From certain angles it looks like a rocket launch. Rocket launch in North of England. We do have a well established space programme. Including a successful moon landing.
Yes the great Wallace and Gromit made it there.
So if you put your mind to it anything is possible. Or in the case of the Grand Day Out , if you run out of cheese, the sky is the limit. So when I have a day when I feel hemmed in. When life seems a little too constrained then it’s the perfect time to watch these 24 minutes of animation escapism. Just like today.
It’s a reminder that even I can still have A GRAND DAY OUT. Get round to doing some of that elusive living. That gives me hope.
Homeschooling and intermittent power cuts don’t really dovetail together, ever…. It’s always a good sign that you reach the official school closing time meanwhile in homeschooling land Hawklad has only just finished the first lesson.
So after well over two years an annual health and education review is being organised. An online review and actually a rather intimate review. I remember back to when Hawklad was 8. These reviews were ticket only events. Hawklad, The Head Teacher, his Teacher, a Teacher from his future school, a representative from the local education authority, the Lead Physio, a Speech Therapy expert, a Child Psychologist, an Opthalmologist, a Paediatrician, a Specialist from the local school outreach team and me…..
Fast forward to 2021. The review is pay at the gate. It’s the Head of Inclusion from the school, a representative from the local authority and me. Even Hawklad is refusing to attend 😂. His one support service left, his one last support person is on leave. All the other services have been cut although the need is still there. Yes changed but still there.
This sums up a lot of the support to children on the spectrum in this country. Children are lucky to get any support in the first place. If this eventually arrives then the support drifts away as the teenage years approach. Older teenagers and adults get NOWT.
After hardly any communication from school suddenly it’s almost communication overload. Almost.
Missing exams papers are starting to arrive. A push to squeeze an annual review meeting in before the end of term. Some class notes from a missing in action subject. Interestingly it looks like our best guesses at what this subject has been doing in class since the schools reopened again 4 months ago have been completely wrong. Hawklad is way off topic. But as we have had no class guidance then what can we expect..
Then more Art trauma. Why is it so often Art. Hawklad submitted his exam piece and was pleased with it. Clearly the teacher was less pleased. The feedback is that the teacher had not received a final submission and had only received a rough draft drawing… Arough draft….. That rough draft is Hawklad’s (who has dyspraxia) best effort.
Hawklad’s take on all this. A shrug of the shoulders. One of those looks. No he won’t be submitting a final piece as that would be a final final piece. He will happily take a poor mark and then even more happily drop the subject in just 4 sweet weeks.
I walked past this tree and was thinking about what could be. What still could be.
I was listening to the self absorbed numpty who is frighteningly in charge of our countries schools. He was saying that children needed greater discipline and should work harder to catch up with the targets the Government had set for them. He had just announced that pupils would be banned from having mobile phones in school. They need discipline. Which is interesting as that doesn’t apply to members of the Government. For security and probity reasons Government Ministers are not supposed to use private mobiles and private emails for official business. Well guess what. Apparently they all are breaking the rules and they don’t care. They are above the rules.
Anyway this numpty was waffling on about how pupils should focus on the subjects the Government are pushing. They needed to learn the areas that are selected for them by those above them. Yes they can have options but carefully selected options. Options that are in the interests of economy. It was time focus on the important stuff.
So if Hawklad stays in school from next year he will have to study. English, Maths, Science, Religious Studies, Citizenship. From a really narrow option choice he will also study History, Geography, Design and Computing. Within those subjects the range of areas covered and the sources of learning materials are carefully controlled.
But here’s the thing. If it was Hawklad’s true choice then this is what he would study.
History and history and history and history. He would also study Maths, English Literature, Geography, Archeology, Geology, Animal Husbandry and Zoology. He is keen to pick up those computing skills he needs but on his own terms and at his own pace. Religious studies is something that he believes should be on his terms and not predetermined by someone else.
See there is a difference. An important difference and maybe that difference holds the key to why his country is in such a mess. Why his country is so inward looking and narrow minded. To me that says everything.
This morning I mentioned that school were kinda hoping that parents would help with a homework task of forage jam making. I was not hopeful as basically I am the culinary equivalent of an accident prone Lemming.
But I had missed the obvious. Much wiser friends than me came up with the idea of just substituting some shop bought Jam. That’s a plan we can sign up to. That’s a worry. A couple of years back Hawklad would have been mortified at the thought of breaking the rules. But now not he is not so principled. That is my influence.
So we ransacked the cupboard. Can you believe it. No Jam. Not even any deeply hidden years out of date jars. The nearest thing was jar of Mango Chutney. Needs must. We steamed the label off and we had forage jam…
But we had a problem, the first home label said ‘Mango Jam’. Ok Mango isn’t a fruit you often find foraged in Yorkshire 😂😂😂😂😂 So we now just have Fruit Foraged Jam. Hopefully the colour and the lumpiness of the Jam won’t be questioned.
In Food Technology today Hawklad was set the task to research how wheat is turned into flour. I was expecting this would set him off about the health aspects of bread. Maybe the additives used.
But NO.
His line of attack was – flour mills go through all those stages, make all, that effort, spend all that time. This is on top of the months of hard work performed by Mother Nature. So much effort and then a certain muppet Dad can’t even produce a half edible loaf of bread. What was the point….
Fair comment.
The other task was to forage and with parents help make some Jam. I remember the last time I tried to make Blackberry Jam. Even after two ceiling repaints I can still see the evidence. That Jam stain has a longer half life than Uranium 235. Plus Hawklad hates Jam.
A pleasant walk across the farmers field. It’s good to expand the world beyond the usual constraints.
We were sent a practical science test to try at home. I presume it was just for information. Test requirements included a Bunsen Burner, a Fume Cupboard and various rather explosive chemicals.
Or just maybe the teacher has heard about my baking and just assumed I would have these facilities in the kitchen.
I was sat blankly gazing at a featureless spreadsheet on my work laptop. It was all numbers, letters, formulas, data ranges and macros. A few changes here and a few changes there. It might balance soon.
Wow
I hate work.
No hang on let’s get that right. I hate this work. I hate accountancy. I hate using spreadsheets and word. I hate putting on a work face and being all professional. I hate hiding my incompetence and acting like I have the faintest idea what I’m supposed to be doing.
I work to pay the bills (well some of them 😂😂). That’s it.
It took me years to work out I was the official Mr Grumpy Work Pants. But actually the signs where always there. Wearing bright ties and waistcoats to try to be cool. Spending much of my life stressed out. Looking on enviously at other people and their jobs. Pilots, Mountain Guides, Astronomers, Health Professionals, Artists, Chefs. Reluctantly setting off for work every day. Only funding a spring in my step on a Friday afternoon as I leave work for a few days.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. We all have dreams and talents. Interests that can be made to work for you. I’ve heard parenting been described as an unpaid job. Well if it is then I love that job. Yes tiring but so rewarding.
I certainly don’t want Hawklad to get stuck in an unrewarding job. You invest too much time to waste that. I want him to live out his dreams. I don’t want him to be me. I want him to avoid the spreadsheets and get to smell the roses.
For those that don’t know Yorkshire is called the White Rose County.
School is a bit of a strange bizzaro world. A world in which most things are back to front and I’m not just talking about my pants 😂😂😂. An education world where Art invades all the subjects except Art. Where Maths becomes Computing. Computing becomes Comic Strip Studies. Where Citizenship becomes Comic Strip Studies. Where Geography becomes Science. Where Science becomes a million ways to learn about ways to get ill and where History becomes Victorian Criminology. You get the picture….
But what is even more unsettling is where the subjects he has elected to go with next year increasingly forget about Hawklad and where the subjects he is dropping within 4 weeks are given him increasing amounts of attention. Where his marks have gone through the roof in soon to be dumped subjects – 89% in one soon to be ex-subject. And in the subjects he is continuing with he is struggling to get hold of the exam paper to even attempt to try them…
There’s a chap in the village who is an artist. A really really good artist. Has exhibitions. He has a talent for creating beauty. Even in his garden. He lets his garden go native. Will occasionally tidy it up but mainly just let’s nature sort the rest out.
Well this is what happens he does this…
This artist lost his partner a three years back. It really hit him hard. His world fell apart. Yet over time he has got going again. He has returned to making new art. He’s carrying on. He would give me a progress report every time I walked past his garden with Captain Chaos. Whisper it – the Cap likes contributing to this nature show in his own very unique way…. We talked about sitting down and having a longer chat.
Hopefully over the next couple of months I can pop over and he can show me his studio. We can have that coffee that has been on hold since the pandemic swept the world. We talked about doing this 15 months ago.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 