The Jungle Book

If I cry, do I look like a victim? Probably. Do I care about looking like a victim? Probably not. I am old and, for that matter, mean enough not to care how I look. I certainly wanted to cry this morning when a friend who was in school last week, said he had noticed that my son was unusually quiet and anonymous in class. My friend described him as "a different boy". Another person described my son's face, normally responsive, as "set" in the last recent while. Sheesh! This afternoon I went up to school to see for myself what was going on. I was informed that the child who had bitten him yesterday, today managed to "accidentally" sit on my son's head. The boy apologised - as you do when you accidentally sit on someone's head. OK, I will buy the fact you can accidentally sit on someone's head. It is possible; a shove, a fall-over, a stumble. Not quite sure about the follow-through kick to the hip. School is a jungle. As an adult, you know deep down that school is a dangerous place, you just choose to forget the dank hurt and slavering darkness. Until the day bleeds out into a tropical sky and you watch your own child disappear into the leaf-heavy gloom, whistling as he goes.

I am assured the school is taking it seriously. The committed and professional teachers seem as concerned as I am. There have been conversations and meetings; next week we go back for an official update with the head who is a woman in whom I have every confidence. You trust teachers with your children's lives, quite literally. I have no idea what happens when you do not trust the teaching staff. Panic horribly and home educate? God. The thought of home schooling brings me out in shingles. My children would get bullied then, by me.

In the meantime, like nice middle-class parents, we are checking with a nice middle-class doctor in case there are "spatial awareness" problems with our son. I am not quite sure how spatially aware you have to be to avoid having your head sat on. In any event, I have issued my son with the first few pages of his jungle survival guide: "Do not sit next to him. Do not stand near him. Do not talk to him. Do not play with him. Do not have anything to do with him. Do not pull a tiger's tail." He looked at me blankly: "What tiger?"

"Welcome home Mummy."

Well, I'm back. Mummy's home and did I mention the six-year-old is getting bullied at school? "Crisis? What crisis?" I want to gnash my teeth in rage and push someone smaller than me over. I was thousands of miles away and my husband revealed the six-year-old had told him he likes school, he loves his teacher but that "sometimes the other children aren't nice to me." He is heartbreakingly reasonable about it: "Some people aren't nice to other people. That's just how it is." Cor blimey. Maybe the world is like that but you do not want your six-year-old awake to that fact.

We appear to have several things going on. Possibly more disturbing than anything else is exclusion from playground and classroom activities. Children not wanting him to work in their groups, while at break: "Sometimes I don't play. Sometimes I just walk around the playground and sometimes I sit on the bench." This is your cue as a parent to drop your head onto the wooden kitchen table and groan loudly.

I am trying very hard to be as reasonable as my six-year-old about it. Let me make the point, that I am, perhaps, not as impressed as I might be, all things considered, at the level of supervision in school. Separately and almost as disturbing as the bullying, since he started at this teeny tiny church school, he has sustained nine injuries to his head in a variety of incidents, some of which appear to be entirely accidental, some roughhousing and some aggression. The headteacher wondered if he had something wrong with his ears or may be his eyesight. He does not fall over at home; apparently though he is like a young Norman Wisdom at school.

On Thursday, he was swung round and hit his chin. (On the upside, at least he was playing with someone.) On Friday, an older and bigger boy kicked out at him hard enough for my boy to fall over and hit his head. Monday, he had a day off for good behaviour but Tuesday he was pushed over by an older girl in the playground while today he was bitten on the cheek by someone. We now have a little collection of notes home from school. Today's note read that one boy had "hurt" my son's cheek and "apologised" for it. That's alright then. Friday's note bears little relation to what my son says happened. It says he "overbalanced on his chair" and "fell bumping his head slightly." He was standing beside his schoolmate when he was kicked and fell to the floor. This happened at 10.30am. The larger boy along with another girl went on to berate my son at lunchtime for taking the last morsel of something when he was queuing for his lunch. The berating went unwitnessed by staff but after it, my son refused to join in normal school activities. I am being to steam up. Perhaps it is the heat. All this in the last week.

But it is not just the last week. During his time there, he has also fallen over playing horse which won him a massive lump on his forehead; he was hit soundly in the middle of his forehead as he walked behind a boy swinging a rounders bat (another lump); his eye was also cut when the older boy involved in Friday's incident managed to poke a broom into it, (this required a stitch). There was also a bump on the head from a cupboard. According to the cheery note home, my son "forgot it was there". Oh and earlier this month there was another tug of war, fall and bump. It is like the parachute regiment's "P" company for tots. We have had to take him to hospital three times. If these incidents had happened at home, the social workers would have been round by now.

Not that by son is blameless in all of these incidents. Leaving aside the occasional clutz-like walk behind a rounders bat or hapless push-me, pull-you with a skipping rope, he has a nasty habit of intervening in the world around him. He was bitten after telling the boy not to swing on a fence in case he hurt himself. He got pushed over trying to help a younger child get her skipping rope that older girls were standing on, while on Friday, he was only kicked over after the older boy told him his work was scribbly and my son kicked his chair. Fair do's, he would perhaps have done better to kick the chair and run away.

If this was happening at his former East End primary, it would be more immediately understandable. There, classes are crowded and some of the children are from difficult inner-city backgrounds. This is a tiny village church school with a church spire visible across grassy fields. It has fewer than 45 children in the whole school - five in his class. We are hardly talking a culture of hoodies with knives here.

I have always taught my son to take responsibility for his own actions and that he has a duty of care to his little brother and baby sister and to look out for younger children. Big mistake. His father wants him to slide into playground oblivion. Stop telling other children what to do for a start. But I do not want the sort of boy who turns into an adult who crosses the road when a teenage gang picks on a young mother waiting with her buggy at a bus-stop. I want Henry Fonda in "Twelve Angry Men." I wonder if Henry Fonda got bullied at school. How to survive at school? They should give lessons in it. How to teach your child to survive at school? They should give lessons in that too.

This is an inter-galactic emergency

I have a headache. It is hardly surprising I have a headache because I just fell down the stairs, six of them at least. Why did I fall down the stairs? Because they were carpeted with slick, shiny wool, I was running and they were there. Because it is that sort of day. Every day is that sort of day.

I spent all of yesterday driving around with a silvered spaceman toy in the footwell of the passenger seat. Just when I thought I was safe from his cultural imperialist tendencies, he would blurt out: "This is an inter-galactic emergency" and "I am Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace." Between the children and their paraphernalia, it is surprising I ever feel lonely. When we moved in, I counted the soft toys as I lined them up against the wall in the living room - 81 of them. All of them judging me with their little beady or woollen eyes as I attempted to put straight the wreckage of my life. Even more disturbingly, I know they weighed me up and found me wanting.

But I think the noise pollution put out by toys is worse than the acute feeling of paranoia they can engender. It is not just Buzz. Yesterday morning, I was struggling to find my way to school because I now live in a different house which means I have to drive along different roads. The problem is you drive by different fields which all look the same as the fields you used to drive by. I was running late because that is what I do, and looking for a turn-off which could have been anywhere, when my six-year-old decided to "start up" his orange plastic steering wheel. This engine noise is the sound another car would make if it joined you on the back seat and it distracted me long enough to miss the turn-off. I have to admit I did not say "Oh dear, Mummy just missed the turn-off". It was definitely one up from the "bloody, bloody" of the weekend. My six-year-old, with the infinite forbearance of a child for his mother, turned off his wheel while I manoeuvred my way back to the turning. Thinking about it, his teacher recently told me how advanced he was verbally. I wonder how advanced he really is. I must remember to teach him that discretion is an under-rated virtue.

Once I managed to deliver the boys to school, inter-galactic emergency averted for the moment, I was able to spend a glorious afternoon packing up more of the cottage kitchen. Highlights included chiseling soldered coins off the microwave, discovering a pan of pasta quills from before we moved and too many mouldy coffee cups to mention. Mould so thick you could lift it out and wear it as a hair accessory. I do have previous on mouldy coffee cups. I even have previous on the remains of a duck casserole which I forgot about the night before a fortnight's holiday. My housemates of the time, put a heavy cast-iron lid back on the pot and kept it for me. I do not think that was a nice thing to do. I think they could have washed it up. I ended up burying it in the garden. In future years someone will find it and figure it for a muti killing.

Today has not been much better, although at least I got through it without my electronic Disney sidekick. After the school run, I had to tear round a showroom with my builder looking at kitchens before abandoning him at the plumbers to go eat lunch with my six-year-old as part of the school's open week. This open week means my son expects me to be at his side at all times. He was less than impressed by my "Shall we do lunch then darling? I've got 45 minutes." (I didn't say that to him but I wanted to.) I blame time poverty; I still have not finished cleaning out the kitchen, we still do not have a working TV, apparently the dishwasher is faulty and last night the lights downstairs fused about 20 minutes before my newly installed internet connection gave up the ghost. When I rang, just short of 11pm, British Telecom politely me told to call back at 8am. Eight a.m.? When do they think mothers want to use their computer? Nine am? "Oh look everybody, the big hand is at 12 and the little hand is at nine, Mummy is just popping upstairs to start work then". Absolutely, once I have finished moving us out of our own house, unpacking everything in the rented house, deciding which consumer durable I am going to take to pieces first and calling India to talk down a jet.

When I got back from the school lunch, things at home were no better, both my four-year-old and the baby were in hysterics. Apparently he had wanted to come to lunch too and she wanted to see if she could cry louder than he could. I had to say to him: "You and mummy can go to lunch together tomorrow OK? Just you and me." I resisted saying: "I have got 45 minutes". Maybe this is what Buzz means by "inter-galactic emergency." Worst of all I forgot to buy my husband a Valentine's Day card. Actually, that was not the worst thing, I forgot to buy one and he remembered.

Did I mention, my head hurts.

Define "special"

I have my first official link from someone else's blogsite to mine and am absurdly pleased about it. On a scale of one to 10, about as pleased as Dorothy was when the Emerald City appeared on her technicolour horizon. Tom Watson, the definitive blogging MP, has listed me on his blogroll. Pausing for a quick sigh of happiness and a glance at my sparkling shoes, this means that someone has now read my blog who didn't go to school with me and doesn't share my gene pool. To hell with Iraq, I may even have to vote Labour at the next election to say thankyou.
Today has been rather a good day all-round. I spent the morning being a "special person" at school and was awarded a certificate with red felt-tipped hearts, a daffodil and a chocolate rice crispy cake by my sons. There was a slight vested interest at stake which worried me. If I came in to pick up my award (along with a cup of tea) , my boys also received a chocolate rice crispy cake. Sometimes though, it is best not to look too closely at the quid pro quo, as I am sure Lord Levy would tell you.
To continue the political theme of this blog, the children have apparently been learning about special people - like the Queen. This has involved drawing the Queen's jaggedy- toothed head on a stamp, making a corrugated cardboard crown and a consequent lecture from mummy explaining that the Queen is not actually a special person (apologies to the royalists out there). She is infact an ordinary person just like you and me who only got the job because she was born into a particular family and actually Helen Mirren could do it just as well.
If you cannot brainwash your own children, what is the point of having them?
By the way, for anyone who stopped by yesterday. She left the dog.

Dollies and Disability

We had to go into school this morning for a daddy's reading day which entailed TW reading a book called Vesuvius Poovius which is all about poo and how to get rid of it. Not quite sure if that is what they had in mind when they asked my husband in to read but the children seemed to like it. I am, however, disowning responsibility if any of the other mothers start telling me little Johnny is stashing his number two's under the frontroom rug.
While I was there the baby crawled across the classroom to the doll's house. As she pulled out the dollies, each was revealed as more unfortunate than the next. Among the inhabitants were an old lady clutching a zimmer frame - fair enough, grannies do get that way. Granny had a lot on though, living there as she did with her middle-aged son on crutches, another bespectacled momma's boy with calipers and a blind daughter who could not move anywhere without her white stick. Infact she could not really move with it. Meanwhile a little granddaughter dominated the sitting room in an overly large wheelchair while a deaf black teenager, presumably a lovechild to the calipered one, sported an NHS hearing aid and learnt signlanguage. Two other elderly wooden dolls lay around on a bed upstairs, presumably dementing quietly while two child dolls, fresh into their 15th foster placement contemplated arson and the doll that looked closest to being a whole-bodied adult considered coming out as a moulded plastic lesbian. Talk about The Curse of the House of Usher. If there had been a cat, it would have had three legs. Apparently, local education authorities require schools to buy Caribbean and Asian dolls at the same time as Caucasian. Quite right too - the children up here never see a black face. But all things in moderation and that was more of a care-home than a doll's house. According to the classroom assistant, it is all about diversity and inclusion. Really? What about escapism and imagination?

Just call me Pollyanna

A friend told me my blog made her cry at her desk and that I have become a "victim". Oh dear. Maybe I have been too gloomy about my life up North. So this is my Pollyanna list of everything that is good about living up here: the beaches (which are empty), the skies (which are glorious), the village school (my son kissed the building like some pint-sized pope when he got back from a recent holiday), the "community" ( there is one, really), the opportunity to make new friends (who says you should put up a "No Vacancies" sign just because you are 40-something?). The garden (bigger than anything we could have in London), the gardening(I grew leeks. You have to or they won't let you stay here). The happy husband (he'd better be.) The opportunity to think creatively about life(this one I am working on.)
Anyone of a tender disposition should look away at this point - here is my list of things which are bad about living here: the absence of my old friends, the silence which falls when I talk sometimes (not a good one. More of a "Oh my God. I can't believe she just said that," sort of a space). The fact I had to leave behind not just the friends I had acquired and cherished over years but my hairdresser, my beauty consultant, my nutritionist, my masseur, my homeopath, my osteopath and my therapist.(I never said I was low maintenance did I?) Then there is the career I am probably waving goodbye to along with the galleries, the films, the bookshops, the shopping and the cafes. Even watching TV can make me feel homesick if the camera pans across the London skyline. I think I will stop there. It might be time to dig up a leek and go marvel at the passing clouds.

Happy Birthday Jesus

I have just been to the school nativity to witness my three-year-old as a solemn-faced star and the older boy as a Scotsman. Not sure quite how Christmassy a five-year-old in a kilt and tam o'shanter is but you get the picture. Tinsel, an anatomically correct baby Jesus and a refusenik shepherd who threatened a sitdown protest at one point - in other words, the usual nativity plus a few racially stereotyped stop-offs for the jet-set angels hunting out the best place for the messiah to be born. (Scotland being one of them complete with cabers, sworddancing and Irn-Bru.) The Japanese, by the way, are very polite and do a lot of gardening while in India apparently the smell wafting across the stage was of chicken tikka massalla. At our previous London school there were more black and mixed race children than white and Black History week was a major event. The very thought of dramatising chicken tikka massalla would have given its politically correct teachers the vapours. But there are no real ethnic minorities at my children's charming village school. About the closest you get to an ethnic minority is a red head. Anyway, it was utterly lovely and quite lifted me from my pre-Christmas doldrums. The parents may have been smiling at their beloved celestial tourists but religion at the school is a serious business and not just for Christmas. Even the tots were expected to sing "Happy Birthday Jesus" to a candle stuck in a mince pie the other day at their Christmas party. I admit clap-happy enthusiasm like that brings me out in a cold sweat. I struggle hard to believe in God and other people's certainty impresses me but when they "Praise the Lord" in public - sometimes they even wave their arms while they do it - I am swamped by the thought "Not infront of the little donkey."

Apocalyptic horsemen and friends

Life in London was simpler in many ways. Cafes knew how to make a decent skinny latte with an extra shot, muddy wellies weren't de rigeur and most importantly I had friends. Quite a few of them. Often in the media and certainly in work. Those who had children, juggled their responsibilities, adjusted their career expectations and got on with it. Those who didn't, tried not to talk too much about the exotic holidays and how long they spent in bed on a Sunday. I had things in common with my friends, an office, children of the same age, an outlook.
When we moved to Northumberland a year ago, I gave up on the friendship I had once known. There is, for instance, noone I feel I could immediately turn to in a crisis - I simply don't feel I know them well enough yet to impose. During my husband's absence in London for three weeks, I was left with my five year old, three year old and a teething baby. One Saturday, after four sleepless nights on the trot, I was desperate. I hated my husband, myself and my children in about that order. I spent the day on my knees. When Sunday dawned, I crawled onto the phone to confide in my absent husband that I simply didn't know how I would cope, what to do with myself or what to do with the children. "I know," came the reply. "Why don't you go to Alnwick garden, gather autumnal leaves and make a collage." "I know," I replied. "Why don't you just come home and you can make the f***ing collage." I know there are people up here who would have welcomed me if I had 'fessed up to a crisis but I just didn't feel I could. I was too low and my children too ghastly to inflict them on anyone. In London, I would have shown no such scruples. I would have thrown everyone in the car and expected my friends to welcome me into their homes even if I was insanely grumpy and my children monstrous.
Without a job to go to up here, my main route into friendships is through school. To start with the village church school is tiny so the potential pool of bosom mates is small. In any event, one of the perks of rural living is a free bus for the kids which cuts down the number of mothers you see. I was desperately disappointed when I realised one particular mum was now bussing her son in. Unlike me, she didn't consider the 40 minute round schlep twice a day worth a few minutes of chirpy banter and who can blame her? Well, me for one.
A substantial number of the other mothers I have met are married to farmers. Even if they aren't, they often have pet horses or sheep. I mean why? Don't they get enough mucking out to do at home already? If they don't keep something with four legs, they often keep chickens instead. For the eggs. Which makes their life a perpetual search for egg boxes. And they don't buy eggs, so you see their problem. Hardly any of them work outside the home. Some of them do some teaching on the side. They aren't news junkies. Few of them talk about books. All in all this town mouse struggles sometimes with her country cousins. Not least when religion comes up in the conversation - which it does. A lot. One couple have been immensely generous and welcoming but I can't say it' s not disconcerting when someone you had previously thought entirely sane admits, he is waiting for Christ to return to earth. He told me: "I believe the world will end, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will come among us, death and destruction, the whole package you know. I would only say this to another believer," I shift uncomfortably in my seat at this. Evolution he dismissed as "a theory". Homosexuality an "abomination". Even slavery was Okayed providing it met the biblical caveat of justice within it.
So take your choice. Do I remain a Billy-no-mates or do I ride with the apocalyptic horsemen and his friends, chickens perched jauntily on our saddles , my inhibitions scattering to the wind.?