Planning can get you to places. Get you to places at the right times. Sometimes planning can get you to places when the weather is nice.
Planning can get you out of the daily routine. Walking on an island in the North Sea is a much needed break from the usual daily routine. That’s good for Hawklad, for Me.
Planning is going to be the key going forward.
To push the boundaries out just a little bit further.
Hawklad wants to see a bit more. Experience a bit more. But his anxieties are spiking again. It’s going to be a challenge. More planning is required.
So can we plan a quiet day trip to another country next.
A carefully planned day trip. A trip 140 miles north up the coast. To deepest Northumberland. To the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. A stunning tidal island set in the North Sea. To reach it you need to cross a one mile causeway which disappears when the tide comes in. Saint Aidan founded a Monastery here in 635AD. Even today you can see why.
So much planning was needed. Time the arrival as the tide was just revealing the causeway. Stay just long enough before the crowds arrived.
Unbelievably the plan worked. Hawklad got his day out with few crowds. That is definitely the blueprint for trying to expand his world on HIS TERMS.
For weeks I’ve struggled with the online banking process. All goes well until the bit about sending a confirmation text message. The message never got to me. So I was constantly using the help desk to approve transactions. All a bit of a polava.
Well something happened today. Something very odd. Suddenly a bank confirmation text message arrived. Then another. And another. Actually over 230 messages arrived. Not all from the bank. Weeks and weeks and weeks worth. Message after message.
The first two I looked at where about WORK. From colleagues. Moaning colleagues. Very moaning. My life was definitely not enhanced by reading them. The next message was clearly another moaning work one. The one after that looked like O2 trying to flog me a new mobile.
Am I a bad man, I snapped. I might have accidentally deleted all the messages. Deleted without looking at virtually all of them, just 4 out of 230.
Yes I might be a bad man but wow the feeling of power. The liberation. Sometimes I do like online connectivity. It would have taken me ages to shred 230 letters. That’s progress.
Hawklad was playing online with his best friend so I had an afternoon to burn. Let’s go for a local walk.
I have issues with HORSES. Always have. Some say its because they like me for some reason but I know differently. The truth. They are after me.
As a child I once went to Africa to visit my sister. At one stage I was asked to stand next to a horse so my family could take a CINE film. Remember those…. As I stroked this particular fella, much laughter ensued. The horse literally ate my T-shirt. From then on the vendetta took hold. A few years later I was trying to get into a Football Stadium to see Newcastle get beat again. Stood in the queue chomping on a chocolate bar when a police horse stood on my foot. As I spun round in pain another police horse ate my Mars Bar……
The theme continued. I was walking on Dartmoor when a wild pony pinched my sandwich……
If only it was always that end. I was walking through a city centre to a meeting one afternoon when I came across a crowd. A new Betting Shop was opening and the famous Racehorse, Red Rum was the guest of honour. I found my self in a queue which I thought led to a free T-shirt but no, it was the queue to stand next to the great horse. I patted the huge horse with some trepidation and he repaid me by crapping on my shoe….
See they have issues with me. Maybe it’s because they know that I once voted for that horse loving movie, The Godfather as my favourite soundtrack ever. They know….
So on this particular grey Yorkshire afternoon I found myself walking across a field when over the hill a pack of ravenous beasts appeared. They came closer….
And came closer…
And closer….
And closer….
And sensing blood, even closer….
I was surrounded. I now knew what it felt like for Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum to be surrounded by a pack of blood thirsty Jurassic Raptors.
And remembering the best Jurassic Park survival strategy, I legged it. And when I got back home guess what. I had stood in horse poo….. See they have issues with me.
The GIVE A FENCE A GLOVE push continues here in Yorkshire.
So much love to the fences. I’m reminded of a Beetles song
GLOVE IS ALL YOU NEED
As the Bank Holiday kicks in here, the roads are rammed full. The car parks are overflowing. But around our village, all is quiet. Hardly any traffic. Our walk today and we didn’t see another soul.
Quiet amongst the storm. So a few days of local walks, table tennis in the garden, lego. Maybe even croquet amongst the mole hills. That’s what Hawklad needs at present. A time will come when Hawklad has to face crowds but not yet, still too much anxiety. Progress has to be at a pace that suits him. I might wish for bigger adventures further afield but those can’t be now. Certainly not this weekend. So for a few days the adventures are amongst the GLOVES.
These EGGS make a cracking Egg and Soldiers. Mighty fine very local honey as well. Every few months the Bees do a mighty impressive fly past directly over our house. There is something much more regular than that. Every morning the Cockerel provides a morning alarm call at 6am. Not always welcome.
If only we could bribe the big fella to call out at other times. Hawklad would appreciate that. He really struggles to get the concept of time. Digital or Analog, doesn’t matter, he just struggles to tell the time. Sometimes he can work it out but it’s a real effort. Thankfully he can use his iPad to read out the time for him and to set alarms.
Unfortunately iPad audible alarms and time prompts are not allowed in the exams. Exam timekeeping will be a huge issue for him. So as Hawklad pointed out, “I wonder if they would rather me take the cockerel into the exam hall instead.”
Why not, I bet Cockerels are not specifically mentioned in the regulations.
My favourite tree. Has been for over two decades now, everyday I see it from the garden, standing alone and proud. Surviving several lightning strikes and countless storms.
But today after all these years I discovered something special about that wonderful tree. A magical hidden secret…..
Hawklad sat an exam today at home. Two hours worth of work. I set him off and kept out of his way. No need for two teacher referees this time. I was asked to keep an eye on him to make sure he stuck to the exam rules. Deep sigh….. They could just ask him and he would straight away tell them the truth. On one trip to Switzerland I gave him a sip of a shandy drink. At the end of the holiday we went through Swiss Customs. We were asked if we had anything to declare. Hawklad immediately owned up to that shandy….
No I didn’t enforce the exam rules. He walked about. He finds sitting still difficult, not moving for two hours would be torture to him. He had some noisy crisps and really loud wrapped up mints. He talked to the pets. The key things he stuck to. He didn’t use any sources of help, he observed the time allocation. If only school exams could be this flexible.
So the hidden secret.
The other side of the much loved tree has a face…
An angry face. Can you see it.
Wow. How did I miss that. Just goes to show that you can never be certain that you know everything. But I do know that school exams are forms of legalised torture. Why do we do that to them.
I was about to quote a certain Star Wars catchphrase to Hawklad. Unfortunately I was still a bit distracted as I had just been to the kitchen to fetch some ice cream, so ‘let the FORCE be with you’ came out as ‘Let the FRIDGE be with you’. That would fundamentally change the overall ethos of the Jedi Order.
Then just a few minutes later…..
“Dad I can’t believe you said that”…
It will taste like chicken, everything tends to taste like chicken.
“Dad, it might work with meat but I asked what a pomegranate taste likes….”
That is a valid point. That old expression just popped into my head. To be fair I am from Yorkshire which explains many things. Round here if you stop your car for directions you run the risk of getting this helpful piece of advice, “Eh Lad, I wouldn’t be starting from here to get there…”
Is it just a Yorkshire thing…..
My mind wanders back several decades. I remember going on a Geography Field trip with school. We went to the seaside and found ourselves on top of a huge cliff. One lad asked the teacher, a right Yorkshire character, if we could follow the steep path down to the beach. This was at the time a certain big fish with teeth movie was scaring the pants off millions of cinema goers. The teacher replied “NO”. When asked why, the first excuse that popped into his head was
“Because of sharks…..”. The mad teacher must have realised just how daft that had sounded to a group of snotty nosed teenagers. Pointing down at the massive cliff face he calmly recovered his credibility.
“I’d like to see Jaws climb up that bugger and then try to bite me on the bum, stood up here. “
This mad teacher had lots of form, I think he deserves his own post one day. Anyway looking back all those years, my FRIDGE comment isn’t so bad now. But I guess cliff top Great White shark attacks are kinds rare in Yorkshire.
That’s a gnarly tree at night. It looks like how I feel…..
Finally we have some exam clarity. The exams papers will be sent out to Hawklad who will complete them at home. This is ok (this time ) as they are internal school exams. Mock exams.
After that the problems are clear.
Hawklad has not been in class for two years now. He has worked really hard at home, but let’s be honest, he is no where near returning to school. As the Psychologist working with him points out, a return might not be feasible before his final exams. If this ends up being the case school have provided the following options.
1) undertake the exams in the main exam hall with the other students,
2) sit in a separate room with two members of staff and sit the paper,
3) sit the exam at home with two members of staff watching over him,
4) resit the entire course
5) get no qualifications from the courses he has worked hard on.
He can have access to a scribe. He might be eligible for up to 5% mark consideration for exceptional circumstances, but he might lose a similar amount of marks for using the scribe.
Here’s the thing. None of those options fill me with any confidence. Fine if he gets back into the classroom in the upcoming months. But that looks unlikely and if he did, it’s going to be a huge shock to his system. He can’t even go into a shop for a couple moments so how could he get into school and stay there for an exam. Something like 10 exams. How much damage would that do to him.
The exam at home option has flaws as well. Apart from one boiler service repair visit, we have had no visitors in the house since 2019. On that boiler repair visit, Hawklad stayed in another part of the house and refused to go into the boiler room for weeks afterwards. His house is like his safe, protected area. Even family visitors are use to sitting outside in all weathers. So how will he react to two strangers being in the same room as him for hours. Maybe we could try for an outside garden exam but that’s weather dependent (this is Yorkshire).
Resitting the course. He would know no one in school at all. how daunting would that be.
Does that really leave Hawklad with the real prospect of getting no qualifications after his school days finish. He has worked so hard.
So I’m sat typing these words and I’m feeling parenting angst. What on earth do we do. I really don’t know. Unfortunately doing nothing is not an option. Deep sigh. I’ve been single parenting since 2016. I. I might have got this right. I might have done the best I could possibly have done for Hawklad, but….. Have I got this so badly wrong. Have I messed up the most important job of my life. That is a deeply unsettling feeling.
Why is school so vexing. Do all parents end up feeling this way.
Important exams start tomorrow. Well I think they start tomorrow. This is based on three bits of evidence
1) One teacher has sent a calendar invite for something called an ‘Exam’ is his subject. To be fair to him he has also sent some revision notes. I can live with that…..
2) Many of the other classes have disappeared, I assume they have been revising.
3) A PE teacher emailed Hawklad’s Year Group this evening to tell them that Netball was cancelled tomorrow due to ‘your exams in the main hall’.
So important Exams I guess start tomorrow. Not sure if Hawklad is sitting them or not. Can we do them at home or not. If so are they online or written. When are they. What happens if he is not sitting them. Why are they important.
We wait with baited breath for news. Yes, school is most VEXING.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 