Mistakes

I have made a monumental mistake. This is a brain splurge because I'm completely struggling to get past it and I'm hoping this will help in some way to order my thoughts and help me move forward.

I committed the ultimate internet sin. I clicked the box that said I had read the document with all the terms and conditions and information with an online form. 

But I wasn't buying something I could return. It's not like I've just lost money on something because i was careless. This was my daughter's school placement application.

Only I didn't read it. At least, not the whole of that stupid 14 page document. In fact, I cannot find anyone who did, but for some reason its come back to bite me and me alone. Or it certainly feels that way. 

Last Autumn when i did the application life was on that awful stomach churning downward lurch of a rollercoaster. It was as much as I could cope with to fill in the form and send it, let alone actually really engage with and think about reading a jargon filled document. Of course, hindsight is an amazing and terrible thing. Of course, I should have explained that my eldest daughter had been forced into an out of catchment school that we never chose for her and now I was applying for a sibling to join that same school. But nowhere on the form indicated that i needed to tell them this at all. For some reason I just assumed that they would know that. In fact the paragraph relating to our situation is on page 13 of the 14 page document! But i couldn't even think like that back that, applying that kind of logic in the blackness of everything else was completely beyond me.

And now my beautiful sassy daughter hasn't got into the same school as her sister because I filled the form in wrong and ticked the box to say i'd told them everything they needed to know. The weight of guilt that i have felt is almost overwhelming. So here's to hoping that logic and common sense will prevail in the appeals process, that some lovely people will see that it is absurd to expect someone who doesn't drive to drop two children at schools a mile and a half apart within 15 minutes of each other and to pick both of them up at 3pm and that siblings really should get preference whether or not they live in catchment!

I realise now that I messed this up, but i hope someone out there will give us a second chance, because we were let down in the beginning by a system that didn't give us our catchment school because there were never enough places when Mirembe started. Someone really needs to make the idiosyncrasies clearer! 

It's interesting to note that there is a new school being built before another five hundred houses are built in our town. All those school places have been filled already. Where are the children who move in to those houses supposed to go exactly...?

Sun, sand and encouraging the dreamers

I'm conscious that I don't really want to write too many posts with regards to parenting. I'm not a model parent and there appear to be many people out there who are much more qualified on the subject than I am. But this is important to me...

After spending a lovely day at the seaside with the beautiful three and my parents yesterday, after digging holes, building sandcastles and trying to prevent sand getting absolutely everywhere. After watching my girls enjoy being outdoors, collecting shells, exploring sand dunes and generally having the time of their lives, I sat and read this...

Essentially, if you don't want to take the time to read it, a lady who has done the amazing thing of adopting three children who have had a very damaged start to their young lives, is outraged about an article in a certain newspaper which brands children who don't pass year 6 SATS as "mediocre failures"...this is rhetoric coming from this government with regards to education and it cannot possibly take circumstance and individuality into account.

Besides making me very angry for this family who have already overcome so much, I found this article challenges me on how I plan to support the nurturing of my children through their academic life. Of course, my biggest hope is that they excel, of course it is. But what resonates with me is that I need to recognise in their everyday world, the things that make them tick...their own passions and characteristics that need to be encouraged. Those things that make their eyes light up. My own passions and joys in life are not particularly measurable by academic achievement. Yes, i can read and write to a fairly good standard but its my over active imagination and love of words that has fueled this and it's probably not the first thing i would tell you that I'm good at.

The political standards of education are never ever going to measure my children's capacity for compassion and empathy or the beautiful way in which they build relationships with those around them. Or what their presence in this world is going to give to others over the course of their lifetime. I refuse to let a bunch of people who have never, and are very unlikely to ever, meet my children, tell me that they're not good enough for their system.

I want to share this quote with you that really stirs my heart...

"It is crucial that when our children look into our eyes, regardless of the circumstances bearing down on them, that they see someone who believes in them"

Danny Silk                  

All I can say is that I'm trying to do my best to draw the strengths and talents out of these incredible little people. I know that they are going to have struggles down the line. There are times that they push me to my limit, sometimes beyond it. Sometimes I shout, and get angry with them. Sometimes, I want to go and hide and eat chocolate. But the instant something is a little bit off kilter, my instinct is to draw them to me, to sooth and reassure, to tell them that they have the potential for anything they dream of.

When I think about the joy that my children had spending time exploring nature, learning about how sand works when constructing sand castles. When i watch them painting, or helping me cook. When my oldest come home from here swimming lesson and tells me how well she is doing...it is evident that there is so much more to education in addition to what they can learn in a classroom that can never be measured by Whitehall suits. It sounds obvious, i know, but sometimes its good to make a conscious stand.

I will not allow their potential to be defined politicians and statistics. 

I will encourage them to go higher, do more, reach further and dream bigger, however that looks for them.

My dreams did take flight!

I have this thing where if I wake up fairly early, I usually doze off again and have the most peculiar dreams. Its a bit like the film Inception* in that I can feel like I'm dreaming for hours when in reality it's only fifteen minutes or so.

Today's involved ships...big oil tanker type boats, so big that the top of them could barely be seen close up. There was a shower in a room somewhere. Not on the boat, somewhere else. I was wet, absolutely drenched. Then there were bombs and things exploding at really close range. I was looking for someone but I have no idea who.

Something about the end of the world. Then, I was in a car driving through the Fen countryside, for those who don't know it's very flat and the sky is very big. Then, in that dreamlike state, I was shepherding small children down a country path somewhere, a Jay chattering in a branch over head... three woodpeckers go shooting passed, two green ones chasing a red and black one at breakneck speed...

I think i woke up not long after, the bit with the birds was the resounding impression from the dream.

Didn't think much about it at all, even though it was vivid. Got up, showered, took some laundry out to the tumble drier in my garage, which involves going out into my garden. 

All most jumped out of my skin when a woodpecker started tapping away at the poplar tree behind my house!**

He was red and black, he disappeared off into another tree. 

Very strange indeed.



*What's wrong with you, seriously brilliant film!
**Just before you get all cynical and say i heard him in my sleep, my lower end hearing is pretty shot, so the thrush that lives in the same trees annoys me no end, but i just wouldn't have been able to hear a woodpecker at all from inside my house.

"Let your dreams take flight"

So, time to share a little creation with you. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about what our creativity is "for". I struggled doing A level art because so much of it was about the thinking behind a piece. The truth is I see things in my head and I just try and bring them to life. No huge process, although it might not necessarily go to plan. I like to make beautiful, poignant, inspiring things.

"Let your dreams take flight"

I recently tried to move away from being confined by a rectangular canvas and trying all kinds of new ways to drag my mental visions in to reality. So far it's been a lot of fun and this wall hanging is the result of some of that experimenting. 

I've been trying out a few new techniques with distress inks, texture paste and sprays, after finding some wonderful inspiration from other artists (I'll share some of them in another post), it's great not being limited to what i can do with a paint brush. That said, I'm very much looking forward to finding ways to incorporate some of these ideas into my other ways of working. 

Enjoy x