iii. Colour hair when another responsible adult is at home to call ambulance, lift body out of shower, assist medical staff in lowering corpse from window, console children, etc.
14. Decide on a day.
15. The day arrives. Drink a large glass of wine. It no longer matters that it is 9am.
16. Don plastic gloves and feel this course of action is as foolhardy as surgically removing your own liver.
17. Follow instructions sheet to the letter. Panic each time fluid touches scalp. Wait continuously for severe allergic reaction.
18. While waiting the 20 minutes development time, write Last Will and Testament. Sob a little in self-pity that life has come to this. A bottle of foaming fluid in a bathroom.
19. Emerge three hours later, having obsessively examined scalp from every angle, tugged at hair to feel if it is coming out, scrutinised arm for signs of severe allergic reaction.
20. Announce presence to dear husband and ask, How is my hair? Am I 20 years younger? Husband scrutinises head, as if looking for fleas, then says, Look round the back. You have missed a clump.
2. Read all hair-related horror stories, avidly, for months. Absorb the terror of each one, slowly.
I coloured my hair and died. My mother coloured her hair and she died. Hair colouring ate my face. Superhaircolour says they are sorry after face-death misery left children motherless.
3. Peer nervously into all retail outlets selling hair colour. Think, When I am desperate and going slightly mental, so maybe death will no longer matter, I will buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.
4. Stare enviously at other women. But they have coloured their hair! They are STILL ALIVE.
5. Reach a point on a Monday morning when life or death doesn't matter. Impulsively run out to buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.
6. Stare at box fearfully. It is a box of certain death. 200 sleeping tablets and a bottle of Whisky would be easier.
7. After six weeks, tentatively open box. Learn instructions by rote.
8. Ignore box for another two weeks. Plenty of time to prevaricate! Pray grey hair turns brown without assistance, and that crumpled face magically becomes age 20 again! Try and delude self with, I am so busy! I haven't had a moment!
9. Pluck up courage for skin allergy test. Dab fluid, awkwardly, on inside of elbow. (Rats, now I have to wear long sleeves because otherwise it looks like one of the children thumped me.)
10. Stare in horror as chemical foams on skin. Expect to die now in a severe allergic reaction. Grab children in terror. Scare them by whispering, slightly hysterically, Mummy loves you. You know, don't you? Feel the urge to confess. And it was me who ate the stash of chocolate Squirrel hid behind the bread bin.
11. Within 24 hours, forget about the patch test and wash arm. It is a shower! Who can wash with one arm sticking out the door?
12. Try the patch test again. This time, wash with one arm sticking out the door.
13. Decide it is impossible to prevent water dribbling between armpit and elbow. Stop to plan and think logically:
i. Colour hair when hairdressers are open. Thus, when severe allergic reaction kicks in, there is time to run screaming to them for an antidote.
ii. Colour hair not at rush hour, when A&E is accessible.
iii. Colour hair when another responsible adult is at home to call ambulance, lift body out of shower, assist medical staff in lowering corpse from window, console children, etc.
14. Decide on a day.
15. The day arrives. Drink a large glass of wine. It no longer matters that it is 9am.
16. Don plastic gloves and feel this course of action is as foolhardy as surgically removing your own liver.
17. Follow instructions sheet to the letter. Panic each time fluid touches scalp. Wait continuously for severe allergic reaction.
18. While waiting the 20 minutes development time, write Last Will and Testament. Sob a little in self-pity that life has come to this. A bottle of foaming fluid in a bathroom.
19. Emerge three hours later, having obsessively examined scalp from every angle, tugged at hair to feel if it is coming out, scrutinised arm for signs of severe allergic reaction.
20. Announce presence to dear husband and ask, How is my hair? Am I 20 years younger? Husband scrutinises head, as if looking for fleas, then says, Look round the back. You have missed a clump.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
How we do it
I never know how best to answer that question, How do you do home education?
Tut. It's like asking, How do you live? Or How do you interact with your children?
But I guess they're asking when they have a gut feeling that not all is right with their school option, and not just because they're a nosy parker. Maybe they're considering choices ahead, and wondering what their experiences might be.
In which case, I try and help. Maybe with this?
5% sitting at the table doing anything alongside me which an onlooker could say looks like school. (Usually over breakfast.)
25% kids away doing their own thing. (Squirrel on roof, doing stuff, better not to ask. Shark reading fish book. Tiger creating horse animation.)
25% out with friends, groups, meet ups, workshops, events.
45% family, reading, cooking, talking, visiting, play, swinging punches, sulking.
Or maybe a narrative of events would help? Today's home ed diary reads:
See? Home ed is easy. It's just living normal life, but with lots of friends and family. Does that help?
Tut. It's like asking, How do you live? Or How do you interact with your children?
But I guess they're asking when they have a gut feeling that not all is right with their school option, and not just because they're a nosy parker. Maybe they're considering choices ahead, and wondering what their experiences might be.
In which case, I try and help. Maybe with this?
5% sitting at the table doing anything alongside me which an onlooker could say looks like school. (Usually over breakfast.)
25% kids away doing their own thing. (Squirrel on roof, doing stuff, better not to ask. Shark reading fish book. Tiger creating horse animation.)
25% out with friends, groups, meet ups, workshops, events.
45% family, reading, cooking, talking, visiting, play, swinging punches, sulking.
Or maybe a narrative of events would help? Today's home ed diary reads:
'Chemistry workshops are going well. Our Leader is totally brilliant at galvanising kids. (Not literally, obviously. That would involve dipping them in zinc. I mean metaphorically.)Or maybe I could photo record the most eye-catching and extraordinary moment of the day.
I bet I could run these weekly workshops back home. Looks simple. Involve a dozen chemical-minded kids to chant chemicals, run about, sing, do drama, experiment on a super-strength dining table, and now, watch TV. (One of the kids has to work out how to turn the thing ON and play stuff. Same as at home.)
But good result. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger can now make some sort of account for carbon.'
See? Home ed is easy. It's just living normal life, but with lots of friends and family. Does that help?
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
It's not that far to Pluto
I want to reassure anyone about to plunge into the murky, conspiratorial world of home education.
Do not worry. You are not alone.
You'll find another one here already. Following the same home educating routine as you. Go on, physically locate yourself anywhere on this planet.
I guarantee, you will meet other thinkers and doers just like you.
You're sure to meet your co-twin - maybe hiding in the cafe at the steam train museum, under the table in the bead workshop, wet in a field peering at a moth, or trying not to look at buckets of crap at the poop-cleaning farm - and you'll go, Wow! Meeting you is spooky!
Because when you hear their story - how they started home educating Tinkertop - you'll be shocked how similar it is to your own.
Your co-twin will have observed the things you did. They have thought the thoughts you have. They have struggled with the arguments you did. They have drawn the same conclusions.
You look at each other, then know truly, you are thought-twins beamed from a parallel universe. This could have been used as a plotline in the Twilight Zone!
But this is no accident.
I have met with co-twins now so many times, I have come to understand this is why I was abducted in the first place, taken to Zelta Minor, implanted with a three-headed being, and sent back to Planet Earth.
It is our mission to CONVERT ALL THE UNBELIEVERS. It is obvious to us that home educators are a master race of aliens put here to infiltrate ordinary normals.
Soon SOON we will take over the mind of Ed Balls. Yes, him, and ex-education ministers everywhere!
SSSSShhhh! Don't tell anyone! Let's keep it secret until the time is right!
Ha! But our plan is working!
Here is a local group of home educated kids, looking innocent enough, meeting at Tai Po Waterfront Park, chosen especially because of its super-long avenue.
This is our covert job. To explore the universe, home ed style. Meaning: glue peppercorns, seed heads and hazelnuts on bits of paper to better represent scaled models of planets in our solar system.
Then, line up planets in order, separate out the billions of light years between them into distances we can comprehend, and walk the waterfront, measuring* and laying out the planets as we go.
See? To the unbelieving world, it simply looks like we small group of home educators are doing smart-arsed planet talk and astro-maths, or putting learning into practice, right in the middle of the community.
Not at all. We are plotting the co-ordinates that will take us back to the mothership for when our work here is done!
* This is a photograph of Our Lord John Holt's measuring wheel. It is TRUE. I have seen documentary evidence.
Dig says he thought John Holt did not believe in measuring anything. Pft! Blasphemer. Of course John Holt needed a measuring wheel. How else is he going to communicate with us the distance we need to calculate for our safe return to Zelta Minor?
Do not worry. You are not alone.
You'll find another one here already. Following the same home educating routine as you. Go on, physically locate yourself anywhere on this planet.
I guarantee, you will meet other thinkers and doers just like you.
You're sure to meet your co-twin - maybe hiding in the cafe at the steam train museum, under the table in the bead workshop, wet in a field peering at a moth, or trying not to look at buckets of crap at the poop-cleaning farm - and you'll go, Wow! Meeting you is spooky!
Because when you hear their story - how they started home educating Tinkertop - you'll be shocked how similar it is to your own.
Your co-twin will have observed the things you did. They have thought the thoughts you have. They have struggled with the arguments you did. They have drawn the same conclusions.
You look at each other, then know truly, you are thought-twins beamed from a parallel universe. This could have been used as a plotline in the Twilight Zone!
But this is no accident.
I have met with co-twins now so many times, I have come to understand this is why I was abducted in the first place, taken to Zelta Minor, implanted with a three-headed being, and sent back to Planet Earth.
It is our mission to CONVERT ALL THE UNBELIEVERS. It is obvious to us that home educators are a master race of aliens put here to infiltrate ordinary normals.
Soon SOON we will take over the mind of Ed Balls. Yes, him, and ex-education ministers everywhere!
SSSSShhhh! Don't tell anyone! Let's keep it secret until the time is right!
Ha! But our plan is working!
Here is a local group of home educated kids, looking innocent enough, meeting at Tai Po Waterfront Park, chosen especially because of its super-long avenue.
This is our covert job. To explore the universe, home ed style. Meaning: glue peppercorns, seed heads and hazelnuts on bits of paper to better represent scaled models of planets in our solar system.
Then, line up planets in order, separate out the billions of light years between them into distances we can comprehend, and walk the waterfront, measuring* and laying out the planets as we go.
See? To the unbelieving world, it simply looks like we small group of home educators are doing smart-arsed planet talk and astro-maths, or putting learning into practice, right in the middle of the community.
Not at all. We are plotting the co-ordinates that will take us back to the mothership for when our work here is done!
* This is a photograph of Our Lord John Holt's measuring wheel. It is TRUE. I have seen documentary evidence.
Dig says he thought John Holt did not believe in measuring anything. Pft! Blasphemer. Of course John Holt needed a measuring wheel. How else is he going to communicate with us the distance we need to calculate for our safe return to Zelta Minor?
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
In anticipation
We went to the coastal defences museum. Really, the defences museum? Again?
I'd rather be elsewhere. We came here before. And I still have difficulty being a fan of military museums. You can probably tell from the things I choose to photograph. See these shapes? They're interesting, don't you think?
I'm finding this very frustrating, returning here rather than taking advantage of what's over there.
Because it is hiking season in Hong Kong. For that, read, the weather is now cool enough to walk the mountain trails.
But am I walking them? I am not.
I am 100% irritated by what I am about to say - I can feel the irritable bowel syndrome squeezing my insides right now - but I cannot walk those remote trails without assistance. More specifically, the assistance of someone who has a sense of direction.
Now everyone should understand why I stay married to Dig. Only he can find the way out of the paper bag.
It is difficult for people to believe - especially if they attempt to cross Nathan Road, ride the trams, or get off the underground at Mong Kok - but not every inch of Hong Kong has seven million people standing on it.
Hong Kong has beautiful remote mountain areas where there are no people, no sodium lights, no street signs, and - horror of horrors to the directionally challenged Grit - choice of more than one route.
Now I dare not embark on those trails offering me more than one route if there are only kids alongside me. Twenty minutes in, and Shark will say, with her usual hint of contempt, Mummy, do you know where you're going?
I will begin to doubt. Tiger's radar will pick up my fake laugh. She will ask in a trembling voice, Where are we going? Mummy? Is this the right way?
I will answer brightly, Yes, of course it's the right way! But a little creeping doubt will niggle in my mind. What if she has an intuition I do not? Back there? We took a left, and we had the choice of a right.
Think about it. She has inherited Dig's sense of direction. I had to rely on her to lead me out the Elements Shopping Mall. I was in there an hour trying to find the exit before she took control.
The silence will be broken with, Are you sure? Mummy? MUMMY? MUMMMYYYYY? WE ARE LOST! LOST! LOST!
In an instant, panic will spread amongst the masses. Squirrel will photograph every tree as a desperate means of finding her way out again, Shark will stomp off in a huff saying IT IS THIS WAY, Tiger will fall to the ground in tears. Then ten hours later, alone on the mountainside, in the dark, we will all die. The End.
I know it will go like that because it has damn near happened before.
So even though I so dearly want to head up the mountains and across those trails, and even though I am so totally pissed off by my own inadequacies in this department, I know it is wise to wait a little longer for a responsible adult to pass this way, take me by the hand, and lead me and the mini grits safely over the mountain trails. (And if it all goes bellyup, I can blame them.)
I'd rather be elsewhere. We came here before. And I still have difficulty being a fan of military museums. You can probably tell from the things I choose to photograph. See these shapes? They're interesting, don't you think?
I'm finding this very frustrating, returning here rather than taking advantage of what's over there.
Because it is hiking season in Hong Kong. For that, read, the weather is now cool enough to walk the mountain trails.
But am I walking them? I am not.
I am 100% irritated by what I am about to say - I can feel the irritable bowel syndrome squeezing my insides right now - but I cannot walk those remote trails without assistance. More specifically, the assistance of someone who has a sense of direction.
Now everyone should understand why I stay married to Dig. Only he can find the way out of the paper bag.
It is difficult for people to believe - especially if they attempt to cross Nathan Road, ride the trams, or get off the underground at Mong Kok - but not every inch of Hong Kong has seven million people standing on it.
Hong Kong has beautiful remote mountain areas where there are no people, no sodium lights, no street signs, and - horror of horrors to the directionally challenged Grit - choice of more than one route.
Now I dare not embark on those trails offering me more than one route if there are only kids alongside me. Twenty minutes in, and Shark will say, with her usual hint of contempt, Mummy, do you know where you're going?
I will begin to doubt. Tiger's radar will pick up my fake laugh. She will ask in a trembling voice, Where are we going? Mummy? Is this the right way?
I will answer brightly, Yes, of course it's the right way! But a little creeping doubt will niggle in my mind. What if she has an intuition I do not? Back there? We took a left, and we had the choice of a right.
Think about it. She has inherited Dig's sense of direction. I had to rely on her to lead me out the Elements Shopping Mall. I was in there an hour trying to find the exit before she took control.
The silence will be broken with, Are you sure? Mummy? MUMMY? MUMMMYYYYY? WE ARE LOST! LOST! LOST!
In an instant, panic will spread amongst the masses. Squirrel will photograph every tree as a desperate means of finding her way out again, Shark will stomp off in a huff saying IT IS THIS WAY, Tiger will fall to the ground in tears. Then ten hours later, alone on the mountainside, in the dark, we will all die. The End.
I know it will go like that because it has damn near happened before.
So even though I so dearly want to head up the mountains and across those trails, and even though I am so totally pissed off by my own inadequacies in this department, I know it is wise to wait a little longer for a responsible adult to pass this way, take me by the hand, and lead me and the mini grits safely over the mountain trails. (And if it all goes bellyup, I can blame them.)
Monday, 28 November 2011
If only Tintin had been filmed by Sergei Eisenstein!
So I blatantly defied the instruction from my betters on this review.*
I took the kids to see Tintin the FILM.
HEY. Look at me. I AM IN OPEN REBELLION!
If the act of attending 'Spielberg's "execrable" film adaptation' is not enough of a demonstration of my insubordination to those who discern better than me the essential emptiness of all art, let me also yell bold in caps,
I LOVED THIS FILM.
But I feel I should declare another motive, up front.
I had to go see Tintin. It was Tintin, not me, who taught Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger to read.
Before they could read for themselves, they got hold of the Tintin books in their snotty-chocolaty fists and loved (and still do), all the Hergé illustrations.
Tintin's hair! The moustaches! Snowy! The mountains! The wild-fisted Captain Haddock!
But they couldn't read the captions. I had to read aloud all the words with all the voices. (Prof. Calculus was difficult. Foolishly I made him squeaky.) After that, they pored over the books, only looking up to delightedly yell Blistering barnacles! Iconoclast!
Despite that background, I still fail in Tom McCarthy's world. For me, the experience of a triplet family weaned on Tintin only made the film more fun.
I loved the performance-capture animation. It was a perfect technique to merge the real with the fiction. My eyeballs - connected to my humour synapses that obviously never matured beyond a ten-year old - could follow people bounce from lamp posts, climb onto aeroplanes, and crash land in the desert, while all the time my brain explained those impossibilities by it's a cartoon, dummy.
And I loved the script. The plot. The sub-plot! And the way the characters from different cartoons were brought in and mixed into one roller-coaster Spielberg film-ride. With hidden treasure! And pirate ships!
So it pains me to come away from Tintin the FILM and compare it to Tintin the CARTOON. They are different works, right?
I wanted Captain Haddock of the cartoon to be Captain Haddock of the film. In the film, he's wild, but he's not dangerous. In the cartoon (or in my head), he's much more a perfect role model, teetering on the edge of the unacceptable, veering unstably into the dangerous and uncontrollable, pulling back enough not to be totally, pointlessly, destructive.
But like I said, they are different works, the cartoons and the film, and I can't judge one through the other.
I'm just left having enjoyed the cartoons with all the voices, and thrilled to watch a fantastic adventure film. With pirates!
So ignore Tom McCarthy's instructions. He's just out to impress his mates with his I'm Important Pen. I've seen that plenty of times before.
Now follow Grit's advice! Take your kids to see Tintin the FILM!**
*Empire-building author alert.
** Of course my kids didn't like it. They just kept complaining about how the film was a Žižekian example of a dominant ideology's capacity to recuperate its own negation, or something.
I took the kids to see Tintin the FILM.
HEY. Look at me. I AM IN OPEN REBELLION!
If the act of attending 'Spielberg's "execrable" film adaptation' is not enough of a demonstration of my insubordination to those who discern better than me the essential emptiness of all art, let me also yell bold in caps,
I LOVED THIS FILM.
But I feel I should declare another motive, up front.
I had to go see Tintin. It was Tintin, not me, who taught Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger to read.
Before they could read for themselves, they got hold of the Tintin books in their snotty-chocolaty fists and loved (and still do), all the Hergé illustrations.
Tintin's hair! The moustaches! Snowy! The mountains! The wild-fisted Captain Haddock!
But they couldn't read the captions. I had to read aloud all the words with all the voices. (Prof. Calculus was difficult. Foolishly I made him squeaky.) After that, they pored over the books, only looking up to delightedly yell Blistering barnacles! Iconoclast!
Despite that background, I still fail in Tom McCarthy's world. For me, the experience of a triplet family weaned on Tintin only made the film more fun.
I loved the performance-capture animation. It was a perfect technique to merge the real with the fiction. My eyeballs - connected to my humour synapses that obviously never matured beyond a ten-year old - could follow people bounce from lamp posts, climb onto aeroplanes, and crash land in the desert, while all the time my brain explained those impossibilities by it's a cartoon, dummy.
And I loved the script. The plot. The sub-plot! And the way the characters from different cartoons were brought in and mixed into one roller-coaster Spielberg film-ride. With hidden treasure! And pirate ships!
So it pains me to come away from Tintin the FILM and compare it to Tintin the CARTOON. They are different works, right?
I wanted Captain Haddock of the cartoon to be Captain Haddock of the film. In the film, he's wild, but he's not dangerous. In the cartoon (or in my head), he's much more a perfect role model, teetering on the edge of the unacceptable, veering unstably into the dangerous and uncontrollable, pulling back enough not to be totally, pointlessly, destructive.
But like I said, they are different works, the cartoons and the film, and I can't judge one through the other.
I'm just left having enjoyed the cartoons with all the voices, and thrilled to watch a fantastic adventure film. With pirates!
So ignore Tom McCarthy's instructions. He's just out to impress his mates with his I'm Important Pen. I've seen that plenty of times before.
Now follow Grit's advice! Take your kids to see Tintin the FILM!**
*Empire-building author alert.
** Of course my kids didn't like it. They just kept complaining about how the film was a Žižekian example of a dominant ideology's capacity to recuperate its own negation, or something.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
The perfect home educating body
Many times in our home educating journey have I had cause to look inwards, measuring my heavy responsibilities against the insufficiency of my inner resources.
But I have also looked down, and seen the physical impact this great learning journey has wrought upon a woman's frail and feeble body.
Here is the evidence of a home educating experience. Battered ribs, stringy thighs, and wretched knees of despair. Ankles of doom, pounded feet, and wiry hands, scarred from a thousand face-clawing, vein-popping struggles.
Yet, as I look south, beyond these sad and torn remnants, I am happy, for I have learned what wisdoms to impart.
Collecting my battle wounds and dismembered limbs, I can now give you, youthful person considering home education, the gift of my experience.
If you really, really, REALLY are intent on spending several years teaching your own, then with these essential items, you must now prepare your body.*
1. Brass neck.
Every home educating mother must acquire one of these. A solid brass neck to navigate the High Street at 11am on a Monday morning.
More than moral righteousness is cast in the brass. It disables any ability to turn head-wise to the whisperings following the 'school-age child' straggling at your side. The particularly scruffy child, clad in grubby tee-shirt, torn jeans, an assortment of dreadlocks, chocolate over one eye, and a left shoe only (a fact you are bound not to notice until you reach the Co op on account of not being able to turn the neck).
2. A tongue you already bit off.
My advice is DON'T SAY IT. I have struggled with this, and still do, because oh yes there are so many responses to the in-law who, horror-struck, whispers Home education? Is that wise? or the neighbour who asks 'Are you allowed to do that?
STOP. Your response will not only be taken as evidence in court, it must be totally positive PR for what you are about to do, and simultaneously support all the struggling world of home ed. DON'T SAY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. JUST SMILE.
3. Face of steel.
As you sit around the kitchen table, determined to enjoy yet another happy learning moment with Urban Environments or What shall we watch on the telly, the peace will shatter between Arch Enemies, Sibling Rivals 1,2, and 3. Number 1 destroys the moment of educational perfection with I hate you; number 2 screams Get out of my life, and number 3 chimes in with the chorus, It would be better off if you were dead.
Then, with the learning day of happiness in ruins, you will need a face of steel. Any ordinary plasticine face, betraying motherly tenderness brutalised by shock, disbelief, and horror, inevitably adds emotion to the moment; it allows the offspring a terrible opportunity to observe the maternal pain, then show how much they care by finishing the kill.
4. No ears.
With kids around all day everyday, simply plug the ears up. Shove them under a duvet. Better still, take them off. Hide them in a padded box and stash them in the linen cupboard where they can't transmit any sound at all.
5. Wired up teeth.
Yes, wire the buggers up, top to bottom, and quick about it. If you are home educating any primary-age child, with or without siblings, you very quickly realise that your entire education is composed of cake.
Cake is chemical reaction! (Obviously.) It's maths! (There are four in the family to eat one cake and the mother must be fed six slices.) Cake is geography! (Punch a hole in one side and turn it into a river valley with a bucket of cream.) French! (Oui, nous voulons faire un bon gâteau.) Business studies! (Grandma, your slice costs $200, hand it over, cash.) And English Literature! (While their mouths are full, reverentially lay your copy of Robinson Crusoe upon the table.)
If you fail to wire your teeth together, you will come to know the consequences. That cake is 5,890 calories every day. And only Millets can cater for size 36.
6. Hands, hands, and more hands.
Three pairs of hands per child, minimum, are required for all daily interactions of education and child management.
One pair to lay out the happy learning craft resources. A second pair to put the kid with the scissors in lock down. The third to pour a stiff gin and tonic. Three kids = Nine pairs of hands. Stitch your extra hands onto a belt and hang them round your middle.
7. Legs.
Acquire a pair of stout and sturdy tree trunks to attach when the original human pair buckle, as they are sure to do. (Mine went in a stable yard under three kids, a pissed off horse-keeper and a disabled mongrel called Lucy.**)
Keep two additional leg pairs, both waterproof, suitable for nature studies and small children peeing on you. Use one pair for climbing out of ditches because no-one else will fetch the ball, and use the second pair for plodding across woods, fields and hills in the drizzle while you look in despair and rising panic for prehistoric art, moths, or rocks.
(Keep a decent trolly-dolly pair in the cupboard 'for best'. You can always hope to have a night out in 2016.)
8. No hair.
Shave it off or hope it falls out. Only this way can you be relieved of washing, styling, cutting and thinking about the irritating, increasingly grey chore sprouting from your head.
When you home educate kids, consider this. You may have them 24/7. Spending two hours alone in the hairdressers is as likely as flying to the moon.
If you do get to Curl up and Dye, you will inevitably sit next to the lucky cow who whines on and on about how her life is shit because she has to be home in five hours to 'pick the kids up from school'. Then you will never want to go there again.
9. Armour.
In your home educating journey, there will be weapons. Feet, fists, words dipped in poison, lethal pauses, and fatal punctuation marks. Your body without armour will be dented, scratched, bruised, bitten, torn, and trampled upon. Medieval armour c. 1485 is recommended.
10. Nerves of steel.
You are going to need these. You are going to chew down your knuckles with anxiety for Tinkertop's total FAIL if your mother measures her against the common ideas in her knitting circle about reading, writing and 'rithmeticing. When your teeth hit the bones, the nerves of steel will be the only things holding the entire arm together.
11. Large empty space in head.
Yes, when you start home educating, the world will open up, and with it, your mind.
Your brain will no longer be crammed full of pointless crap about lunch boxes, the PTA, holiday forms, or whether Tinkertop's uniform meets the regulation grey.
But do not be scared of the space. Enjoy it. Your mind will be called upon at all hours to help explore the Arctic, explain why polar bears have feet, or expound upon DNA. Keep the space as wide and as far-ranging as possible, then exercise it often. It must be fit for sudden demands to answer questions What holds the sky up? and then to elaborate upon Stephen Hawkin's conception of the universe.
Yet always it must be prepared to try out a new recipe for cake. This time cooked with nettle leaves.
12. Heart.
This must be enormous, bigger than your whole body, with a capacity far greater than all the oceans of the world.
What you are about to do will challenge yourself, your in-laws, show the neighbours a thing or two, take on the educational thought police, put you on the defensive against people you meet, lose friends, make enemies, and cause a tail-back on the M1 southbound from Junction 14. Yes, you will probably take the blame for that too, from the likes of Ed Balls, the NUT and the TES.
In the face of this onslaught you will at times be plunged into severe and crippling doubt. Then you will need a strong heart.
When you are fighting the universe and the children are foul; when the heart wants only to sit sobbing and defeated in a corner; when you are overwhelmed, in despair; when Tinkertop says, after all your effort and stinging hands, that maths with nettle cake is crap, then you must call upon the heart's limitless capacity for forgiving.
Apply it to everyone and, most importantly, to yourself.
* True, I am only talking woman body. This is based on the undeniable, observable fact that most people who turn up at the home ed meet up group - and who we can assume are in the bloody daily front line of the home ed decision - are women.
**Disabled mongrel.
Edited because my French is so bad. That shows you what an A grade is worth.
But I have also looked down, and seen the physical impact this great learning journey has wrought upon a woman's frail and feeble body.
Here is the evidence of a home educating experience. Battered ribs, stringy thighs, and wretched knees of despair. Ankles of doom, pounded feet, and wiry hands, scarred from a thousand face-clawing, vein-popping struggles.
Yet, as I look south, beyond these sad and torn remnants, I am happy, for I have learned what wisdoms to impart.
Collecting my battle wounds and dismembered limbs, I can now give you, youthful person considering home education, the gift of my experience.
If you really, really, REALLY are intent on spending several years teaching your own, then with these essential items, you must now prepare your body.*
1. Brass neck.
Every home educating mother must acquire one of these. A solid brass neck to navigate the High Street at 11am on a Monday morning.
More than moral righteousness is cast in the brass. It disables any ability to turn head-wise to the whisperings following the 'school-age child' straggling at your side. The particularly scruffy child, clad in grubby tee-shirt, torn jeans, an assortment of dreadlocks, chocolate over one eye, and a left shoe only (a fact you are bound not to notice until you reach the Co op on account of not being able to turn the neck).
2. A tongue you already bit off.
My advice is DON'T SAY IT. I have struggled with this, and still do, because oh yes there are so many responses to the in-law who, horror-struck, whispers Home education? Is that wise? or the neighbour who asks 'Are you allowed to do that?
STOP. Your response will not only be taken as evidence in court, it must be totally positive PR for what you are about to do, and simultaneously support all the struggling world of home ed. DON'T SAY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. JUST SMILE.
3. Face of steel.
As you sit around the kitchen table, determined to enjoy yet another happy learning moment with Urban Environments or What shall we watch on the telly, the peace will shatter between Arch Enemies, Sibling Rivals 1,2, and 3. Number 1 destroys the moment of educational perfection with I hate you; number 2 screams Get out of my life, and number 3 chimes in with the chorus, It would be better off if you were dead.
Then, with the learning day of happiness in ruins, you will need a face of steel. Any ordinary plasticine face, betraying motherly tenderness brutalised by shock, disbelief, and horror, inevitably adds emotion to the moment; it allows the offspring a terrible opportunity to observe the maternal pain, then show how much they care by finishing the kill.
4. No ears.
With kids around all day everyday, simply plug the ears up. Shove them under a duvet. Better still, take them off. Hide them in a padded box and stash them in the linen cupboard where they can't transmit any sound at all.
5. Wired up teeth.
Yes, wire the buggers up, top to bottom, and quick about it. If you are home educating any primary-age child, with or without siblings, you very quickly realise that your entire education is composed of cake.
Cake is chemical reaction! (Obviously.) It's maths! (There are four in the family to eat one cake and the mother must be fed six slices.) Cake is geography! (Punch a hole in one side and turn it into a river valley with a bucket of cream.) French! (Oui, nous voulons faire un bon gâteau.) Business studies! (Grandma, your slice costs $200, hand it over, cash.) And English Literature! (While their mouths are full, reverentially lay your copy of Robinson Crusoe upon the table.)
If you fail to wire your teeth together, you will come to know the consequences. That cake is 5,890 calories every day. And only Millets can cater for size 36.
6. Hands, hands, and more hands.
Three pairs of hands per child, minimum, are required for all daily interactions of education and child management.
One pair to lay out the happy learning craft resources. A second pair to put the kid with the scissors in lock down. The third to pour a stiff gin and tonic. Three kids = Nine pairs of hands. Stitch your extra hands onto a belt and hang them round your middle.
7. Legs.
Acquire a pair of stout and sturdy tree trunks to attach when the original human pair buckle, as they are sure to do. (Mine went in a stable yard under three kids, a pissed off horse-keeper and a disabled mongrel called Lucy.**)
Keep two additional leg pairs, both waterproof, suitable for nature studies and small children peeing on you. Use one pair for climbing out of ditches because no-one else will fetch the ball, and use the second pair for plodding across woods, fields and hills in the drizzle while you look in despair and rising panic for prehistoric art, moths, or rocks.
(Keep a decent trolly-dolly pair in the cupboard 'for best'. You can always hope to have a night out in 2016.)
8. No hair.
Shave it off or hope it falls out. Only this way can you be relieved of washing, styling, cutting and thinking about the irritating, increasingly grey chore sprouting from your head.
When you home educate kids, consider this. You may have them 24/7. Spending two hours alone in the hairdressers is as likely as flying to the moon.
If you do get to Curl up and Dye, you will inevitably sit next to the lucky cow who whines on and on about how her life is shit because she has to be home in five hours to 'pick the kids up from school'. Then you will never want to go there again.
9. Armour.
In your home educating journey, there will be weapons. Feet, fists, words dipped in poison, lethal pauses, and fatal punctuation marks. Your body without armour will be dented, scratched, bruised, bitten, torn, and trampled upon. Medieval armour c. 1485 is recommended.
10. Nerves of steel.
You are going to need these. You are going to chew down your knuckles with anxiety for Tinkertop's total FAIL if your mother measures her against the common ideas in her knitting circle about reading, writing and 'rithmeticing. When your teeth hit the bones, the nerves of steel will be the only things holding the entire arm together.
11. Large empty space in head.
Yes, when you start home educating, the world will open up, and with it, your mind.
Your brain will no longer be crammed full of pointless crap about lunch boxes, the PTA, holiday forms, or whether Tinkertop's uniform meets the regulation grey.
But do not be scared of the space. Enjoy it. Your mind will be called upon at all hours to help explore the Arctic, explain why polar bears have feet, or expound upon DNA. Keep the space as wide and as far-ranging as possible, then exercise it often. It must be fit for sudden demands to answer questions What holds the sky up? and then to elaborate upon Stephen Hawkin's conception of the universe.
Yet always it must be prepared to try out a new recipe for cake. This time cooked with nettle leaves.
12. Heart.
This must be enormous, bigger than your whole body, with a capacity far greater than all the oceans of the world.
What you are about to do will challenge yourself, your in-laws, show the neighbours a thing or two, take on the educational thought police, put you on the defensive against people you meet, lose friends, make enemies, and cause a tail-back on the M1 southbound from Junction 14. Yes, you will probably take the blame for that too, from the likes of Ed Balls, the NUT and the TES.
In the face of this onslaught you will at times be plunged into severe and crippling doubt. Then you will need a strong heart.
When you are fighting the universe and the children are foul; when the heart wants only to sit sobbing and defeated in a corner; when you are overwhelmed, in despair; when Tinkertop says, after all your effort and stinging hands, that maths with nettle cake is crap, then you must call upon the heart's limitless capacity for forgiving.
Apply it to everyone and, most importantly, to yourself.
* True, I am only talking woman body. This is based on the undeniable, observable fact that most people who turn up at the home ed meet up group - and who we can assume are in the bloody daily front line of the home ed decision - are women.
**Disabled mongrel.
Edited because my French is so bad. That shows you what an A grade is worth.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Hong Kong tourism!
Visit Lamma Island!
Fancy a natural haven with no roads and no cars? Where you can hike between ancient fishing villages, over green mountains, through lush groves of banana trees, to reach quiet swimming coves and golden beaches?
Place your footsteps in Lamma Island - a South China idyll - and you could truly believe here is one sanctuary of Hong Kong uniquely dedicated to conservation of our natural and beautiful habitat.
We're soon to change all that!
In only a few short years, as one of the privileged few, you can visit our new Hong Kong tourist attraction - the BAROQUE!
Reserved for the seriously wealthy - the BAROQUE development on Lamma will boast 500-berth marina to moor your yacht, superior concrete harbour facilities, state-of-the-art shopping mall, exclusive hotel, yet more upmarket seafood restaurants, and loads, loads more concrete.
This superior development project will go beyond any point of logic you've ever known before!
Designed to position Lamma Island as a rich man's paradise, you'll be able to use our seriously smart facilities to demonstrate how you have cash to burn.
Imagine, at what ridiculous expense, you could be that exceptional person able to take advantage of our planned redesignation of the island's Site of Special Scientific Interest into Only-for-the-Rich Concrete Deployment Zone.
Consider the possibilities! On this tiny getaway island with no roads, we have plans to build a modern, fully-functioning, and superbly designed car park.
Helicopter in your Porsche, and proudly park it in the space we'll reserve for only 135 private cars. Remember, you won't be able to drive anywhere! This unique and protected island has no roads!
See how you can boast to the world what Hong Kong can do!
Yet not only are we dedicated to development which is wasteful, destructive, and bizarre, you can trust us to truly fulfil the yearnings of your romantic soul.
You can find your satisfaction here, on Sham Wan Beach.
You know that lady of your dreams? The special someone who wears those shoes made for lying down about the town?
Dream yourself, showing her your gift of a lifetime - the pleasure of lying flat with her shoes on the exclusive Sham Wan Beach - a site the World Wildlife Fund for Nature once identified as a special world breeding ground for the endangered green turtle.
Imagine how these rare and beautiful creatures once paddled thousands of miles here, to this spot, and sought to nest.
Rest here to listen as the waters lap against the concrete harbour, and recall how sweet, fresh, and delicious they were cooked to your taste.
Come experience the world of the future. The BAROQUE on Lamma Island.
Showing completely how truly Hong Kong is dedicated to economic gain for a privileged few, combined with the best in environmental destruction.
Living Lamma.
WWF.
Photos show demonstration in Central.
Strangely apt.
Popular opinion says NO to the Baroque.
The petition.
Fancy a natural haven with no roads and no cars? Where you can hike between ancient fishing villages, over green mountains, through lush groves of banana trees, to reach quiet swimming coves and golden beaches?
Place your footsteps in Lamma Island - a South China idyll - and you could truly believe here is one sanctuary of Hong Kong uniquely dedicated to conservation of our natural and beautiful habitat.
We're soon to change all that!
In only a few short years, as one of the privileged few, you can visit our new Hong Kong tourist attraction - the BAROQUE!
Reserved for the seriously wealthy - the BAROQUE development on Lamma will boast 500-berth marina to moor your yacht, superior concrete harbour facilities, state-of-the-art shopping mall, exclusive hotel, yet more upmarket seafood restaurants, and loads, loads more concrete.
This superior development project will go beyond any point of logic you've ever known before!
Designed to position Lamma Island as a rich man's paradise, you'll be able to use our seriously smart facilities to demonstrate how you have cash to burn.
Imagine, at what ridiculous expense, you could be that exceptional person able to take advantage of our planned redesignation of the island's Site of Special Scientific Interest into Only-for-the-Rich Concrete Deployment Zone.
Consider the possibilities! On this tiny getaway island with no roads, we have plans to build a modern, fully-functioning, and superbly designed car park.
Helicopter in your Porsche, and proudly park it in the space we'll reserve for only 135 private cars. Remember, you won't be able to drive anywhere! This unique and protected island has no roads!
See how you can boast to the world what Hong Kong can do!
Yet not only are we dedicated to development which is wasteful, destructive, and bizarre, you can trust us to truly fulfil the yearnings of your romantic soul.
You can find your satisfaction here, on Sham Wan Beach.
You know that lady of your dreams? The special someone who wears those shoes made for lying down about the town?
Dream yourself, showing her your gift of a lifetime - the pleasure of lying flat with her shoes on the exclusive Sham Wan Beach - a site the World Wildlife Fund for Nature once identified as a special world breeding ground for the endangered green turtle.
Imagine how these rare and beautiful creatures once paddled thousands of miles here, to this spot, and sought to nest.
Rest here to listen as the waters lap against the concrete harbour, and recall how sweet, fresh, and delicious they were cooked to your taste.
Come experience the world of the future. The BAROQUE on Lamma Island.
Showing completely how truly Hong Kong is dedicated to economic gain for a privileged few, combined with the best in environmental destruction.
Living Lamma.
WWF.
Photos show demonstration in Central.
Strangely apt.
Popular opinion says NO to the Baroque.
The petition.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Maybe I'm equipping them for another kind of normal
Okay, I give in. We home educated types. We're not living a normal life.
I suspected it.
You can find out too, whether your kids live a normal life, with this report, commissioned by The Children's Society.
Missing out: A child centred analysis of material deprivation and subjective well-being.
This is what the researchers write: 'We wanted to know what material items and experiences children themselves think are necessary for a 'normal kind of life', whether lacking these items and experiences is related to their self-reported well-being and if so, which items or types of items seem to be the most important.'
Took less than a second to find out my kids aren't normal, as Shark, Squirrel and Tiger dumped the most wanted items in 'normal life' - clothes, branded trainers, and cable TV - right at the very bottom of their lists. Worse, my kids don't even want them, which is an indicator of something (bloody mindedness, probably).
'Clothes? I'm not wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt with Hello Kitty on it. Why would you want to fit in with that?' (Expression of ghastly horror from Squirrel)
'I don't care if my clothes fit in with other people. I care if something goes with the other elements of clothing I'm wearing.' (Tiger, clearly not destined for either Top Shop or Vivienne Westwood)
'Does it give me the option of a diving suit?' (Shark, who has a very particular water-based definition of normal)
On the issue of cable TV the kids were even more flummoxed. We don't have a TV. (DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL.) The kids have laptops and we taught them to access the iplayer. (Does that count?)
Incidentally, the three number one items for my kids were garden (Tiger) family days out (Shark) and family holidays (Squirrel).
Then I showed them the original list of 20 material items. (If you gave these* to your child, which 10 would they strike out?)
Everything went bellyup then, not what researchers want at all, because top of the list here went pet as in HORSE (Tiger), books (Shark), and more books, preferably with dragons (Squirrel).
I blame the mother. Leading the innocents away from the one type of high-street, mass shopping, mass consumption, TV-watching life we are all invited to consider normal.
I led us into another type of normal. People who value books, gardens, outings with the family, and horses (that one, definitely not my doing).
Hmm. I suppose it is not particularly surprising, given the educational and cultural experiences of these young ladies (and the state of the mother's hair).
It puts me in mind of an incident that happened a while back at a workshop. Our home ed group sat side-by-side with a school group. The leader asked, Who's your hero? The school kids answered Eminem, Lady Gaga, P. Diddy. One of the home ed kids looked surprised, then pipped up with My brother.
*What ten items does a child value most for 'normal life'?
The original list of 20 items :
1. Some pocket money each week to spend on yourself
2. Some money that you can save each month, either in a bank or at home
3. A pair of designer or brand name trainers (like Nike or Vans)
4. Treats and snacks like sweets, chocolate, chips or pizza once a week
5. Being part of a club where you play sports or do a hobby like drama, art or music
6. An iPod or other personal music player
7. Your own mobile phone
8. A computer at home that is connected to the internet that you can use for school work and in your free time
9. A games console, like an Xbox, PS3 or Wii, and at least one game for it
10. Cable or satellite TV at home
11. A pet at home
12. A garden at home, or somewhere nearby like a park where you can safely spend time with your friends
13. A bedroom of your own (not shared)
14. Presents on special occasions like birthdays and Christmas
15. A family car for transport when you need it
16. Access to public transport like the train or the bus when you need it
17. The right kind of clothes to fit in with other people your age
18. Books of your own (suitable to their age) at home
19. At least one family holiday away from home each year
20. Family trips or days out at least once a month
I suspected it.
You can find out too, whether your kids live a normal life, with this report, commissioned by The Children's Society.
Missing out: A child centred analysis of material deprivation and subjective well-being.
This is what the researchers write: 'We wanted to know what material items and experiences children themselves think are necessary for a 'normal kind of life', whether lacking these items and experiences is related to their self-reported well-being and if so, which items or types of items seem to be the most important.'
Took less than a second to find out my kids aren't normal, as Shark, Squirrel and Tiger dumped the most wanted items in 'normal life' - clothes, branded trainers, and cable TV - right at the very bottom of their lists. Worse, my kids don't even want them, which is an indicator of something (bloody mindedness, probably).
'Clothes? I'm not wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt with Hello Kitty on it. Why would you want to fit in with that?' (Expression of ghastly horror from Squirrel)
'I don't care if my clothes fit in with other people. I care if something goes with the other elements of clothing I'm wearing.' (Tiger, clearly not destined for either Top Shop or Vivienne Westwood)
'Does it give me the option of a diving suit?' (Shark, who has a very particular water-based definition of normal)
On the issue of cable TV the kids were even more flummoxed. We don't have a TV. (DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL.) The kids have laptops and we taught them to access the iplayer. (Does that count?)
Incidentally, the three number one items for my kids were garden (Tiger) family days out (Shark) and family holidays (Squirrel).
Then I showed them the original list of 20 material items. (If you gave these* to your child, which 10 would they strike out?)
Everything went bellyup then, not what researchers want at all, because top of the list here went pet as in HORSE (Tiger), books (Shark), and more books, preferably with dragons (Squirrel).
I blame the mother. Leading the innocents away from the one type of high-street, mass shopping, mass consumption, TV-watching life we are all invited to consider normal.
I led us into another type of normal. People who value books, gardens, outings with the family, and horses (that one, definitely not my doing).
Hmm. I suppose it is not particularly surprising, given the educational and cultural experiences of these young ladies (and the state of the mother's hair).
It puts me in mind of an incident that happened a while back at a workshop. Our home ed group sat side-by-side with a school group. The leader asked, Who's your hero? The school kids answered Eminem, Lady Gaga, P. Diddy. One of the home ed kids looked surprised, then pipped up with My brother.
*What ten items does a child value most for 'normal life'?
The original list of 20 items :
1. Some pocket money each week to spend on yourself
2. Some money that you can save each month, either in a bank or at home
3. A pair of designer or brand name trainers (like Nike or Vans)
4. Treats and snacks like sweets, chocolate, chips or pizza once a week
5. Being part of a club where you play sports or do a hobby like drama, art or music
6. An iPod or other personal music player
7. Your own mobile phone
8. A computer at home that is connected to the internet that you can use for school work and in your free time
9. A games console, like an Xbox, PS3 or Wii, and at least one game for it
10. Cable or satellite TV at home
11. A pet at home
12. A garden at home, or somewhere nearby like a park where you can safely spend time with your friends
13. A bedroom of your own (not shared)
14. Presents on special occasions like birthdays and Christmas
15. A family car for transport when you need it
16. Access to public transport like the train or the bus when you need it
17. The right kind of clothes to fit in with other people your age
18. Books of your own (suitable to their age) at home
19. At least one family holiday away from home each year
20. Family trips or days out at least once a month
Thursday, 24 November 2011
It does not mean I can launder knickers
So yeah, of course I read that. Home education is all about the parents.
TOO RIGHT IT IS.
Because maybe it escaped someone's thinking, but here's our Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 where we are clearly told it's our job:
7: Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
a: to his age, ability and aptitude, and
b: to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
That is sensible. Who would give over the decision-making to a five-year old? If you let them decide things, they will have you living in a tent with a pet lion. Next they will want to openly thieve packets of chocolate digestives from Tesco, and they will insist grandma eats her mud pies.
Of course parents should make the decisions. What else do you want?
Some days it pisses me off that I have this duty, true. It is hard enough being a responsible adult for myself, let alone the minds of three children, the contents of the fridge, and a clean pair of knickers.
But it's a duty I have, and it's up to me to work out how to discharge it. Should I plunge my hands up to the armpits in the bucket called responsibility? Or try and shovel the whole load off to a school down the road?
Being a bit of a masochist, I chose the former. Anyway, I looked round at the educational options, and reasoned that if I were to do it myself, then life might be tough, but in some ways it might be easier.
I could take the kids to a museum on a Tuesday and to the woods on a Thursday without having to account for myself to any institution. And I wouldn't have Mrs Ming standing between me and my child at 8am, telling me what lunch to pack, what clothes to wear, and what book to read evenings, weekends and holidays.
Easier, and I consider these areas my other responsibilities. I make the decisions. So Yes. It's all about me.
Well, from the moment you take the decision, I guess it's up to each of us. How it happens on the ground - the real, practical, working out and implementing of your decision, day-by-day.
Round here, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have had quite a few days of their primary education choosing exactly what to do and how to do it. On different days I've either borne the scars, or worn the laurels.
When Tiger chose to trash my entire house, Squirrel painted my Buddha fluorescent orange, and Shark threw a spanner at my head, of course that was a bad day. I had scars. Literally.
But on another day, when Tiger cutely asked 'Can we see a lion?' I've had three kids happily sitting in a bright cold autumn morning, drawing snoozing lions within inches of our noses. Then I could wear my laurels.
These good and bad, swings and roundabouts, failures and successes, they are all part of the practicalities and consequences of decision making; bad days on their own are not the reason why I should expect my duty to be rescinded, nor the sole reason I'd give why I would think my decision good or bad. I'd have so many other factors to think about.
I expect your decision making follows much the same lines. Throughout it all, whether you give your kids a great deal of freedom and choice, or whether you give them not much choice at all, well, that's up to you. But isn't that called parenting? (See? It's still all about us.)
We can ignore the minor inconveniences, trashed front rooms, and the occasional head wound, because those come with the territory of children, regardless of educational model.
But the final responsibility for the overall decision-making on the education, employment, economy, and running of the family? Ours.
Because we are the grown ups.
TOO RIGHT IT IS.
Because maybe it escaped someone's thinking, but here's our Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 where we are clearly told it's our job:
7: Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
a: to his age, ability and aptitude, and
b: to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
That is sensible. Who would give over the decision-making to a five-year old? If you let them decide things, they will have you living in a tent with a pet lion. Next they will want to openly thieve packets of chocolate digestives from Tesco, and they will insist grandma eats her mud pies.
Of course parents should make the decisions. What else do you want?
Some days it pisses me off that I have this duty, true. It is hard enough being a responsible adult for myself, let alone the minds of three children, the contents of the fridge, and a clean pair of knickers.
But it's a duty I have, and it's up to me to work out how to discharge it. Should I plunge my hands up to the armpits in the bucket called responsibility? Or try and shovel the whole load off to a school down the road?
Being a bit of a masochist, I chose the former. Anyway, I looked round at the educational options, and reasoned that if I were to do it myself, then life might be tough, but in some ways it might be easier.
I could take the kids to a museum on a Tuesday and to the woods on a Thursday without having to account for myself to any institution. And I wouldn't have Mrs Ming standing between me and my child at 8am, telling me what lunch to pack, what clothes to wear, and what book to read evenings, weekends and holidays.
Easier, and I consider these areas my other responsibilities. I make the decisions. So Yes. It's all about me.
Well, from the moment you take the decision, I guess it's up to each of us. How it happens on the ground - the real, practical, working out and implementing of your decision, day-by-day.
Round here, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have had quite a few days of their primary education choosing exactly what to do and how to do it. On different days I've either borne the scars, or worn the laurels.
When Tiger chose to trash my entire house, Squirrel painted my Buddha fluorescent orange, and Shark threw a spanner at my head, of course that was a bad day. I had scars. Literally.
But on another day, when Tiger cutely asked 'Can we see a lion?' I've had three kids happily sitting in a bright cold autumn morning, drawing snoozing lions within inches of our noses. Then I could wear my laurels.
These good and bad, swings and roundabouts, failures and successes, they are all part of the practicalities and consequences of decision making; bad days on their own are not the reason why I should expect my duty to be rescinded, nor the sole reason I'd give why I would think my decision good or bad. I'd have so many other factors to think about.
I expect your decision making follows much the same lines. Throughout it all, whether you give your kids a great deal of freedom and choice, or whether you give them not much choice at all, well, that's up to you. But isn't that called parenting? (See? It's still all about us.)
We can ignore the minor inconveniences, trashed front rooms, and the occasional head wound, because those come with the territory of children, regardless of educational model.
But the final responsibility for the overall decision-making on the education, employment, economy, and running of the family? Ours.
Because we are the grown ups.
Chemistry. I decided my children would know about that, too.
Choosing how to do it is only follows the decision.
It has been by very traditional means.
Kitchen cupboards, cooking, experimenting, observing...
...talking, sharing, that sort of thing.
Did anyone seriously think it would automatically mean
taking on my views about petrol bombs and yeast?
taking on my views about petrol bombs and yeast?
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