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Sand castles

Autumn in Yorkshire seems to be set in now. Day after day of dark, damp, dreary weather. The heating is now on full time now, guess it will be till 2025.

But then out of nowhere, an unexpected weather gift. The Day Forecast was really poor and the morning brought rain, lots of rain. But without warning the clouds parted. The first sight of The Sun in days.

Got to seize these gifts.

Three hours later we found ourselves 100 miles north, on a beach in Northumberland. With Cloudless skies and a Castle on the beach.

Bamburgh Castle, a setting for many a movie and tv show. It’s something like 1400 years old but unusually for round here, it’s not a ruin. Stately Home, Museum, Luxury Hotel, Wedding Venue. Definitely worth a visit, but with one piece of warning. Don’t bother bringing a bucket and spade to build your own sandcastle. It’s the finest sand ever, like walking in a Desert. Sand gets everywhere and I mean everywhere….. but it will not hold together. Definitely only one castle here.

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Mr Blue Sky

And finally some blue sky.

What have I become…..

This week I booked the Christmas food delivery from the local supermarket. It’s arriving on the 23rd December, that’s over THREE MONTHS away…. For years I was the supreme last minute panic shopper, now I’m living the dream as Mr Forward Planning.

I’m on a roll now.

Time to book a Christmas trip out. Tickets pre booked for the Pantomime at the local theatre.

I could get used to this. Maybe I can start buying presents, booking family visits. I could start writing Christmas Cards…..

BUT you can never take the MUPPET out of my personality. Muppets don’t forward plan, they just move cockups into the future. I’ve just realised that I’ve double booked my two Christmas bookings. Food coming at exactly the same time as the Pantomime will be starting…..

I’ve started messing Christmas up and it’s only early October. Marvellous…….

Truly Living the Dream …….

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Boarded up

A few hardy souls braved a distinctly cold and windy Yorkshire beach.

Definitely felt like Autumn.

Definitely looked like Autumn. The small rides, the cafes, the ice cream vans had mostly all closed down and boarded up for the year. No more intrepid crazy golfers until next year.

I wonder what it feels like to be a resident here in Filey right now. Sadness that the summer season is over with the crowds departed OR relief to get their seaside town back again. The chance to walk quietly along the seafront again, to breathe.

I guess it’s a similar feeling that this time of year brings to our little hilltop village. With no village shop or school or pub or cafe. A church with only one service a month. It’s not unusual to not see another village soul for week upon week upon week. The short days, bleak weather and zero street lighting all ramp up the feelings. So what’s it going to be this time around. Peaceful solitude or suffocating isolation…..

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 19 Comments

Autumn

It’s been late this year but finally the trees have truly changed colour.

Change can be such a good thing.

I was talking to a mum who’s daughter goes to the same school as Hawklad went to. Hawklad is a couple of years older. The daughter is dyslexic with some specific educational needs. It’s telling that NOTHING HAS CHANGED. The daughter is going through exactly the same trials and tribulations that Hawklad went through. The School Approach and Attitude is UNCHANGED and as INFLEXIBLE as ever. It might be working for the School and System, but it’s still NOT WORKING for far too many pupils.

Change is needed.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 53 Comments

Shakespeare

Autumnal colours.

I wonder how Shakespeare would describe this scene. I bet he would use lots and lots of vowels…. This set me off thinking about school. What would Bill think about how his plays are taught in some schools these days. Initially he might be a tad chuffed that his words are still being read. Once he had got over that feeling, then what would he really think of how the plays are being used.

When I was at school with the dinosaurs, we would read the Shakespeare plays together as a class and then act out the scenes. I remember doing a rather excellent snotty nosed version of Lucentio. The teachers tried to make the learning fun and interactive. As a kid I shouldn’t have really liked Bill’s plays, but I actually did. School did it’s job.

Fast forward to Hawklad’s schooling and wow it’s changed. Shakespeare is still taught, just so very differently. The fun has gone… Now it’s about parrot learning key quotes. It’s about memorising the metaphors, the juxtapositions, the oxymorons, the alliterations. It’s not about acting the plays out, enjoying them, that’s all replaced by being told what to think about the plays. The work is so very often, repetitive, writing sections of the plays out, word for word. Then writing out the comments the teacher has scrawled next to the text. Then doing the same thing, over and over again. Got to get those words into the child’s head. Got to get the one approved interpretation memorised. They never ask what the pupil thinks about the play, just what the pupil can remember from the set model answer. In too many subjects Hawklad has been marked down for expressing his own opinion. Its not interactive learning, it’s more like brainwashing. Is it me or is schooling going backwards in the UK.

Deep sigh…..

I’m not sure Bill would be that impressed as well……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 47 Comments

Fungi 2

It’s been a cracking Fungi season. A gift that keeps on giving.

The school half term holiday starts tomorrow evening. The school at home project has completely nosedived this half term. Any support provided is becoming at best very very very patchy, too many of the subjects are dropping completely off the radar. It’s all very vexing and we both quip that it feels like the postman will be bringing a letter from school saying that Hawklad has been sacked. So a week off is needed to lift his spirits, to relax. He is seriously stressed out.

Apparently NOT….

School has made it clear that for pupils like Hawklad, this half term is about work and revising. The school will be checking to see that pupils have put in the hour after hour of work by setting tests as soon as school reopens again.

All work NO play.

I realise other parents might take a different view but this is so wrong to me. Everybody needs a break, especially in these times. Kids need time to relax and have fun. So many are stressed out. Stressed out with school, freaked out by the madness they see unfold all around them. No wonder that UK Child Mental Health Services are being swamped. Latest figures show that over 400000 children per month are being treated for mental health problems.

So here, yes there will be a small bit of work but hopefully bucket loads of relaxation and play. If Hawklad isn’t up to work then stuff school.

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Fungi

If you like Fungi, then this is the time to come to Yorkshire.

There has been MUSHROOM today to admire these regular autumnal visitors. A bit of a pattern is forming with Hawklad’s final school year before the main exams next May. A couple of subjects upload reasonable class notes onto the online school system, enough to follow a lesson but there is no interaction with the teacher. A couple of subjects will randomly load up shed load of questions, no explanations, no teaching materials, just questions. Hawklad then needs to figure out what he is supposed to be learning. Sadly his answers to the shed load of questions mostly remain unmarked, not even reviewed, an answer sheet makes it his responsibility to assess his own work. And the rest of the subjects, well let’s be polite, the bare minimum is sometimes being provided ….. possibly.

School has been back one month now and he hasn’t had any direct contact with a teacher. The occasional brief email, the occasional one or two word scribbled note on a document. That’s it. No teaching interaction.

So with a return to the classroom seemingly as remote a possibility as ever, we have mostly falling into homeschooling. It definitely doesn’t feel like a ‘school at home’ project anymore.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 40 Comments

Crumble

It’s Autumn here in Yorkshire and Autumn means lots of really sour apples from our creaky old tree. What to do with them….

A few years back I would descend on my mum’s with bags laden with apples. She knew exactly what to do with them…. Make the most perfect apple crumbles.

So why not.

Not as good as mums but not bad at all. It’s amazing what difference shed loads of sugar and honey can make.

If I can do it…..

It’s the Great Bloggers Bake-off real soon.

Why don’t you have a go…..

You can find more details at Mel’s wonderful blog.

https://crushedcaramel.wordpress.com/2022/10/01/two-weeks-to-go/

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 16 Comments

Back

Autumn is here, school is here.

In the great tradition of Yorkshire Awkwardness, the moment the local water company declared a DROUGHT and brought in a hosepipe ban, ITS NOT REALLY STOPPED RAINING.

So SCHOOL is BACK. Is there an anti Alice Cooper ‘Schools Out’ song. Maybe Another Brick in the Wall…

When I say school is back, I kinda say that figuratively. So far only one subject has set up Hawklad with this year’s class codes, so only one subject is available on the online system. Apart from receiving one code the only other message from school was an email to all parents and pupils reminding (maybe threatening them) them of the attendance rules and the penalties. That’s it.

And so just like the autumn rain, so starts the chasing up school rigmarole, all over again. At least we have the hosepipe ban weather to sunbathe in.

Update… now add one more school email stressing the importance of pupils continuing to work as hard during the nations official mourning period while ensuring their behaviour is appropriately reflective. As Hawklad points out, the UK Parliament has closed for 10 days to mourn but that option is not applicable to schools – again one rule for some, another for the rest of us. WOW he is starting to sound like me, that’s not good.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 59 Comments

It’s all in the message

Autumn is nearly over for another year. Sadly the same can’t be said about other things in life.

There’s been a few messages being pushed here in the UK since July.

Covid is now just like flu….

We are now learning to beat Covid….

Get a vaccine and you don’t need to worry about things like masks…..

We have a Prime Minister who makes a show of walking round a Hospital with no mask….Even after being told THREE times to put one on by staff. Finally he did after the cameras were turned off.

Photo of a selfish prat from The Mirror

All these messages mean that social distancing is often not happening here anymore. Masks are becoming a bit of a rarity in places like shops and public gatherings like football matches. But now the managed message has become way more disturbing. Here’s a phrase being used by the UK Government and freely repeated in news outlets.

Only 6 healthy children with no underlying health conditions have died due to Covid in the last 12 months here….

As if the other 112 children who died with conditions such as asthma don’t count as much. That attitude is such a dangerous road to go down for a country.

As if 6 plus 112 children dying is an acceptable number. Something which we are prepared to accept as normal. Sadly now this is the becoming the case, the norm. What are we becoming when our PM can say

‘I’ve given you the most important metric. Never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes, just look at wage growth’.

He’s not my leader. He will never me my leader. We deserve better than him. Our children, all our children deserve much better than someone like him.