The Holidays: An Education

I don't know about you but I am chomping at the bit to get back to work properly.  I'm afraid that six weeks of squeezing work in around the holidays have led to my writing abilities diminishing beyond recognition, and I'm bored of the children being bored.  This is not one-sided either - they're desperate to be back amongst friends and the certainty of routine.

Always, always cold

There's also the small matter of whether the break has erased the efforts of the teachers over the past term.  If today's return to rugby was anything to go by (where children forgot how to catch balls and parents forgot that standing on a pitch is always, always going to be cold) then that may well be true.  Unless you frame the learning in a different way.  Which is what I'm going to try to do, so here's....:

How to keep your kids educated during the holidays:

Maths (or numeracy, if you want to be PC about it).

At primary school, depending on where you children are at in the curriculum, they could be covering anything from basic addition to multiplying fractions.  Leave this stuff to the teachers (you'll be getting homework on it anyway), instead demonstrate to them the wonder of maths by doing the following:

1. Ask them what theme park they would like to go to

2. Ask them to calculate how many boxes of cereal you will need to buy in order for the children to get in for free.  Make sure they add on the cost of all the extra stuff you ended up buying from the supermarket because "you were in there anyway".

3. Take them to the theme park

4. Ask them to calculate how much it costs per minute, per ride (answer: circa £20 unless you subscribe to the divisive wealth indicator that is a Fast Track pass).

5. Watch their little faces light up in amazement when you explain to them that even though you bought cereal packets instead of tickets, you still managed to spend £150 on one day out.

English (or literacy.  Or phonics.  Or SPaG.  I don't know what the right thing is anymore).

Poo pants.  There for all to see..

With less focus on writing and honing formal sentence structures, children get far more time to exercise their conversational skills - whether you want to talk to them all day or not.  This is great for developing their confidence in communication although you may find yourself having to explain to them that declaring "Dinner is Served" in a loud voice as they exit the toilet is not an 'appropriate' thing to say.

You may also want to plan any leisurely strolls that you want to take around your neighbourhood with care.  I recommend avoiding bus stops, unless you want to find yourself having to explain "all the swears".

If you're interested in the extent of your children's vocabulary, you could also while away some time by playing Hangman, as we did in a restaurant.  How smug we felt entertaining our children without devices.  How short-lived this was when the waiter noticed the words 'poo pants' written on the pad.

PE (joyously this is still PE!)

The one thing that I *love* about the holidays is that the children get a hell of a lot more outdoor exercise than during an average week at school.  The only challenge is that more often than not this exercise needs to be undertaken as a family.  Which means negotiation, bribery, arguments, fighting and occasional crying.  What begins as a simple bike ride or "just a walk" will morph into an hour of misery but like with all tough work outs, once you've busted through that wall you will find yourselves enjoying a tremendous sense of achievement (and ideally a pint).  If you want to avoid the misery, the solution is to go with friends - there is something about the children being around other kids that seems to silence the whining button in a way that offering encouragement / threatening a tech ban / shovelling Haribos into their hands will never do.

If you want to ride this route without whining - just add friends :)

Music

As neither of us play an instrument, our ability to influence our children's musical tastes begins and ends with playing what we like.  We keep BBC 6 Music on the radio and if we can be arsed to connect up the iPod, they'll hear mostly indie rock, dance and (heavily edited) hip-hop.  

All this counts for nothing however as we have discovered to our great dismay.  What the children have decided is all they want to listen to is Heart.  Which means that the soundtrack to your holiday will be Shy Guy by Diana King which they seem to play on the hour, every hour.  I think Diana puts it best when she says: "Oh lord have mercy, mercy, mercy......"

Your children may also decide to search the iTunes with their friends for Cake by the Ocean by DNCE.  Did you know that it's got a version including the word "f*cking"?  Neither did I.  But now I do.  And so do you.

Sex Education

Whether on holiday or not, we all run the risk of being caught 'in flagrante' (unless you're camping, I mean seriously are you really going to attempt it when you're separated by a 'wall' that is the thickness of a high-vis vest?) but on returning to our favoured holiday destination this year to discover one of the owners had had a beautiful baby just 7 weeks earlier, our son was most interested to know precisely why he was not going to get a little brother.  Couldn't we just "wish for one"?  Erm...no.

RE

Whatever the lessons contain at school did not quite prepare the children for the moment when on holiday I walked down to the swimming pool which contained a large group of men, women and children of various ages, yet when I got in to the pool the men and teenage boys had mysteriously all disappeared.  I thought for a moment that perhaps I had mistakenly put my costume on back to front (now that would be horrible) but it turned out that we were holidaying at the same place as a family of Orthodox Jews.  So there's me and my girl in our speedo cossies and the ladies in their swimming dresses.  We stared a bit, smiled a bit, chatted a bit about the temperature of the pool and the weather (we were in Devon, it's The Law) and carried on enjoying our respective swims.  

Despite the differences we may have had, I learned that the way you deal with awkward questions is universal.  My husband overheard one of the dads telling his son that he had to get out of the pool "because you just have to".

This holiday has been one of revelations, of family time, of raised voices, big hugs, memorable moments, boredom, excitement, beautiful days and torrential rain, late nights and early mornings (why does our boy not understand what a lie-in is!) but above all, it has been an education.  I think we're all ready to go back to school. 

Here's one way to stick two fingers up at SPaG

Let me begin by saying I love my local school, love the teachers and love the English language.

Let me continue by saying I am wholeheartedly hacked off with SPaG being used as a means to measure how our primary schools are performing.  One of the stand out things for me about the school my children attend is that they were taught 'free writing' to help them play with, explore and enjoy language.  I am not as well-informed, or articulate as Michael Rosen, so if you want to read the thoughts of someone who really knows what they're talking about, please read his blog.

Tools of the trade - yes I did take in a record player.

Anyway, I'm not going to rant because I've found a way to stick my fingers up at the pressure this then places on primary school children to know what a fronted adverbial is when they still have so many other fascinating, interesting, exciting things they could be doing with words: I ran a performance poetry workshop.

Here's what we did:

1. Discussed poetry as being like a song without words

2. Talked about how hip-hop artists play with words and combine movement and language

does anyone diss Tiny Tempah for the spelling of his name?  No.  Do people care about the role of each word when he states "I've got so many clothes I keep some at my Aunt's house?"  No.

3. I performed a poem I for the class:

Poetry as expression
Not a session

The only time I'm likely to be in the
same picture as Michael Rosen...

In spelling and grammar
Use your words like a hammer

Or a feather
Make them sweet
Bring them out
To a beat

Have fun
Bend the rules
Brain and mouth
Are your tools

Be still
Be physical
Savour words
Make them lyrical

Make it up
Or make it true
Poetry
Is for you

4. Discussed whether animals feel self-conscious before they make a noise.  

Ever seen a dog think twice before barking because its friends might laugh?  Didn't think so.

5. Did a full 'pack howl' 

I watched The Jungle Book recently - it was always going to happen :)  Luckily it's also a great tool for breaking that whole 'self-conscious' thing that we have.  Sometimes you just need to be more 'wolf'.

6. Asked if anyone spoke any other languages:

The purpose of this was to examine how different languages have different rhythms - we heard Afrikaans, Chinese, Hindi, Italian and Polish.

7. Played the first couple of verses of 'Fight for Your Right (to Party)'

Licensed to Ill was the first album I bought with my own money.  That song blew my mind.  The children marvelled at seeing a record player then rocked out in their chairs.

Heroes

8. Sent the children out to find baseball hats and sunglasses

Apparently mirrored shades are in.

9. Put the children in teams and gave them a copy of Spike Milligan's 'Ning Nang Nong'

They then had fifteen minutes to rehearse a version of the poem to perform in front of the rest of the class, with emphasis on feeling the words, using facial expressions, body language and any props they fancied - lots of baseball hats went on back to front at this point.

10. By way of repaying their performance, I told them how Jamie Oliver set my kitchen on fire

If you want to read the poem - it's here

What came out of it

By the end of the session, each child had stood up in front of the class and performed poetry.  Some children heard a new language for the first time, some children spoke in their mother tongue in front of their classmates for the first time, some children did something that they'd never tried before.

Not one child refused to take part and everyone received applause for their efforts.  We had possibly the best "Jibber Jabber Joo" that's ever been uttered.  And not once did we talk about the function of any of the words, or how they should be spelled, or which one ought to go where.  We just had fun for a full hour, hooting and shouting and enjoying what no-one can ever take away from us:  our ability to express love for our language and play with words.

What I've Learnt About Half-Term

So here I am on the eve of returning to work after a week off and it has been quite an education - here's what I've discovered:

If you take your children to a National Trust Property with your friends and their children this is what will happen:

* One of them will say "booooriing"
* One of them will say "this room smells"
* One of them will unleash a silent but violent guff
* At no point will your group resemble the images in the National Trust booklets of Boden-clad mummies, earnest daddies, and artfully disheveled children in hand-knitted Arran sweaters

I made this!

If you take your children to the New Forest with your friends and their children, this is what will happen:

* One of them will sink their foot so far into a bog that it will suck their trainer off and you will then spend £32 in Clarks
* One of them will manage to get a splinter lodged into their finger that is so massive that blood pours out of their finger tip and you will actually feel the resistance as you draw the damn thing out when you finally get home and locate a pair of tweezers
* You will be in awe of your friend who carries her own mini first aid kit, and it will inspire you to create your own

If you take your children to Longleat, this is what will happen:

* They will be disappointed that the monkeys didn't rip every bit of trim off your car
* One of them will skin their knee on a drop slide and appear in front of you with blood running down their leg
* You will be glad that you have copied your friend's mini first aid kit and feel mightily smug as you deal with the knee

If you take your children on a long off-road bike ride, this is what will happen:

* One of them will hurtle so fast down a rutted track that you will fear for their life
* One of them will manage to introduce their legs to every single stinging nettle in the countryside
* You will wish you'd put aloe vera in your mini first aid kit

If you stick to your promise to not look at work emails for the week you're off, this is what will happen:

* You will marvel at how relaxing it is when your home is not a workplace
* You will marvel at how relaxing it is when you're not worrying about work
* You will realise that big splinters, skinned knees, letting out guffs in National Trust properties and being bored make for some brilliant family experiences.

I'm looking forward to next half term!

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I Don't Want To Talk About It

A couple of months ago my daughter brought home a road safety DVD, the aim of which is to help parents teach their children to safely cross the road.  It says that most children are not safe to cross a road unaccompanied until they are ten years of age.  

A few weeks after that I receive a letter to inform me that my daughter's PSHE lessons will include a cartoon depiction of sexual intercourse - I just hope it's not between Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse - Mickey will go nuts!  Joking aside I can't help but wonder how a child considered not old enough to cross the road is seen as old enough to watch a depiction of the technicalities of sex - it doesn't seem to make sense.  

I'm not a prude, or naive.  Both children know precisely how they were born - even if my son does insist on referring to it as when babies are 'laid' (I blame the fact that we keep chickens) -  we told them the truth on that one as soon as they asked.  The children know that conception (most of the time) requires a man and a woman and a 'cuddle' but beyond that they haven't pressed to find out more and so I feel a bit sad that the decision to discuss this is being made by someone else.  Now, we could opt out of our daughter seeing the video but I think it is probably better for her to watch it rather than have it described to her by a fellow class mate with a vivid imagination, or one who's suffering from the shock of realising that her mum and dad do that thing, or one who might see it as great sport to make something up ("yeah - the man puts willy in the lady's belly-button!").

There's loads of very useful stuff too - explanations of puberty, body changes, hormones, emotions  - all things that will be here sooner than we'd like and it would be wrong to pretend it's not going to happen, but sex?  Do we really need to cover that right now?  In the context of our daughter's life so far, it's (hopefully) at least another lifetime away for her and her peer group, even if as parents we joke that we hope it's at least another twenty...

Maybe I am getting too het up about what is, after all, just a 'fact of life', maybe our daughter will do little more than express utter disgust or mild hilarity.  Maybe she already knows....  This being uncharted territory for us as a family, perhaps this worry comes from not having talked about it before.  My own experience was (if my memory serves me right) being shown a video of childbirth at school which did a great job of making all the children say "I'm never, ever having sex!!" and being given a book called 'Woman's Experience of Sex' by Sheila Kitzinger by my mum which became quite a talking point for me and my friends.  With a more mature mind I can appreciate its frank, even-handed explanation and illustrations of post-birth vaginas, masturbation and sexuality but at the time it served mostly as a tool to amuse and repulse me and my pre-teen friends.  I am forever thankful that its pictures were black and white, there were a lot of them *shudders*.

One friend has, very kindly, provided me with perhaps a more suitable book to help support the conversations that we're going to have to have - a nice practical one with not too many pictures that give you nightmares.  I'm sure it will be fine, I'm sure I'll discover that our daughter knows more than we think but if I'm honest, I don't really want to talk about it.

Photo Credit: www.sxc.hu

Soundtrack: I Don't Want to Talk About it - Everything But The Girl (you could have Crazy Horse or Rod Stewart but I'm picking this one :) )

Move any Mountain

Lots of happy coincidences and serendipitous meetings have been taking place over the past week but let's start with today.

As a means to provoke thought and debate amongst students at my old senior school about their future careers and aspirations, I was asked to go in and talk about my story of  going from being a pupil at the school through the corporate years to becoming a writer.

I may have been small (and covered in eggs & flour,
such was the way we celebrated birthdays at my school)
but I was already planning on moving a few mountains :)

Whilst driving over, I heard a Radio 2 phone-in on the hot topic of how children of working-class white parents (a category I would have been very much put in when I was a teenager) tend to fare less well at school than children of other ethnic backgrounds.  I didn't get to hear the whole programme but I did hear a lot of "I blame the parents".  What I would have liked to have heard is the children's perspective, I think they would have had some interesting things to say - I know I would have had an opinion when I was fourteen (and twelve, and three...never did learn to keep quiet :)).

I decided during the talk that rather than try to describe to the pupils what I'd done, I would read them some extracts from Reasons to be Cheerful that dealt with being a teenager, education, my first foray into work and the relevance of rap music to my career.  After all, I'm a writer, kind of made sense to..

I also decided that I really ought to back up my claim that I could write a decent bit of verse by writing them a rap - although it is entirely possible I was more Pam Ayres than L'il Kim...

It's about the potential we all have to effect change, the possibilities that can come from positivity and just getting out there and going for it.  I'm not yet brave enough to record it as one of my favourite bloggers and fellow seeker of truths Chris Packe but watch this space :)

It All Starts With You

Here’s a question for you

Can a white woman rap?

Will I carry this off

Or will it sound …….rubbish

Here’s another – is the future

Of your own making?

Is life what you’re dealt?

Or is it there for the taking?

If you’ve been told

“You’re a waste of space”

Can you still be successful?

Can you still find your place?

Do you think life’s pre-destined?

Or that you have choice?

Do you choose to hear a positive

Or negative voice?

If you want to get somewhere

If you have that desire

Go find the example

To which you can aspire

Who gets to decide

What we each will become?

Think it’s “different for them”?

Think it’s “alright for some”?

I would challenge that view

That it’s written in the stars

The paths our lives take

Are all choices of ours

Want to work in big business?

Create software, form bands?

Whether you’re something, or nothing

It is in your hands

Your process starts here

You can shape your ambition

Set out what you’ll strive for

Earn recognition

Just think for a moment

How you would define

Your future to be

And say “This is mine”

“I own who I am

And what I will be

It’s within my control

It’s starting with me”

Make yourself a promise

To prove others wrong

Keep a positive outlook

Be fearless, be strong

Believe you can do it

Make it come true

Stay focused, stay hopeful

It all starts with you

Soundtrack: Move any Mountain - The Shamen (for my friend Nina, and for the times we spent rapping along with Mr C :D )

The Future's So Bright

I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying.  I know it is a parent's right - I mean, when a warm, slippery, wailing bundle has been placed into your arms fresh from your womb it's a pretty powerful way to kick-start your protective instinct - but I hadn't realised until very recently quite how much energy I was investing in it.

Get a group of parents together and it won't take long for the worries to come out - whether it's about friendships, schooling or their ability to tie their laces.  We joke that as children grow older 'the challenges change' and the wild panic caused by attempting to find a toilet when your potty-training toddler "wants poo-poo" will be something you miss when you're faced instead by door slamming and "I hate you!".  And you'll miss it all the more when your daughter tells you she wants her boyfriend to stay the night (and then slams the door and tells you she hates you when you say no).

It had left this latent worry in the back of my mind, concern for what's to come and how to handle it, even dipping into a book about how to raise teenagers when we still have years to go - what on earth am I doing creating worries about problems that don't yet exist?!  And then I visited a couple of schools for World Book Day.  And then I got a wake up call of the most brilliant kind - I got to speak to some children.

The original purpose of my visits had been to read my stories for younger children (as yet unpublished but working on it!) but one of the schools asked if I would consider speaking to their Year 6 class (10-11 year olds) about blogging.  So despite feeling unsure of how it would go, I said "sure, why not?" and arranged to do it at both schools.  It turned out to be the highlight of my visits.

Turns out these ten and eleven year old's are pretty switched on.  Turns out they had lots of really insightful questions about being a writer ("Is it difficult to focus on writing when you have small children?"  "How do you feel when you see a piece you have written for someone else?  Don't you wish your name was on it?" "How do you stay motivated?") turns out that they are interested in the power of words and the power of social media to create movements that promote equality.  Turns out they're pretty opinionated when it comes to the treatment of women in the media.

In the second school that I visited, I was unexpectedly asked to read them an extract of Reasons to be Cheerful, Part One to give them an idea of my writing style.  I read them 'My Beautiful Friend', and it was as moving an experience as it was nerve-racking and I hope I get to do it again.  But what came next was even more incredible: talk over, the children lined up with their text books to show me a short story they had each written to accompany a dialogue-free video they'd been shown and the words spun up from the pages like I had never expected - dragons soared, decks creaked, wood smouldered and the smell of singed sails hung in the air and stung the eyes.  Tears fell 'like bullets' to the ground and a man tried to 'hammer away his pain', love, loss, worlds created and storms tearing them down.  There was movement and rhythm in their writing, and they wrote powerfully, freely, beautifully.  

Like the song says: I gotta wear shades...

I'm sure that behind those children are scores of parents worrying about them but oh my, how their questions and their stories have given me something to look forward to.  I try to always enjoy the moment and am not short on wonderful memories of the past (anyone else got about a million baby photos?) but in the absence of knowing what was to come I had created a big ball of worry about the years ahead.  Now thanks to the children at those two primary schools, I'm about to kick that ball of worry into touch.  They have inspired me to be more hopeful, optimistic and excited about the future and if they're anything to go by, then the future could be very bright indeed.

Soundtrack: The Future's So Bright - Timbuk 3

Get Lucky

I went back to my old college (BCoT, since you ask) a while ago to deliver a talk on how choosing to go back into education after a shaky finish at secondary school gave me a second crack of the whip and changed my life for the better.

*Nervous face*

It was an important event for me, so much so that in the weeks leading up to it I slept fitfully amidst dreams of failure, and the adrenalin rush caused by facing eighty automotive students during the first session made my heart pound.  

I tried to break the ice with a joke centred around Pixie's 'What Goes Boom' (my heart - geddit?), but it was like holding a match to the Antarctic as twenty-year-old students do not listen to Pixies.....  The second round, with a group of thirty hair and beauty students went better thanks to the sharing of snacks (as they informed me: "sharing is caring").

Happily I didn't make any more music-based faux pas' and discovered that the video for 'Infinity' by Guru Josh from 1990 will cause impromptu 'arms in the air' dancing.  I also discovered that when you follow that video with the statement that 1990 was also the year one of your parents died, an audience will sit up and listen.

During the Q&A I was asked whether the good things that have happened in my life were down to luck or conscious decision making and I guess that it's a combination of the two as the below examples illustrate: 

• I didn't want a teenage pregnancy so I took contraception - I was lucky to be born in a country where that contraception is available and free.  

• I didn't want to be skint so I chose to go to work - I was lucky to find a job straight away. 

• I found the job I'd chosen had no career prospects so I went back to college - I was lucky to be born in a country where that education is accessible and free.  

• I wanted to pursue a corporate career and continue it after having children - I was lucky to meet and marry a man who doesn't expect his wife to stay at home.
  

And so it goes on.  A little luck but a lot of hard work, conscious decision making and a lot of seeking out opportunity.  

I had likened my attitude to being like a cat going after a laser beam before realising that the cat never catches the beam, so perhaps it's more accurate to say I'm like a dog in a field full of interesting smells.  I am constantly darting around, seeking out new opportunities to improve, collaborate, try new things and progress.  And like the dog chasing the scent, sometimes I run into things and bang my head, sometimes I find the trail doesn't go where I thought it would, and sometimes I become so focused on the possible opportunity that I miss paying attention to the bigger picture and have to be shouted at until I return like "FENTON!", but every now and then the trail leads to something truly brilliant which causes me to bound around in joyous delight.  

With a constant pull between getting on with the job in hand and chasing those opportunities it's a difficult balance to maintain.  Life is good, so perhaps I should just enjoy things as they are and be grateful for what I have, I'm certain my family sometimes wishes I would.  But the passing of friends and relatives reminds me that life can be incredibly, shockingly short, and so I plan to cram as much experience and opportunity into whatever time I have.  For as long as I'm here, I'm going to chase those trails, I'm going to work hard on getting lucky.

Soundtrack: Get Lucky - Daft Punk

How Soon is Now?

I believe that the school holidays are designed by quantum physicists and contain a special ability to bend spacetime in order to confuse the hell out of us.  The children are bewildered as to what day it is and learning to cope with boredom despite being surrounded by Christmas presents, and parents are trapped in a fug of over-indulgence from eating plate upon plate of rich, lovely, food and deciding it's a great idea to finish the night off with a double Baileys, and then a Gin and Tonic, and perhaps the last tree chocolate.  And some twiglets.  And the port.  And if the port's open then we might as well get the cheese out....feel your waistline expand overnight!

Essential School Holiday reading

Our son returned to pre-school today and my husband has been working over the festive period but full equilibrium is not restored until I go back to work and our daughter goes back to school next week.  I am trying my hardest to re-engage but it feels an effort to even look at the laptop as the screen of choice for the past two weeks has been TV-sized for the never-ending feast of movies.  

Getting up in the morning has drifted from the regimented to the frankly, slack.  After the huge build up and early waking caused by the promise of presents and then the days spent eating more sugar than you will admit to their dentist and running around like a lunatic clutching toys as the tree lights flash in techno timing, the children are completely exhausted.  First day back at school and work is going to require some serious prep and negotiation to make sure we get there on time and in the right clothing.  It will be a very bad day indeed if she wears my leopard print kitten heels and I wear her princess dress.

Today, after venturing out to the shops to try to find something that is neither 40% saturated fat or 40% proof for our cupboards, our daughter said to me: "it feels like Sunday, doesn't it?"  Quite right she was too, and it took us a few seconds to agree on what day it actually was but the question that hurt our brains the most was one posed by our son when he asked us: "is today, tomorrow?". This prompted a five minute conversation about how yes, if today were yesterday (which it wasn't) then today would indeed be tomorrow, but today is now today, which makes tomorrow, tomorrow, and not today tomorrow because today was tomorrow but only when viewed from yesterday.   At the end of this explanation (which to my mind was worthy of a pat on the back from Brian Cox although in fairness I think he's more of a hair-ruffler than a back-patter), he added neatly that if that were the case, then could he please have a tree chocolate.  Because I'd told him yesterday that he could have one tomorrow. 

So thank you, oh school timetable warlords; you have brought physics to the forefront of our conversations and inspired our son with science but if you wouldn't mind sending me a new copy of a Brief History of Time before the Easter Holiday kicks in, I'd be very grateful.

Soundtrack: How Soon is Now by The Smiths

We Don't Need No Education?

Our daughter is about to finish her second year of Primary school and we are in awe of what the teachers have helped her to achieve.  There are so many moments that we want to wrap up and hold on to: stories written with the most hilarious spellings (and mostly involving wolves having their stomachs cut open to allow villagers to escape...), drawings of us all holding hands and early attempts at times tables.  She is in her element and we are loving watching her learn.  This is rubbing off on our son - he loves the fact he has 'lessons' at pre-school and can't wait to join his sister so that he can have his own book bag and uniform.

In my last years at senior school it would be fair to say that I didn't care too much for education.  I left with a couple of A's but also a couple of F's and a few other letters inbetween.  I started work on my 16th birthday in a fruit and veg shop that paid £68 a week cash in hand.  I thought I was loaded and very much enjoyed attempting to pay for half a lager & lime with a £50 note at the local pub.  The landlord did not share my hilarity but liked the money me and my friends brought in so we were tolerated.   It didn't take long however for me to realise that spending my days in a green and white tabard serving bananas to bodybuilders and potatoes to pensioners was not going to get me very far.  This was further underlined by friends popping in during my shift and bellowing "Have you got any caulies?!" much to the dismay of my manager.  There's nothing like shrieking 16 year olds to scare away the high-spending old ladies.

BCoT and its beautiful, big purple sign!

So I enrolled at college where I was completely won over.  Not only could I choose subjects based on what I thought I'd like to study but you were also allowed to call the teachers by their first names - winner.  The most important thing for me though was that it gave me a chance to enjoy learning again.  Sitting in a class with a group of people who have chosen to attend is a very different sensation to being in a class 'because you have to'.  There was a slight hiccup though, in that having completed my 'A' Levels (and re-sat my Maths GCSE), I asked the careers advisor what I could do next.  Her response was 'you can apply for university'.  This was not an option as I needed to earn some money but fortunately she enrolled me on a secretarial course where I learned how to turn up on time and touch-type and before the end of the first year I had my first 'proper' job.

Because of the teachers at Basingstoke College of Technology, I rediscovered the pleasure of learning, and gained practical skills that set me on a path to opportunities and experiences I couldn't have imagined as a sullen 16 year old.  I thank them for setting me right.

Our children are at the very beginning of their journey.  I know that there will be ups and downs in their time at school, and whether they choose to become academics or apprentices, roofers or rockstars, I will work my hardest to keep and encourage the love of learning that they have today for the rest of their lives.