Bear with me - this may ramble…

In the car this morning I caught Archbishop of York John Sentamu talking about using the credit crunch to retake some of the basic meaning behind Christmas. In amongst this was the idea of appreciating the value of the truly important things - which are not necessarily material gifts.

And it got me thinking. I was on my way to Fort Kinnaird to buy Christmas presents for a family of dear friends. But although I love them very much, I don’t find them easy to buy for. They enjoy a far more affluent life than the Soup household. It is always hard to balance our tight budget against finding items that fit (even if they don’t match) with their style and interests. I am sure they are careful to judge what they buy for us, not wishing to overwhelm us with gifts that cannot be reciprocated. But welcome as those gifts are, my lasting gratitude will go to them instead for many acts of kindness over the years, which cost little or nothing, but which I will remember for the rest of my life. For instance this summer they gave time and expertise to support me in making some important choices. No money spent, but crucially useful. So the presents, I reminded myself, really are only tokens. Make them good ones, if you can, but don’t fret about them…

And while at Fort Kinnaird, we went into Borders and I picked up a kids’ book called Teach Your Granny to Text. I gave it just a quick flick. It seemed to be a 101 things to do… book with an ecological twist. The page I read was entitled ‘Love Your Stuff‘ about appreciating even your old and tatty things.

I put the book down, but found myself coming back to the idea of ‘Love Your Stuff’ throughout the day. It fitted with my general philosophies about the world. I know I’m a follower of the make do and mend ethos, and I’ve been a little amused to find that so much of the credit crunch advice being bandied about reflects the way we’ve been living for a long time (the downside of this is that it’s harder to find further ways to economise…) But, financial - and ecological - implications aside, I feel there’s a value to loving your stuff as part of a positive mindset.

Then in the afternoon, I took one of the Littlest Soups out for a walk, and we came past a place where we have previously found abandoned toys - discarded, I think, by the children in nearby group of houses. We’ve tried returning them to likely homes, without success. We’ve tried propping them up prominently to be reclaimed, only to see them moulder week after week. This time we spotted a naked, cloth-bodied baby doll, not dropped but hurled to the edge of some undergrowth. She wasn’t there the day before but, from the muck and the mildew, she’d been outdoors for some time.

There’s something tragic about an abandoned doll at any time, but when I picked her up I was struck by her resemblance to the computer-generated images of neglected injuries which have dominated the news in recent days. She summed up for me the antithesis of the ‘Love your Stuff’ ethos. Of all toys, a baby doll is designed to foster affectionate nurturing.

I remember the Council making a deal, some time ago about the provision of houses like the ones from where these toys may have come. They spoke forcefully about the need to supply ‘affordable housing’ for people who don’t have much money to spend. But is our society doing anything to support people in making the most of the things they buy with what little money they can spend?

Well, I’ve spent a little bit of money - I’ve checked out the website of that book’s authors and I’ve ordered a copy of ‘Teach Your Granny…’. As a family we’re going to think anew about making the most of things.

And the doll? I couldn’t just leave her there. She’s been bleached, washed, scrubbed and will be receiving fresh stuffing, a name and a new home somewhere. She’s as good as new.

Tension is mounting for one Little Soup, waiting to find out if they’ll have a role in the Christmas Play and what that role might be.

Apparently the teachers are deciding this week: I have images of children taking every opportunity to show their potential: standing proud in the classroom, facing front and declaiming like a Noel Coward luvvie “Please Miss, may go to the toilettttt?”

Alas, I’m guessing the roles may already be decided. If it’s a traditional nativity play (and there’s no certainty about that) then I’d imagine that Mary and Joseph will be sweet but steady types. The innkeeper is the confident, bossy boy who is savvy enough to say the first lines in many scenes. The angels (who should technically be boys, but then there wouldn’t be enough roles for girls, would there?) are cute but not necessarily the most capable individual speakers. Ditto shepherds for the boys. If you’re lucky enough to have a boy with exotic looks or height, he makes a great Wise Man. Fill in the gaps with animals (if you’re creative) or a choir/percussion orchestra.

Mary and Joseph are of course, seen as plum roles, although frankly, they can seem a bit dull in practice. Kings and angels are sought after for the bling-laden costumes. No-one wants to be livestock.

My Offspring has their heart set on an impressively costumed role, but as they are known as a bit of a Voice I fear they may be disappointed and used for ear-candy rather than eye-candy. I hope they can cope with the highs and lows of casting and auditions, because not everyone can be a star, luvvie.

I may yet be consoling a Cow…

I took the opportunity recently, while I happened to be in the right neighbourhood, of diverting off route just enough to swing past a couple of my old schools.

I’ve not bothered to do this for a long, long time - not since I became a parent (I had the Offspring in the car with me). What a strange experience it was. One school I had remodelled in my mind to resemble one of my Offspring’s schools, which reminded me of it. In real life I realised just how very different it actually was. One school looked very much smaller - and the grounds had been ‘edited’; one school looked very much bigger - but then it had been considerably extended!

I’ve not had the chance to visit these places, or to share memories with fellow pupils, for quite some time. As a result it had all taken on a slightly unreal, dreamlike quality, rather as if they were mental images from a book I had once read. And that links to one of my reasons for making a point of revisiting them.

One of my Offspring has reached a stage where they are reading many of the books I can so clearly remember enjoying in my schooldays. And for me the memory of these books and the memory of those schools are firmly intertwined. I don’t know what the room layouts are like inside now, but I could go back to the classroom and the very desk where I read particular books. I could point to the precise place where my favourites were shelved. I can practically smell them.

I’ve lost track of most of the teachers and pupils, few individual lessons stand out from my memory, but the memory of those books have come down the years with me. Once I had children I started to search the internet and began to build up a collection of the ones I hoped my children would themselves enjoy one day. They’re not going to read them in school: there’s nothing wrong with the school library, or indeed the public library, but a significant number of books which were popular among my class are now out of print.

Sharing books with my kids is one of the greatest joys of parenthood. I hope they can grow up with memories as vivid and cherished as mine.

In these days of measurable targets, do schools set aims, objectives, etc for parents’ evenings? What do they hope to achieve?

I imagine - I hope - that they want the parents to leave feeling informed, reassured, possibly even inspired.

I guess they don’t want them to come away from the meeting with the image in their head of running up a down escalator, but that’s what happened to me after the most recent meet-up.

One of the inspirations behind starting this blog was an incident at the equivalent parents’ evening last year. I don’t think I ever anticipated this blog changing the world (maybe just myself) but it felt so frustrating to come away feeling so many negative emotions.

I haven’t posted for a while. Last week, the week before, I was all for jacking this blog in. Things feel futile when you’re down, but I have noticed that my relationship with this blog is directly linked to how I feel about my Offspring’s schooling. When I am that concerned about the education, attention, support, I feel the emotional energy has to go into tackling that, not into this blog. Why - goes the chain of thought at times like that - should I spend my valuable time on a flippin’ Edublog, when they can’t even meet my child’s needs?

Last year we tackled a situation and found some positive ways forward, but a new school year, shifts in staffing and we found ourselves back where we had begun. We also found that some unstated intra-school policy was reluctant to deal with the situation in any depth.

What a range of emotions that creates. You feel you have to give the school a change to work forward on its own proposals, but at the same time, you’re already gearing yourself up for the potential battles you can see before you.

Well we’ve had some progress, although it seems to have been prompted by checks and balances from an entirely different angle. Suddenly it seems that action is possible, and we’re keen to nurture it. And hopefully the system will allow progress within a decent timescale - kids’ needs cannot be expected to wait.

So, little blog, you’ve got a reprieve for now.

Image from: 101 Things to do before you’re Old and Boring

I’m afraid to go shopping nowadays.

Whenever I walk down the streets of one of East Lothian’s little towns, I find that another familiar, valued local business has disappeared. Right now they seem to be dropping like flies - it’s a bit that that story of the plague village where each day there were a couple fewer parishioners in the church.

I don’t know if the credit crunch has anything to do with it, but I’m sure that once these little shops have gone it will be much, much harder to re-open them. A bit like the Beeching cuts on the railways: just think what East Lothian would be like if we had even one or two or the old branch lines still working!

Right now, the only things which seem to appear in these vacant shops are gift shops and other chi-chi ‘high-end’ businesses- there’s only so many presents a girl can buy. There seems to be no opportunity for day-to-day businesses…

When the Little Soups were young, I found local shopping quite tough. The shop premises in North Berwick, Haddington, etc were not planned for prams and buggies, so you either left your little ones outside (it would always be raining) or hauled them in and out of straps and raincovers. At that stage Kinnaird Park (as it was then) was a much more practical alternative.

But rediscovering ‘little shopping’ was a delight. Lots of variety to keep the littlies amused - and it was easy to use a visit to the toyshop, bookshop or pet shop as an incentive and many - alas by no means all - shop staff were happy to welcome a reasonably well-behaved toddler, who itches to explore so much crowded produce. And there are playparks, gardens, rivers, beaches and libraries nearby as useful add-ons.

And I enjoyed the chance to talk with staff who helped to give each shop its soul. Small children are a great ice-breaker, and I’ve found I’m far more inclined to chat when I’ve got a child with me. Getting advice from a knowledgeable shopkeeper, and knowing that if I revisit or return goods I can deal with the same person is a big plus for me.

I can’t afford, however, to do all my shopping in the little shops in the little towns. But everytime another one dies off, I feel a pang - if only we’d all bought one more thing, would it have made a difference?

Go on, shop local, just a little bit more…

Where do you keep your money? Maybe not the bank, in these interesting times… Where do you keep money in your house?

Yesterday, I had to lay my hands on a reasonable sum of cash for someone who would be coming to the door in a short time, and could not be put off (or paid by cheque). I was not able to reach a cash machine in the time remaining. Even with the entire contents of my wallet and the obvious domestic financial kitties I was still a few quid short.

Where do you go to find that extra money? I quickly raided all the obvious bits and bobs depositories round the house - still not enough. Every handbag I could find was emptied, and every coat pocket explored - just pennies. The fluff collector in the washing machine produced 5p, and I discovered 2p by the back door that the kids had dug up in the garden. Now where? I was horribly conscious of the kids’ piggy banks staring down at me - but raiding them seemed like the lowest of the low - keep that as a last resort.

Come on, there must be some money somewhere! The bottom of the pen pot, the hall table, emptied my wallet one more time. I poured out the kids’ play money and found nothing but a measly one pence piece. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and time is running out, I’m thinking more and more about taking a knife to the slot in those piggy banks when, oh joy of joys, I remembered the swear box. The old swear box which had fallen out of use (and we didn’t use it for swearing either, but for other unsavoury practices - not as yeuch as it sounds, though) - and there. forgotten in the bottom was an entire 50p piece. I felt so rich! never has 50p seemed so much. Combined with the scraped together pennies I was well in the clear.

But I couldn’t help feeling that I woman of my mature years shouldn’t find herself scrabbling about so desperately for change - or does this happen to other people?

Have you ever had to pick up a child from school in order to rush somewhere else?

Not the gentle meander home chattering about the day just past, but a swift grab and go.

Getting to school on time at the start if the day may be fraught, but getting out again in the afternoon has its own pressures. At least in a morning you’ve a chance of keeping the child focussed…

You arrive to do the pick-up in plenty of time (as if that’s going to make any difference) and hop up and down checking your watch, although the sounds coming from the classrooms sound nothing like packing-up-time. Surely that bell should have gone by now? Everybody else hanging around looks really chilled - do they know something you don’t?

Relief when the bell finally goes… but nothing happens. Where’s the tide of children streaming out of the door? Come on… come on… oh for goodness’ sake is the some sort of mass detention going on?

That morning, you have drilled your child about the urgency of this afternoon’s errand, and you’ve extracted a promise that they will be first out of that door, and raring to go. Of course, they’re not in the early birds, nor in the main van, nor in the ensuing trickle. They eventually appear in the last few, walking backwards to chat to someone, and dragging a disorganised trail of coats and bags. They react with shock and indignant surprise as you rush at them: what do you mean, ‘hurry up’? You never told them there was an appountment elsewhere…

Now you’re caught up in contradicting them, grabbing bags, chivvying them along, while other parents give you the “get her - pushy mum” - look. Yes you told them, yes it’s urgent, now thcan they get a move on? You hoped to be well on the way by now… and you turn a corner of the school and run slap-bang into that elusive neighbour/member of the school council/key teacher that you’ve been needing to have a word with for ages.

Now the child is hopping around and rolling their eyes - thought you said we had to rush? duh…

Child in car, bags in car, coats in car, bag straps caught in car door, seatbelts tangled, normally quiet child trying to tell you complex story as you scurry from car door to boot to door again… Trying to cope with other parents who obviously do the car-thing outside the school everyday and are waltzing through three-point-turns behind you whenever you try to reverse, till you’re finally, finally on the road and - being East Lothian at this time of year - stuck behind a combine harvester…

I think I preferred commuting.

I would just like to point something out… but guineapigmum said it, almost a year ago.

Older children are uncommunicative. Younger ones are not a valid conduit for essential or complex communications. The bush telegraph is useful for those of us who haunt the playground, but it excludes working mums. Nor can it guarantee to pass on the information which the school wants us to know.

I’m always willing to open my mouth and ask questions, BUT IF I DON’T KNOW ABOUT SOMETHING, I CAN’T ASK ABOUT IT!

I wonder what the teachers think about the kids who don’t supply whatever item, info or response is anticipated, and how long it would be before they followed it up. Today I discovered that a bright, chatty, keen-to-get-involved Little Soup hadn’t told me about some outstanding ongoing requirement because they “thought I just knew”. So they’d been left out of that activity. And if I haven’t heard, what chance for the kids who have poor attention spans, who struggle retain information, who need encouragement to speak up? They could miss out all year.

Some days my Offspring bring home piles of letters on topics which - to me - seem to be of little relevance or importance compared to the things I’m *not* told. Letters seem to originate from the Office, not the Classroom; I get the bigger, wider, longer-term info but without a sense of the more immediate requirements. Result? It’s all too easier to feel disempowered, and so less inclined to get involved in all the topics the Office letters promote.

A little more direction, especially at the start of the school year, would be very welcome. I know I’m not the only parent who feels this way. Goodness knows the teachers are busy right now, but if we get some more direction, we can provide the support as valued partners and teamplayers, which has got to pay off in the long-term.

Walking back home today at a snail’s pace with the Tiniest Soup, we bumped into a chatty neighbour. She wanted to know if I was taking part in something in the neighbourhood. Alas, said I, if I had the money for that, then I wouldn’t be wearing these tatty old trousers.

We were supposed to be going out in the car this morning, but we decided to skip that and make the most of the sunshine. Tiniest Soup put wellies on to stamp about the garden while I hung the out washing. Then Tiniest watered everything in sight, and stamped about in the puddles this made. Then sat down in the puddles to do some close-up splashing while I hacked back the foliage. While Tiniest was talking to the worms, I found a few end-of-season raspberries that had escaped the wasps and the birds. Tiniest put them in the basket and we headed back to the house where the worst of the mud was wiped off Tiniest’s face, although it was quickly replaced by fresh raspberry juice  and a big smile.

It is the little moments like this that are so heart-stoppingly beautiful. Too much structured running-around and they never have chance to happen. If I worked more then I could probably afford better trousers, but I’d have missed that priceless mud-and-raspberry smile.

And the tatty old trousers got filthy anyway…

With that white trim he must have been a prefect…

Uniform acquisition feels like a game which all parents obliged to play. There is no escape; our only choices come in the tactics we use. I’ve been caught out before by leaving it too late and finding the shelves and racks scoured clean of all the decent stuff. The limited availability of school uniform stock feels like such a whim of the big shops - slotted in between between Easter Eggs and Christmas Cards in the timetable for their seasonal aisles. Kids, of course, don’t grow at other times of the year…

So I bow to consumer pressure, and grab what I can asap. And if it’s 3 for 2, and I only need to buy 2, I use the third slot for something to stash away for future years - clever huh? Not when the school starts to apply… the Pressure.

You see, you *can* buy certain items from the shops, but if you buy the school’s own branded equivalent, you know you are Helping to Fund Your Child’s Education. It’s laudable, yes, it’s a positive and valid way for the school to raise money, but it costs that little bit more, and that little bit more multiplied by x number of items and then by y number of children and then by z number of years that they attend the school becomes quite a lot indeed.

This year there have been little changes in some uniform items for one of our schools, and the school has been keen to encourage orders of new items, perhaps to make them cost effective, perhaps to bring in the income, quite possibly both. There’s been some talk amongst parents about the dilemmas this causes. If you don’t buy (whether because of cost or because your child still fits the previous size) then you may as well hang a sign round your kid’s neck saying “NOT SUPPORTING THE SCHOOL” - how comfortable do we feel about that? Another Mum was lamenting that she had been given a fine quality winter coat for her child, but felt obliged to buy her school’s own coat as well because she didn’t want her child to look different.

I thoroughly accept that schools need to make money, and I very much want to help, but I have to work to a tight budget and can’t just jump at new purchases at short notice. The Soup Family Children will be wearing the same clothes and carrying the same bags until those are worn out or too small, and then they’ll be obliged to wear a size or two bigger until they grow into them.

And there’s a point - bags! School bags, lunch bags, gym bags… “I got him a new bag for starting P3″ said a parent of a littlie to me last week. Errr - why? If the old bag has still got some life in it, it gets used in our house. It seems to be an outmoded concept, Using Something Until It’s Worn Out or Broken, but it’s one I hold to. Bags at least you can buy all year round.

And finally on the subject of uniform, I have been infuriated by these back-to-back adverts running in the print media for M&S:

Boys’ trousers that repel water! Girls, you see, don’t get wet - maybe the raindrops just turn to rose petals an inch above their heads! And boys’ trousers that repel stains! Because girls don’t get mucky - oh, no. Boys are self-absorbed in their own athletic, energetic activities (see photo) while girls are self-conscious, passive wallflowers (again see photo). There are well-recognised issues about girls’ self-confidence and body image as they grow up. It would be lovely to think that they too, like their brothers, could enjoy physical activity without feeling self-conscious and concerned about their appearance. Adverts like this do nothing to help.

And that’s not mention the infuriation faced by parents like me when we put boys’ and girls’ clothes alongside each other for comparison and only on the boys’ stuff we see: tough textured soles, plenty of pockets, more durable fabrics.  Actually, M&S do produce girls’ trousers with the same protective coating - but not the ones with the sparkly charm - of course girls can’t be pretty and practical at the same time.

Quite a rant going on here, isn’t there? And uniform is supposed to make our lives easier…