Still mundane, but more positive

I think today might be classed as a Red Letter Day, which given the Brown Letter Day qualities of yesterday is all to the good.

I produce as evidence:

• I managed to sleep last night.  The previous few nights have been very disturbed what with one thing and another.  Apart from having a very strange dream where I went into the sports hall in my old school only to find that it had been turned into a zero gravity environment and I was forced to run relay races round the roof whilst keeping my strength up by eating Bovril, all was well.  I have no idea what the dream was about.  I shudder to think.
• I got a lie in this morning.  I straggled downstairs just after nine to find that Jason had gotten Oscar up and taken him to nursery, dealt with UE returning with the girl’s things and held the fort while I snoozed.  He is a good man, despite having funny eyes.
• I am still wearing pyjamas.  It is two in the afternoon.  My plan had been to forsake the house and go to town with my books.  I thought about it and realised that a) I would have to get  dressed and b) I would undoubtedly spend money and be frowned upon when I returned.  I have been studying at home, and despite it being home and hundreds of little jobs being on hand, I have managed to ignore them and pile through some more work.
• I finally got my essay back.  You know the one I wrote on Fairy Stories and had major kittens over? I got 90%.  Let me repeat that for you in bold: 90%! I have never gotten 90% for an essay in my entire life.  I just have to keep looking at it I’m so thrilled.  Of course, this does pile the pressure on a bit for the one currently residing in the murky depths of my brain, but hey.  Once in a lifetime is good enough for me.
• I managed to book tickets to see Tamsin Greig in her new play  ‘The Little Dog Laughed.’  I love Tamsin Greig.  She was fabulous in Green Wing and Black Books, two of my favourite programmes of all time, and I was gutted that I missed her performance as Beatrice in Much Ado for the RSC a couple of years ago, so I am very excited.  Plus Andrea will give me extra Brownie points.
• The best news of all is that Jason and I are going away together alone, tomorrow night.  I am unbelievably excited.  We usually try to get away for a couple of weekends a year, but this year has been particularly tough and we haven’t been anywhere since last summer when we snuck away to a hotel for a night.  It seems much, much longer ago than a year.  My friend has offered to have the girls over for a sleepover, and my mum and dad have offered to take Oscar.  We will be alone!

It all tentatively came together last weekend, but we didn’t book anything until today because, given our recent track record we were understandably nervous.  Today we threw caution to the winds and have booked a suite at the Malmaison in Harrogate for the night.  I love Harrogate and haven’t been there for nearly ten years.  I wanted to go last New Year but children prevented us due to their being alive and very much present.  We have no plans except to eat and sleep and lounge about.  I may straggle to Betty’s deservedly famous tea room some time on Sunday before returning home, but that is all.  That is enough.

I feel as if a ten ton weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  The thought of being free, and alone, with my husband is quite amazing.  Please gods, let it be true.

Did I mention the fact that we will be alone?

Ha.

Alone…

A mundane post because I am a bit rubbish today

I continue to administer to sticky eyes and do laundry.

I continue to drive about in a half assed way. I had a dreadful lesson today. I am losing heart.

I continue…

I am in a filthy mood, and still in two minds about running away.

The UE has arrived from a two week holiday in Hawaii and taken the girls away for the night.  Usually when he comes back from his jaunts he tells me how tired he is and how he needs another holiday. I had resolved that if this were the case then I would be forced to kill him stone dead.  Luckily he had clearly been taking lessons in reading body language and refrained.  It could have been the large axe I was wielding.

I am revelling in the pleasure of only having one child to look after for the evening.  This is probably a contributing factor to me not having run away yet.  That and the fact that it is very cold outside.

The child that is left has taken it upon himself to invent a new game where he is an evil villain called ‘Rooster Boy.’  He has a beak and feathers and a very impressive way of shouting: ‘Cockadoodle doo!’   I have to pretend to be asleep with my head under a blanket.  He climbs in under the blanket, stares into my face, renders his war cry at volume eleven and then hits me with a beam from his portable death ray.

Even though I try to pull his feathers out, he either escapes or goes to the feather shop near his evil lair and repairs himself.  Rooster Boy, I am sad to say,  is indestructible.  I asked him what he thinks about when he is in his evil lair (the gap between two arm chairs in the lounge).  He mused, with head on his hand and then announced: ‘Rooster thoughts.’  So there you have it.

The other reason that I am not running away is because I dug my heels in and refused to cook.  Instead of throwing me out of the house and getting a new, obedient wife, Jason offered me a Chinese takeaway, and has just gone out in the driving rain to purchase it.  The relief at not having to come up with something splendid to eat is quite remarkable.  I am also looking forward to being unsociable with the amount of garlic in the black bean sauce.

I do have other things to be thankful for.  I managed to book tickets for the Almeida’s Measure for Measure next February for Andrea and I. It was the one task she left me with before she buggered off to Chile and Easter Island for three weeks and left me.  The swine.  Booking opened today and I was terrified I would forget and then when I remembered they would be sold out.  It turns out that writing all over my hand in indelible biro was a good idea after all.  I am also in the process of booking other tickets for other theatrical joys, but I am superstitious and will only tell you about them when money has changed hands.

I have also managed to do some more study today.  I am steadily working my way through piles of essays on Little Women and the accursed Treasure Island and making notes in spidery handwriting.  It all seems completely intelligible now.  When I come to write the essay I have no doubt that I will be entirely baffled and confused, but it’s a start.  I was beginning to get collywobbles over the essay.  It’s scope is massive and I had only vague and troubling ideas about what the hell to do and how to discuss the texts in a coherent fashion.  I’m feeling a little more confident now.  Which is good, because there is less than a month to go before it is handed in. This sounds a lot, but when you are running your own private A&E and contemplating Christmas, it’s all a bit hair raising and far too sudden.

I am sorry it is a prosaic post.  I have much more creative wonders in store for later. I promise. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

Bless me father

For I have sinned.

I must have done.

I must have done something, big, bad and horribly hairy somewhere along the line.  This is why I am being punished, punished, punished.

I can’t think what it is.  It may be a sin of such magnitude it was actually in a previous life.  I have certainly done a lot of low level sinning in this existence, but nothing as terrible as what I feel I am currently paying for.  I did steal that cherry off a market stall in 1985, but I felt guilty about it for weeks afterwards, and gave some money to charity to make up for it.  I am pathologically incapable of cheating at cards due to the fact that I can only ever remember how to play Snap.  I haven’t had much time to sin in the last ten years due to being a bit tied up with becoming a maternal harridan and teaching my children swear words that haven’t even been invented yet.  I did run off with another man, but I married him and the unsuitable ex did thank me for being the only one brave enough to admit we were headed to hell in a hand cart recently, so it can’t be that.

It’s just too troubling.  Whatever it is I’d just like to say; ‘I’m sorry. Alright.  I promise I will do better from now on. Just give me a frigging break ok?’

Today. Just as I was finally feeling better and thinking: ‘Good. Now all that illness is out the way I can get on with real life again in all its glorious mundanity,’ Tilly trotted downstairs to tell me that her eyes were gummed together.  I said: ‘No they’re not. I can see that they’re not.’ to which she replied: ‘I know. I’ve wiped them with my fingers.’

Arghhhhhhhh! Holy mother of cheezus.

Then Tallulah pipes up from the landing: ‘Yes! My eyes are sticky too.’

Grrrrhhhhhhhh! Holy tortoise of Nathan.

What did I do dear internets?

I did a bad thing.  I rinsed out their eyes with saline.  I shoved in some antibacterial eye drops (thank god I didn’t throw them away), and I sent them to school under a vow of silence.

Then I thought about running away to join a circus.

It’s times like those when I really, really wished I smoked.  I can just imagine the enormous relief of being able to take a huge lungful of fag smoke and think; ‘Fuck it.’

Unfortunately I don’t.  But it may explain why today I have had a large Whopper meal, a coke, a bottle of Lucozade, some chocolate buttons and a lot of biscuits.

I thought about the fact that I had to strip the beds again, sort out all the towels again and all the other agains.  I found some money and Oscar and I went out, locked the door and didn’t come home until it was time to pick the girls up from school.  I just couldn’t face it.

When I got home, Jason was already home.  He has conjunctivitis and they have sent him home until he is better.  If he gets the sack because of a spasming disc and eye phlegm I will go postal and kill everyone with Optrex eye drops in the water supply.

Do you think it’s too late for me to pack my hankie and abscond to the Chattering Order of St. Beryls?

I dread to think what our electricity bill is going to be.  Our washing machine and tumble drier are on overdrive.  The weather is filthy and there is no way I will get everything dry unless I rip another hole in the space time continuum by failing to beat my bedclothes on a rock and preferring to wok them.

How do they do it? This is what is baffling me?  Do they all go and lick each other’s eyeballs as soon as my back is turned? What? What is it? It cannot be the house being dirty. It never gets a bloody chance to be dirty.  They’re coming down with things so quickly, no sooner have I swabbed one deck, another one appears.  I’d love the chance to appear in Slattern’s Monthly, First for Slatterns,’ but it’s never going to bloody happen at this rate.

Damn their eyes.

And I mean that quite literally mate.

Oscar proves he is not a sit on the fence liberal. I blame Beatrix Potter

We made it outside today.  This was good. My bank is making disapproving noises and I really needed to go and throw some cheques at them much in the way a lion tamer pokes raw steak through the cage bars.

On our way home we walked past a bus shelter where someone of a criminally vandalish persuasion had decided to smash in half the glass side of the shelter in a fairly dramatic way.

Oscar asked me what had happened.  I told him that some naughty people had done it and that it made me feel very cross (yes. I am a grumpy old lady).

Oscar was thrilled by this. He pondered it deeply and said: ‘I ‘spect it was a naughty big boy.’

I said: ‘If it was my naughty big boy I would smack his bottom.’

Oscar warmed to his theme; ‘I would hang him up and pull all his skin off and chop his willy off, and chop his head off and poke his eyes out, so he would be sorry.’

I said: ‘I think if you did that he would be very sorry indeed.’

Oscar quite rightly said: ‘Yes. He would never do that again.’

or anything else.

Later, when we picked up the girls from school he told one of the mum’s that a huge fat boy did it because he couldn’t control his big, fat, bottom, and he just poked the window out when he turned around.

The mother wasn’t very amused, but it made me laugh immoderately.

Another: ‘I’ll get my coat,’ moment.

If you wonder where all the ferocious violence came from regarding his earlier outburst, you will be amazed to know that we were reading ‘The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin’ by Beatrix Potter on the bus ride home. It is an excessively violent and malevolent book in which the owl, Mr. Brown, gets entirely sick of the rude little oik, Squirrel Nutkin, prancing about on his doorstep and sitting on his head, as you would.  He takes revenge by hanging him by the tail and trying to skin him alive.  Thankfully Squirrel Nutkin is able to wriggle free at the last moment, but only at the cost of his tail and a severe bout of post traumatic stress disorder forever after.

Never let it be said that Beatrix Potter is a cutesy writer.  She is a vicious maniac.  One only has to take into account such episodes as the above.  Further evidence is forthcoming, should that not be enough:

• Hunca Munca’s furious rage when she finds out all the dolls house dinner is made of plaster (I don’t blame her, frankly).  She wields that poker like a mouse scorned.
• Samuel Whisker’s desire to eat Tom Kitten any way up, but preferably as a Roly Poly Pudding and the near success of his evil scheme.
• Peter Rabbit’s run in with the murderous Mr. Macgregor.  Any man who is prepared to kill over a piece of lettuce clearly has issues.
• Further misadventures of a rabbit so evil he is only called ‘A Fierce Bad Rabbit,’ in which his tail gets blown to smithereens.
• Jeremy Fisher’s near death experience, saved only by the judicious application of galoshes to the jaw.

Those books should come with a health warning, sod Call of Duty.

 

Things to make you go ha ha

As you know, I am clinging onto the Chaise Longue of Death with my tiny paws.

In this enfeebled state I have still managed to find time to laugh.

Oh yes.

It is being so cheerful that keeps me going…

Cough….cough…

I do feel that if things can make you laugh while you feel that there is a burglar rushing about inside your cranium trying to steal the family silver and shove it out through your eyesockets, then these nuggets of humour should be shared.  For they truly are very funny indeed.

Item the first:

Last week when I was famous, I treated myself to the book: Notes to my Mother-in-law by Phyllida Law as my reward. I read about it in the Telegraph Review while I was round at my parent’s house and thought; ‘That sounds lovely.’  Sometimes I am wrong about these things.  Sometimes when I am wrong about these things and I have paid for the hardback edition of the book I am mightily depressed.  On the other hand, sometimes I am right about these things, and having the book first, and not having to wait is a great joy and a treat heaped upon a treat.

This is one of those times.  It is and does exactly what it says on the tin.  Law, whose husband wrote and narrated ‘The Magic Roundabout,’ and whose daughter is Emma Thompson, is a rather good actress in her own right. Here she presents a series of notes written to her deaf mother-in-law who lived in her house for seventeen years before her death.  The notes are funny, witty and charming, and despite their brevity, her actor’s eye catches characters and situations beautifully.  There was one note, about constipation, which made me laugh so much I had tears in my eyes for all the right reasons. No mean feat.

Item the second

Oscar has discovered The Muppets.  This is a joy to me. I loved the Muppets as a child, and bought my girls the box set of the first series of The Muppet Show, to which they remained profoundly indifferent.  Oscar, on the other hand, loves them.  What’s more he persists in calling them ‘The Magic Muffets,’ which also delights my heart.  And he likes the ‘Mahna Mahna’ song best of all.  Hooray.  Plus. The fact that he likes it is now indoctrinating the girls into the ways of the Muffet. All good.

Item the Third

Tallulah (yes. again) has created a very strange character known as ‘Aunty Panna,’ a role she inhabits with alarming ease.  Last night, on the way back from the hypnotherapist’s they were playing ‘Aunty Panna,’ in the car.  The others think it is absolutely hilarious for some strange reason I can’t quite understand, but their amusement is very catching.  It basically consists of Oscar and Tilly behaving normally, but interacting with Tallulah while she is being ‘Aunty Panna’.  Being ‘Aunty Panna’ involves talking in a strange voice, much like the character Edna from The Incredibles and saying things like: ‘No darling. I can’t eat the Wensleydale, but you could pass me the gorgonzola.  Aunty Panna loves gorgonzola.’ and ‘My darling, you cannot go home to your mother. She is dead. Dead I tell you! How do I know? Because she called me on the telephone to tell me. That’s why! Don’t argue with Aunty Panna, darling. I always win.’

Small things I know.  But they make me happy.

And the point of doctors again?

I am in the middle of day three of big, fat, hairy migraine.  Waaah!

I went to bed with a killer headache and woke up with a killer headache.  So killer in fact, that it made me cry.  Migraleve didn’t help, coffee didn’t help (I know it’s contra indicated, but sometimes it does help. Go figure).  Getting up early and sobbing my heart out at the kitchen table while everyone else was still asleep didn’t help. 

When Jason finally came down stairs I confessed that I thought I probably needed to see the doctor. For those of you who are regular readers you will know this is serious.  I only go to the doctors if I think my leg is falling off.  I hate going to the doctors.  On the other hand I hate not being able to do anything because the pain in my head brings tears to my eyes, so it had to be done.

Jason took the kids to school and took me to a 9.00 a.m. appointment.  Bless him. Late for work again, on my account.

I only go to the doctor’s when I really, really need to go.  And when I finally pluck up the wherewithal to go I feel I should be rewarded with some sensible help.  It seems only fair.

Instead I got some nincompoop who pointed out that I had a migraine.

No? Really? Gee? Thanks for that stunning observation.

She then said that I might have a bit of a cold as well.

Umm. o.k.

And when I pointed out that a three day migraine was a little unusual, and that it was particularly unusual that my meds weren’t really working, she said: ‘well, it’s probably because you’ve got a cold.’

Oh.

She said I needed to sleep.

‘Duh!’

I pointed out that three children and a life means that this is not as easy as it sounds.  Nursery have no spaces today and if Jason doesn’t go to work today he stands a good chance of getting the boot.  Today is a really important day for him, and he’s already risked a lot taking an hour out to sort me out this morning.

She just shrugged.

I asked if there was any other pain meds she could give me that might help better than the Migraleve.

She said: ‘Yes! But they might give you a heart attack.  Do you want them?’

To which I said: ‘No thanks.’

I asked her how long I should leave it before I came back, if the pain didn’t improve.

She said: ‘Oh! It will get better in a few days.’

What could I say to that other than: ‘Stand here while I split you in two with this magical axe that I have just found’?

I left.

I have more Lucozade, some pills and Toy Story on heavy rotation for the under fours. 

Oscar is delighted.  His dreams have come true.  I am letting him watch television all day.  I feel guilty.  Guilty and ill.

It’s a winning combination.

Guest Blog Post by Tallulah

Tallulah has written a new book:

It is delicious.

I present it here for you complete with Tallulahspell ™

It would take me too long to scan in all the pictures.  One day I will have the technology, but for now I will leave those bits to your imagination.

THE END OF THE BADDY

 

By Tallulah

 

Ilastratid by Tallulah

Lots of peaple wake up to a normle morning but not Emily

Emily was one of those peaple!

Most of the time she dddn’t no what an orthe she was tarking about!

Emily lived in a little white coteg whith a fached rooth!

Her father was verry rich and also verry bad

Do you no why he is verry bad? becus he was a robber

Emily didnt like her father she didnt want to turn bad.

The next night it snowed and there stud in Emilys ….father

Yelld Emily

Yes said father its me

go away

go awaw ok but ill be back tomorow night

morning mother said Emily

morning said mother

and Emily went down for brekfust

but she didant say enthing about father!

and at the end of the day Emily

had fogoten that fharther

said ill be bak but he newer came bak that night!

becus he had been freezd!

Emilies dad diddants like beaing frozen

but Emily got along qwite well whith it!

So Emily and her family lived hapaley ever after.

as for father he diddant get along verry well cuss

he was dead.

now it’s the END!

By

Bleurghh…

I write this with palsied hands in a darkened room, clinging to the Chaise Longue of Death (TM).

Yes. It was only a matter of time before I succumbed and was ill myself.  It seems only fair given that every other bugger in the entire universe is using up valuable time being ill, usually in my house, while I run about with hot and cold running thermometers and ‘soooouuup’.

Yesterday I thought I might be getting a cold.  Then last night in the space of about half an hour I started getting the most astonishingly hideous head pain, my eyes hurt so that I had to turn the lights out, and then I vomited prodigiously all over the place. 

Helloooo world of hell known as migraine…

It was the full monty.  Pain the size of Europe in a head the size of Luxembourg; visual distortions much like the blessed visions of Hildegaard of Bingen but without the religious ecstasy; metal spikes through the eye; pulsating pain through the back of the neck; massively heightened and truly troubling sense of smell and 24 hour vomitorama.

Whilst I was vomiting merrily away, Tilly called Jason who was out playing with his friends, pointed the phone in my general direction and shouted; ‘Dad! You need to come home now I think.’

By the time he arrived I was on my second sick bucket and shaking so hard I could hardly get up stairs.  He nursed me manfully and womanfully and nursily, and this morning when I woke to find I still felt sick and my head was still falling off, got all the children to school, booked Oscar into nursery and sent me back to bed.

By three o’clock I had managed to eat a piece of toast, have a bath and put my clothes on.  My head was mostly still killing me and I couldn’t see straight out of my right eye.  I was wearing half of Jason’s clothes for ease of access and was attracting such strange looks in the playground when I tottered off to pick the kids up I’m glad I decided against the idea of fashioning myself a pirate eye patch.  I must have looked like a junkie coming off smack.  

We just about made it home before my legs crumbled.  I fell into a chair and supervised throwing some fishfingers and potato waffles into the oven, which Matilda managed beautifully.  Probably due to the fact that this is the first meal they’ve actually liked in the last four days.

And I still went to the hypnotherapist.

I am a good girl.

Right now I’m surfing on a tide of Lucozade and Migraleve and praying that the vomiting is over.  The headache definitely isn’t, and the CLD beckons. 

See how dedicated I am to the world of blog? Even in the midst of death we are in blog.

Proof of madness should any be needed.

Children: Why do we bother?

Some people have their babies with alarming ease, much like hiccupping.  Others work slightly harder at it, something akin to coughing up a hairball.  Then there are those who end up with the child birth equivalent of bronchitis.

It’s a tough gig.  I have only met, in my entire parenting career, a tiny handful of people who glowed, and bloomed and all the other radiant appellations that are given to women who grow month by month to resemble a watermelon crossed with a duck.

Most of the people I know found it everything verging from unpleasant to downright disastrous, regardless of how lovely the end results were and are.

And now here we are, with the products of those disastrous, wonderful, endless moments, living the dream.  Sometimes living the nightmare, it’s fair to say.

We love them, we hate them, we love and hate them all in the same split second.  We watch them sleep and our hearts ache with love.  We watch them eat, and our gorge rises in horror.  We spend aeons worrying ourselves sick as to how the hell they’re going to survive without us whilst simultaneously packing their hanky on a stick and shoving them out the door.  It’s an education spending more than twenty minutes in the same room with them.

They take us to the limits of every emotion we’ve ever experienced and tired, knackered and sticky though we may be, it’s certain that we have never, ever been more alive than when we are with them.

Every now and again, through the haze of exhaustion and antiseptic wipes we are given a tiny glimmer into why we ever volunteered.  They smile at us with total joy, and in the moment our hearts open like flowers in the sunshine.  They confide in us because they can think of nobody better, safer and braver to help them and we become, just for a second, as noble as they believe us to be.  Even when they are in full and torrid tantrum it is proof of their utter trust that at their most naked and vulnerable we will not hurt them, but keep them as safe from themselves as from all the other lunatics out there trying to get them.

We watch them playing, absorbed in the moment, and we are gifted a glimpse of the adult they will become.  Those moments make it all worth while.

And we are lucky.  Truly lucky.

Like I said. It is not easy, this childbirth thing, this parenting thing.  And some people, try as hard as they might, never get the chance of this amazingly awful, heartbreakingly fabulous roller coaster.  And that sucks.  It really does.  And it is often the best of people, the most loving of people who get to experience that disappointment.

And what about the people whose journeys are more fraught than most?

My wonderful blogging friend Ann, over at The Hairy Farmer Family recently held a coffee morning for just those people.  Her kind of people. The kind of people like my best friend, who had three babies, all premature, all requiring special care, all surviving because of wonderful, dedicated teams of nurses, doctors and carers who give their all, even when there is very little there to give.

Read Ann’s blog about her experiences of bringing her wonderfully fierce son, Harry into the world, despite fertility problems that defy belief, a premature birth, an almost death and weeks in intensive care.  Give her major kudos for consistently and bravely being a dedicated, loving parent in very trying situations and fighting Harry’s corner with a kind of ferocity that we all wish we were capable of should we ever have to rise to the challenge, as she has.

Then donate to her chosen charity, Bliss, for babies who are born too soon.    Do it so that should you ever be in the same position, someone like Ann will be sure to help you, the way you have helped her.  Do it on behalf of your own children who have the great privilege of being healthy enough to drive you bonkers on a daily basis.  Or do it because you have no children, but if you did, you would so want that kind of support, care and dedication for yourself.

I don’t do many good things with this blog.  Mostly I moan.  Sometimes I carp. I do love a whinge.  It’s all gravy, but sometimes it’s more important to say something meaningful because you can.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  In the meantime, dig deep people, dig deep.

Homework Hell

Homework, as I have discussed before on this blog, is pooh plop pants.

At least for children in primary schools it is anyway.

My reasoning being (and this is backed up by several of you good readers), that it has very little to do with the children learning anything at all, and quite a lot to do with parents being forced to do things they haven’t looked at or thought about voluntarily for twenty years.  It is also, and this is what galls me the most, quite a lot to do with a frankly shite educational system whereby the teachers cannot teach because they are mown out with ludicrous bits of paper they have to fill in and they are so worried about upsetting health and safety, parents with Asbo’s and head teachers intent on crawling so far up the league tables they appear on the face of Mars planting flags, that they can’t get round to hearing children read more than once a year.

‘Oh, dear Katyboo,’ I hear you cry.  ‘Is it Sunday again? What are you stuck on this week? Can we be of any help with your long division and your four hundred synonyms for the word plop?’

Actually it isn’t too bad today.  Oscar now has homework from nursery.  This is bizarre, but they are fine with my failure to do it. Today, because he wanted to, we drew pictures of yellow things.  He was very insistent that penguins were yellow.  This is mainly because he likes drawing penguins.  I didn’t stop him.  I am happy to let him continue to be as creative as he likes.  I’d quite like a yellow penguin.  Not as much as a pygmy pig mind you.

No today was alright, mainly because Tallulah was off on the day they handed out homework this week, so all she had to do was read several pages of a dreary book about snow drifts.  Nope, it’s more an accumulation of things.  Things like the fact that Tilly’s homework on bridges (to tie in with the theme of rivers which they are doing this term), has stretched my general knowledge cells so far that they have almost snapped.  I am really hoping that thing about armies etc marching over bridges in formation and breaking them is not an urban myth.  Although I am far too lazy to go on Google and check it out.  After all, it’s not my bloody homework.

The thing that has galled me most is the issue of Tilly’s reading.  I have been meaning to blog about it for a while, but didn’t know whether I was calm enough.  I still don’t, but I’m thinking about it, I’m here, and I’ve got twenty minutes before I need to go and do clever things with Yorkshire pudding batter.

Tilly is now what is classed as an ‘independent’ reader. This means that her reading and comprehension have gone off the measuring scales for primary school and are currently already at her secondary school, hanging about in the library looking coy.  She has finished the reading scheme and is now able to read anything she likes.  This is good.  Great in fact.  I am very happy.  Everyone is very happy.  You would think this would be an end to the matter, no?

No.

She also has a reading record.  It is a notebook in which her progress on the reading book of her choice has to be charted.  At the beginning of term I handed her the reading record so that she could take charge of it.  I am not interested in hearing her read as a part of homework.  I do not need to.  As an independent reader I decided that she could also independently fill in her own reading record.

In the last few weeks we have had squeaking from the classroom.  First it was: ‘Mum. Mrs X says that she needs to see adult’s comments in the reading record.’  I said: ‘Oh!’ and carried on in my own sweet way.  This was repeated a couple more times. I explained my thoughts to Tilly.  She agreed.  We carried on.

Then, in half term Tilly announced: ‘Mum. Mrs X says that if we don’t start putting adult’s comments in the reading records, then there will be consequences.’  I said: ‘Oh!’  Apparently not just consequences for me, this was a class – wide threat of an unspecified nature.  I was very good dear readers. I didn’t fly off the deep end immediately. Oh no.  I waited and thought, and waited and thought.

Then, when she went back to school I wrote in her reading record.  I precis, for your viewing pleasure:

‘Dear Mrs X

This is the last time I will be writing in the reading record, so please make the most of it.

Tilly is an independent reader.  Her  comprehension and reading skills are way above what is expected of a child of her age.  This is good.

At home, she is currently reading Bridget Jones’ Diary.  That, and the fact that a couple of weeks ago she attended a performance of12th Night with me, and then had an intelligent conversation about it on the way home, suggests that I really do not need to worry about her reading.

Add to that the fact that we live in a house surrounded by thousands of books, and you are welcome to visit and check this fact at any time, and that we have regular, weekly trips to the library for pleasure, suggest to me that things will be fine.

It might help you to know that I am a postgraduate student of English Literature and am currently studying Children’s Literature in particular.  I do think therefore, that I might be in a reasonably good position to judge whether my child needs any help with her reading.  If you disagree, I would be delighted to discuss it with you.

I do not feel that filling in a reading record for the sake of bureaucracy will be of any benefit to me or my child.  I have two children who  do need help with their reading and I will be concentrating my efforts on them in the future.’

Naturally Matilda was quite impressed by the fact that I had ‘bigged her up’ to the authorities. Not quite so impressed when I pointed out that in order to keep the trust I was placing in her, she had to keep up her end of the bargain by reading regularly and not seeing this as an invitation to get off scot free and wander about doing bugger all.

It has been two weeks since I wrote the note.  Two weeks and no feedback.  I asked Tilly why this was today.  She said: ‘Oh! Well they only look in the reading records when they hear us read and nobody has heard us read for weeks.’

This is why I am rather annoyed today.  I am not a teacher.  I never wanted to be a teacher.  I did not sign up to teach. I have no patience and no skill for it. Yet there is pressure like this, exerted on children and parents to do the work of a teacher, to make up for the shortfalls in the education system.  I could almost forgive them if they had forgotten to make time in the curriculum for conjugating Latin verbs, but the fact that there is no time to hear and teach children to read is pathetic. 

I am lucky.  My child can read beautifully and Tallulah looks to be going the same way.  Scratch that, it isn’t luck.  They are brought up  in a household where reading is considered important, empowering, freeing and special and where reading aloud or alone is celebrated.  But what do the poor buggers whose parents are barely literate themselves, and who consider reading a waste of time do in these circumstances? 

It makes me feel even angrier for people like Grit, whose blog on home educating you can read here.  Grit spends half her life having to justify her decision to home school her three daughters.  Three daughters who receive a fantastic, imaginative and dynamic education that most children would die for, given half a chance.  Why punish people like her, who are doing a fantastic job, when people who are paid to do the same job, cannot even find the time to listen to a ten year old read a few pages of a book once a week, and who then offload the guilt and workload onto parents?  That hardly seems fair does it?