Trouble with Electrics

Just a few minutes before taking the kids out to Wallace and Grommit. Busy busy busy. Had a nightmare last week when the rain came down so heavy and the gutter overflowed and overflowed and water ran down the wall and soaked into the wall and through the wall and into the electricity supply and…

Nothing happened when I turned on the kettle, no hot water came out when I turned on the shower, and memories of returning from our honeymoon came flooding back. We got married on the cheap. We’d been meaning to do it for a while, but I’d got pregnant and money was really short. In the end we thought we’d better do it and had a quiet do in the registry office in Hove followed by a small reception in a local pub. It was great fun and unexpectedly moving and everyone enjoyed the informality of it. Afterwards we stayed in a hotel on the seafront with a group of friends, ate fish and chips in one of the rooms, and took a married walk in the brisk November air the next morning.

Then we went on honeymoon to Malta. It was a last minute deal and we didn’t quite know what to expect, so we weren’t particularly surprised to be in a Saga hotel with a bunch of 90 year olds as well as the Moldovian football team and all their hangers-on. Having a two-year old and a pregnancy to take care of, it wasn’t the most carefree of holidays. Finding good vegetarian food was difficult; even though we tried a lot of the local fish we weren’t really impressed and felt hungry a lot. It was worse for our son because the food was quite unfamiliar to him, and after a few days he caught Salmonella from a badly boiled egg at the hotel. Luckily the shits didn’t begin for a few days, but he was quite weak and poorly for the rest of the holiday.

One day we were walking around and were approached by someone offering us a free lucky dip which we accepted and then she told us we’d won the first prize, a gold pendant. I don’t know why we were sucked in, we must’ve been incredibly distracted, but we followed her to a hotel where we were supposed to pick up the prize. After waiting a while in the hotel she came and told us that we would be taken to another hotel to collect the prize. By this time we were a little suspicious and our son was getting disruptive, but we allowed them to persuade us into a dodgy car with a dangerous driver who drove us what seemed miles through the bumpy dusty streets of Malta to another hotel. We got out there and had to wait again. We were wanting to go back to our hotel by then, but were determined to see this ‘prize.’ In the end someone came and gave us a hard sell on a time-share. Gave us a tour, schmoozed us good and proper. Despite the fact we had no spare money at all he persuaded us this was our dream, and it was possible. We were just about to sign on the dotted line (really) when common sense intervened.

‘Let’s go and have a sandwich and think about it over lunch,’ I said to my husband and after some hard negotiating with the salesman who didn’t want us to get out of his clutches, we extricated ourselves and he left us in the restaurant downstairs.

We sat and ate our sandwiches and drank our drinks. An old man sat near us, and we got into a conversation. We asked him whether he had a timeshare here, and he advised us not to touch it with a bargepole. Some might say he was an angel or a messenger. He saved us thousands and thousands of wasted pounds, but in the end we pissed off our salesman, didn’t get a lift back to our hotel and had to carry our exhausted and ill child many miles back in our arms.

We’d almost reached home when the shits started. I didn’t know until we got there. It was dark and we were tired. It had been a long journey. We’d had trouble getting a connection from Gatwick, had to wait around for a bus, then had to get a cab from Heathrow. When we reached the front door there pinned to it was an A4 piece of paper with small hand writing all over it. We pulled the note off and entered the dark house. The note was from our friend who had been house-sitting. We read it by the light of the streetlamp outside. It explained that the water and power were both off as the boiler had gone very wrong, there had been water pouring down it and another friend had suggested turning everything off.

It was clear that our son had exploded somewhere between Heathrow and home, so I took him upstairs to change his nappy. This required candles and many many baby wipes as well as some careful manoeuvrings to avoid getting shit on the sleeves of my lovely fake fur coat which I was regretting not removing.

After a few frantic pleading phone calls we arranged to stay with friends for a few days, which turned into a couple of weeks, and by sheer good luck or blessings from on high, our friend won a lot of money on the lottery and was able to hep us pay for the repairs we needed so we could finally move into our home for the first time as a married couple.

It didn’t feel like a good omen for the start of our marriage, and things certainly got hard for a while, but we’re still together, and the house is just about still standing too.

We got the gutter sorted out and now we have to face up to the damage that was done by our tendency to bury our heads in the sand, or in wasting time blogging.

Wednesday 19th October 2005

Wednesday 19th October 2005

Today it is 11 years since my father killed himself. I woke up in physical pain, feeling guilty because I hadn’t called my mother for a while, and knowing how difficult she finds this day. I spent the first few hours of the morning swearing at everything; it was one of those days when everything seems to be conspiring against me. I dropped things as I made my kids packed lunches, I hurt myself opening their drinks bottles, and I felt under immense pressure because I had so many things to do. I had urgent shopping to do, I had to go to the doctors to pick up prescriptions for the kids and I had to be back by 12 for a meeting.

After the kids were dropped at school I came home to pick up what I needed, and then started leaving for the doctors. When I opened the front door I realised it was raining so had to hobble upstairs to find my umbrella. When I got to the bus stop I realised I didn’t have some paperwork I needed so had to walk back home again. It took a few minutes to locate it but I got there in the end. As I walked up a little side street on my way back to the bus stop my attention was drawn to a Budweiser can perched on the back shelf of a car parked in a front garden. Soon I was saying ‘Oh my God’ as I noticed torn rizla packets, large rizla papers and then a small paper bag whose contents of weed were spilling out over the shelf. It looked a bit like someone had been having a small party in the car and had forgotten to tidy up. Looking up I noticed a window was open on the house, and I went on my way. I wasn’t sure if I should have done something. I thought (very briefly) about whether I should have contacted the police, as a good citizen should do (?), but I couldn’t see what good this would have done. Perhaps I should have been a good neighbour and knocked on the door and suggested they be more discreet. It’s hard to know sometimes. I just walked on.

I just walked on again later. After I’d been to the doctors, picked up the prescriptions and filled in their survey I returned to another bus stop and was wondering whether to wait or walk to the next one when I heard screaming. Screaming which was going on and on and on, and it seemed to be coming from a particular house. I hate hearing screaming, especially if it sounds like a child, which this did. My head becomes full of pictures of children being hurt, and the many real stories I’ve heard about abuse. Then I think, well my kids scream a lot, and that’s not because they’re getting hurt but because they’ve been told ‘no’ or they’ve hurt themselves, or they’re playing some game. I wouldn’t like someone to call the police or social services on me! I hear a lot of screaming from my back garden. I think about all the dead kids where the news says that people heard screaming, but did nothing. I do nothing. I don’t know if anyone’s being hurt or not, and if they were I wouldn’t know which house the noise was coming from. I’m not an uncaring or disengaged person; I have got involved in ‘society’ in other ways – I’ve stepped in on the bus when a man was beating up a woman; I’ve called the police when I’ve seen young lads ‘tooling up’ in the alley; I’ve contacted the right authorities about discarded needles and syringes, and human crap around the streets, and I support friends who seek justice for themselves. It’s an uncomfortable feeling though, when you hear screaming and there’s nothing to be done, so again I walked on.
I like the 207, even if they keep changing things about it. The bus runs from Uxbridge in the far west of London, all the way into Shepherds Bush. When I first started using it in the 1980’s I used to get on at Brunel University, near Uxbridge, and most of the occupants were White people. Looking out of the window you saw the RAF base then lots of trees and nice semi-detached houses. After a while you reached Hayes and the scene became more urban, with shops, a bingo hall and lots of people walking around. Then you reached the dividing line, the bridge over the canal. The first time I came this far, the older students I was with pointed out the Hambrough Tavern, the first pub over the bridge and into Southall. ‘That’s where the riots started in 1979,’ they told me, ‘It was burnt down.’ I didn’t know anything about Southall at this stage of my life, and it was dark that evening as the boys took us to their rented house and cooked me and my friends a nice dinner. It was only later that I travelled into the town and experienced it in the day. Soon I was a regular visitor, seeking out fresh spices and interesting ingredients for the authentic curries I’d started making. As soon as you crossed the bridge you noticed the Asians, Southall was full of them. In fact, you had to look very carefully to spot a white person. Every man seemed to be wearing a turban, and the women all wore beautiful colourful Salwar Kameezes. The shops overflowed with vegetables of all sorts of colours and shapes, huge green watermelons, bright white moolis, brown pistachios and dark green coriander whose irresistible scent tempted me in. At first I felt on edge. I felt I had to tread carefully as I didn’t want to offend anyone. This seemed like someone else’s town, with someone else’s rules which I was unaware of. I didn’t want to eat on the street, or look too directly at people, especially men. I felt obvious, as if I was the only white person in town, which was not true. As time went by I became a regular at the Hambrough, and at Rita’s on the Broadway, sometimes I’d be in there two or three times a day. By now I was living on Ranelagh Road with a bunch of students, and Rita’s was a cheaper option than cooking for real. It’d be a really sociable place, I’d often meet friends. One time my hippy friend left his wallet behind which had a little hash in it, but it was returned untouched. The man that ran Rita’s was legendary in our circle. He was truly massive. Every time we went in he was sitting down eating his way through huge platefuls of fare from his menu. While we spent £1 each on an Alu Tikki Chaat we watched him gorge on pakoras, dosas, rice, naan and all sorts of other dishes. I didn’t go for a while, and then went in and found he had shrunk. He looked similar but much thinner, and instead of eating he was focused on using a computer. Behind his counter, pinned up proudly, was a newspaper article about him. He had achieved ‘weightwatcher of the year,’ having lost 22 stone! It was a really impressive achievement, and following on from this his restaurant became posher too, introducing a fantastic fish tank and a fast food counter at the front. But the next time I went in, about a year later, the slim manager had disappeared again, to be replaced by the larger version, and the prices had gone up too.

After Southall the 207 goes past Ealing Hospital and then through Hanwell and Ealing. These used to be fairly monocultural places, but now show a really good mix of people. You had to wait until you reached Acton and Shepherds Bush for another change in culture, as that was where a lot of Black people were based, and they would get on the bus here, filling it with patois and the clean smell of coconut. Now it’s all changed, from Uxbridge to Bush the bus community is mixed. Today I sat at the back with two middle aged Irish women who were sharing family stories, two Somali women who were chattering away to each other and also to other Somalis on the bus, a Black man whose nationality and culture I couldn’t ascertain, a white woman and her child who gazed wide-eyed at the Somali women, and an Asian male, who was probably a Sikh. This kind of mix happens all the way along the route now and I find it really stimulating.

People are still surprised to find an English person in Southall, because despite the larger numbers of white people around, many are Eastern European or Irish, but after 20 years of visiting, and 15 years of living here, I no longer feel obvious and strangely out of place, as if I’m on fire. I feel at home, and when I places that are pure white I suffer snowblindness.

National Boundaries - a Solution

Virginia Woolf said something like ‘As a woman I am not a citizen of any country, I am a citizen of the world.’ This is something I agree with, and want to write about today.

The dominant civilisations through human history, especially the last 2,000 years, have been patriarchal, and these are the guys that created national boundaries. Why? Well, before that they were fighting a lot over who controlled what bit of land, and eventually they had to get down and talk about it, and the solution they came up with was a fairly arbitrary system of conceptual boundaries. Presumably these made sense at the time, but many were, or have become, unfair systems of keeping poorer people away from richer people, and keeping their hands off their wealth. Did women get a say in all of this? Probably they were exerting pressure from behind the scenes, but most of the meetings consisted of men. Boundaries were drawn up on the basis of men’s issues like race, religion and political persuasion, but womanhood can and often does transcend all these dimensions, leaving them largely irrelevant to womankind. If I sit down with a woman from another race or culture for more than a few minutes we find a lot in common. We share issues with our bodies, our relationships with men and with power, and childbearing and rearing. We swap ideas and perspectives, and we gain strength from hearing about each other’s struggles for recognition, love and justice. In short, we don’t fight about it. So national boundaries for us are false and meaningless.

People often accuse me (yes accuse me) of being idealistic, as if it’s better to put up with everything just as it is, as if none of us have any power to change anything at all. I say if we all just sit on our backsides complaining then nothing will ever change. I say that there’s only a few people who hold all the power in this world, and we let them have it. I say there’s more of us who are poor and powerless, than those that are rich and powerful, so we do have the strength to change things, just by our sheer numbers. But if we sit quietly, or refuse to dream of possible solutions, everything will stay the same, or get worse, and the kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers – the world aristocracy – will continue to treat us as unfeeling unthinking pawns in their self-centred game. Do you really think these people have our best interests at heart? Do you think they are altruistic beings who seek justice and equality? I don’t. I think they might like to think of themselves that way, and it stops us going mad to think of them like that too, but in reality they’re self-centred individuals who would do anything to hang onto their power. That’s why they’re so happy for us to fight each other, man against woman, adult against child, race against race, religion against religion; at least we’re not fighting THEM!

So, back to national boundaries. If we got rid of them all overnight we might have anarchy and lots of murder, so a more sophisticated plan might be needed. I propose a world government which would evolve out of the United Nations. Kofi Annan for World President! This world government would restrict itself to a few simple and basic tasks, for example ensuring everyone has food, clean water, shelter and vital medicines. Seeing as how this UN hasn’t been able to arrange a piss up in a brewery this is quite enough work for them to be going on with, although I’d quite like them to be peacekeepers too. I say this about peacekeepers because it looks to me as if President Bush has elected himself world president and his army the world police force. There hasn’t been any international input into these decisions, whereas the UN is supposedly representative of many nations and is ‘democratic.’ Therefore any kind of army or police run by the UN is more representative of the world at large and less likely to be serving the interests of the world’s richest most selfish nation.

I know I’m only a lowly blogger, but I think deeply about world politics, and I care about the planet and the human race, of which I am a well-connected part. Us little people can make changes, but only by sharing views and discussion. All I hope is that the seeds I cast into cyberspace meet some water and sunshine….

Young people, citizenship and democracy

Today I wore a suit. It doesn’t happen very often. Usually I’m fairly informal in dress, as I’m occupied doing housework or painting pictures with my kids, or I’m working alongside youth workers or young people. Now and then I get a chance to dress up a little bit and it feels nice.
Today I dressed up for a youth conference. It was all about citizenship and democracy and involved about 100 kids. I came in on a discussion about citizenship lessons and it was quite enlightening. Out of the seven or eight young people in my group only half were having citizenship lessons, although others had had occasional lessons, or lessons in previous years. It was clear the young people thought the lessons were important, whether they were about legislative processes or drugs and alcohol. They had enjoyed lessons where they played games about jobs and mortgages, practiced dispensing criminal justice and took part in other highly participative activities. Sometimes they didn’t like the delivery, especially if it involved filling in worksheets. They also noted that the subject was often taught by form tutors who sometimes did not have the expertise to talk about the topics that arose. They suggested more use of outside experts and activities to keep the subjects alive.

When they were asked what they thought the lessons were for, there didn’t seem to be any common understanding of what they were supposed to achieve. One thought citizenship was about the community. Another said it was for all the bits and pieces that couldn’t be fitted into the curriculum elsewhere, so in some schools it was combined with PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) and in others RE (Religious Education) was also added into the mix. Some thought the lessons should teach them to think and debate freely and to be diverse, but some thought the curriculum was not neutral (the word ‘propaganda’ was used) and aimed to create similar-thinking humans. For example, some of the young people wanted to discuss immigration and asylum, but felt they couldn’t say certain things and so the debate was stifled and they were forced to be politically correct. These young people did not have dangerously racist views, but admitted it might be tempting for them to rebel and take on that stance, just because they didn’t feel like they were trusted to have a proper debate. Others wanted to talk about drugs and sex but had to wait until it came up on the curriculum (often too late).

I think the education system aims to create ‘chips in the motherboard of the nation’ when it should be concentrating on creating good citizens and good parents. Citizenship, including parenting, should be the curriculum, and maths, science, literacy, etc should be built onto it where appropriate. It’s all arse about tit if you ask me. That’s all I’ve got to say for now, except that young people are quickly wising up to the fact that it’s a ‘fake world’ and that what is presented to them is not necessarily the whole truth, or any of it. If you think you can pull the wool over their eyes, you’d better think again. This generation are smart cookies like you’ve never seen before. Mark my words.

Friday 14th October 2005

10 minutes to blog before the school run. There’s been quite a lot going on, and nothing, not sure where to start.

Work is good, lots of direct work with young people at the moment, helping them to take more part in the running of services. I was always a revolutionary, but now I can’t believe I’m getting paid to create rebellion. It’s always fun working with young people, and when you go into a meeting with them, you can never quite know what to expect. Last night it could have been 50 or it could have been five, so we had to have a very flexible plan. In the end it was about eight. Actually our plan was so flexible it could bend itself backwards and touch its own ankles, and it was certainly required to do some contortions on the night. We were also working with colleagues who we didn’t really know too well, so their actions were unpredictable too. In fact the only thing we already knew about was the youth centre.

It was quite a chaotic meeting, and some people might have had a problem with that. Our thing is informality; we aim to be as little like school as possible. Unfortunately, those young people who thrive in school are not so comfortable with that. Some wanted to come out of their first meeting with decision made about things that were going to change in their centre, but most of the meeting was taken up getting them to define themselves as a group, and how they were going to operate. This involved lots of input from all those present, some of it completely barmy, but we always listen and give appreciation.

Uh oh, 10 minutes nearly up.

At the end they had decided to have an elected forum of seven who would be responsible for consulting with the rest of the membership and they also made decisions about how and when an election would run. They also decided what they wanted to do for Halloween. I thought, how long did it take parliament to set up all their rules and regulations, and how ineffective is it? And I thought these young people, who were a fairly diverse group, at least in terms of social background, were pretty clever to have created a youth forum in two hours.

Time’s up

WAR (DEN)! What is the good of it?

WAR (DEN)! What is the good of it?

Today I have been wandering around my front room/office like a bird on hot coals, unable to settle for more than 5 minutes. Keep wandering out into the kitchen to make coffee and have a half a smoke in the back garden. I must admit to having a problem with smoking, and it’s next on my list of weaknesses to overcome, so don’t have a go at me please.
My work is sometimes inspiring and sometimes very very dull. Like today. I’ve had lots of little jobs to do, but nothing that means anything, and the sum total of my face-to-face social contact has been with the cashier at Somerfield and with the PCSO who picked up the needle I found in the street. I have had a few phone calls, including from friends, but each time I put the phone down I had a feeling that I’d been chattering meaningless nonsense for a while, and now it is all quiet and kind of lonely again.

I loved the fake doctor’s website, I was almost pissing myself laughing, that has been a high point of my week so far.

Creeping debts are frightening us at the moment. I’ve never been in a position to save anything, ever since I got into debt as a student, and the banks kept offering me more and more credit. This was fine while I was earning and could pay it back, but once I stopped work to look after my children our family income dropped massively, then my husband had a period out of work and after that he was only doing agency work for a while. It doesn’t help that he likes to buy DVDs for the kids and beers for himself, but don’t tell him I said so!

To be honest, I wanted to be funny on this blog, but life has become quite serious for me, so it’s not something that’s coming easily. I’m not going to fight my state of mind, so you can either read or not.

The PCSO was just returning to the police station at the end of my road when I approached him. I was on the phone to the council, in a queue, waiting to talk to highways, but thought I’d see if there was anyone else around who could help. Excuse me, there’s a needle round the corner, can you find someone to remove it? He didn’t say much, but indicated he was coming to have a look. I asked him if he was a PCSO or traffic, looking at his label (presumably there to remind him) which said Community Support Officer Traffic. He said he was a PCSO traffic. I remained confused. I’m still not sure who all these people in uniforms are, but I especially like the street wardens’ red Frankie Goes to Hollywood ‘WAR(DEN)’ t-shirts. I’m sure they encourage a spirit of peace and love wherever they go. Actually I thought wardens worked in kennels or prisons, so does that make us all dogs or prisoners?

I said to the PCSO that I’d heard the drugs minister on the radio earlier, saying that drug problems were going down. He was a portly dark-skinned man, I couldn’t tell his race, but that’s why they dress them up like that, but he had his opinion. They’re too lenient. Do you think so, I replied, but by then I was wondering if he could smell ganga on me (there is something about my house that people seem to come out smelling of ganga, I don’t know why). He wasn’t very conversational, so I was left without a political debate, which as you know I rather like. It’s probably a good thing, I would probably have got onto Iraq and then had a heated disagreement with him, calling him part of the axis of evil like I did to this poor young ex-army man I was training a while back. I have learnt since then that I need to avoid the subject at work; it’s bad enough stirring people up about young people, drugs, sexual health and diversity and sometimes their attitudes are appalling and I have to be very careful about how I challenge them, so Iraq and work shouldn’t mix.

Want a laugh?

Check this website out, it's a hilarious blog by a 'fake doctor'

SAFETY INFORMATION for WOMEN

Hi All
Please see below & pass it on! This is from Bedfordshire police....

Women.... In light of the recent kidnapping and now murder of Leigh Mathews I think it is important to read the following info for your own safety. Things women should know to stay safe:

Please take the time to read these pointers. There may just be one or two you hadn't thought of.

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!
2. If a robber asks for your handbag, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you.... he is probably more interested in your handbag than you and he will go for the handbag. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!
3. If you are ever thrown into the boot of a car: Kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm through the hole and start waving. The driver won't see you but everybody else will. This has saved lives.
4.Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their cheque book, or making a list). DON'T DO THIS! A predator could be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, and attack you. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.
5. A few notes about getting into your car in a car park: A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and check the back seat. B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most attackers surprise their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars. C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the shop, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)
6. ALWAYS take the lift instead of the stairs. Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot
7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; and even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN!
8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP IT! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.
9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her 'Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, "We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear babies' cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night. Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby.

Our Bubbles

Our Bubbles

What is it about people? People walk around in huge bubbles and only occasionally bump into someone else’s bubble which might have impact. People only hear and see what they want to, they only broaden their minds and perception to a very limited degree. Most people can’t take on anyone else’s point of view, or even believe their experiences. I was like this as a teenager, probably still am largely, but I hope I’ve developed a little bit. I used to not believe my school friend Angela. I don’t know to this day whether she was telling the truth, or whether it was a rich fantasy land that she inhabited. She told me she was due to inherit a million pounds on her 21st birthday, she told me she was going out with Mike Gatting’s brother and most of the rest of the Brighton & Hove football team, she told me about snuff movies. I didn’t believe any of it, but now that I know snuff movies are real I doubt my disbelief, and I wonder at how much we don’t believe. In hindsight I worry how she knew about snuff movies at the age of 16 in 1985 in rural Sussex, and I worry about her relationships with the footballers, and I worry about the fact that she used to go home from school and drink spirits at lunchtime. There’s a lot to worry about afterwards when at first you refuse to believe, but there’s nothing on earth you can do about it. Anyway, I didn’t like her because I thought she inhabited this fantasy world but now I think she was probably in some dangerous situation. If a 16 year old was talking to me like that now I’d be very concerned about what might be going on in her life.
I just wonder how much we refuse to see.

Schools should be like safe families

Schools should be like safe families

What is it about schools? Why are they all such sick places? My kids’ infants’ school tries to create an image of a happy family, but every day my kids are coming home complaining about being tripped up, kicked and punched. Other kids have complained of being attacked with dinner knives and being strangled. The head teacher is baffled that this could be happening, but frankly I’m baffled that she doesn’t know anything about it until a parent informs her. Surely a head teacher should know what’s going on in her own school playground? If no-one’s telling her then there’s a problem with communication and accountability.
I know this school is no different to any other. It has unique issues but is also wonderful because of the amazing cultural diversity of the pupils. As an example of this, on the ethnic monitoring form there were two or three languages I hadn’t heard of, and I would say I’m fairly knowledgeable about languages. The head tries to use this as an excuse, but that is not appropriate or fair. Heads are responsible for creating an environment that is good for kids’ learning; in my mind that means a place of safety where the kids feel secure. But schools seem to be dangerous unruly places where kids have to learn to be physically tough, even to be bullies, to survive. This is all a distraction from their education, let alone the physical damage that can be done. My daughter particularly suffers from asthma as a result of stress, and has been suffering badly since being back at school. How is a loving parent supposed to send their daughter, whose very life they have fought for, into somewhere so brutal?