I had intended to publish this post earlier in the week, my intentions and reality don't meet that often at the moment. There have been days lately when I have felt like I was in a room with no obvious way out and whilst I search for the door my panic levels rise, but inside me there is a small voice telling me all will be well. It is not lost on me that this time last year I stopped blogging for a while, I thought I was doing a better job at managing my busyness levels this Spring but I guess my report card would say 'could do better'.
It is all too easy after the cold of Winter to want to be out and about all the time and saying yes to every invitations we are offered, forgetting the bigger picture whilst doing so. I write 'the cold of Winter' as if we are now in the throes of a warm Spring, but Winter is clinging on here as it seems to be in many places in the Northern Hemisphere, we had as much snow last week as we did in the Winter months. My busyness has frustrated my garden plans some what, but with hindsight this has been no bad thing, the few seeds I have sown have have yet to germinate, there is always next week. My leeks that overwintered and survived the deluge of Winter rain are growing well as is the purple sprouting broccoli and kale which are providing enough for the odd meal and smoothie.
I am not much of a radio listener these days. The news, which is what I most often switch it on for, is rarely appropriate for small ears, I did however catch some snippets last week. There are a few days in my life when I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. One of those is the afternoon of 15 April 1989. It was a Saturday and I was at work and, like every Saturday, there was a steady stream of colleagues dropping by to catch the football scores on the radio that was always burbling away in the background. Most weeks it was drowned out by conversations, this was the staff canteen, that afternoon there was a hushed silence and no one moved, not even when someone came into the room. We lost two colleagues that day one just sixteen years of age. For 27 years the fans were blamed for what happened, vilified by the press with lies fed to them by the police and politicians until last week when finally the truth has been uncovered. It is important to remember that the world was a different place in 1989 but even taking that into account lies are lies, and lies to protect your mistakes, your job and your profession cannot, ever, be condoned.
I am also a sporadic listener of a radio soap that is popular here in the UK. One of the current storylines is tackling domestic abuse and has made for difficult listening at times. I know how hidden this world can be as a friend of mine was brave enough to reach out to the authorities and only then did I find out what had been going on for years. This programme has sensitively bought this world into the public domain, donations to support charities have increased as has reporting of violence in the home.
If Alice was a school she would be taking tests this month, every school child who is seven or will be by the end of August has to sit them. They are tests built round right/wrong answers, an input/output assessment, you would expect then that all the tests be factual? No. The English paper is based on grammar, punctuation and spelling. Some of the questions have several parts to them, all of which have to be right to gain a single mark, so even if the child has grasped the premise, one spelling mistake will mean no mark. I cannot think of any way to make a test more demoralising and pointless. My heart goes out to all those children and parents who are enduring this, it makes me immensely grateful that we are able to live on one income and home educate our children. This week Alice has, amongst many other things, been building a circus out of lego, attended a Steiner French group, had many books read to her, recapped her alphabet learning, visited a local Bird of Prey centre where she handled a hawk and played ludo with two dice.
The busyness has meant less thinking time, thinking ahead is vital for our rhythm and I have been clinging on with finger tips with the minimal of thinking and planning, hoping that all will be well which it has, mostly. It has meant far less time online, I apologise if my visits to your blog have been sporadic but now you know why! I haven't managed to post here for nearly a week, I think for the next few weeks, maybe longer, I will be posting less often and my visits to blogs may continue to be sporadic for a while, I do hope you are ok with that. But, we are all happy and safe and that is the most important thing.
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