Author: bob

When I got home from work today, Doris and clan were still around having tea with our lot, which was a pleasant surprise – apparently a good time had already been had by all visiting the Zoology museum, chatting and taking part in a study on child development (just our lot) – the Zoology museum was handy for the bit of the university doing the child development work which was handy as we’d managed to double book things. Thanks Doris et al for being flexible about this!

I half unpacked the mail order box I’d brought home from work while the hordes ate, but due to some urgent interruption or other didn’t finish it. (It would be nice to have an increased percentage of jobs that get finished in one go, but I think that’s known as having retired.) The next time I went back to the box J had completely unpacked it in a random, fling it around the room, kind of way as he obviously wanted to turn it into a time machine. It now has a detachable control that looks a bit like a speedometer, labelled “Romans”, “Other” and “Home 2006”. Guess who likes reading daddy’s old Calvin and Hobbes books?

This is the first bit of web stuff (and first post) done via the new broadband provider and our computer. I’ve previously cheated and used the new broadband with my laptop temporarily home from work, but this proper set-up involves a looooong extension lead between the micro-filter and the modem – and it works! The furniture shuffling to get the extension lead in place wasn’t too painful, so I know that if my current job comes to naught I could always try pulling cable for a living. Yes, I know we could have gone for wireless, but life’s too short to worry about securing the thing and we haven’t had noticeably diminished lives through not being able to check email on the loo.

Nice conversation with K while getting him ready for bed about echoes, ultrasound, bats and aeroplanes’ radar.

Saturday was one of those weird days that had bits that were so different from each other that it’s hard to remember them as the same day. It started terribly – everyone seemed very tired, short-tempered and bolshy. Going out with the children rather than attacking the mountain of jobs didn’t appeal to me, but I’m glad that Katy’s common sense prevailed over my bad mood.

Despite the setback of lack of scanner we got the children’s entries off to Nature Detectives OK due to noticing on their web site that it was alright to post them over the weekend! 🙂 Because the morning grumpiness had raged for so long, we only just got to the post office in time, and then got into town in time for lunch. When our local Woolworths turned into yet another Next, the only decent cafe where you can get something simple but good like a baked potato is in the library. There are excellent views over the roof tops of the historic buildings, but there are two problems: washing up is limited to wiping the trays, so everything else is thrown in bins. Also, due to the huge new shopping centre development (to add to the two existing shopping centres and the slightly smaller shopping centre development happening just across the road), the whole library will be shut for OVER A YEAR very soon :-x.

Over lunch J asked why Turkey and Greece don’t like each other – I think this carried on from something else we’d been talking about recently. We said that they had invaded each other over the years, and generally vied for being Top Nation like France and Britain had. I told him about France and Britain competing over whether the meridian should go through Paris or London, which led to a discussion of what a meridian is.

Katy also said that Turkey vs. Greece might be due to Christian c.f. Muslim, and how this is an excuse for some people to be violent. We said that Jesus didn’t tell his friends to invade other countries, but to love each other. This wasn’t the same as being weak – he got angry when people did things wrong, but he kept people and the bad things they did separate. Katy said it was like the Nestle boycott – we don’t like what they do and get angry, but we don’t bomb their factories. We wrote to them and won’t give them our money by buying their stuff until they stop. I write all this now as it’s mostly to show how our discussions with the children are often interesting to us and go over unexpected things that force us (me, at least) to test what we believe in.

The reason for our expedition was a special event at the Archaeology and Anthropology Museum, about faces and masks. I’ve been to other departments and their museums, but none of us had been to Arch & Anth before. In short, it was excellent! J said it was his favourite museum, replacing his previous favourite which was the Science Museum in London. Mostly it was the staff – there were extra staff specially for the day, who really were interested in the children and respected them and wanted them to enjoy themselves. It was linked to the Big Draw, and the first thing we had to do was to draw a smiley face on a circle of card so that we could stick it with some blue tac to the exhibit we liked the best. After a bit of wandering around looking at interesting spears and spear throwers, bows and arrows and things dug up locally we got to someone inviting us to draw faces on big paper cups, which quickly became prosthetic ears.

Then the children made masks, and printed faces using stamps that were copies of art from the around the world. Plus there were loads more exhibits: a three storey totem pole, a huge grizzly bear totem pole, samurai armour and sword, mongolese shaman costume, a statue of the goddess of mercy (lots of arms), a statue of a buddhist sage, a huge ceremonial food dish carved out of wood with huge ducks and dolphins for handles, an innuit qayaq (not spelled kayak) next to a polynesian canoe, native american clothes, innuit fur clothes and boots, and an african mask with a face at the back as well as the front. It was labelled a Janus mask, which prompted discussion with J about the god Janus and when I said that was where the month January gets it name from, J remembered Thor giving his name to Thursday. We bumped into a few families we knew which was nice, and Katy had a chat with another mum over mask making about schools and home education.

A Maori sculptor made lovely huge clear acrylic set of carvings, lit up beautifully. He had full body and face tattoos, and a (maori) kilt, and drew maori face tattoos onto a paper plate for the children to turn into another mask. His tattoos took 20 hours (2 x 10 hours with a one hour break in between – mostly for the tattooist) using a needle and a chisel :shock:, with all his family around to support him. The tattoist was his cousin and you have to be a good wood carver before you can tattoo. You get them at puberty, each one is individual, and it represents having a baby (as men can’t have a physical one). Anthropology in the flesh!

On the bus back, J had conversation with Katy and me about money because I think the museum had reminded him of the culture that has shells threaded onto a necklace as currency. We started with bartering, and how the problems with it (trading a fraction of a cow for 4 apples is a bit tricky) led to the creation of money which is in itself useless.

While cooking tea J scrounged some uncooked pasta for everyone, and K turned his face pots (prosthetic ears) from the museum plus some of the pasta plus some sticky tape into a shaker. A strange game was invented while I cooked, involving some tongs from the kitchen, K’s shaker and the remote control for a toy – all of it was turned into a toaster with a slot for the bread (or something – I overheard bits, didn’t see any, but kept them amused for quite a while).

Just in case you thought the sun always shines in this blog(!), on Sunday morning J found some dark blue nail varnish from a box buried in a corner of their room waiting to be unpacked. He ended up with all blue finger and toe nails, K some of each, L a bit, plus lots on her hands :roll:. They were still rather blue at church, which was JMA Sunday where J and the other children his age or older collected certificates from the Minister for raising nearly £400. I don’t think he was phased by J’s blueness!

On Friday I had my first whole day as sole parent for a long time, as Katy was off to London to help sell nappies at a baby show.

After the common getting dressed inertia, I managed get everyone into the car and off to the post office to pick up undelivered parcels, then off to Friday Club. The children had all been before but I hadn’t, so the fear of not finding the place and so on was tempered by finding out what they get up to as I’ve heard about it a lot. It was in a village I’d never been to but fortunately it was easy to find.

There were only three other families – the planned nature walk plus bad weather plus half term may have scared people off. Shoes off at the door led to lots of skidding on the polished floor (this appeared to be normal). It is a churchy group, so prayers and songs first, and the we did a bit about autumn weather via percussion instruments which was nice. Each child had to pick an instrument and think how it could represent weather: L had triangle for gentle drops of rain, K had maracca for wind in the trees, J was heavy rain and we all did thunder by stamping on the floor. As the leader told a story everyone had to join in as the weather did their thing.

After that were slightly disorganised but fun games. I had the unenviable task of dividing a mixed age and ability group with several sets of friends into two roughly equal teams. Then was snack time where Katy’s cooking was enjoyed by all. Next was the main event – the nature walk. Down to the local recreation ground for a walk looking at trees (autumn leaf colours, conkers, seeds etc.). The rain had stopped, the sun was out and the children and adults enjoyed themselves. Back for lunch, then painting things we’d collected (L did some abstract art, K did a good set of conkers and J drew a huge mushroom he’d picked showing all the gills). More songs then home via some playing the churchyard. On the way home we got stuck in the [mostly private] school run. Another benefit of Home Ed. to society in general is that, even when we do drive to things, it’s rarely at rush hour if we can at all avoid it.

Tea and bed solo (Katy was still on her way back from London). I was at last re-united with my beautiful wife who was exhausted after standing pretty much all day :(. Being masochistic I decided to end the day trying to sort out our old scanner with our current PC, so that we could submit the children’s entries via email to the Nature Detectives competition at the last minute as the deadline appeared to have just passed. I went to bed late and defeated :(.