Let Them Eat Cake

Michael Gove has been working tirelessly recently to make changes to the education system but I think I have discovered a new option for him.  Forget about back to basics or other such initiatives, how about the latest trend for taking cakes into school to help with the learning process?

Yes that’s right.  Apparently having cake in class helps the learning process.  Younger Son came home today and announced that it was his turn to take cake into Maths.  (We are talking A level maths here – not sit on the mat and recite times tables).  I thought it was a joke until Only Daughter told me they have similar initiatives in her school.  Friday is Chocolate in Spanish day apparently and some science classes have similar schemes.  Whatever happened to rule number one - no eating in the lab? 

I bet they don’t have it in PE though.  Imagine that?  Run ten metres and get one cupcake and so on.  Who knows, maybe it will be good for learning but all I can see is chocolate on the uniform and crumbs on the desks.   Not to mention the panic caused when your child’s day arrives on the rota and you have no cakes in the house. 

Maybe it’s the influence of Great British Bake Off?  To counteract any baking induced stress caused by this new initiative however, I can only suggest similar enterprises be introduced in the office or at home.  Wine Wednesdays for example?

Flying the Nest

Phew, we survived A Level Results Day, and in September Eldest Son will be flying the nest to University.  It seems like only yesterday I was reading to him and teaching him how to tie his shoe laces and now we’re looking at toasters and kettles for a student flat.  I am lucky that I still have two more children at home.  For some of my friends, however, it really is the end of an era and no doubt their houses will echo come September.

However, being an optimist, there is always a good side to everything and so I have thought of a list of positive facts post Eldest Son:

 1) The swamp that is his room can be fumigated and left in peaceful tidiness for a few months;

2) There will be plenty of food in the fridge and no late night snacking;

3) No anxious nights waiting for him to come home;

4) All the towels will be in their rightful place;

5) The television won’t permanently be on Sky Sports or Game of Thrones;

6) The newspaper will be available to read in a clean state;

7) Absent Husband will have surplus beer in the fridge and not moan about his missing comb. 

The list goes on, but truthfully, we will miss him really.

And of course, there is his brother waiting for his promotion to top dog and at the end of every term, there are those inevitable long University holidays….

Summer holidays, exam results and sad times

The summer of 2013 was a mixed one for me.  My last post talked about the stress of having two boys on study leaving revising for GCSEs and A levels.  Well, turned out it was worth the stress with both boys doing extremely well.

Eldest Son's last few events at school were tinged with sadness.  After eight years at the school, he was finally leaving those school gates behind.

By the end of August the good news rolled in for both of them and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.  Our big boy - the one who made us laugh every day was on his way into the big wide world.  (Well, Exeter University to be precise!).  We couldn't have been more proud.

Younger Son did really well in his GCSEs and began to look forward not only to his first festival (Yo Reading and Leeds) but to Sixth Form where he could discover just exactly what girls' banter is really like.

Our wonderful holiday in hot Rome and Tuscany late July was marred by the death of my eldest brother Jon.  Although this had always been on the cards since his diagnosis, it doesn't make it any easier.  I am so glad for the wonderful week I spent with him in June saying my goodbyes.  I did the same thing sixteen years ago with my father.  Never underestimate the chance to do this.  With my mother who died four years ago there was no warning, just a phone call in the middle of the night to say she'd died of a heart attack.  Cherish the time with your family and loved ones, no matter how much they irritate you.

Exam stress levels are soaring....

When I had my third child, I remember a pleasant health visitor commenting on the fact that there was exactly two years between them all.  “Ah,” she said, “they will be two years apart at school. What fun you will have in the exam years.”  I was struggling with three under the age of five at this point and was incapable of actually thinking that far ahead.  I was too busy trying to get through the night feeds, bath time, potty training and preschool jitters.  A Levels – Pah!

Well, dear reader, here I now am with my eldest two knocking on those very doors and I can honestly say it’s no picnic.  Younger Son spent his Christmas holidays revising for GCSE mock exams.  The lure of the play station was strong and I spent most of the time either cooking sprouts or acting as a sentry in front of the games console.  Eldest Son, meanwhile, strolled around with the confident air of someone who is “applying for University” and therefore knows everything and can go on the play station whenever he wants to. 

We have managed to navigate the world that is UCAS with Eldest Son and are now waiting, with much hope, for conditional offers.  We are no longer the naïve parents we once were at dinner parties where friends with older children smugly warned us of the perils of “university choices”.  We are now those smug parents (with nervous fingers crossed under the table.)

So, the spring is here and just as the birds begin to sing their dawn chorus and the leaves begin to bud, my household moves closer to exam time.  All signs of normal life will begin to disappear.  Absent Husband will be conveniently “absent” as exam timetables arrive magically by email with long winded letters about revision and study leave.  And soon said study leave will arrive and I will have two bored boys at home to “police”.  Eldest Son will be tempted by the fridge and Twitter.  As the weather warms up, Younger Son will be enticed outside to hit a hockey ball against the wall and I will be sent scurrying to the supermarket as brain enhancing food (read junk food) runs out.

While most people will be stepping out with a spring in their steps looking forward to summer, I will be pulling my hair out and not sleeping.  By this I mean the exams will find their way into my dreams and I will be taking an A level in History or, and this is much worse, a GCSE Maths paper.  Let’s not even go there.  I shudder to think about it.

Suddenly, the potty training and mass nit removal seem so much easier.

 

Is it just me or are motorised gardening tools evil and annoying?

It’s that time of the year again – spring.  It’s great to see the sunshine after so long in the wilderness.  It did seem as if maybe the sun had gone on a very long holiday to Antarctica.  But never mind at least its back.  However this means inevitably that the most dreaded thing on earth will happen in all the gardens of England.  No, not weeds – although they are annoying.  It is the sound of the Strimmer machine as it noisily hacks its way through my neighbour’s almost perfect garden beds.  Every vrrmm sends an annoying shiver down my back. 

 

The other afternoon it was so lovely, a gentle breeze kissed my sun drenched back deck and I took a plate of nibbles, a cup of tea and my laptop out to finish my work – an hour or so before the return of the children.  But just as I sat down, almost as if he’d been watching, a half naked gardener jumps out across the fence and begins to rev his machine.  It’s like it’s some kind of extension of his male parts and he is doing this ridiculous dance of “look at me with my big evil weed strimming machine”.

 

Now I know I’ve blogged before about leaf blowers in the Autumn. But to be honest they are nothing compared to the most soul destroying sound of the strimmer.  Absent Husband does own one and will be known to get it out over the weekend after he has mowed.  That I don’t mind.  It’s the weekend, the only time for him to do it and it lasts usually around ten minutes during which time you can carefully avoid it by going out or at least going upstairs for a bit.

 

But of course my neighbours don’t do their own garden so the strimming takes place mid-week for hours on end as their gardener clearly tries to hit them for as many hours as possible.  And what I want to know is why did he suddenly start doing it the minute I went outside?  And let's not even talk about the horrible fumes of petrol coming from the machine as he revs it all around their garden.  The previous owners would be horrified.  A lovely old couple who loved their garden with a passion and spent hours on their knees weeding the beds rather than running a noisy machine over them.

 

Better buy a better pair of ear defenders I think….

 

 

 

 

Tweet, Tweet

I have been thinking about getting Twitter recently.  So many writers I meet (published and unpublised, old and young) tweet.  I can see the networking sense in it but there is still something that holds me back. 

There has been a great deal of chat in the media recently about Twitter (or should I say tweet?).   Quite well known people are being sued for comments they have made on it, while others are in trouble for making inappropriate statements.  Given the fact that both my sons tweet, and being a social networking dinosaur, I realised I know very little about what Twitter actually is.

Apparently in 2006, after a daylong brainstorming session, three American guys came up with the idea for Twitter. They called it Twitter because it means “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds”.  Interesting.   I often hear birds outside in my garden and to be honest it does sound like they are having a chirp about absolutely nothing. 

 

Six years later 140 million users send 340 million tweets a day.  That’s a lot of chat - from the Pope to rock stars to politicians to journalists and to perhaps your actual neighbour. But what do these tweets actually say?  Any fan of Twitter will tell you that not all tweets are inconsequential, that a great deal of breaking and useful news has been imparted through the Twittersphere. 

 

That might be true but from what I can see (and hear) a great deal of nothing is also delivered.  So my question is: how amid the cacophony of 340m tweets a day do you sort the tweets from the chaff?  Answers in less than 140 characters please.

Sorting laundry is definitely easier than sorting teenagers

OK.  So nobody said it would easy.  Raising children I mean not laundry.  Somewhere way way back in the recesses of my mind I recall my mother probably saying having pigs would be easier.  She might just be right.  At least the little curly tailed creatures would appreciate you when you throw slops at them and surprisingly are cleaner and tidier than the average teenager.

But it's not the mess or noise of a teenager that's troubling me - it's the fact that as they get older they are actually more demanding than they were when they were 8 or 9 or 10.  Life was a lot easier then than I realised at the time.  Sure I had to drive them here there and everywhere - swimming lessons, cricket, football, rugby, piano etc but emotionally they were sound and happy.  It's those dreaded hormones that have well and truly kicked in and some days I feel like an old wet towel - wrung out to dry.

And there's still the laundry to do.

Typing The End

It finally happened.  That great moment in a writer's life when you actually type those words you never thought you would write - The End.

Now I know I have written a Mills and Boon book and must have typed those words, but writing my proper novel - Changing Altitude was very much a labour of love and when I finally finished on Thursday it was a great feeling.

So here's to writing The End.

So here's to typing The End.

 

New Year Poem

A Hint of Promise by Vanessa Woolley

 

The open window lets the new air in

Running like a river through my lungs,

Starting the day, the year, with a hint of promise.

 

Outside the sky is slate grey

And the air damp

Nothing seems different or new

Yet it is somehow

As if all the things we said and did a day ago

Are long gone

Replaced with exact replicas

And just a hint of promise.

 

The rubbish trucks rumble along pot holed lanes

Collecting festive rubbish

Strands of tinsel and party poppers hang from fences

Like party guests who outstayed their welcome.

And, sitting on a window sill in a small porcelain bowl,

A purple flower protrudes upwards

As if it had been waiting for this exact moment and time to arrive

With a hint of promise.

 

Vanessa Woolley, January 2013

Keyboard banging, Christmas,Snow and January Blues, Camel rides in the desert and now I'm back!

Yes - it's true - I am finally back after an absence of a three months or so.  But - the good news is that as promised (and this is a writing blob), I did write a novel in that time.  Well, I am two chapters short of the end, but who's counting?  "Changing Altitude" is a novel about coming to terms with grief and finding friendship in the process.  I am so glad it is finally a piece of finished work and not just ideas floating about in my head.

 

So by the 10th December, I got up to 65,000 words with six or so chapters to go, and then the thing called Christmas kind of got in the way.  And then came the snow...  Sure everyone was back at work and school and I could have holed myself up and finished the book, but sadly the January blues attacked.  This is probably the worst thing for a writer.  So by the end of January, the book was still six chapters short of being finished.  And then, in early February, inspiration struck (or maybe it was the mental kick I gave myself).

 

Anyway, half term was looming so I gave myself the deadline of Valentine's Day to finish the damn book.

 

15,000 words later it was done - well, except for the last three chapters which are planned and ready to write. 

So dear reader - despite my apparent lack of blogging stamina, I was doing something useful.

And as for camels in the desert - well: