Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
Something to say?

Saturday 20 June 2020

Spilling out of Burrows

Today, suddenly, there is a quickening of eager life on the roads. On the residential road on which I live, along with many other oldish or middle aged families, the people are briskly about. On Brighton Road, which is fifteen minutes' walk downhill, the noise of traffic is getting back to its urgent hum. The road behind our house is pounding and rattling to the familiar, earth-shaking noise, of heavy duty vehicles. I am deeply, deeply concerned that we have learned nothing after the death of forty-thousand plus people. We seem to be ready to jump right back into our destructive lives.
   In the last ten weeks, there has been blessed peace in my back garden. The bees and moths are back, the birds are chattering away near my bird table, and from their nests, mother-birds warn me off when I go towards the trees on which they live. Or, perhaps, they are merely greeting me. How quickly they forgave us our trespasses. There is enough room for all of us on this planet, I think. Why do we threaten nature away?
   I am so grateful that the birds, moths and bees are willing to give us a second chance. They are such a benediction. We simply cannot afford to go back to our wanton ways.
   I consider what I, personally, can do, my little bit to avoid disastrous climate change. So, I shall, for a start, stop cooking beef in this house. This one's easy as we are not great meat eaters anyway. In winter, may be, we can keep the heating in the house a notch lower. Not easy for me, as I am the one with cold limbs. Instead of one pair of woolen socks, I shall have to wear two. An extra jumper would help too.
   As for the car, we have to consider it as a luxury, not an indulgence for those short trips to the local corner shop or park. The best way would be if families could share transport for school drop-offs and pick-ups. We tried that once, but evening activities in schools were all over the place. And, in the whole process, there was little or no goodwill. Yet, when I worked in Wickford and lived in Laindon, four of us teachers went to work in Bob Ashford's car, and paid him fifty pence a week for the privilege. Very civilised. Until public transport becomes safe it would be a good idea to share.
   Long distance flights are something we have taken for granted, with family in India, and friends all over Africa. That will have to stop. More Skype conversations, perhaps??
   We could all shop less, buy less. Indeed the whole idea of shopping as a desirable social or leisure activity, is one only affluent societies indulge in. In India, where prosperity has slowly advanced, middle-class folk still do not go shopping for fun. You go to the shops or market because you need something specific.
   Not buying more than we NEED, avoiding waste, is probably the first thing we can all consider. No one needs a wardrobe suffocating with tops and shirts and footwear overflowing.
   Here endeth my lesson for the day!!
 
 
   

Tuesday 16 June 2020

A CLUSTER F--K OF U TURNS

What is the collective noun for U TURNS? There have been quite a few by the Boris herd -- we have to have a name for them. STRING OF U TURNS? AN EMBARRASSMENT OF U TURNS? A Cluster f..k of u turns?
   Actually I don't care how it came about -- bless Rashford -- but if the children get their meals I am on the side of whosoever provides them. Tax payer?
   Therese Coffey needs a few lessons on poverty, such as a definition of it, which works for her. Will, 'hungry but no food coming' work? In this respect I have no problems. Food poverty is crystal clear to me from the visual images of my childhood. It is unforgettable. I watched the refugees from Pakistan begging from house to house in my little town, Thalassery, in Kerala. Since they didn't know Malayalam, they touched their lips and stretched their cupped palms out, looking at us imploringly. Achamma (grandmother) saved Conjee water for them when she drained the rice daily, and dropped a handful of rice in it, to give it more substance. She kept half coconut shells handy to serve them.   The ragged children hid behind the mothers; no men in the beggar-stream. Where were the fathers? Now, there are no beggars to speak of in India.
   In the late forties, a young man from the neighborhood came to our house in the evenings to help me and my two cousins with our homework. His mother, who had eight boys to feed,  pleaded with Achamma to take him on -- -You don't need to pay him,' she said. 'Just give him an evening meal.' He was a bright young man, who rose to the highest echelons of the local civil service. The whole community was very proud of him.
   Hats off to Marcus Rashford. Pity he isn't playing for Liverpool.

 
   

Sunday 14 June 2020

Learn in Schools?

Learn in Schools?? Or are they convenient places to park children while we make money, gossip, quarrel, go shopping... Because I figure children will not learn the valuable things they need to learn by a 'social distancing' school environment. They'll learn no more than my granddaughter does by 'isolating' herself in her room with mobile phone, laptop, make-up stuff. mirror... And Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
   Children need to learn to negotiate their social environment, chatter, play, love, hug, shout, ask questions, make friends, quarrel, make up... Even criticise, question...   Every day, when my granddaughter proceeds to schools, her skirt just that half centimetre shorter than it should be, I don't say to her, 'Focus. Learn a lot.' Instead I say, 'Be happy, be kind.' And when she comes back in the evening with an avalanche of news, 'He said, she said, and she is like...' , I merely ask, 'And what did you do for someone else today?  She disdains to answer me; old people are so strange.
   And do these silly suits in office really believe children will be irreparably damaged by not going to school for a month, a half-year? My children, two boys and a girl were born in many countries, in some where schools started at eight years and boasted no reception classes. They are not exceptionally able or disciplined. And I certainly was not a demanding parent. Indeed I was not even around a great deal of the time, as I was teaching 'other people's children' in strange and distant places. My sons and daughter among themselves garnered four Masters degrees and a Ph.D, while somewhere along the way, I managed to do evening classes and an M A in Education. In spite of all that EDUCATION, we are extremely flawed individuals.
   Children have to be in places that other children gather and school is one of many places this can happen. We have to make that possible soon, but not while the two-metre rule applies.
   I know of at least two families who taught their children at home, and the children did as well or as badly in their GCSEs as anyone else. {Another blog some time on the monstrous imposition on parents and children called exams. What a way to calibrate a child as a functioning individual!)
   And, I hate to say this: so many teachers are damaged and weary by their every-day; I was one of them for many years.  We have no lien on knowledge of any kind, let alone child-rearing wisdom. There are some great individuals among teachers and children benefit hugely from their humanity, but they are very few. Most are like me -- chasing the material for the next lesson, catching up on marking homework from weeks ago, marking essays without consistency or objectivity...
   And now I will probably have a deluge of complaints from good teachers (whatever they are), so I shall go into hiding. SELF ISOLATION??