Did you know my life would suck without you?

The Long Suffering Husband came in this evening and said, "You don't love me any more, you love baking."

I didn't correct him.  I do love baking.  I also love him, my children, my job, my friends, the dog and anything that makes me laugh.  I'm a bit of a floozy when it comes to who and what I love.  Monogamy is for marriage and sex but not for love.

Tonight was the PAMs Christmas social/concert and so when he got home he found me quickly making a batch of mince pies to take with me.  You might think it's a bit early to have a Christmas social but the last one we had was in June, so actually it's quite late.  

It has been a very funny day.  The children at school asked why the baby Jesus was given insects, which would have been confusing if we hadn't been singing John Rutter's Carol for the Children, which includes the line, "Three for the kings bringing gold, brining myrrh, bringing incense."  At lunchtime we became almost hysterical as we tried to simplify the Christmas story for a Church Service, "Can you mention Palestine?", "The children don't know what a manger is, we could sing Away in a Food Trough!" and "You've got to leave Bethlehem in.  It's not Christmas until I've heard Beflea-em and  Baaaaaby."

One of the pieces we played at the Christmas concert was a Glee medley, including the song My Life Would Suck Without You, which sums up just how I feel about my Wednesday night music and the wonderful people who join me.  We always have a giggle and no one could accuse us of not enjoying ourselves.  The admin of the group has been taken over by people who like to use a lot of paper and so I received 2 invoices and a questionnaire about the group.  Last time we had a questionnaire I wrote silly things on it because it was my friend who would be looking at them and she knows that Wednesday evening is the highlight of my week but this time I probably need to be serious, which is a bit of an oxymoron for me.  PAMs and serious? The two don't go together in my mind.  One of the questions asks, "Do you feel any health benefits from your lesson?"  
I think I might answer with, "my life would suck without it."  I am going to struggle with the question that asks if I'm making progress because I'm desperate to answer that I'm an adult and Ofsted couldn't care less how many levels progress I make in my leisure time!

Laughter is the best medicine and so this evening, when we were laughing until we cried no one could doubt the health benefits.  My favourite moment came when the conductor was explaining that some people had exams coming up and so were going to play their pieces and she said, "Because its good to get your parts out in public!"

All Stirred Up

Sunday was the day for getting all stirred up about something.  Tradition states that you are supposed to get stirred up about your Christmas pudding, filling your kitchen with wonderful fruity smells and beginning to think about Christmas for the FIRST time.  I did spend the day in the kitchen and two days later my Christmas cake and pudding are in a cool dark cupboard, quietly waiting for their moment and jars of mincemeat are hoping they will be turned into pies very soon.

It seems as though tradition has been completely lost, though and so I also spent the day getting stirred up by just how early Christmas seems to start.  I'm bored of Christmas already and it has also crept up on me, as I realise that next week is the beginning of December and the first of many Carol Concerts that I have forgotten to let the orchestra know about.  When buying my dried fruit at the weekend the shop assistant said, "Oh, you're going to be busy.  Are you actually going to make something with all that?"  When I told her it would make my Christmas cake, pudding and several jars of mincemeat she looked at me and said, "I didn't think anyone bothered with that sort of thing anymore, well not anyone who isn't ancient anyway."  Although, she could have been talking about cooking, I think she might have been talking about traditional Christmas food.  I can't be the only person who thinks the loss of seasons and traditions is a shame.  I like the fact that you can only eat pomegranates in October, strawberries are ripe in June, Christmas puddings are made the Sunday before Advent and you can get roast chestnuts from street corners in December.  It's a routine and we need routine.  

Christmas pudding hiding in a cool dark cupboard 

In our rush to throw out everything traditional people are irritable and lost.  They have decided that they need to re-invent traditions and the names of our months.  Now it's Stop-tober (time to stop smoking, Movember (time to grow a moustache).  A friend told me that January is going to be Fanuary and we are all going to encourage a growth of the lady garden and Caitlin Moran has written about Plebuary replacing February.  The world has gone crazy.  This must stop.  It's time for everyone to go and bake a Christmas cake.

Follow the Star

Now that we are hurtling towards Christmas at a frightening speed my whole life is a huge Christmas Album.  I'm not feeling very festive yet. Baa Humbug.

However, when you work with small children it's hard not to get a little bit excited.  The children at school are very excited about learning their songs for their Christmas show.  This year we are doing Hey Ewe by Anthony Copas and it's great fun.

Everytime the children see me they run up, point and shout (I'd like to say sing but the music teacher has allowed them to be over-enthusiastic and tuneless), "Hey Ewe, come back here!"  I have been starting to feel a bit paranoid, so this week I taught them a much better song from the show.  Now, they are running up to me, throwing their arms around my knees and singing, (yes, they are singing this one), "Follow the star, follow the star, follow the star."  Now, that's more like it.

Tasty Gloria

It's that time of year again. We can now mention the C word.  With only 4 1/2 weeks left before the holiday we are learning Carols.

Christmas Carols are full of archaic language that children often turn into words they can understand.  I'm sure I wrote a blog post this time last year about Mondegreens - or misheard lyrics in Christmas Carols but today I was thinking how many women's names are in them.  There's Olive (the other reindeer), Ruth and Grace (He rules the world with them), Dawn (we now our gay aparrel), Mary (Christmas), and Gloria.

There's an awful lot of Gloria's in Christmas Carols and despite searching my extensive knowledge of the Bible I can not recall anyone ever mentioning her before.  Is she the lost profit? The children were singing The Angel Gabriel today.  The lyrics are supposed to be about Mary receiving the news from the Angel Gabriel that she 'has a bun in the oven' (as one child told me today) but the last line of each verse confuses things slightly.  It says, "Most highly favoured lady, Gloria."  Maybe Gloria was God's first choice and she turned him down and so He had to settle for Mary instead.  The children often change the word favoured (which they don't understand) to flavoured (which they do).  So, Gloria was tasty.  I can see why Gloria's book of the Bible wasn't included.

Obviously, I am being completely silly about this (I know about Latin) but there is something about the whole Festive Season that makes me have to do this. I have to sing, "While Shepherd Washed," and "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells." and as Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier each year I just get sillier and sillier.

Women's names in Christmas Carols makes me think of my favourite joke:

Three men arrive at the Pearly Gates on Christmas Eve and St Peter says to them, "Right lads, as it's Christmas I'll only let you in if you've got something with you that represents the true spirit of Christmas."
The first  man panics a bit, pats his pockets, thinking that he has nothing except a lighter, so he pulls it out and lights it and says,  "Errm, this is a light and it errrrm represents the errrrm light that God sent into the world by errrrm giving us his son at Christmas."

"Ooo, very good," says St Peter, "you're in."

The second man has broken out into a profuse sweat.  He only has his keys.  So, in desperation, he takes them out of his pocket and as he does so he breathes a huge sigh of relief as he hears them jangle.  He shakes them loudly and says, "These keys represent the bells that ring out throughout the land on Christmas morning."

"It's a bit lame but Okay, you're in," says St Peter.

The third man is completely calm.  Instantly he pulls a pair of women's frilly panties out of his pocket and waits.

St Peter scratches his head, "I'm sorry, they are very nice knickers but I don't understand what they've got to do with Christmas."

"They're Carol's!" replies the third man smugly.

The Casual Vacancy

Sometimes,  I wonder how many hours of my life have been lost in a book and what I could achieve if I didn't read so much.  Am I avoiding real life by constantly sticking my nose in a book or am I enriching it?  I find it very difficult not to read.  I did try it once, I put myself on a week's reading ban, determined not to read anything at all in the hope of finding my own authentic voice and apart from being an incredibly pretentious thing to do it was almost impossible.  I realised that I searched out words in every room I walked into, for that week I knew the wattage of the kettle, the ingredients in a packet of crisps and Tesco's postcode (actually, I've never forgotten Tesco's postcode; it's EN8 9SL).  The reading probably would be manageable if I could read a page a night but once I'm into a book I have to know.  It becomes an obsession.  Nothing else gets done until it's finished.

This week I have lost 3 whole days of my life to The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling.  It took a long time to get into but then - goodbye world - I was unreachable.  When it first came out I understand that the reviews were not good.  People were disappointed.  They wanted more Wizzards.  They wanted something they would want their children to read.  Ms Rowling was cross, "I'm a writer and I'll write what I want," she said.  Good for her.  Some people (particularly the Daily Mail) thought it was an insult to the middle classes, spouting dangerous socialist ideals.  People seemed to either love it or hate it.  It got one star or 5 stars and not one review assigned it to middle ground.

Despite what the reviews said I thought it was similar to the Harry Potter books. You can tell it was written by the same person.  JK Rowling does not write the most beautiful prose you have ever read but she can write a character and in this book there are several characters, probably too many, which makes the book much longer than it needs to be and a bit confusing until you've worked out exactly who is who.  It is dark, just like Harry Potter and isn't afraid to touch on subjects that most people would rather not think about like death in Harry Potter and quite frankly everything else in this book.

I like my fiction to be dark.  I'm not a great fan of they fluffy bunny living happily ever after kind of story.  I like a bit of gritty realism.  The characters are well observed and to be truthful not very likeable.  The terrible thing is that not only can you see people you know in them, you can also see yourself (I could, anyway) and you just don't like what you see.  To those who say this book promotes dangerous socialist ideas I would argue that it isn't very nice about anyone.  Those who do care about the characters in the book who clearly need help neglect their own families.

There was humour, not jokes but funny observations of people and how they react in certain situations.  A few things irritated me.  I didn't like that one of the teenagers quoted a verse that he'd found on a bookshelf at home that was obviously Nietzsche but acted as thought they didn't know who said it.  I can't believe any teenager would actually quote Nietzsche without naming him.  Teenagers love a bit of name dropping.  I think they're more likely to say Nietzsche than the actual quote.  The other thing that upset me was having the funeral on a Saturday.  I really don't think funeral homes open on a Saturday.

This book did make me think, it did make me sad and it made me feel a bit hopeless.  In some ways the writing reminds me of Dickens, who also said things that people at the time didn't want to hear and drew caricatures of real people for us to delight in.

There are some beautiful quotes in this book, about authenticity, self belief and how people feel.  This, for example, describes perfectly the trauma of being a mother:
"How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way the ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement."

She forgets to say that seeing the new person they become is also a constant joy but I don't suppose there is much that is joyful in this book.

Brain Ache

It's official.  You loose brain cells when you give birth.  I used to be able to follow a scientific argument.  I know that because I have 3 science A levels but when my son talks science at me I just want to stick my fingers in my ears, sing, "la, la, la di da." and think of easier things.  A few weeks ago we went to Leicester to visit my daughter.  It was just me and him in the car and he discovered his voice.  At first I thought he was making things up but then a few facts floated back into my Swiss-cheese brain and I realised that he just knew much more than me.  He knew that space is a vacuum and that just baffled me.  I don't get how there can be stuff in a vacuum and I know there are stars - I can see them.  Then I was treated to an explanation about different wave lengths and how tiny gamma rays are (I hope I've remembered that right) and I was a bit confused because I thought gamma rays were only to be found in Science Fiction guns.  He bamboozled me with a whole load of numbers too.  He said that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s2 (I can't work out how to do the little up number thing on this blogger app) and when I said I though it was 6.62 x 10 to the power of something he told me that I was talking about Planck's constant, which is the other bit of the equation I need to know for working out wavelengths.  By the time we got home my head was throbbing and I needed to go and lie down in a darkened room.

I had also promised him that we would visit the National Space Centre next time we went to Leicester, so you can imagine my trepidation when we decided to go again this weekend.  The Long Suffering Husband took our daughter to see Skyfall, while I prepared to put my mush of a brain through another scientific workout.  

I shouldn't have worried, though.  Museums are designed for the brainless.  They are set out so that even small children can understand things. The National Space Centre is very good for this.  There are loads of buttons to push, loads of games to play and loads of videos to watch.  There was even a display that explained the wavelength thing in a way that even I could understand.  

I was quite excited to go and see the space suit that Laika, the first dog in space (probably the only dog in space) wore until we watched a video that explained how she had been a stray who had been strapped into the capsule for 3 whole days before lift off and how she had died of dehydration quite soon into the flight.  Our dog can't cope without going out for a wee and a sniff for 3 hours and so we felt so sorry for her that we couldn't go and look at the suit.  I also learnt things I didn't really want to know about the Americans protection of Nazi V2 Scientists and I realised that I had mis-remembered something.  I thought there had only been one moon landing; the famous one, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," but there were loads (well, six).  I had thought I had watched the first moon landing on TV at my Nan's house one Saturday (with milk blancmange for tea) but that didn't make much sense because I was only 3 at the time and the first moon landing was at 2am UK time.  But now I know it was in 1971 because I remember a spaceman hitting a golf ball.  

My favourite part was the Clanger.  I loved the Clangers and their wonderful flutey language.

I learned that I can't read in my head without moving my lips, when we tried to read the weather report for 2085.  I learned that you would die if you only took chocolate rations on a spaceship.  I learned that I'm not the most stupid person around, when I heard a teenage girl ask her dad if this was, "the real moon?"

To be fair, when I looked at the other side of it, I realised that it was a casing display for a piece of moon rock, so maybe she wasn't  being quite as silly as she sounded.

I also learnt that museums make the best soup.  I will be trying to make a spicy parsnip and coconut soup myself very soon. 

3rd the one with the hairy chest

The Long Suffering Husband has been nagging me to see a doctor for ages.  I don't like doctors.  I don't suffer them gladly.  I think many of them are no better than fools.  Loads of people love their GP and go running to them for every sneeze and sniffle.  I'm more of the 'pull yourself together' variety. However, I finally had to admit that I had a little problem that wasn't going away.  I have a tickle in my throat that makes me cough and it's affecting my singing.  I don't like things that affect my singing so I thought I'd give the GP a go.

I was very surprised.  It was a quick visit.  I didn't wait for ages.  I said, "I've had a cough for a while and I'm being nagged to see you."  He said, "How long?"  I said, "Honestly, I can't remember.  I know my husband was nagging me in the Summer holidays but I thought it was just an irritated throat and I was clearing it but I got a cold at the beginning of September and the cough didn't clear.  I've waited 2 weeks for this appointment and now I'm back to how I was." He said, "I'll listen to your chest,"  then he said, "your chest's clear."  I said that I wasn't surprised because it was in my throat. He stood up and got a form for a chest x-ray out of the box.  He said that it was probably just a bit of left over mucus but there were a few things it could be at my age  so I should have a chest x-ray.  I wanted to say, "Yes, but we both know it can't be either of them because I'm not coughing anything up, have no breathlessness, eating normally, not loosing weight or sweating," but I couldn't because he didn't know anything of the sort.  So I asked, "so you really think it's worth getting my chest x-rayed?" - pointing at my throat.  Possibly a little subtle I know, as he hadn't looked at me the whole time I was in there.  The Long Suffering Husband is very cross with me; he can't believe I didn't let the GP look in my throat.  

Anyway, I was good I went for the chest x-ray today and I think I know what's wrong.  It's a fur ball!

I stood against the x-ray machine, breathed in and held it.  The radiographer scuttled behind the screen to press the button and I heard her say these words to her colleague: "Hairy Chest."  It just goes to show how clever children are, as when I walked into a classroom on Friday there were two girls in there already, who sang, "Third the one with the hairy chest."

Remembering

Lest We Forget

What do we forget when we remember 

What are the stories left untold 

What do we think each November 

As we march down that glory road 

As we march down that gory road 

One hundred million 

Don’t come home from war 

Another eight hundred million 

Who lived to bear its scar 

Who lived to bear its scar 

Lest we forget 

What they were dying for 

Lest we forget 

What they were killing for 

Lest we forget 

What the hell it was for 

  

What do we forget when we remember…

Owen Griffiths

This Remembrance Day I have mainly been shouting at the newspaper, radio and television.  The Long Suffering Husband asked what was making me so angry, then declared I was annoying him and fled to the golf course.

The news that has made me so cross is the BBC bashing that is currently going on over the Newsnight programme.  When the Saville story broke I thought it had only become newsworthy because the two BBC programmes could argue between themselves about who ran the story and who bottled it.  It wasn't enough to believe the victims.  Their stories were not what was making the news.  Everyone knew what he was.  They knew what he'd done.  They knew how millions of girls had suffered and no one cared.  The girls had been told they wouldn't believed and unfortunately that was the truth.    Panorama only ran with the Saville story because they could say that Newsnight had buried the story.  They weren't interested in the victims only point scoring.

So, when Newsnight got another story about child abuse that had been covered up they had to run it, didn't they?  They had a victim, the subject of serial abuse throughout his time in care, who was prepared to tell his story and say that there were people who abused him who were not charged or properly investigated at the time.  He told Newsnight who they were but the programme didn't name them.  

Straight after the programme Twitter was full of names. People who had been  rumoured to be abusers for many years. Now the victim claims that he was mistaken about the person who Newsnight didn't let him name.  It wasn't that person after all.  The world is outraged, baying for blood.  "The poor soul who was falsely accused," they say.  

But memory is a funny thing.  What we remember or don't remember isn't always true.  I have a very vivid memory from when I was 3 years old.  I remember waking up and finding no one in the house, the table was set for breakfast.  I went outside and got on my tricycle and cycled all the way around the house.  I would swear that this is true, that it happened but my parents tell me it didn't and couldn't have for two reasons; We never set the table for breakfast and the house wasn't detached.  I probably didn't have the tricycle either.  A friend told me that she would swear on her life that she was in a particular shopping centre when Hillsborough happened but now knows that she couldn't have been because she wasn't living there in 1989.  But mis-remembering doesn't mean that everything that people say is untrue.

On the Sunday Politics show today, Andrew Neill said that the victim's evidence was wholly false. That's not true.  He was abused, he was in care and he did have a terrible childhood.  He was probably abused by someone he believed to be a senior Tory M.P. and the abuser could have told him that to keep him quiet,  "They'll never believe you, I'm a powerful man." or he could have actually been a powerful man who was able to make the world believe that he had been falsely accused.  Then David Mellor accused the victim of being a "wierdo"  and said you only had to look at the accused to know that he wasn't a paedophile.  This is why victims suffer in silence.  The abusers are right.  No one believes them and then they say horrible things about them and apparently sane people think paedophiles have a large P tattooed on their heads.

It's quite staggering what we forget when we remember.

Let's try not to forget that children need to be protected and believed and encouraged to tell. Let's not forget that accusations need to be thoroughly investigated, so that they don't have to wait until they are adults and so damaged by their experiences that their memories are unreliable.

Mushroom

I love a mushroom. He's such a fungi.

There are some jokes that never grow old.  But seriously, mushrooms have always fascinated me.  It's the annual October half term treat; a walk in the woods kicking up the leaves and spotting the mushrooms.

This obsession started with a spotter book.  It had such a pretty picture on the cover and there were so many to find.  At the time, I collected stamps, knew all the flags for every country, tapped messages out to my sister on the radiator in Morse code.  I was a nerdy, mystery story reading nine year old.

Finding the mushrooms in the book proved to be impossible. There were so many and lots of them looked the same.  You had to measure them to make sure which ones they were. As I've grown up, free food has really appealed to me but this appeal has never stretched to mushrooms.  Not being a risk-taker probably has something to do with this.  It is so easy to confuse an edible mushroom with a psychotropic or poisonous one.  I always thought that death by mushroom soup would be a terrible way to die, although it would be a rather cunning murder weapon.

Walking the dog this morning I found two mushrooms.  

I think the first one is a Chanterelle and edible but I'm not going to risk it.  The second one looks deadly to me but is probably delicious.

Yesterday, on the sound hunt with the foundation stage class a little girl jumped on a mushroom and announced, "Well, that's a surprise! I thought it would make a squeaking sound." I believe that they do squeak on the Ben and Holly TV program and I can understand her confusion, after all, life is supposed to imitate art.  

When I told the Long Suffering Husband about it he didn't agree.  "She should have known that mushrooms are designed to be quiet." 

The Berry Incident

It's so easy to neglect the things you love.  You know they will always be there.  In times of stress you just rely on them, you can be a bit horrid to them, you can ignore them and sometimes you can even be snappy with them.  They forgive you because you are a bit stressed but you know you have to make it up when it's all over.

So, blog, I'm sorry.  I've neglected you. I opened a page and wrote unpublishable things many times.  There is no excuse for that sort of language and I apologise.  I wrote about not being able to learn words to songs.  I wrote about feeling stressed at a lack of practice time.  I wrote about the piano. I wrote about churches and I wrote about Ofsted.  I will try to be better in the future.  

It has been a very busy week.  There were many highlights, which I failed to share with you.  There were also some funny things and not sharing those was unforgivable.

We sang at the Barnardo's Concert at the Royal Albert Hall this week.  It's a brilliant concert but the best part for me is listening to hyper children on the way home.  They get giggly and excited and say really funny things.  On the way back this time a child said, "Oh look that man's got his head stuck in a hole."

Today I took the foundation stage class on a sound hunt, looking for Autumn sounds in the playground.  I had hidden some instruments and had lots of beaters out.  They were absolutely brilliant, finding some great sounds, many of which I had never thought about.  One of the children excitedly called me over to show me a wonderful swishing sound she had found.  She was hitting a bush with one of the beaters and as she did so one of the berries flew off and went straight into my mouth.  My colleague reminded me that we weren't allowed to eat the berries but I wasn't really able to listen properly as hysteria had set in.  Luckily, I didn't swallow.