Results

We’re on holiday in Dorset visiting our usual haunts and delighting in the absence of TV, internet, landline and dodgy mobile signal: life is slowing down. But we have popped home for a couple of nights to collect Youngest’s GCSE results. She may not be her sister but we are all delighted with a total (including two taken last year) of 6 As and 5 Bs - even if the As were in the subjects she’s not planning to take to A level! As she remarked, “I got what I deserved, and what I needed to do the subjects I want to do, and I can have higher level qualification in those subjects, but I need the As in the ones I’m not taking forward.”


Not perfect, but perfectly grounded!

Update

I am of course busy with a chair, a sixties version of the fifties one I did recently. I think it may become a wedding present for Husband’s friend and godfather to Youngest. (A happy second marriage for both parties.) And today I was asked by an acquaintance to look at a chair with the prospect of my reupholstering it – though she’s only after a quote having already had one which she presumably considers too much!

I have put an advertisement in the parish mag offering two sewing workshops at the end of June with the view to starting classes in September. No idea if anyone will bite.

Eldest, a clever girl, has had two parcels delivered home this week that she needed in college. She promises to look at delivery addresses more carefully next time.

Youngest starts her GCSEs tomorrow with Religious Studies. I have no idea whether she’s done enough revision, questions from her parents result in much eye-rolling but little information.

Our hall is looking terrific but there is still decorating to do and the sewing room and girls’ room are overflowing with extraneous furniture, papers and donations to the church fête – which is still a month away!

Planning

It has been a week of collecting Youngest from school.
A GCSE in Drama requires ‘putting on a play’ – several actually. These are sometimes scripted, sometimes devised, but always planned, dressed and performed by varying groups of students in the Drama class. In turn this means ‘homework’ needs to be done by the group, usually after school, hence Mummy’s taxi has been busy in the lead up to yet another play.
The added complication this week is the three nightly performances of the school’s Christmas Concert. Youngest is in the choir as usual, but this year also performing with the Chamber Choir (Let it Snow and The Twelve Days of Christmas) and a year 11 ensemble of about 6 – Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power of Love. All great fun and of course I’m delighted she’s taking part again, but it’s 6.30 until 10pm. The gap between drama rehearsals and the concert has been challenging in terms of supper and changing, and she’s getting more tired as the week goes on.
The weekend may provide some respite but she plans to make biscuits to freeze for decorating next weekend to give to her friends as Christmas gifts… Meanwhile some major tidying needs to occur if a party for ten, to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, is to happen next Friday – not to mention the visit of her grandparents and godparents on Sunday, the day itself.
We’ll get there, we always do, but poor planning on her parents’ part always adds to the challenge of this time of year!

(The photo shows the unflooded view from the bridge.)

Examinations

Youngest had her first go at GCSEs in May. She took the first modules in the three sciences and the actual GCSEs in English Language and Spanish. She was somewhat surprised to achieve As in the Sciences (which she hates) but content with a B and an A respectively in the other two. Had she failed I expect we would have been encouraging her to repeat the exams, but she got what was predicted by her school, as did her big sister. But what of the current controversy?

Some children, who may have got Cs had they taken the English exam in January have scored Ds in June. Ofqual is saying that their investigations show that the papers were marked too generously in January and that anyone who’s unhappy can resit (possibly at no charge) in November… If the ‘new’ standard stays I’m not at all sure that I can see how this would help: presumably, even if the pupil is available to retake, they would be taking somewhat of a punt on doing better this time around? I don’t like the modular format of exams; it seems to me it lays itself open to this sort of problem. I suspect that the education world, who are shouting loudly about legal action, may find they’ve played into the hands of Michael Gove who believes that our exam system is all wrong and needs a complete overhaul.

I did OK in my O levels but poorly in my As so I hope you will allow me to say that, whatever a person’s results, they were awarded a grade that reflected where they stood in their year group (clearly I was in a very bright year…). The current view that passing time should show our schoolchildren improving misunderstands what the old system demonstrated. It was never about actual achievement but about relative achievement: it showed who the brightest students were in each year group. I’m not advocating that that was right, but we do need to know what these exams are actually for!

As a footnote you may be informed by a little incident when I told a small group that Eldest had a place at Oxford if she could get two A*s in Maths… One of the ladies present explained that since she went to a State school there wouldn’t be a problem as they pick the easiest exam boards with the simplest modules.

I was very restrained!

New Year, New You?

No doubt my first post of the New Year should be about my resolutions: outlining them and then talking about just how bad I am at keeping them. But Woman’s Hour this morning provided an alternative subject. There was a woman on talking about her uniform project in which she had worn a little black dress every day for a year. The trick was in accessorising we were told, though during the interview it became clear that it was a pretty unique LBD that could be worn inside out and back to front... Still, a pretty neat idea!
And it got me thinking about uniform and how useful it is. I have other things to do than think of something to wear every day and generally get by accessorising a pair of jeans. This is not new: I’ve been in my current job for eighteen years and my wardrobe has changed little. There were times when leggings were appropriate either because of fashion or pregnancy but they are no longer an item I can imagine myself wearing, so jeans it is. The waist has risen and fallen; the leg has got wider and narrower; and they’ve moved from Levi to Gap, but they’re still jeans, and I wear them most of the time.
I have been out of work longer than I was in paid employment. Back in the day I wore a skirt suit (the boss didn’t like women in trousers) and high heels. As a military wife I found occasion to use my work wardrobe for various functions, but these ‘opportunities’ continue to dwindle. I have a rare one tomorrow evening when Husband and I will be supporting Eldest collecting her GCSE certificate at a ceremony in the Abbey. The invitation states that ‘this is a semi-formal occasion, so we would be grateful if you could dress accordingly’. The wardrobe may contain classics from my former life but sadly the 18 years have played havoc with my waistline making many items too uncomfortable. The newer items have been to weddings and dinner nights so are not what you might call ‘semi-formal’. I have already let Eldest down by accepting the invitation – apparently she didn’t plan to go – so I can’t afford for her to disapprove of my style of dress. I wonder if I could accessorise one of my LBDs?


And perhaps I’d better make a resolution after all: shall it be to lose weight, get fit or to revitalise my wardrobe?!

Boarding school updated

We were visited at the weekend by Youngest’s friend who has just started at boarding school. Her parents had moved to yet another foreign posting and the international school she was attending there for the last year was proving unsuitable. She is happy to be at the boarding school, settling in well and loving being with her big sister who’s been there a couple of years – to do GCSEs and now A levels. The food is only OK, the work stimulating, the children friendly and the pace pretty relentless… while they’re there. They work longer days than my girls in their comprehensive school, Monday to Saturday lunchtime, but have much longer holidays.

We enjoyed a lively discussion driving home on Friday evening about how much boarding had changed, and how much had stayed the same. Although hers is a mixed school the boys and girls live in separate houses. They sleep 3 to a room in bunk-style with their own colourful sheets and duvets, use the washing machines and tumble dryers in house, choose from a buffet style selection of food in a whole school dining-room and do oodles of sport. They can be full boarders or part-time, and they can be away from school every weekend – assuming they have somewhere to go. (Last weekend her Mum was still here so she was out with her, this weekend to us, next one to Granny, the one after on a French trip and then half-term when she and her sister will fly home for a fortnight.) Eldersister has only visited us once in three years, she prefers to stay in school with the other children who live abroad. I wonder if this is her way of coping? 
At my boarding school we slept in dormitories on iron beds with hospital-cornered, crisp, white sheets and blankets. Our laundry went to a laundrette once a week in a little box tied with string: mending and sewing on nametapes were an important Saturday morning activity if you wanted to see your stuff again.  School meals were not chosen but served at the table and we ate what we were given. I learnt to drink tea and eat pretty much anything because otherwise you went hungry (and famously got into trouble for not eating cold pilchards and coleslaw, a Sunday night delight.) It was largely traditional fare, but curry in the early 1970s was a revelation, and kippers a shock! (Apparently I had to eat all the bones; I like kippers now, but as an 11 year-old...) We had the half-term break plus two weekends, one in each half term, and a couple of days. When my parents were in the UK I went to them, if not to my Granny, usually taking a friend who lived abroad.


I rescued Friendabroad, and mother of Youngest’s friend, last Monday. She rang in bits having said good-bye to her girls the night before. Together we finished the tasks she needed to complete before she flew home, and then I cosseted her here and took her to the airport on Tuesday. She and her daughter had a long phone call yesterday. They text one another too. And e-mail, and skype. Mother and I wrote once a week without fail.


They are a demonstrative family: emotion is expressed in word and hug. With them we do the same. And we have other friends with whom likewise. But not with them all! Schoolfriend and I have to make a real decision to hug: it just wasn’t what we did when we were 14. Ditto with Mother. She and I developed, from the word go, the walk-away-and-get-on-with-it mode of parting. (I tease her to this day about the promised cream tea in town with her on my first evening in boarding school that turned into beans on bread and margarine with the other girls!)
It is lovely to show you care, but there are times when it is much easier to cope if you don’t.

Catching up

The birthdays were both deemed successful; the camping, fun.

Eurostar and the TGV to Lyon were brilliant. We had a busy trip, eating too well and all managing to speak a little French: it’s amazing what you can manage if everyone has to order their own food or go without.

Eldest got nine A* and an A.
My trainee teacher has started work.
My girls have gone back to school.


I AM ALONE IN THE HOUSE.


I may take the day off; eat chocolate with a good book; think in the sewing room; play in the garden… or perhaps just take delivery from Sainsbury, do the washing, tidy the sitting-room and catch up on what’s been going on on the blogosphere, all while listening to Radio 4 with no chance of anyone turning it off.

Football!

In between other things Youngest’s room has been redecorated, refurnished and cleaned several times. She arrived home on Saturday in time for supper with Doctor Who. On Sunday we treated the man of the house to breakfast in bed, some bottles of posh beer and some boy’s DVDs. He then, of course, watched the football…

If you have missed Lynne Truss on the Today programme on Radio 4 you have missed a treat whether you care for the football or not. I’d give you a link to listen but they don’t seem to think anyone would wish to hear it again! However you can read her thoughts here.
In other news: the GCSEs are over and the planning of the prom ensemble begins in earnest.

Steering Wheel

Little French girl is a delight! She understands lots and responds with short English sentences or phrases. She’s a year older than her sister was when she visited, but I still think it’s pretty brave to come and live with a bunch of foreigners.


We mothers put up with a lot don’t we? Monday’s request went something like this:
“I need a steering wheel for the bus.”
“?”
“We’ve agreed it will look better, and I need it for Friday at the latest, ‘though it would be better for Wednesday’s rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal?”
Then the Look! I produced a wire ring from a lampshade that for some reason I had thought might come in useful, but it would need a transformation, and a proper wheel would be better.
The lovely man at the Mini restoration garage on the edge of the village produced a grubby white leather steering wheel and said it would cost me 15 quid unless I promised to bring it back. Eldest looked down her nose, “It’s very dirty.” I wiped it down and offered to do a more thorough job if they decided to opt for it rather than the ring.
The rehearsal was OK I gather and the gang want the real thing. Their GCSE performance for the examiner is on Friday. I’m washing the costume shirt. Fingers crossed.

holidays

We’ve had a good time in Dorset and staggeringly fair weather, but it’s nice to be home. We walked every day, read lots of books, ate out several times and went to the pictures twice. Alice in Wonderland was wonderful – even Husband enjoyed it – and How to Train Your Dragon was OK. Youngest had a friend to visit and has come home exhausted from too much chat and too little sleep... she’ll learn one day that beauty sleep is essential.

Poor Husband is busy taking exams, two last week and five more this. He’s been swatting hard and I’m crossing my fingers as he’s anything but confident – most unusual for him. If nothing else he’s setting a very good example to our GCSE student!
I’ve had a lovely weekend catching up with all the laundry and pottering in the garden. There’s something very satisfying about piles of freshly laundered clothing – not ironed of course, just smoothed when folded - and it's amazing what a week of warm weather has done to the plants. All the excitement of the dentist and shoe shopping this week to look forward to. I wonder if the girls will get up today?

I can sew

I told you I was being distracted from my ‘proper’ chores didn’t I? I hope you’re as pleased with the resulting cushion (both sides) as I am! It is destined to be a gift for one of Youngest’s friends.



I have both an O and an A level in Needlework. For the O level I had to make a garment (I made a halternecked evening dress) and a piece of craft work (I made an embroidered picture, hand and machine, of Noah’s Ark). The dress is long gone, but the picture lurks in a box in my sewing space. Then there were two exams, one written and one practical. I did OK and I loved to sew so I moved on to the A. For this I made a Viyella dress, a lined needlecord jacket, a macramé lampshade and a machine embroidered picture which still adorns my parent’s spare room. The practical required me to make a lined waistcoat which I found easy, but the written paper was a different matter. The knowledge required included home dressmaking, fabric types, soft furnishing construction and design, and the history of costume. I was rubbish at the history part and have an abiding memory of being asked for the history of the pocket in womenswear… and something about providing instructions for making all the soft furnishings in my new house…
I tell you this to help explain my reservations about Youngest’s plans to take the sewing option as her GCSE Design Technology subject. She won’t need to decide for another year, but I have a specific concern! For the first 3 years of secondary school they alternate the DT subjects and in the sewing terms they do 3 projects: they design and make a bug, a hat and a pair of shorts. That’s what Eldest did, and Youngest has done the bug and expects to make a hat next term.
At my secondary school we had been timetabled to do Needlework classes weekly regardless of stream – you could only cook in the C form! We made bags to hold our sewing, and Science rolls to hold our scalpel(yes, knives in school , as required kit!) and other tools. Lots of straight line machining, name taping, chain stitch embroidery and oversewing. Basic, dull and useful! We were taught to darn, mend a variety of tears and different methods of sewing seams. Then we smocked aprons with shell-edged strings for our mums. At last we chose garments to make for ourselves. As a boarder I spent two hours every Saturday morning in ‘mending’ where we sat around sewing on nametapes, darning socks and tights, sewing on buttons… All those things I now do for my girls and have completely failed to teach them.
There is no sign of anyone teaching them to sew at school either.

Matching families

We have received two lots of visitors this weekend. Both are friends met through the Army, both have ‘matching’ girls.

In the first lot, both parents work and the girls went to boarding school when they reached seven. All are content with their lot. They value the limited time they spend together which is why getting all eight of us in one place probably only happens once or twice a year. We had a family dinner party where everyone participated in the conversation and then played a version of Trivial Pursuits in teams of two. Raucous!
Mother1 and Theireldest1 had seen the Channel 4 programme Leaving Home at Eight and been as unimpressed by it as I had. The programme focussed on four military families for some reason and then did not explain why such families might pick the boarding school option, nor what the alternatives would be. And we all agreed that being in too much contact with home (one mother seemed to ring every day) is a disaster in the settling in stakes.
Our next visitors were just Mother2 and Theiryoungest2 who were in the UK from a foreign posting to spend half-term with Theireldest2. She started boarding when she reached Year 10 and started her GCSE courses. Previously, like her younger sister, she has gone to school wherever her parents have lived. Largely this has worked, though Theiryoungest2 is bored by her latest school such that her parents are wondering what to do. This family are all finding the separation difficult; they have moved even further away for this, the actual GCSE year, and the distance in both miles and time doesn’t help.
For Youngest and myself it was a treat to have our friends with us, however briefly – Husband and Eldest missed theirs.


Perhaps I should add by way of explanation that you could see something about my boarding school experience here.

Just different

When Husband and I went to our very first Parents’ Evening, when Eldest was all of 4, we were told by the elderly and almost retiring reception teacher (Christian name Critchell, a seriously frightening woman to parents, but who was very fond of small girls) that our daughter didn’t take criticism well. We didn’t actually climb over the desk to hit her, but I fear we clearly demonstrated where she got it from. At last week’s meeting with the secondary school teachers, where we had once more gone to talk about Eldest, but this time about her GCSE prospects, and what she should be doing for AS level, we were told that she had a wicked sense of humour, but it was very cynical. We tried not to think about where she got that. It was the only ‘criticism’ we collected.

We are regularly informed that Youngest is bossy. At primary school this was definitely a criticism and deemed to be a potential friendship problem. At secondary school they see it as a plus to be channeled into the school council or anything else that needs a reliable decision maker and ‘doer’. Youngest throws herself into almost anything with immense enthusiasm and willingness to please, but no tolerance for people who aren’t trying.
I’ve said before that parenting does not get easier, just different. I remember potty training as ghastly, but, since I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t mastered the art in the end, I did at least understand at some level that it would all be over eventually! Now the difficulties of parenthood are generally more about emotional than physical things. The guiding hand, and the parental worry, is about friends – or lack of them. About whether they are making the ‘right’ choices about subjects, and doing well enough in them, to lead to the career of choice – whatever that might be!
I know we have to let Eldest do what she wants to do, and if we ‘push’ any particular plan it is liable to backfire – she may be sensible but even she likes to get her own way and not be seen to be doing what her aged parents approve of all the time!
And I’ve no doubt that this too will pale into insignificance when we’re trying to provide useful advice about whether he’s the man of her dreams, worth giving up her career for! Perhaps life will be different then, but I doubt it. We will still be trying to decide how we should run our relationships, who’s job it is to do the washing (mine) and the ironing (his) and how best to raise children (and who should do it).
Our toughest task, I’m sure, is going to be learning to let go.

Happy New Year

A Happy New Year to one and all, but especially to my very own (and only) Follower! In her honour I have added a Followers' gadget to my Blog and I await the flood with interest, but little expectation. I'm not sure I understand the advantages of joining; I've been content to put people's addresses down the side of my page as destinations I enjoy visiting regularly and haven't felt it necessary to 'Follow'. Perhaps someone will explain?
The Christmas holiday has flown by and the girls have gone back to school. Since the in-laws mass visit we have had a hugely enjoyable New Year's Eve dinner party (Black Tie and party frocks and enormous quantities of champagne and posh food - guests didn't get up from the table 'til gone 2 in the morning so I guess they had fun too); a brief visit from Northern Friend en route home from her holidays; a visit to London to stay with my parents which included a trip to Tate Britain (Youngest and Husband looked at the Turner Prize contenders for £8 each whilst Eldest and I did the rest of the gallery for free. We didn't think we would get value for money being inclined to dismiss large tracts of art as ‘rubbish’); a welcome Italian meal out and An Inspector Calls (very dramatic and interestingly staged so we could all help make notes for GCSE drama) and a visit from my eldest brother and his family for lunch.
We’re now back in the frozen west in our term time routine. Ballet has begun again. My taxi service just needs to defrost my unused car ready for tonight – perhaps we will be snowed off? I don’t know who wished for a white Christmas, but I’ve had enough now!
(The fox is a regular in my parents back garden.)

Not easier, just different

Last night I went shopping for Quorn. I have never bought it before, nor knowingly eaten it. Not being a vegetarian it hasn't occurred to me to try such things. I don't really understand why you would want to eat something pretending to be meat if you don't approve of eating meat. Prior to owning a husband I was as likely to eat a vegetarian meal as not, mostly because I'm too lazy to cook for just me. So I ate cheese salads, baked beans, fried eggs, lots of salad...

Actually, as a student in Leeds, where I had an electric oven in my room, and a metre to feed with coins (15p for a bathful of hot water), I reduced suppers to a helping of cottage cheese with mango chutney, and a portion of uncooked flapjack (why wait?), followed by fruit, a glass of milk and plenty of chocolate. I seemed to survive!

These days I prepare family meals. This is yet another new phase. It is true that life with children doesn't get easier, just different. I no longer make a separate meal for two little people who cannot wait until Husband gets home. In those days my freezer was full of fish fingers which was pretty much all Eldest ate from when she was about 3 until secondary school. At a meeting with a doctor inspecting her health aged about 4 I was told that while her diet might be boring, it was perfectly balanced and I wasn't to worry about it. I didn't, but it reduced the offer I was prepared to make to Youngest because there's a limit to how many evening meals I was going to make. But they're older now, and can wait for Husband's appearance on week nights. We're only gradually broadening the range of food that Youngest will try - she's very partial to a bowl of pasta with grated cheese, so it is possible to feed her simply when she refuses point blank to eat a roasted vegetable lasagne/veggie chilli/ fish pie or whatever.

It remains true that Youngest likes a roast dinner and no vegetables, Eldest likes fish and chips and lots of fruit, and Husband likes joined up meat. I like most things but won't cook things I don't like (prawns), and I'm not keen to make 4 different meals!

I haven't resolved whether we will actually eat the Quorn. Eldest is taking GCSE Home Economics and is doing a project on Textured Vegetable Protein. She is to make a balanced meal incorporating TVP in school on Thursday, and that means for homework she needs to make sure the cobbled together recipe works in the pie dish that I must buy specially - apparently those I own won't do. I didn't do HE so it's a bit of a learning curve for me too: every dish she makes has to include a psycho motor skill, which basically means anything they make must include pastry, bread (in an hour and a half long lesson), a 'proper' sauce or cake making. This makes savoury dishes quite difficult! So a Quorn savoury pie with a cheese crust is to be produced. They also have to present everything so she'll be designing a menu card, looking for suitable table cloth, napkin, vase and flowers and any other prop she thinks might help. Getting to school on Thursdays on the school bus can be a challenge.

The practice session is tonight so I'd better go and buy that pie dish.