Never cut the elder tree

Had a big family fight. Mostly recriminations, accusations, resentments. It started because I sawed a branch off the elder tree to make my kitchen wands (very good, practical, you should buy one; find them at the craft stall soon).

Squirrel was outraged at the elder branch removal. She said I had not asked permission. I said if you mean of the tree, I'm sure I did. I made due requests to the elder mother and I gave my respectful thanks. I probably turned east, west, south and north too. Of anyone else, I didn't think I had to. The thing is in our garden.

This did nothing to mitigate the crime.

Anyway, the argument quickly escalated. My elder violation came hard on the theft of the dotty ribbon and the purloining of Shark's glow-in-the-dark glitter.

Alright, I admit, I did pinch the glitter. The ribbon was an accident. But since I am in truth and reconciliation, I also offered of my own free will Tiger's beads from Sham Shui Po. But I said, Tiger has millions of them and I didn't think she would miss five. I stitched them into the binding of a notebook and they looked very pretty. After I sold it, I distinctly recall I gave each of my daughters a fiver, which is not a bad return on five pink beads.

Squirrel said the money was like blood money only worse, and you cannot buy your way out of betrayal.

She went on. If I would like to remember, the elder tree, ribbon, glitter and beads are not my only crimes. It is the way I go about collecting things that are not mine (bits of bark, hand-made paper scraps, lengths of wool, that sort of thing). I told Squirrel she should be grateful she got her squirrelling tendencies from someone like me, who is so clearly very sane and well-balanced, indeed she should thank me, because with our collecting natures and delight over earth's details and natural found things, her future happiness and content is almost guaranteed.

That made it worse. Out came the grudge about how I had stolen the entire back bedroom earlier in the year to turn it into my workroom.

But I have to stash the craft items somewhere! The front room looked like Mr Trebus had given me interior decorating tips on storing and sorting. And I have to make at least twenty woody notebooks for my woodland spellbound theme, so it's not surprising if I am in the workroom every day, concentrating on the delights of silver birch and hawthorn.

I cannot say that anything I said made anything better. After a couple of hours it had descended into yelling (me), clawing at head in frustration (me again), throwing tea towels about (yup) and slamming doors (twice) before forcing the entire family to sit round the table to thrash out a negotiated settlement on elder tree use and notebook making hours.

Which includes, incidentally, the strict injunction that I am to saw my wood from elsewhere; to the earthly guardian of the elder tree, the elder in our garden is precious, more rare and beautiful than anything, and the fact that it already died last year, that matters not one bit.

Flexischool to feral

I must be helpful to a new home educator, so forgive this moment of thought. (Normal service will be resumed shortly.)

One of the difficulties people in the home ed world seem to have (and probably not just in the world of home ed) is how to label the stuff we do. Like the Autonomous vs Structured tag.

I have fretted about this myself. Is la famille Grit autonomous? Structured? School at home? Free range? Eclectic?

How many times have I heard myself explaining what position we adopt in this wild spectrum, not to people outside the community, but to people inside it. Yet I never think I got that label exactly right.

And it's easy to make the same assumptions about each other. One week you might observe Tinkertop casually kicking a chicken carcass about a car park while mama looks on tolerantly. Then I'm thinking, Aha! Note the non-coercive parent approach. Must be autonomous. Mama is probably respecting Tinkertop's expression of violence towards the dead chicken as some sort of emotional response towards the avian world. 

But two weeks later I could probably catch Tinkertop hunched over a desk with a maths worksheet, mama scrutinising her from afar, holding a pack of 12 pencils in a threatening manner. Then I might think, Aha! Note the coercive parent approach. Must be structured. Mama is probably organising Tinkertop's entry into the GCSE exam right now.

The reality is, once we withdraw Tinkertop from school to do it the alternative way, we never really know what the alternative way is, until we do it. So you try everything in every direction.

Through trial and error, by picking a way through all options, choices and approaches, you come to see what fits with Tinkertop's brain, character and emotional state. It may be a way that simultaneously allows you to manage the days, cook dinner, consider the rest of the tribe, and attend to your own needs. As if you needed more pressure, you might find yourself trying to position your family group in a face-saving way within the expectations of the wider communities in which you all move - and present yourself so the unaware school-choosers who are watching this whole sorry performance don't ostracise you on the conclusion that you just proved yourself irredeemably nuts.

That experience of home ed becomes the very close way you come to know your own child. And is possibly one reason why home educators become picky and prickly if they feel they're being given the wrong sort of interpretation. We're still working and thinking through all the approaches ourselves.

So my conclusion is, as you get started, I wouldn't fret too much about the labels; neither the ones that are given to you, nor the ones you feel under pressure to use, especially if they come with a whole package of ideas that you don't automatically subscribe to. Be free to try what you like, how you like, when you like.

And now I can leave you to draw your own conclusions about Squirrel's activities of the day.

'Stop fussing. It will be fun.'

Dear Goddess of the Woods,

We powerless parents have today offered up to you the sacrifice of twelve kids that your holy branches demanded of us. We have included one dressed up like a Wookiee in military fatigues, and the others looking like they are members of the UKIP Youth Wing who have taken their tribal ideas from the Khmer Rouge.

Dear Goddess, if you can be mercifully minded, please be kind to these offerings today, as they run about trying to bash the shit out of each other with sticks while they 'capture the flag with a twist'.

If you can return to us our children in one piece, as we would entreat you, then we would be eternally grateful. Please do not stab them in the eyes with your pointy twigs, nor trip them up with your stumpy remains, neither catch them in your nettley and thorny embrace.

Although I am convinced that once they get started running about blindfold there is sure to be blood.

Thank you, Amen, etc.

(I have brought the Savlon, just in case.)

Bark, leather, drills, needles

Mostly gone off in my Knicker Drawers.

Lists are good

I feel my August plan to do bugger all is working.

Just for August, and thanks to my medical miseries, I changed tack, and abandoned my uptight imperative to do stuff; life of doing stuff comes with a permanent feeling of inadequacy. I fail to sit down, never relax my head, am unable to kick the kids out the hammock without feeling guilty. Doing stuff means I should always do more; fill the space available with more activity, go more quickly to more places, offer more inspiring educational moments, complete more laundry cycles, cook more dinners and dust more roof tiles. But it's never enough, is it? So I am taking August off. I am making lists instead. Of stuff I would do, mixed with stuff I should like to do, mixed with stuff I never will do but since this is a fantasy to-do list I may as well add it.

In other (disconnected, unfocused) news for my educational record, last night I picked up Shark from her week spent dossing down with the Woodcraft Folk at Venturer's Camp. Woodies, she loved it. Thank you. (Loving mama not so much, since I suggested on the drive home she could review her physics course wot we bought for her so we could start properly in September.)

I see the September things-to-do are rolling in from the home ed lists. This year I am trying to be choosy, and not dash everywhere to do everything. My plan is to stay home for longer, settle into book-bound routines, and help teenagers be teenagers.

Obviously there is something in it for me. This is an important message for would-be home educating mamas. It has to work for you, too. If it doesn't work for you, home ed is not going to work.

Staying for longer periods at home means I can build up my Knicker Drawers for a more rewarding 2014. After all, these three kids are not going to need me for more than food and laundry in a couple of years, so I plan to be off, exploring life in other dimensions.

Finally, in medical matters, I have not only taken August off to rearrange my body, today I have given my soul and another squillion dollars to Doctor Quack and his compelling potions. And this is from a woman who has read Ben Goldacre's Bad Science (I recommend it). If Doctor Quack can do me over good and proper then you seekers of magic mixtures for chronic urticaria and angioedema can be sure I'll be posting the formula.

Hello, Mumsnetters

As the entire world approaches that calender date on which children wait to be sacrificed to Gove's Global Datasheets of Branded Academic Performance Structures Phase I, I know from the secret statcounter that some of you parents are considering alternatives. (There is always a spike about August.)

Geology walk to Coombs Quarry

To wit: 'making the most disastrous mistake of your life', 'setting up your child to fail', and 'beginning on a path that will deny Tinkertop her life chances, remove from her opportunities of a professional career, and separate her from her friends forever'. Probably also she will become an anarchist member of that evil underground network bent on destroying all humanity, and led by our hero, Grimly Feendish, aka Home Educators.

Thornborough Bridge, built in the 14th century, 

the only surviving medieval bridge in Bucks! 

Imagine the travellers who crossed this way.

I cannot help you take your decision. All children are different, la? If Tinkertop threatens to go bonkers, breakdown, or chuck herself under a bus on September 4, in the absence of her rational thinking, then it is you, responsible parent, who weighs the options, costs, benefits, and consequences.

 WTF? Who signed off this repair?

Time to become the nit-picking little building nerd 

I truly am, and send a note to English Heritage.

What I can do, is give you what I do. Probably across many posts (apologies). Otherwise, I only have wrods of experience for the new-to-home ed:

1. Find local home ed groups; talk to practicing home educators, face to face. Meet as many as possible, all over the place. Yes, you will meet people who are bonkers. Some will be wary of you, some want to sell you tuition services for profit, some happily include you in the panda-themed party they're having that afternoon. That's life, not home ed. Be grateful your first introduction is not being locked in a toilet with the hippy who protests against the exploitation of cotton pickers and passes you her favourite bottom wipe. She knitted it herself from the hair of the family goat.

 Calming, no?

2. Are you suffering for the cause yet? Not enough. A next step is to attend home ed meets, visit the haunts and habitats, and generally discover how they know where to go. It may involve wellies, sticks, and a dog wearing a cardigan. Or tea and Bibles. Or watching a kid see if a pile of salt on the kitchen table can be ignited. Relax, broaden your mind, wait for it all to make sense. It never will. Probably why I enjoy the company of souls in this community. (But I am also comfortable with my own contradictions, denials, excuses and hypocrisies, so I am not much of a judge.)

 The river here would be an excellent place

 for the kids to do a river survey. 

I am all up for that. 

Anyone want to come along?

3. Open your eyes to education in everything, not just what school taught you. You have to do this with grinding relentlessness. Say, when you stand forlorn before a museum display that is basically a pile of old rocks, a joyless mound of dusty plastic fish, and a non-functioning video about newt warts. The lot will be guarded by an elderly woman who wants to do her very best for you. She may pin you down so she can find the worksheet that Doreen made in 1985. She is sure they have a photocopy of it somewhere. But even here we can find an education! There must be something about communities, social values, museum funding, and English politeness formula as you try and beat a path to the tea shop.

 Soil! I like soil.

4. Redefine the word Success. Tinkertop not made it out of bed today? Success. The pom-pom making workshop that ended in vomit? Success. The giddy heights of the stick-and-glue group where there is an almighty fight over the single Pritt Stick? Success.

Ah, woodland.

5. Don't feel bad, even when you feel marginalised. Oh yes, it will happen, even in happy home ed land.  One group may feel all wrong; you sense an ugly bad-tempered truce in another; a third resembles total chaos. The fact you weren't invited to the library group, and now you're sure they're telling you something? Keep with it: you and Tinkertop will be comfortable somewhere. And let's celebrate. Expect these divisions; they are made of ideologies, philosophies, religious beliefs and politics. You wanted to join a community of people who stand up for what they believe, don't do things just because someone tells them to, and rarely agree just for the sake of conflict avoidance, didn't you? Society needs strong minded people, and you'll meet a shed load out here.

In the quarry. 

Here you can find shells from the time 

this land was a tropical beach.

6. You must be prepared to face out the incomprehending others. Like those who think Tinkertop should be at school; assume she has been excluded; or there must be something socially wrong with her. They may make comments about how you must be mad/desperate, or your motives are suspicious. Maybe you are needy and weak. You never knew you were capable of murdering your own family until now, huh? I guess you'll develop your favourite reply which isn't fuck off delivered under your breath.

And the perfect spot for a picnic 

with a bit of ice age art.

7. You may have to get to grips with exam culture. Or not. The illegal flexischool, or not. But educationally, you and Tinkertop can sort out a route that is suited to her, and her specific needs and interests. Like the wise woman said, life is not a race. Tinkertop can find her own way, be inspired by courses for which she needs qualifications, aim to be in the place she wants to be. So what if she does it on her own path? It is for situations like this people invented the expression There is more than one way to skin a cat. (Apologies to Tiddles.) You have to help pick a curriculum, negotiate an exam centre, and pay the invigilator. For info, join the high volume, informed and intelligent home ed exams yahoo group.

 I love this gate. 

Whoever made it, I thank you.

8. You have to know the law. At some point, it will be unavoidable, maybe when you need to articulate your philosophy, choose whether to have visits, or avoid court. I could give you a quick legal thingummy, in case you fear an EWO will test your knowledge of English Educational Law 1947-2009, and you don't have the gibbering Tinkertop on hand to demonstrate the mess made by conventional schooling, but the law is not my first interest and anyway, other sites give you the gem.

The sort of day a girl needs. 

Equipped with knife, sticks, ancient shells and soil, 

what could be a better way to footle through a Sunday?

9. It may be of no use to anyone else, but fortune cookie philosophy keeps me upright. Be imaginative to think of the choices; be brave enough to carry them out. Leave the life you planned; embrace the life you have. Eat more prawn crackers; why resist their crunchy charms? And always look for the easy laugh. There will be times when you need it.

Burial mound.

10. You have to be prepared to drive a car where you hope the police never have cause to look in the boot.

Now you could say, Do you know what? Having thought about it, let's not do it.

'Where can I find vacuum cleaner sex?'

Dear reader in Germany. Yes, you, who typed the above urgent question.

Naturally, the answer brought you to grit's day. To the seductive charms of her Hoover, Dyson, and the One with no name.

Before we begin the sexy photo tour, I should tell you, that for myself, I do not yearn for my pornographic vacuum cleaners. I plan no dalliance with any of them. In fact, in confidence, I hate them. I hate them with my woman's vengeance. The sort she reserves for domestic equipments that may have been designed by a man who wants them for sex, because they are no sodding use for sucking up carpet fluff. (Or, in my household, several strata of craft debris.)

But it is worse. I have a cruel and bitter streak at the heart of my nature, and I want to make my vacuum cleaners suffer for the pain they have given my spirit.

In fact, let me pause, while I go back to their prison at the top of the stairs and give them a good kicking.

See? Sex and violence at grit's day.

But why, Grit, do you not love your sexy vacuum cleaners?

Because, regarding actual sucking up of carpet debris, of craft peelings, of anything, they are unfit. More than unfit. Totally sodding useless. I have dumped them here, on the landing, in the bit that no-one ever knows what to do with, where we pile up books, shoes, and now, the non-functioning vacuum cleaner collection. It is a hall of shame, literally.

Let us explore the goods.

There. That is the sodding Dyson, skulking behind the banister. I hate the bastard. It weighs more than I do, inevitably smashes into the wall every time I try and pick it up, and it doesn't suck. A bit broke off four years ago which I failed to glue back on with Hard as Nails. It now dangles, uselessly. Oh, my pain! The Dyson only works if I grovel on hands and knees, hold the broken flexible end at right angles to the floor, and plead. Then it manages a teensy weensy bit of a pathetic suck. When I turn it off in despair, it vomits.

Or you could try the Hoover?

Turn this on, and it roars like a jet engine. That is all.

The One with no name! Probably a ripped-off design screwed together in a manufacturing unit in Shenzhen.

But oh, how I once adored it! Lightweight, and I could swing it round corners, it was my favourite! Working hard, loyally, for at least eighteen months, happily and powerfully sucking up everything it could find, only narrowly missing the hamster, but always ready, always on duty! I thought it would last forever!

You can start this up. It will get all hot, before inexplicably shutting down and refusing to start again. It promises much, yet delivers nothing. All is ash and dust. Old age is a terrible thing.

Dear reader in Germany, if you are desperately searching for sexy vacuum cleaners, then here, take mine. I shall pimp this sorry brigade for your pleasure.

Take them all. Explore their vulnerabilities, which now are many. Crush them to your command. It will be easy. And when you have finished, take them properly, where they belong, to the vacuum cleaner disassembly pile. Please. It would save me the journey.

Woodland magic

One time at Kentwell Hall Tudor reenactment, we went to see the alchemist in the woods.

After presenting us with eyeballs, and magically changing his urine - yellow to red to yellow again - he told us that you could always find an alchemist in a wood; they properly belonged together.

Not only could the woodland timber supply fire, and the forest floor provide all manner of materials for experimentation, the proper alchemical work of heating, cooling, bonding and dividing could be done here safely, away from prying eyes. Any wonderful discoveries, say towards the magical elixir of eternal life, would then be quite safe.

Meanwhile, the strange sounds, coloured plumes of smokes, sparks and crackles of light emanating from the trees would, amongst the locals, only add to tales of alchemical mystery and power.

Better still, outdoors in the woodland clearings, he could leg it sharpish if his experiment blew up his hut.

This notebook then, for alchemists in woodlands.

I shall take the example from the alchemist. I shall hide myself away in my own forest room, allow only explosive profanities to escape from me when I bugger up the stitching, and emerge, clutching the elixir of eternal youth!

Or at least a few very handy notebooks on a woodland magic theme, just in time for the Christmas crafts festival at Marston Vale.

Gone to some place in my head

This Knicker Drawer creation, inspired by the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Wouldn't you like to meet that rabbit? He might carry a little notebook, just like this.

But you have to know the secret

I want a Knicker Drawer book to be a book you discover in a story; the small hand-sized leather-bound book you might come upon while you are rummaging in an attic or a junk shop; you never knew it was there, but here it is, tucked away, wrapped in cloth, stowed safely, intentionally, maybe at the bottom of a crate, or in a box, or strangely placed behind a splintered wooden panel. You find the book, feel the soft cover, see that it is chained and sealed, and wonder how to open it. Take a moment to think on that. Maybe it would be better if the book stays sealed. Who knows what you might discover inside.

Weaving tangled webs

Yes, these medically miserable days I may resemble Nosferatu on a bad trip but, on the Knicker Drawer front, all is happy.

Requests for books for wondrous people aged 13 to 93 have come at me, together with a bumper order for storytellers; Knicker Drawer books are not only sensory experiences in themselves, they are of course excellent places to quietly stash your creative musings and diverting findings, like tickets, receipts, fragments of wrods, and bits of nick-nackeries. Fill them with objects of wondrous beauty, and they become the tale.

Not much and everything

Spending the week out of action.

Which means avoid all people with shingles, measles and chickenpox. I am therefore not taking Squirrel to her Astro Club, swerving the sand pit dig, avoiding the early music concert, and staying out of Norfolk.*

The children in my care I will abandon while I creep backwards and forwards to the vampire nurse.

Happily, Squirrel and Tiger begin some bizarre August animation experiment today at a local arts centre. I think this adds nicely to their holiday projects, and will help fill out the week when they are not bashing rocks, pulping newspaper to spread all over the back doorstep, and swinging on the hammock complaining it is broken.

Which means, dear reader, there will be not much home-educational for me this week. Left to my own devices, I intend only to research jewellery in the fourteenth century, read this blog, listen to the radio, and make lovely, lovely notebooks.


*I would hate to suggest all residents of Norfolk have the pox. I wishfully marked out a geology tour on the North coast but, all things considered, it has been put on hold, become yet another of Grit's goals, to be achieved in yet another time.

Need a guide to Prednisolone?

I have given in this morning to the dreaded pills, the Prednisolone.

Hopefully that means nothing to you.

However it might mean something to you people searching on chronic hives and angioedema, and you are really the only people who need this post.

The reason I have avoided these little beasties is not simply that I am a die-hard hippie who has so far handed over my mortgage to Doctor Quack and his magic herbal pixies, it is because Prednisolone comes with fearful side effects more suited to the atmos of a German expressionist movie from 1922. Let's just call them Nosferatu's Happy Pills.

See? Grit looks forever on the brightest side! I am chippy about medical miseries in my vague hopeless way, yattering off my stock of handy British phrases like never mind and mustn't grumble, together with my fortune cookie philosophy useful for all health matters, even though I mostly chant from little seeds grow big trees.

But with this powerful combination I am sure to be able to effect a cheery outlook on the range of medical possibilities the evil Prednisolone will now certainly offer me! And it is too late to stop me. I swallowed six already.

Let's try, anyway, making the best of a bad job.

Have you severe depression, bipolar disorder or manic depression? Prednisolone is the drug for you! Offers to make any mental condition worse, much worse, until you are in the cupboard under the stairs rocking backwards and forwards.

Nervousness, schizophrenia, mood swings and plain old being out of control of your reality? Yes, Prednisolone helps by letting you see things which aren't there! Personally I am looking forward to this one; I placed an order already for three naked men, a vat of champagne and a monkey.

Have you been in contact with someone who has shingles, chickenpox or measles? Even if they don't know about it yet? Like, they're just carrying around that infection, waiting to kill you? Because, yeah, on Prednisolone, if you catch it, for you, it's probably fatal. Never mind! You can take the monkey with you when you wind up screaming at your own funeral.

High blood pressure? Heart problems? Gulp down that Prednisolone, if only for your Sunday afternoon entertainment. Better than the TV when your super-pressurised blood shoots out both ears like oil from an unplugged well. Why not get the kids to photograph the moment for your GP's inhouse magazine, Medical Mess of the Month!

Stomach and intestines. Let's get grimy with the innards. Bloating, ulcers, perforations. Basically, your insides are going to resemble a colander after a few weeks on the Prednisolone. You can always be useful! Maybe you could be hung upside down and use your handy intestinal lining as a spaghetti strainer.

Hormones, you're in for a treat! Soon, passers by in the street will stop to wonder, Who is that girl? And how did she get that glossy chestnut brown on all her luxuriant facial hair?

Skin! The very reason I've been prescribed Prednisolone! Promises to cover me in purple lines, bruising, acne and wounds that don't heal! Yay me! A huge festering lump of drugged out pox!

But hey! Let's look on the bright side. The pills are teensy-tiny, and so easy to swallow.

Time? Distance? Pft.

One of those mornings when I must explore the time dimensions of Einstein, considering I have to put Shark on a train at Luton airport, place Tiger on a windsurfing lake outside Bedford, and erect a modest craft stall in a small town north of Milton Keynes. All within fifteen minutes of each other.

I do what any normal mother of triplets does when she must have a practical bash at time travel. After all, what did Einstein have but a load of letters and some numbers? I have a beaten up old diesel van and a willpower fashioned from experience with late twentieth century steel.

I fill up on rocket fuel, hold the earth steady, put two fingers up to the normal laws of physics and give Squirrel very specific instructions about what to do with my red velvet curtain.

Together we do it all, but really it is only thanks to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger doing exactly what they are told within a one-second horizon that we do it at all.

But the morning almost finishes me off. The puffyupandfalloffyitis is so very chronic today, probably akin to leprosy, that I not only resemble a hideous withered gnome, I am also in pain. Squirrel suggests for the rest of Saturday I hang a bell round my neck to warn those approaching that I look like a woman half done in. That is a helpful suggestion and I might take it up. Were I not for the fact that I must spend the rest of the day standing behind my craft stall, selling beautiful hand-made leather fetish collecting books.

Here, amuse yourselves similarly with other tales of time travel.

Quick! Join the Woodcraft Folk!

Take Shark to a park in Luton.

The early start has me driving like Sisyphus about the backstreets of Luton in the rush hour, but it will be worth it. Shark is to spend the day with her like-minded chums, engaged in healthy, outdoor, cooperative team-building activities.

I know that in today's jaded teenage world, team-building activities should properly mean common assault, social humiliation and physical violence, but we hairy hippies must follow a different path. We have found tent putting-up and tent taking-down. Okay, it might end up with the happy teens bashing each other round the face with tent poles, but let's take what we can get in this Facebook stalking world.

But this is the very good reason why I once again recommend to all parents... ta dah... the lovely, lovely Woodcraft Folk!

They properly belong to 1925. Any parent faced with a vision of Tinkertop sat hunched and hooded in front of Myspace, peeing into a bucket because she cannot move for a second from her apps, simply consider the alternative. The happy Woodies. They are your team.

If you nostalgically yearn for Tinkertop to enjoy a bygone era of childhood with tents, chiff chaff worship, and co-operative tent-putting up and taking-down, with no allegiances to Gods nor Queens nor knee-length shorts, then take my advice. Get in there now, before they become uber trendy, and you can't get a place for love nor money.

Remember, nothing is ever new, so we can expect 1925 will become the new vogue for 2015. Myspace will be dead, the loss of childhood will be mourned, and school will have swung circle: the grinding academic techniques praised by Gove and his international league-table chums will sniff of old age and inadequacy; 15 A** passes will tell of woefully closeted rooms; employers will despair of people who haven't a clue how to use double-sided sticky-tape; and society will be filled with the lost, despaired ghosts of childhood, staring regretfully at the ancients with the sallow, haunted eyes of hot-house victims.

Then, my bet is, we'll all be looking to a new social saviour in the form of a reinvented outdoors education movement, showing us the light with the bright happy faces and cooperative tent-putting-up and taking down. The sort of education Tinkertop can get today from the happy hippie Woodies in fact, right now probably assaulting each other with tent poles.

Just my summer holiday recommendation for kids. The Woodcraft Folk.

Well, at least be grateful we don't call them The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.

twtwtw

Pack up and go home day!

Farewell, field at Stonham Barns! Arrivederci, home education HesFes gathering! Au revoir the debating corner, the talks, workshops, music sessions, strange hair brigade and the delightful furniture shop where I succumbed to the charms of your shabby chic candle sconces.

It was good, people, but I lamented the absence of the solar powered cinema, and I would fare better with choices in hippie food beyond pizza and chips.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger delighted in their feral pack-gathering, happily joining up with the Hertfordshires and Hong Kong home edders to be about their unfathomable business. Me, I sat about in the travelling library, or hung out with the Shanghai contingent and Ida from up the road.

We all agreed a useful policy to promote home ed was to spend yet another year bludgeoning the public with information of their legal duty and freedom of choice, helped along with tales of our wayward outdoor ways, warts and all.

At least then, mama and papa of Tinkertop, you know what life she can have, once set free from the school's zero-arts policy, the uniform grind of a daily maths and spelling test, and Mad Jessie of 3G who stalks her on Facebook.

Thus I hail our annual home ed gathering, all round, another roaring success! (I have to. I have no Plan B.)

Wet Tent Art

Yeah, there was a camping downpour. Don't ask when. I lose myself with time even when I have a diary and a repeater alarm clock. Put me in a tent in a field and I'm timeless. But this moment I have a camera, a goal of musing through idleness, and vague recollections of Mondrian.