Moors

'Swollen streams and rivers - the Beck and Brook. Hard to see which is snaking road and which river. Then up through a gate and across a cattle grid and you're on the moor. Three-foot pillars of granite, forming a hut circle beside the road. Low clumped gorse. Pony dung, sheep droppings, the great jagged Hound Tor. Clitters of stones and rocks.'

from 'Notes from Walnut Tree Farm'
by Roger Deakin

Come and sit on the fire

Ooops, what I meant to say to H was 'Come and sit on the sofa to watch the fire.' He asked me for a fire, so I built one. I'm the one who has photographed it and poked it. H is still in the kitchen doing something special on his laptop.

My hand is still cold from when I put it right down into the rain water bin outside. I wanted to feel how thick the disc of ice was. It is still floating there after 3 days of thawing.

Earlier I went out for a walk in the village. It was dank and beautiful. We have faint drizzle and thin fog. There is no moon so it is the opposite of just a few days ago when I could look out onto the lawn at night and it looked like the lit up iced top of a Christmas cake.

Sewing

I did some important and welcome sewing recently. Our family's fluffy socks had got holes in them. I used to throw away the holey ones, but this year there don't seem to be many fluffy socks in the shops.

So I had a think and cut out sole shapes from the really bad ones to put on the still ok ones. The chair beside the tv got all speckly with bits of thread and fluff where I was doing my sewing and weather watching. All in a good cause. 

Now we prefer the double soled ones to the thinner single layer ones.

As the weather has suddenly got so much warmer it isn't making much of a difference, but when it was -8 each night and the door opening is like opening a huge freezer door, it did make a difference.

Gordon Brown would be thrilled with the amount of draft proofing we have done over the past 10 days! Nothing like real snow and thick ice to get me sorting out the gaping drafts.

Crackling

I have a log on the fire plus some smokeless fuel. It is crackling very softly, showing it is not out, even though there are no actual flames.

We had some surprising train crashes earlier on the new train track. I altered the track too so it is a little shorter and the connections are smoother. Even so the track goes over the edge of the carpet with satisfying results!

I'm typing up last month's home ed review, but keep on giving myself time out to look at new blogs. Guess how long my time outs last! Long enough to find a stunning quilt here.

Wildness

'This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.'

from 'Inversnaid'
by Gerald Manley Hopkins

Half

T and S are now in Venice to take photos. Our household here at home has been halved! It's pretty quiet, and more tidy than usual.

It is H's 13th birthday today. He asked me for a fire in the drawing room, so I'll lay a fire and we can play with his train set :)

Coughing

I can't be sure whether H has a bad cold with wooziness or a version of flu which allows him to have relatively normal moments before he goes back to the sofa. I explained that with flu you just can't get up, but I think he felt I was downgrading his suffering by calling it a cold.

Anyway, I have prescribed more sofa and less chatting, then he won't be hit with exhaustion and bad coughing in the same way.

He and T had been having a go at me in a teenage sort of way, but then only moments later H needed me to be saintly nursing Mother who completely forgets the previous discussions and just brings towels and medicine and the remote!

Hogitat

I found a brilliant corner of the garden centre this morning. It has all the different habitats and feeding stations for hedgehogs, frogs, ladybirds, solitary bees, butterflies and bats. I very nearly blessed my human relations with one each!! Then I realised that this is my passion, not necessarily theirs.

When I got back home I announced that I know exactly what I'd like for my birthday!!

I like the idea of helping wild creatures without imprisoning them. They can go off elsewhere and live their lives as they see fit.

The Cherub series

I have just been explaining to H how much I used to censor these books as I read them out loud to him. I'd be reading out the words from one paragraph and simultaneously assessing the next for swear words and anything which went over my tolerance level. I'd also miss out phrases and substitute words.

The Bond books got the same treatment.

When the children were small I'd miss out the odd section just to save time and my croaky throat. I didn't realise my skills would come in so handy later on.

I never spiced books up though. The only bit I add is the phrase 'And that is the end of the story' to make the transition from the story to us again.

Lap time

Well, I don't call it that. If I come into the kitchen and the only free chair is actually not free at all, but being used as a foot rest by H, this is what we do:

I lift up the feet, sit down on the chair and put the feet back, but on my lap. I then have 2 socked feet and 20 toes to hold onto and rub gently. It's good.

T used to put his feet on top of mine while we sat at the table for meals. It was like holding hands, but different.

There isn't enough distance under the table for T and H to sit opposite each other. There hasn't been for a while. Those foot fights can get nasty. Maybe we need a divider under the table, or to turn the table round so they each have a place at the far ends, like the husband and wife at formal dinners, far enough away from each other not to bicker! Though bickering transcends any barriers...any time, any place is an opportunity if the wish is there.

How not to do it

I made fudge today, but it didn't work at all. So there is learning how to do things and learning how *not* to do things.

Earlier in the day we sat round the table and played cards. We take turns being dealer. We play vingt et un without betting. We just count the number of tricks each player wins as we go through the pack each time.

I haven't been out in the car since Friday. S has been doing all the errands in the snow. This is the most non-adventurous I have ever been. T and H have been even more house bound in a good way than me. I rush out with my broom to sweep away new flecks of snow from my paths. Every envelope with a stamp on it is an excuse for me to walk carefully along our snowy footpaths to the post box.

The chat time in the kitchen is just starting between T and H. It's good that they have a similar chat cycle.

This will keep me busy

I have found I'm linked to on this site. Obviously I'm pleased as anything. I'm also thrilled to have a whole new list of blogs to search through.

I used to think I only needed to read blogs written by home educators with older children than mine, but over time I realise I pick up so much from blogs by and about people of all ages. It's a sort of browsing, not knowing what I'll learn until I stumble on it.

Over time I need different things too, so I find what I need in unexpected places.

Amazing

That's what H said about my strawberry jam. I made it for the first time a few days ago with some large Egyptian strawberries.

He made toast for both himself and T, first time ever, and spread my very own home made butter on the toast too.

T came to the table and sat down to be served!

It is a lovely thing to see my behaviour being copied by the boys. The bad behaviours, or rather more thoughtless behaviours, get copied instantly, but the more thoughtful behaviour takes much longer to show through.

Can't get this out of my mind

'...To illustrate, begin with a classic case that took place in Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta, Canada, in 1951. Two buffalo bulls and two cows are lying in the grass ruminating. Three of them are in good health; one cow is lame. Wolves approach and withdraw a number of times, apparently put off by a human observer. At each approach, though, the lame cow becomes agitated and begins looking all around. Her three companions ignore the wolves. When one wolf comes within twenty-five feet, the lame cow gets up on shaking legs to face it alone. It seems clear that prey selection is something both animals play a role in.'

Barry Lopez (1945 - ), United States

from The Bedside Book of Beasts - A Wildlife Miscellany -
by Graeme Gibson

Back to basics

Again I have pushed us that little bit too far, so we need to relax expectations and maybe forget about the meal stuff at the table for a few months...

One event in a day is enough around here, or even more than enough.

Tomorrow will be a very quiet day.

Earlier this week

I had one of those bad nights. H wasn't feeling too healthy, I watched an iplayer film about a topic which worries me, and I was shocked by news of an assault.

Since then I have had a sort of fire in me about meal times. The table is cleared off, the plates are laid nicely, the glasses of water are there. I growl, almost, that it is time to WORSHIP the food. Away from the screens, headphones off, and we play a little game of Kids Trivia with a die while eating.

It has been good for me and good for T and H. One night all four of us were squished round the table for a while. It is fun. We have lots of these little food worship moments, because I make food only when people are actually hungry, and we just have one bit at a time, not the old fashioned 3 courses plus coffee....

The best bit is finding fun things to play with while munching. I brought out the magnetic metal shapes yesterday and had a great time making flower shapes, little cars and a ziggurat.

I even made patterns with the HP sauce a la Master Chef.

Netted Together

'If we chose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, diseases, death, suffering, and famine - our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements - they may partake (of) our origins in one common ancestor - that we may be all netted together.'

Charles Darwin
from 'The Bedside Book of Beasts - A Wildlife Miscellany'
by Graeme Gibson

Where's East?

"Thankyou for that information, that was darn helpful!"

While I was peacefully doing the November HE review H asked me where East was on his screen. There is a graphic of the relevant bit of a rotating compass. I was able to explain that the bit in the middle indicated the direction he was facing right now.

So I'm now stuck with lots of memories of those floating compasses on gimbals lit up somehow as I steered a compass course at night across a portion of the Channel.

I don't remember any ferries so I must have been given part of the journey between the 2 shipping lanes. 

A perfect day

I hadn't thought that H had really enjoyed most of Saturday, but then he told me with such a smile that it had been a perfect day.

We went out to our favourite cafe for his favourite food;
got a gaming/swivel chair for him from Argos;
put it together together on the kitchen floor;
went out to a party at the house of one of his friends from primary school,
and then he and T had a happy evening playing together at their side-by-side desks in the kitchen!

I stayed out til 11pm at the party, but S, T and H came home after about half an hour, so everyone was content. I walked home because the mulled wine was stronger than I had thought!

Bubble wrap helps

We have windows with industrial drafts blowing in from them. The shutters and full-length curtains aren't helping that much. Even though they are shut 100% of the time, it is still far too cold in some rooms, even though the heating is on a lot.

So I thought and thought until I hit on a way of putting strips of bubble wrap along the cracks where the wind blows in. I have used loads of sellotape and was careful to rub nail varnish remover on the paintwork and glass first so the tape would stick. I am so pleased. I no longer have to keep the doors shut to these 2 rooms to prevent the cold coming into the rest of the house.

I put some tinsel along the insulation strips too for good measure, although it is somewhat pointless given that I then shut the shutters and curtains again so we are all sealed up snugly until May time.

Off and away...

'Then it's ho! for the plunging deck of a bark, the hoarse song of the crew,
With never a thought of those we left or what we are going to do;
Nor heed the old ship's burning, but break the shackles of care
And at last be free, on the open sea, with the trade wind in our hair.'

'Free'
by Eugene O'Neill

Little notebooks

I have a new passion, making tiny notebooks for us to use for noughts and crosses or doodling.

I take an A4 sheet of plain paper, halve it, then fold the 2 pieces in half. Those are the pages.

Then I find a beautiful advertisement or photo from the heap of mail and magazines we get. A half A4 piece wraps round the little pages.

3 staples finish each one off.

Cold Nose

I want a veil/covering for at night when my nose is actually cold. I laughed at those knitted nose warmers someone had created, but I'm not laughing now!

Right now my fingers are cold too, and my shoulders. It is not a problem because all I have to do is wander over to the super warm kitchen. How lucky are we?