When life gives you strawberries

I rescued what may well be the last of this year's strawberries. Extreme heat and some sort of crawly things are finishing them off.  By the end of day three the children are complaining. "What's for pudding?" Max asks at 7:30 in the morning.  I tried to counter the obsessing about food by posting a monthly menu on the fridge, but it didn't occur to me to detail puddings.
"Strawberries." I hazard. It is half way through the month and there is no more money, so eating from the meagre front garden is a way of providing them with vitamins.
"Oh, not again." he sighs as he finds them secreted in his lunch box as well.

I honestly never remember complaining about the surfeit of strawberries in my life.  When we get in, I ask Pip and Rex to pick the fruit from the front garden, but after 35 seconds it is too warm and they both slink into the house to sit in darkened rooms with screens.  They're also really rubbish and I discover a good 2 tubs full.  It's like finding tiny red treasure.  But many of them are really little now, and very red, so they need to be picked.  Pip ignores any of the small strawberries and sees them as a sacrifice she must donate to slugs, snails and any other night spirits.

I freeze a tub for cake later in the year, leave some in the fridge, then sift through for the little ones, the slightly squishy ones, the ones that I managed to decapitate in the picking, the weird seedy ones and the cleft ones.  The ones the children might turn their noses up at.  And I make them into jam.

It's beautiful, the smell of jam brings me back to my childhood and my mum still makes much better strawberry jam than I do.  I remember small dabs setting on plates and there was always a small pyrex dish left over- the portion that didn't fit neatly into all the jars that would be stored for the rest of the year that we could have straight away, a bit too hot, the occasional semi-complete strawberry sitting in the pink nectar; the perfect sweetness and stickiness.  I've pimped my recipe - though not today - with cucumber and mint from the garden and a bit of Pimms. It's my version of the champagne jam I was bought at Christmas from Fortnum and Mason.  I like Pimms more.

And so this week I will make strawberry tarts, after my mum's recipe again, shortbread cases with a spoon of jam, a dab of cream and half a strawberry wedged on top.  For breakfast I will have homemade yogurt with homemade jam and home grown strawberries.  All made from the rejects, the too small, the ugly strawberries in my garden, that would otherwise have been contributed to the journey of life acting out in my 5x4 plot. 

There's something here, another message that I am trying to draw from this. I'm not sure what it is though, but the potential for allegory was too good to miss.

It might be something to do with examination marking I have completed every year for GCSE, drawing out every possible mark for the weaker students, taking twice as long to mark the shorter answers than the longer ones, making the effort to pick out as much credit as I possibly can, looking beneath the leaves for the flashes of red in the undergrowth, the sparks of interpretation and understanding beneath the confusion of poor handwriting and grammar.

Perhaps it's the story of Max, again, having almost completed a year of secondary school and sinking beneath the leaves of normality. He could be the funny-looking strawberry, the one that everyone ignores for the better, bigger, brasher strawberries, but he is as sweet as any other child.

Maybe I could have made this an an allegory for the General Election and the significance of voting.  Look at May's slim majority, and the small number of votes that were needed in some constituencies to topple or to preserve an MP.  The teeny tiny strawberry could be the vote that was needed to make a difference, on our own we don't feel important, but together we make good jam, and the jam lasts longer than the fresh strawberry promises that rot quickly if you're not careful.

Do I have a point? Details matter, effort matters. All of us can skim the surface and not engage with the deeper issues, pretend it does not concern us, but every element is significant.  6 months ago I was writing about the  year of the snowflake, and the fact that many snowflakes make an avalanche.  Now it's strawberries.  Be more strawberry. Be sweet.

This is my cat.

This is my cat.
Her name is Poppy.
She is very old.
She is getting quite annoying and constantly pesters me to give her attention, but I still love her.
My cat does not have opposable thumbs, a fact that I believe she regularly regrets.
My cat is also not on the electoral roll. Partially to do with the fact that she does not have opposable thumbs, but mostly to do with the fact that she is a cat.  She is also not 18 until next year.
However, my cat thinks that her "daddy" (oh when did I start calling myself the parent of a domestic pet?) is the best thing since ... crab sticks?  I don't really know how long her memory is. She would definitely have put a cross in the box next to his name in the elections yesterday.

In fact so did about 500 other people.  I think that is pretty good. Not good enough to actually win the seat away from the Conservatives, but enough to give my husband a shock that he may accidentally get elected.  But 500 people.  About 4% of the electorate in our area.  I am pretty sure I could name most of them. I am so grateful to my husband for standing and really grateful to those who voted for him, but I think I've dealt with a further 1% of voters complaining to me about Parish Council matters in the last week.  I hope they all voted to make a difference.

So it makes me a bit sad to read on other friends' timelines today about the various reasons for not using their vote today.  Apparently we don't listen, we're only in it for ourselves.  Pretty much all of them had opposable thumbs.

One of my friends didn't vote because they're all the same and Teresa May is decisive.  If you didn't care at least vote for my husband. I can vouch for him. At least vote for the person in the village that you know has the same concerns as you might because his children are the same age as yours and he cares about education.  If you don't care, at least trust me because you know I really care.

I can assure those people and anyone else that there is nothing in it for me to sit for three hours in a meeting every couple of weeks, trying to make progress against a sea of red tape and feeling that your hands are tied.  I do it to try and make sure the view of a significant group is represented, that might otherwise be missing and when people tell me what they think I convey that to the rest of the meeting.

I try to explain what we can do stuff about - eg bins and playing fields and stuff we can't do so much about - eg crime and parking.  But often the stuff we can't do much about, everyone can do stuff about, like phoning the police, which seems to be last on people's mind after posting their cctv footage on social media and naming and shaming the teens, ensuring that the chance of a prosecution is reduced.

My cat shame-facedly takes responsibility for her own behaviour, she runs away from me pretty rapidly when she's crept through the cat flap with a baby mouse.  She tells me when there is a problem, such as her bowl being half full.  And my cat would have voted if she could have, the polls stayed open long enough to cover her committed sleeping regime.  Next time I think I'm going to be stroppier with those I encounter and insist on them trying to vote.  I'm going to pester people, they'll probably forgive me. The cat gets away with it.

Be like my cat. Vote if you can. And sleep lots.

2017 will be the year of the avalanche.

I am petrified about 2017.  I have been building up my fear about the future over the last few months and it is reaching huge, peace of mind threatening levels.  Some of this is real.  Even my doctor said so - "You're not depressed, what you are feeling is a natural reaction to what is happening in your life."  I can be sad without being depressed and if I get things in proportion I don't have to be terrified.
The real things are;
1  I face the prospect of being unemployed.  Having never been unemployed before - like ever - this is pretty scary.  I know lots of people face this in their jobs everyday but I work for the public sector ffs (usually anyway).  I am an essential profession surely?  Everyone wants to know how to read Shakespeare. No?  Also, it turns out that twenty years of teaching has provided me with literally no transferable skills whatsoever. So if anyone needs someone with a wide range of put downs, the ability to get teenaged boys to listen to me without removing any clothing and the skill of spotting a spelling error at 20 paces then I'm available.

2  Darling Dan is planning for us to move abroad.  Exciting perhaps, but so far I don't know where.  Or how.  Or what for.  Difficult to make plans or get excited, and a country which only gave women the vote in 1971 makes me nervous.

3  That man will become president of the USA.  Ugh....

4  There is unlikely to be a General Election, and if there were, then the Labour Party are unlikely to make great gains.

All these things feel like a huge weight of snow somewhere just up the mountain.  I've been watching Les Revenants  and I feel like creepy little Victor has appeared at the door and warned me not to build the dam.  Then he walked off and I foolishly dismissed his warning.  There is an avalanche of misery threatened and simply moving off the mountain into unknown territory might not save me.  In Les Revenants death got them all in the end. Oops, spoilers, sorry.

I choose something else.  I choose life, in a clever double-edged tribute to both the first popstar I ever loved and the upcoming T2 Trainspotting. I choose a job and a career and a family and the fucking big television.  (The last is rather more Dan's choice than mine, but I choose Dan so..)  I choose a different view of my avalanche.  Instead of seeing this as a threatening weight hanging over me I am going to take on the power of the snowflake.  Each of us is a delicate, individual and important snowflake and each of us has limited weight and power on our own.  But even a light fall of snow can disrupt public transport, can make it dangerous for us to travel to work and the buses to get to school.  Even a couple of days of snow can "cover the muck up"  and make us see the magic in our local environment.  Together we can be the avalanche that changes things and starts to push back.  The people who voted for Donald Trump or Nigel-rhymes-with-garidge are not the silent majority, we are, if we don't use our voice for good.

This is not a list of New Year's resolutions. I have neither the will power nor the commitment. Yes I need to lose weight and do more exercise and save money and eat more spinach but writing it down isn't going to help.  (Being unemployed might, but probably won't pay the fixed interest mortgage repayments.)  I am committed to carrying on doing the stuff that I do well.  I am not perfect, none of us are, but sitting here and moaning about it and merely writing it all down will achieve nothing.  I am trying to live the life I want. I will carry on defending those who are threatened with losing their jobs because they have challenged the assumption that they will carry on working for nothing, I will give up my time to help others, I will feed my children less meat.  These things alone are not enough, I know, but as one snowflake that is all the power I have.  I have made a start, I will keep writing and I will keep acting on my beliefs, if you like what I do, then you can do it too; I am not a special snowflake, we are all snowflakes.  

I guess we're not moving to America then.

I am not sure that I am a huge fan of American politics at the best of times, but I don't think I can even bear to waste half a blog on everything I hate about Donald Trump.  The kids say "trump" when they mean "fart", so every single time he is mentioned on the radio, hilarity breaks out.  Until recently, I felt the same when I looked at his peculiar potato face and listened to the random rantings that seemed to be spouted by some sort of American equivalent of the red-faced piss head at the bar who starts every sentence with "I'm not racist but..".

However, I can't quite let go of the latest scandal of his "locker-room talk", as he referred to his discussion of grabbing women by the "pussy" amongst other degrading comments.  Then he repeated it. Again.  As if that means we can agree with him.  The strength of his defence appeared to rest upon attacking Bill Clinton for acting on those urges.  Are we supposed to believe that Trump only looked and didn't touch?  Or is he admitting to being all mouth and no trousers?

So much seems to be wrong with those comments that I don't know where to start. Some people think that the Republicans' campaign will not be damaged by the attitude expressed by its presidential candidate.  I am sure that they couldn't admit it.  But most people do not speak like that.  Not just my middle class, middle aged, politically correct friends. Most people do not use words like that about the opposite sex.  Most women do not, but most men do not also.  And not just my middle class, middle aged, politically correct male friends, but most of the normal men that I don't know that well.  People like Donald Trump have lived for so long in a bubble of his own creation, surrounding themselves with yes men and compliant (paid) women, that they probably, actually believe their own  hype.

I was reminded of Ron Atkinson's use of the "n" word in 2004 to negatively describe a player when he believed that the cameras were off.  He resigned, straight away, as far as I can remember, but still claimed it was "a mistake".  Even in the olden days of 2004, I did not and still do not know anyone who speaks like that. You didn't hear that word in those days, even from people of our parents' age. Most people did not speak like that.

So stop reminding us of the apparent (masculine) context of the words you used, Trump, you were not in the "locker room".  You were not even with a best friend, you were with an interviewer to whom you wanted to show off, and most people do not speak like that about women.  Apart from anything else, this should finally lay to rest the myth that he is a man of the people.  The essence of his statements were that women did this because he is famous.  Most people can not make those claims.

Oh and one last thing, funny name man.  No one cares about Bill Clinton any more.  He's not standing.  His wife made the decision all by herself.  She can do that.

Raising the unexceptional child

 I haven't blogged anything for a while.  This could be because I have been exam marking, too damn busy, but really I have been exceptionally unhappy for so long that I can't even be angry about it, let alone be funny.
I am not better or over it. But I have (sort of) taken control and (sort of ) made some decisions to tidy up my life.  I may struggle to pay my mortgage, I may be writing in a year in a homeless, husbandless half life or we may be doing some of the best things of our life, but things are different so we will see.

I am not really used to feeling this way. I am almost always in control and I was almost always the best at everything at school. I struggle even now with helping my children  with their homework as I sometimes can't teach them what seems easy to me. Pip is the same with most things, which is,I suspect why there are so many tears and tantrums when Rex beats her at x station virtual pretending to run on the spot or whatever it's called.
But Max left primary school this week. Despite the need for him  to have an easy transition, I failed to get him into the desired secondary school. I failed. I appealed. I succeeded in my appeal. But I failed. And so my son who needs security and a gentle and supported transition has none of the support that all other special children . Dan might forgive me eventually. No. No he won't. But he'll do something almost as bad soon enough and will feel uncomfortable enough not to wish to remind me of it.
I told you I don't deal well with lack of success.
So I sat in his leavers' assembly and wept. It was ok. Other parents wept too. I could disguise it as sentimentality. Other children performed. There were the comedians, the gymnasts, the sports people, the singers, the dancers even the magicians.  I couldn't see him. I strained my eyesight. I eventually spotted him in the whole year group song, grimacing and waving unselfconciously. I waved back. Then sat on my hands and rolled my eyes at no one as he developed another hand flapping habit that he didn't have until today.
My mildly autistic son now has a diagnosis of actual autism. Apparently it's not called Aspergers now. And I don't care, and I wasn't crying for him, even though he was shoved at the back of the year to sing although he's now the shortest in the year, and I wasn't crying for his autism which is hardly a surprise, and I wasn't crying for his journey into teenager hood. I like teenagers. I understand teenagers. I'm expecting that challenge. I was crying for me and him and how much harder his life will be just for a few years when those fragile acquaintances can no longer sustain their kindness for his difference and he enters a world of being an outsider, clinging to other survivors, bobbing round in the sea of high school when they can't physically get on the lifeboats with the normal, exceptional kids and don't have enough friends to drag them on.
He'll be ok. I know he will. I need to remind myself to encourage him more and celebrated his successes more and appreciate what those successes are which won't be the same as mine, or his sister's or even his remarkable little brother.
I was jealous of all those other parents though. But I will treat each of their exceptional offspring as they enter my domain of secondary school as kindly as I treat my unexceptional, exceptional young man.
The flowers in the pictures by the way, are from my exceptional colleagues and my lovely sixth formers, to "the best teacher ever" whom they "will miss". So maybe we are all exceptional to someone, even when we think we are not, maybe one size does not fit all.

Sincere apologies

The last thing I remember from my dream this morning was someone saying to me very loudly; "Aren't you forgetting something?"

My eyes popped open instantly, my heart was racing and I started to sit up in bed.  It was 6 this morning and it's a Saturday.  I get a lie-in until 8 as football doesn't start until 9.

Unfortunately, however, that is how I wake up almost every day at the moment, that constant, persistent feeling of incompleteness and stress, there is always something to do and I usually haven't done it.  More often than not at the moment, when I switch the alarm off on my phone I find that I have been in the middle of composing an email, listing an ebay item or trying to write a blog as I fell asleep the night before.

"You can't multi-task." My husband tells me.  "It just means everything gets done inefficiently."  He's all about the efficiency my husband, he finds it very difficult to understand any of the logic that goes into my decisions.

For example,  when I return at the end of a long Tuesday and collect the children from after school group (which takes at least 35 minutes; Pip has a picture to finish,  Rex hasn't had his go on the Wii and Max has been struck temporarily deaf) what should be my first task?  There are ten minutes to feed all 3 before Brownies. Usually the slow cooker has been turning Tesco Value cow flavoured pieces into steak stew,  the bread maker has produced a pale,  but perfectly edible granary loaf and 3 children can sit and negotiate about how much constitutes "enough"  until Pip has to transfer the lot to a plastic tub and "eat it on the way". 

But every now and again I forget,  or there's an unexpected meeting,  or I got up too late and then it is necessary to slide the washing up away to the end of one worktop while I squeeze in a chopping board to get something on the go while I hear Rex read and remind Max to complete his homework and Pip to empty her share of the dishwasher which she didn't do this morning as she was too busy labelling her bedroom with pink post its.

Even in that time I will be expected to stop,  mid-cook,  to get three drinks,  wipe one bottom,  establish what has been accidentally erased from my email while someone was "trying to get on mathletics",  empty the bin,  feed the cat,  give Dan an update on my day,  take a phone call from a union member,  ring the insurance company,  persuade my mum that now is a fine time to ring and not to ring back later when I'm less busy -  because then I'll be marking,  get a white wash on because someone has been stock piling dirty school T shirts in his room,  order a repeat prescription before the doctor's closes,  get Rex to set the table to stop him stealing Max's sword,  smooth things over when Rex gets Max "the wrong fork" cook something vegetarian for me and sew on the interest badge I forgot. 

Women don't multi task because we think we can,  or it's sensible. Often we agree with you guys, it would be better to concentrate on one thing at a time,  but I have ten things to do. All before 5:30 when normal people apparently finish work,  and if I don't start them all they won't stand a chance of getting done. And I'm sorry,  darling,  if I didn't finish loading the dishwasher,  but I was interrupted 3 times by each child who tried to ask you a question,  but you were busy. 

All of which preamble makes me wonder how Nicky Morgan gets a damn thing done these days.  What with forcing every school to become an Academy and testing spellings and connectives at Key Stage 1, added to scrapping the use of baseline tests,  it's no wonder mistakes are made. But Nicky Morgan isn't just scrapping the Local Education Authorities, if all of these academies go badly - and many of them already are, the secretary of state has ultimate responsibility.  The department that accidentally printed the real tests online. The secretary of state who hand wrote "sincerily" at the end of the letter.  (I haven't yet been able to prove that it should have been "faithfully" anyway - but wouldn't that be nice?)  As Michael Rosen has so reasonably demonstrated in his comments on the subject; there is nothing wrong with it, as far as we're concerned, but we've been told that our opinions don't matter.  If you have chosen that word as a key word on the list - and it probably should be - it's been on my list of commonly misspelt words for GCSE for 20 years, then make sure you spell that one right.  It's a trick to play on the examiners, I tell my students, you may not know every word but learn the ones that everyone else spells wrong.  It's the same problem with some PE teachers, they tend to become heads of year because they're the only ones with the time, but if you've got an English department next door, then for goodness' sake get one of them to check the letter before you send it home.  They'll love it. We're all pedants.  Which is probably why we're all enjoying this so much. We have been held to account for so much over the last few years that we are relishing the chance to see someone else get into trouble for a change.

Anyway, I'd better stop writing and get some sleep, after I've emptied the dishwasher at least, I've got an early start tomorrow, it's Sunday, St George's Day Parade, now where's that Promise Badge?

Hunting for the unions

This is why you need me. I am having once again to justify the work I do to a school which has converted to an academy and doesn't wish to pay into facilities funds.

I understand why. "But your members are entitled to representation." A glossed HR person will say to me smugly when I explain that I can't attend a meeting at 2 days' notice because I am mostly a teacher. You have to attend is the implication. Your member is entitled to representation, we, as an organisation, are not obliged to make sure they have help. And I'll turn up to this meeting, and you'll probably sack them anyway. Even if you're in the wrong.Even if I prove you're in the wrong. You're prepared, happy even, to settle out of court, with a privacy clause.

So the press, the public, the politicians, remain suspicious of the unions. Jeremy Hunt is currently imposing a change of conditions on the doctors. Because, pretty much, he does not give a damn about maintaining their good will. As with teachers, politicians seem to assume there is a large cohort of potential junior doctors just waiting in the wings, waiting for all these lazy, uncommitted doctors to emigrate/quit so that they can leap into this new world of 24/7 hospitals (which apparently doesn't exist at the moment-who knew?) and accept the new terms and conditions. No wonder they are resistant. Perhaps they have witnessed teachers struggling with their new performance related pay and effective privatisation. But look at the success. Oh no, that's right. Teacher recruitment targets have been missed for the third year running.

Hunt and others portray "the unions" as part of the blob. A huge amalgous mass which has been criticised for being negative about teaching, standing in the way, looking backward. They seem to assume that there is a very top down approach with some driven ideologue at the head, cascading its poison down to the lower ranks. A model, in fact, more similar to a political party.

That is not what unions are. Unions started with the workers, trying to ensure safe working conditions, promoting the idea of coming together so that it was more difficult to single out individuals. Now they are a body of professionals, and in the case of many jobs like teaching and medicine, a body of skilled, dedicated professionals who drive themselves into an early grave by their hard work and are led by a vocation, with the interests of their patients and pupils at heart. Unions are fighting for the best medical, educational and professional outcomes, not their best interests as is suggested by MPs. Believe us, if we were in it for the money we'd have done something else. Like politicians. And we still could. We are highly qualified, unlike the bank of people who will be dragged in to replace us when we are driven out by unattainable targets and unsafe working conditions that do not have the best interests of professionals or those they are looking after at the centre.