Up (to no good) and Out (to lunch): Never At Home Education Part 73

Groaning at the moaning.... I can't just leave it like that can I? Wot an old misog. Maybe I should knock up a list of the wonderful things I've done lately to balance the books:


* Dark spooky arm-clutchings in Chislehurst Caves. Tales of old Druid sacrifices, murders, hauntings and wartime toilets punctuated with lantern confiscation and mad thundering drumming to conjure up a feel for the bombings. Bit of screaming (me).

* 16 Go Mad on a bumpy twisty bike marathon round Tonbridge wild bits. Undecided whether I should've reported the saddle to the police for indecent abuse.

* Collaring a fisherman in Hastings to get an eyeful of his catch and hear about the GLUT (yes GLUT) of cod in the sea they're not allowed to bring ashore cos Brussels says so.

* Punch and Judy festival (and covert photographing) in Covent Garden and random soakings in the fountains outside the Festival Hall. No we didn't bring spare clothes.

* Rebelliousness in the face of parent meetings. Parent meetings? In Home Ed world? Apparently we have to have meetings so everyone can have their say about the problems with the new Teen Group. There are no problems. Three witches (one me) refuse to hold the glow-in-the-dark dinosaur to have the right to uninterrupted speech. But we urgently need a meeting to discuss the matter of the teens having taken something out of a cupboard in the upstairs room two weeks earlier! (One of the witches had already popped upstairs and sorted that out however about 45 minutes ago. Took about four seconds.) But she hadn't even brushed a warty fingertip atop the dinosaur! The outrage!!!! (I had wondered why only one person said hello when I breezed in late. She must have then been therapod'd up. Pfffttt.... Diplomacy by Diplodocus! I ask you....) Still, quite pleased to be given an opportunity to behave 'like children' - as I found out today we'd been tarred. Love it!

* New dramatic routine's first public performance in the inaugural Spring Challenge Cup at Romford Ice Rink by my Minxy-babe. No tumbles but she did forget to do the jump at the end. Duh. Looked gorgeous tho'. Shame about the mother-daughter role-reversal moment: amatuer Mooncup spillage antics in the medieval toilets (me), resigned spare tights supply (very lovely grown-up clever slightly embarrassed fabulous indulgent Minx.)

* Larks inside and out at Penshurst Place. Frequent showers didn't dampen the spirits. Just the french bread.

* A charcoal burn and impromptu (for us) camp out at a friend's woodlands home in wild green Kent. A response to all the 'Forest Schools' postings of late - this was 'Forest Home Ed'. Including making lethal weapons on a sapling and foot-powered pole-lathe and choking in quilts of smoke emanating from the chalk and charcoal graffitti'd kiln. Rounded off with squashing in like dirty sardines (smoked) with the stinky urchins in a borrowed teepee kind of thang in which we created out own weather and got slightly damp around the edges. Yet entertained splendidly by comedy owls.

* 5 Go Mad in a rowing boat at Dunorlan Park (Tun Wells) - round and round in circles until CanWeGetAKitten Boy gets the hang of it. He did - yay - and so we finally caught up with 6 Go Mad in another rowing boat. (4 Stay Ashore and pretend they don't know us.) No sinkings despite the distraction of that old boy I'd accosted last summer and his remote controlled last-warship-out-of-Hong-Kong thing terrorizing the waves. 11 Got Out Alive. No mean feat.

* First bug safari of the summer - lots of traumatised mini-beasts and happy grubby small people. Giant freak (me) setting off a hoppede from the startled big leggies - (but were they grasshoppers or bubble-bath'd froghoppers eh?) from their hopperopolis (or metr-hopolis). Proper frog-catching always gets the girls tho. Bless my Frog Boy.

All interspersed by the usual gatherings, ramblings, frolics, birthday bashings, youth theatre theatricals - with stage fighting and gruesome make-up shenanigans, football tournament penalty shoot-out pain, Mad Science poppings, heroic tiny boy stabilisers dumpings (yay Thuglet!) and cross-country rallyings in our rattling tin can from each totally non-academic adventure to another. Valiant in our filth and ignorance. Like they said in The Commitments: I'm black an' I'm proud. We are. Well the blackness does come off in the bath - if we bothered to run one. It rubs off on the sheets though. Works for me.

In fact in reply to someone's post on our Home Ed emaily thingy yesterday about the lack of dusting activity I quoted old Quentin Crisp: 'After four years the dust doesn't get any worse.' And then I likened this attitude to Home Edding: 'We've been H'Edding for about four years. The boys couldn't read when we started - and still can't. See? No worse!'

Having said all that, Minx came back from the shops last Saturday with two keystage something-or-other workbooks - one in science and the other maths. Like - !!!!!!!! ????????

Where did I go wrong????


But the main achievement has to be Little Rock Godling's new word tonight: Weirdful.

Sums us up.

I'm prouder than ever!




(Ok - don't look at the sheets.)