Letting go

I have been forced to let go of my home education note book for the past 2 weeks because other things were more important.

The 2 weeks are not being documented in the way I usually like to, but they still happened and were full of activities and discussions. In fact, ironically, they were probably by far the most interesting weeks for months!!

So there will be a 2 week blank.

How can I explain Autonomous Home Education to the LA inspectors when I am discovering it for myself?

Recovery

My father I is doing very well. He is back home from hospital. He went to his favourite cafe this morning and was planning to go to the local library. My mother A sounds happy when I call her.

July

July means a lot water bottle warming up my feet
July means 2 dressing gowns worn at once
July means putting the heating on for an hour in the evening
July means being glad I didn't turn the Aga off

I bet tomorrow will be beautiful and summery again though!

Books, glorious books!

To help my father recover I have been scouring his bookshelves to find easy and fun things for him. So far he has been broadening his mind with:

Memoirs of a foxhunting man - Sassoon
39 steps - Buchan
Wodehouse
Hornblower - Forrester
As I walked out one midsummer morning - Lee
(the one about living in Paris) - Hemingway

"Life is a train"

Or more like a bus. My mother A and I shamelessly plonk ourselves down on the disabled seats at the front of the bus and sit there in a sort of stupor as we head back to my parents' house after the daily visit and medical crash course at the hospital.

Outside the CT scan department I sat there with my head resting on the back of the chairs, legs stretched out in front of me.

There is a soft sofa in the relatives room by my father's ward I have my eye on. I may curl up there for 5 minutes tomorrow.

Blummin home education, I can't shut up my mind. I am learning about pneumonia, oxygen saturation, oxygen bottles, little pipes to attach this to that, even the names of the medical staff. Debates about morphine levels and anaesthetic gels and other stuff I won't put on here. Learning the pace of a gentle recovery with its fits and starts.

No idea what is going on with T and H off at Centreparcs. No news is good news :)

Anyway our train is visiting all sorts of great places like the lifts, the concourse, georgeous Carluccios opposite the Hopsital, a bookshop to get into debt in, 2nd hand clothes shops, fruit and veg market at the end of our street, all the different taxi routes to the hospital.

I love seeing the newborns carried and cherished right in the middle of the emotion and bustle of everything. Other people stare too, eating them with their gaze.

I spend my life saying 'bless you' silently to each person in a wheelchair or on a trolley, and all the hugely pregnant women coming in for their checks.

I have come to realise that my mother's time off happens while she immerses herself in the newspaper, while mine happens at the screen or channel hopping/big brother watching.

Hospital

My father I is in the Chelsea and Westminster hospital after an emergency appendix operation. I have come to stay with my mother A to help out. We make food in the morning, go over what symptoms we are concerned about and take food with us in the afternoon. We see the cycles of alertness and tiredness and are getting to know the staff and other patients.

As always happens there are other family events causing all sorts of emotions at exactly the same time. Also big plans for an event in Scotland which is *very important* and requires family members to wear special formal clothing.

And, as also always happens, awkward questions about why this? and why that? to do with my children T and H. So my energy levels slump further. Mind you reading other people's blogs is such a treat, those beautiful photos, those glimpses of loveliness and order and experimentation. Familiar voices in words.

Graciousness has deserted me, I do a nodding dog impression to stave off critical conversations and still land up in fearsome rows. Yesterday's was about suggesting to a relative that she wear a seat belt in the back seat of a car.

Without the reassurance and good humour from my children T and H family life becomes more threatening and alarming.

This is where a pet cat comes in handy, they purr, eat food and walk by themselves. Best of all they have no unrealistic expectations at all. And there is no cat here or at home either. We watered the tomato plants on the balcony, next best thing I suppose.

I'm sure living in a convent/monastery is like this all the time, constant waves of those parts of life you just can't escape.

Anyway my father's tired smile is bright and lovely.

All kind comments gratefully received.

Different reactions to strewing

Yesterday I realised that I do strew something interesting and new each day for the children.

The difference between my two children is that H glances for half a second at the new thing and in that tiny space of time takes in all he wants to about the item.

Any attempt to encourage him to engage further is met with a no and persistent encouragement leads to irritation and swearing, at which point even the stupidest parent backs off.

T on the other hand generally looks and touches and chats with me about the item for up to 5 minutes.

Now I have spotted the different reactions I can regard each one as a success. Maybe I will go back to noting down each strewing in my home education log.

Funeral pyres and barrows

Here is the last section of Beowulf in Seamus Heaney's translation, wonderful...

The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf,
stacked and decked it until it stood four-square,
hung with helmets, heavy war-shields
and shining armour, just as he had ordered.

Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it,
mourning a lord far-famed and beloved.

On a height they kindled the hugest of all
funeral fires; fumes of woodsmoke
billowed darkly up, the blaze roared
and drowned out their weeping, wind died down
and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house,
burning it to the core. They were disconsolate
and wailed aloud for their lord's decease.

A Geat woman too sang out in grief;
with hair bound up, she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,
slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.

Then the Geat people began to construct
a mound on a headland, high and imposing,
a marker that sailors could see from far away,
and in ten days they had done the work.

It was their hero's memorial; what remained from the fire
they housed inside it, behind a wall
as worthy of him as their workmanship could make it.

And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels
and a trove of such things as trespassing men
had once dared to drag from the hoard.

They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,
gold under gravel, gone to earth,
as useless to men now as it ever was.

Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb,
chieftain's sons, champions in battle,
all of them distraught, chanting in dirges,
mourning his loss as a man and a king.

They extolled his heroic nature and exploits
and gave thanks for his greatness; which was the proper thing,
for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear
and cherish his memory when that moment comes
when he has to be conveyed from his bodily home.

So the Geat people, his hearth companions,
sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.

They said that of all the kings upon the earth
he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

(those are the last lines of the poem, long but worth it)
(Beowulf was part of the Geat nation/people, somewhere near Denmark)

When Mummy is 60

I'll be 26 when you are 60.

36..70
46..80
56..90 or dead
66..100 or dead lol

Reading aloud

I have just been reading a post about how much a mother has to read aloud to her children when they are little. Charlotte Mason writes about this and some of the mothers online were discussing it.

I used to have to read to H from as soon as he woke up to when he went to sleep for a while. It really was all day, he just wanted to be on my knee and hearing all those stories. I got away for little bits of time to do other things, but only just.

At the time I would never have believed that the reading out days would stop. But they have. The last books H wanted read out were the Cherub books plus a bit of Casino Royale. I had to use my well-honed censoring skills, skimming a little bit ahead so I could miss out the worst vocabulary of these books. Little good it has done me as they know all the bad language anyway!! At least I tried.

T had a stage of needing me to read his science encyclopedia out to him, paragraphs about electric circuits and so on. That was the last he wanted read out. I didn't get to read out Harry Potter because he read it himself.

I managed to read out a random chunk of the Bible a while back. I wanted to prove to them that it includes every variety of bad behaviour. The bit I opened it at proved the point very well!

One month on from the Badman Review

I am tired by it all, but I shall read on and spend precious hours on the net taking in more and more information.

So far I have learned about Early Day Motions, the conventions about who to write to, TheyWorkForYou web site, Hansard (addictive!) and the feel of a diverse community pulling together.

I am sleeping better again. I have a Badman file and a pen beside the laptop. I no longer read emails in bed before I go to sleep. So I am in charge of my life again.

Just like the old days

I have a house full of children.

They were wrestling on the trampoline/having a cage match,

then drank drinks and ate biscuits,

then more wrestling and discussions about having a bonfire another time,

renovated the bonfire square,

did hide and seek all round the house,

now all in one room playing on ps3/chatting,

next to the kitchen for pizza.

Nice :)

(It all ended in tears though...I shall find out more later)

Inspired by Phyllis in Ukraine

She is on a very high number of lovely things to give thanks for. I will start at 1 and see how far I get.

1. The red poppies glowing in the meadow on the South side of the Fair Mile into Henley today. I could see each one in a way I have never experienced before.

Wonderful Wildlife

Multi Coloured Asian Ladybird

We have loads of these, one on each leaf of the tree outside our back door. They are turning into ladybirds. I had thought they were caterpillars!!

Crickets

I spotted one on our bookshelves last night. I caught it in between my palms, carried it outside while it bounced around inside the space I made for it, then it hopped away across the gravel once I had released it.

Many thanks to Hagbourne Wildlife for posting about these.

Unusual bird

I saw a couple of little birds with vivid colouring at the other end of the village.

End of Term

Now it is the end of term there is a chance for our timetable to synchronise again. H gets up late usually, but T has to get up at 6.30am in term time.

So in a few days T and H and I will have moved onto holiday standard time of going to bed late and sleeping very well, then geting up late. It makes life a lot easier and more relaxing for me and more fun for T and H.

COD4 - General comments from me

Wet Work

Look at that rocket up in the cloudy night sky. The graphics are still fabulous. The light is so intense, the rain comes pouring down, even the containers are hyper-realistic. I love getting glimpses of the sea.

Classes

Unstopable
Ninja got ya
Nerdragespecial
Aids Inducer

Showdown

Now we are back in Baghdad. The sunshine is so bright and the shadows so clear. The statue of Saddam Hussein is standing in the middle of a rather formal square of buildings with what look like medieval stone arcades. The flags flap permanently in the breeze.

H had a nice clan tag which looked like this: [o+<]

"Shot guns are the funnest, but the worst guns in the game. And ninja-defusing is great." H comments about COD4.