Random thoughts

The death of her father, from Mary Jacob's diary 1862

2011-05-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

Mary Jacob was my great-grandmother. This is an extract from her diary in August 1862, when she was aged 16. She was the eldest child of William Stephen Jacob, an astronomer. He had been appointed State Astonomer at Poona. He, his wife, two eldest and two youngest children travelled from London to Poona by boat. After several months at sea they arrived at the beginning of August 1862. William fell ill almost immediately. (There's an obituary of William Jacob here - Starts at the bottom of the page.)

Saturday 16th August 1862
Annie and I were dressing soon after 6a.m. when Miss Brown came into our room and told us Papa was much worse and that he was wandering, and soon after she came again and said Papa was rational and we were to make haste and go, so we did. We went and kissed Papa and he said to Annie who went in first - "Good night, Annie, my dear. I hope you will lay all these things to heart, and especially what Jesus said, 'Where I am, thou shalt be also". When I went, he said "Good night, Polly". And Mama said, "What will Mary do without you, who have been her constant teacher?", he said, "She will have a better Teacher. She must ask God to be her Teacher." He spoke with great difficulty. They tried to make him sign a paper but could not get him to do it. When the doctor came they tried again, and Mama was going to hold his hand, but he would not let her and said "What is it you want me to sign, I don't sign papers without knowing what they are about." (His mind went directly they asked him about that.) They tried too explain, but he said he thought he and capt. Shortrede had signed that document before, he made a sign for his spectacles nd seemed to be reading and then repeated what he had said. Then he took hold of the shawl and said he was looking for that document Shortrede and he had signed together. Mama said - "Never mind about that" and laid him back and he said "Take care, you'll lose the place" and laid back still. Mama asked him several times if he had any message for the boys, and once she thought he said - Trust in God. Then she asked him several times if he knew her voice and if he did to press her hand and once he nodded. He became fainter and fainter and his breath came thick and hard. We rubbed his hands and feet and put warm bottles to them for they were very cold. Suddenly the hard breathing stopped and he breathed quietly for a few minutes and then he died.

The Candys, Mrs Mitchell and Miss Brown were in at different times and we sent for Adolph. who came shortly before his death. Our grief is unspeakable. All that pain was from his liver, and he could not lie down since Thursday afternoon. They sent for a Mrs Miller to lay out the body and we saw it several times: the countenance so calm, noble and beautiful, all suffering had passed away. Flowers were put round his head and we cut off some of his hair and we are each to have a piece. He said to Mama before we went in when Mama asked him if he were happy - you know I am - Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is staid on thee." The funeral was at a quarter before 6p.m. and several of dear Papa's old Christian friends came to it, Mr James Mitchell read and prayed here and then again at the burial ground under a shed. It was pouring all day, the first good monsoon day they have had at Poona. Dear Papa died at 10' to 10a.m. and the last time he spoke clearly was 8.

Monday 18th August 1862
Mama and Mrs Candy were busy getting mourning from a hawker. Oh, how great is our loss! I cannot realise that we shall never see that dear face again on earth, never feel his arms lovingly round me and hear him call me "Polly". It was dreadful to see that body, so active in life, lie so still and give no answer to our kisses, those bright, impressive eyes closed in death, never more to look upon us in affection and love...

A ghost's dream

2010-12-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

Black. Velvet smooth. Liquid. Drowning. It closes. Like a winter evening when it is suddenly dark. The light fades imperceptibly and the windows become mysterious oily black.

I become aware that I am awake. I am lying in my bed. I feel the cool pressure of the duvet above me, and the softness of the mattress below me. I can feel a crease in the sheets under my left thigh.

The room is silent. No music. There is no sound of birds outside. Or of cars. Or rain falling against the window. I can almost hear the dust settling on the mantlepiece. I think I have been dreaming. A velvet black dream. A sensation of company. Of others. Of not being alone. I feel their faces and voices still pressed against my mind. They are fading to shadows already. I wonder if they were the dead or the living.

I remember dreaming of my grandmother. It happened twice in the year after she died. She spoke to me in the dream. I could not remember when I awoke what she had said. But I remembered her face. I knew in the dream that she was dead. But she was not a ghost. She was my living grandmother. I found it strangely comforting.

The air is cold in the room. The curtains lift slightly as though there is a light breeze through an open window. There is no breeze. The window is shut.

I slip out of bed. Out from under the covers. And swing my legs round until my toes touch the floor. I feel my way onto the carpet with my feet and stand up. The carpet is hard and unfriendly. It has no underlay. I can feel the boards underneath it. The room smells of dust and stale air.

I go to the window and pull back the curtains. The pale wintery sun is just peeping over the rooftops. The watery sky looks as though it has just been painted. It gleams. I am seeing the sun through water. If I could reach out my hand through the window pane I could swirl the sky as I used to swirl my children’s bathwater, watching tiny whirlpools form in my wake.

Medea part III (1st draft)

2010-08-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

He promised her the stars
She believed him a god
Anything. Anything
He could do
She felt protected in the arc of his muscled arm
Felt the soft touch of his long sun-bleached hair
Against her cheek

But she held not his heart
Beauty, intelligence, devotion
It was not
Enough
Right
What he wanted

His eyes looked out beyond the sea
Thirst for steel-quickened moments
Sharp breath
Seeking the gods

She saw it through a veil
Sun-dazzled by his admiration
It would not last

He vowed he was in earnest
His love for her flared bright
Like paper to a candle flame
He told her he had never loved so
Intently
But his intent was clouded
Quagmired by the quickness of their love
Quickened in blood
Thicker than the water it floated in

Her brother’s blood
Blood ties

For love
She saved him
But love is a madness

His love for her was true
At that moment
He would have died for her

Hold onto that moment
It is all you have
It slips away like the shore from a departing ship
So close you could still touch with your fingertips
But already it is out of reach
Gone

I watch her
She did it all for love
Is that so wrong?

Character

2010-05-12T02:46:00.000-07:00

Jean had thin soft hair drawn away from her face to either side of a ruler-straight parting down the centre of her scalp. Her parted fringe dropped like a curtain to just below her jaw line. At the back, her hair was coiled up into a bun at the nape of her neck. A chignon, she called it, challenging anyone to use the word ‘bun’. The colour was orange, clumsily dyed to cover the white.

Her nose tapered to a point. Her eyes were blue; steely cold blue with very small pupils. They darted left and right; and narrowed cruelly at times. She was very short and had child-bearing hips. Her hips distressed her. She chose to ignore them, seeing in the mirror the figure of a ballerina that had greeted her each morning in her heyday.

Her skin was pale; too pale for the hot sun. She burnt dreadfully and had to stay indoors when the noon sun beat down and the earth smelt hard-baked and dry. She would retire to her dressing room and rest on the chaise longue that was squeezed in amongst the mundane office furniture.

Her chin jutted out, emphasising the downward turn of her mouth and the length of her nose. She looked down that nose at the world. No one else had suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune that she had done throughout her life, from her early days shunted between boarding schools and distant relatives; avoided by her glittering mother; through her years at the Bolshoi; and into her disappointing marriage.

She eyed Edward down her nose when she wasn’t concentrating. When she remembered, she looked up at him adoringly and smiled her sweetest, most heart-warming smiles, and stroked his ego with the deft strokes she had always used. He had long since seen through them, but chose to ignore the fact, seeing instead the girlish ballernina he had wooed and won in the Thirties, through his whisky glass.

He painted her as a girl even now, kneeling among the flowers, gazing apparently into the distance, her soft golden hair fanning out behind her, the light so cleverly captured by his brush. But he always painted her from behind.

It is autumn now

2009-12-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

Never let the sun go down on your anger

Childhood. Memories of long hot summers. The summer of ’76. The drought summer. I remember grass crisp as fried seaweed. My brother and I slept out under the open sky, snug in our sleeping bags on two canvas frame beds. We lay there looking up at an inky indigo sky filled with spots of dazzling light.

Millions of stars, flung across the sky with Jackson Pollock abandon. I’ve never seen the stars shine more brilliantly than on those nights of the drought summer.

Sports day – the dry earth cracked like a dried-out African water hole. The sun beat down on us. I was in the 100 metres and the long jump. I remember running into the white elastic finishing line, dragging it on into a long springy vee. First. A rosette. My house was blue. I don’t remember the names of the houses. We had small round badges, plain dark blue.

Never let the sun go down on your anger.

My parents always said that. No argument left to fester overnight. My children’s childhood. Is that what went wrong? It was fire that went underground and ate away at all that was good. Out of sight. Corrosive. Cancerous.

I remember running. As fast as I could, down the grass bank, flung open the kitchen door, up the stairs, slammed into the bathroom and locked it. Heaving gasps, leaning against the door in relief. My brother hammering on the other side.

‘You cheated! You cheat! You filthy rotten liar! I’m gonna kill you!’

No one else at home. I think he would have hit me with the croquet mallet if I hadn’t got away.

Cool fresh smell of the vinyl floor. I sat and waited. Half an hour later we were happily playing again. All forgotten.

That feeling. Being tucked up in bed, secure, loved. All forgiven and forgotten. The warmth emanates outwards, like a cosy mug of hot chocolate warming your insides. The glow of being loved.

Never let the sun go down on your anger.

But anger is here. Not lifted up into the sky like so much chaff on the late summer breeze. It is autumn now. The leaves are rotting on the paths and the grass is wet with misty dew.

Trying to be creative when surrounded by mush

2009-12-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

I would love to be a sculptor. After years of being swamped by all the paraphenalia that goes with small children, my only sculptural creations are made out of cake or sand. These are a few of them

Some illustrations

2009-11-18T02:06:00.000-08:00

This is what I've been working on lately.

Medea Part II (3rd draft)

2009-07-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

I remember the open sky;
The lapping of the waves;
The rise and fall of the horizon.

We stood so close.
He led my sight to a point
Where sea and sky intermingled
As had he and I
While all the palace slept.
There, he said, and beyond there lies my home.
His eyes softened.
Your home now, he whispered into my soft tumbling hair
The salt would turn to brittle
Before the journey’s end.

I watched him work.
The sounds were thin and distant;
I saw it as through a window,
Cocooned, wrapped in love.
I breathed the scent of his skin,
Closed my eyes,
Touching mine.
Last night I had tasted enchantment
That my mother could not teach me.

My father would pursue us.
He would kill us both
For lust and jealousy of the golden fleece.

I stood on deck far out to sea;
But I saw Apsyrtus answer my father’s call.
My eager brother.

As I floated serene,
Enveloped in the memory of my lover’s arms,
An idea formed itself
Like clouds tumbling into shapes
Of things with meanings.

I turned slowly,
Slipped off my lover’s trace,
Tiptoed barefoot across the warm timbers.

Jason’s men averted their eyes.
I understood;
Men dare not look upon beauty
Claimed by their captain.
It dazzles them beyond bearing.

Medea - dramatic monologue

2009-05-18T04:07:00.000-07:00

At my window, unobserved through curtained leaves
I saw him first,
My eyelids blinked in morning sunshine
That pierced the water lapping at his ship.
He had the clear look of honest hero.
Virility purposed striding up from dappled harbour.
His face marble-stern
Softened as he tossed a smile upon the slave
Who took his message to my father.

I heard my maid approach and swathed myself in drapings.
I held this moment secret

He was there beneath my window;
So close I heard him breathe.
He paused in shadow.
I paused too.
I heard him say ‘the Golden Fleece’
Tight-voiced. No matter.
He would hunger for me too.

I can move freely, unseen, unheard.
It is an art.
Despite herself my mother taught me
Even as she sang language into my heart.

So now I drew
Close enough to touch my fingertips to his.
I turned my head.
My lips just brushed his shoulder.
His musky vigour moved me.
I shied away.

My father introduced us.
He started;
That instant in his eyes – and mine –
Recognition.

Stylised picture

2009-04-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

A hot summer's day, lying on the grass at Old Sarum

Pantoum

2009-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

A Pantoum is a poem with each line repeated in a set order. This gives it a circular feel. Not sure what I think of it really. It has a meloncholy air, I think... because it has that sense of being stuck in a loop.

Dream

I walk alone through long grass
the night air cracks and spits
I remember it was your birthday
sandy toes washed by lapping waves

the night air cracks and spits
I dream of
sandy toes washed by lapping waves
you laughing

I dream of
the taste of salt
you laughing
that day upon the beach

the taste of salt
I remember it was your birthday
that day upon the beach
I walk alone through long grass

Standing on the brink

2009-03-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Then I was sinking.
There were moments of black,
Silent screaming, heavy,
Spinning like millstones.

Sand through my fingers.
Thin lines became cracks,
Fissures yawning into chasms
That swallowed up warmth
Light, security - I could see my children
Hanging by their fingertips onto
Some semblance of domestic serenity;
But it was spinning away,
Smashing against the blank
Of blankness.

I was standing on a precipice.
I could feel the uprush of wind;
Adrenalin rush;
Useless, pointless;
It turns on itself
And eats from the inside.
It is a destroyer,
Erasing all that is sunny
And light.

How do you describe such a feeling?
It tastes of fear.
It drags its prey away from the pack.
Into the dark
The dark the dark
A blank dark
That clouds your eyes like mad noise
And magnifies the sound
Of I don't know what

And then it was over
And I don't remember what
And I don't remember what
And I don't want
To remember what it felt like

Snow

2009-02-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Fantastic! We've had proper snow! Snow that's stayed around for more than one afternoon. We haven't had snow like that for eighteen years!

The dog loved it - he bounded out into the garden last Monday and charged round in circles trying to eat it and play in it at the same time. The children loved it - it turned the world into a weird white alien landscape. And their school closed every day last week except Wednesday.

I've loved it! I've been for long walks with the dog across the local golf course - usually out of bounds to a bouncing hound who won't necessarily come back when I call him. I've been sledging with the children on school days because there has been no school. We've perched on the warm sofa looking out at huge snowflakes falling onto an already white world; and thrown soft powdery snowballs at each other in the garden.

My children have never seen so much snow. There hasn't been that much snow here for eighteen years. And there hasn't been real proper deep snow for thirty years.

We had two winters in a row in the seventies when we got snowed in for at least a week - really snowed in. I remember the snow was at least a couple of feet deep everywhere on the ground and there were drifts over six feet deep in places. We lived two miles down a rough track and very few cars came down the track at the best of times. But during those snowy weeks, not even the farm tractors drove past our house. The snow had been blown into drifts four feet deep along the stretch of track beyond our garden and nothing was going to get through without a snow plough.

I remember walking with my brothers through the woods on the hill above our house to the best sledging slope around and looking at the virgin snow on the field beyond the woods. The snow had a gleaming icy crust on top. We stepped onto it and the crust held our weight. We walked gingerly forward and still it held. Then suddenly my foot broke through the crust and the snow was up to my waist. It was incredibly difficult, then, to get back onto the crust and I flailed along until my brother hauled me out.

We had a carport with a roof made of corrugated plastic sheets on wooden beams - and the weight of snow made the roof collapse onto our two cars beneath. The neighbours came and helped my father dig them out.

We walked up the track to the Bridport road one day - a long walk across the fields. I loved the way the roads and paths were hidden beneath the blanket of snow. It felt liberating - we could walk where ever we liked without fear of treading on precious crops or disturbing livestock. The snow was so deep that barbed wire fences half as tall as 10-year-old me had become little chain fences that I could step over without breaking my stride.

The snow was even deeper around the main road up on the exposed ridge. There were cars that had been abandoned several days before still trapped there - some had bits of windscreen and roof showing; some were just mounds of snow on the road. The drifts were as tall as my father.

It was fantastic. And for me, it arrived when I was just the right age to enjoy it. Old enough to go trudging off through the snow with my two brothers and sledge down the steepest hill around and not mind getting wet and cold. Young enough to have no responsibility, no pressure at school, no reason not to want to be cut off from the world for a whole week during term time. Two weeks, two years, fantastic memories.

Memory

2009-01-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

It is hard to write when you're feeling tired. I'm very tired today, so this may be a somewhat dull and plodding post... I thought of something to write just now, but - it's gone. Can't remember it. If I went back to where I was when I thought it, I'd probably remember it again. But I'm sitting here now, and I need to go to bed soon, so I won't.

I'll write about memory instead. Memory scares me sometimes. It's the fear of losing it. Maybe I've read to much about memory loss; watched too many documentaries about people that have lost theirs...

Actually, I haven't read that much - the neurologist, Dr Oliver Sachs' book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, made a big impression on me. It's an excellent book made up of a series of case studies of his patients who have sustained (or been born with) an excess or lack of some brain function. It's really interesting; brilliantly written. One case study was about a man who had lost his long-term memory. He could only remember the previous few minutes - only for as long as the event stayed in his short-term memory. Nothing new transferred into his long-term memory. So after a couple of minutes each new memory would fade and be lost. He had to be retold daily what had happened to him. The death of his mother? brother? I can't remember who (I read it a long time ago) was a new tragedy for him to absorb each day... It sounds like a terrible sort of limbo to me.

I saw a fascinating documentary some years ago about three men who had suffered some kind of memory loss. One was a conductor. He had also lost his long-term memory, and in every day life he too couldn't remember things for more than a few minutes. What was really interesting, though, was that he could still learn a whole new piece of music and conduct an orchestra for over an hour at a time. Music, it seemed, is stored in a different area of the brain.

I read The Man Who ... when I was a teenager; and that documentary must have aired at least a decade ago; but they both made a strong and lasting impression on me. What is it that makes certain things stick? Are some things intrinsically interesting - the human mind, for instance? Or did those things just stick in my mind? What makes us interested in particular things in the first place?

I'm sure the answer to those questions is out there, written on reams of paper in stacks of books and theses, but I don't think I need to go looking for an answer. I'm happy in this case just to delve into my own memory to find my answers.

After all, I'm so tired, I just need to log off now; haul my way up stairs; clean my teeth; and climb into my lovely inviting cosy bed.

One week later - seven days more clutter - and dreams

2009-01-18T09:22:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to type in the dark at the moment. The children are playing a game that involves having the lights off, and I'm hunched over the keyboard in the corner. I can touch type pretty fast but it's very disorientating when you can't see the keyboard at all.

I managed to shift half the newspapers out of the front door into the recycling box last Monday, but have had one child off school sick all week and there is still a two-foot high pile of papers in the hall - and a new stash of dailies growing (daily) in Bruce's cave. Sometimes newspapers invade my sleep; I dream I'm wading through newspapers like thick tangled seaweed. It's a sensation that turns up at random in my dreams - I can't always see the newspapers, but I know they are there.

Dreams - do you remember your dreams? I have very distinct memories of some of my dreams. In one, I was driving a car through dense fog; I remember the feeling of cold wetness against my skin. I closed my eyes - that seemed the only sensible thing to do - reached my arm out of the car window and felt my way along by walking my fingertips along the kerb.

Apparently, the logical bit of your brain switches off when you're dreaming. I love it when I remember my dreams. I love the way everything makes perfect sense while you're dreaming and then when you wake up you realise (if you're lucky enough to remember it for more than a moment) that it was actually completely bizarre.

A great aunt of mine was a psychologist, an early follower of Jung. Jung set great store by dreams and was deeply interested in the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. My great aunt, M. Esther Harding, wrote a number of books, though none specifically about dreams (I think) - my parents have several of them at home - the only one that I can visualise is The I and the not I which I gather is about the conscious and subconscious. I haven't read it.

Her most famous book, it seems, is Way of all Women. I looked for it on Amazon and found a copy that you can look inside. From the first few pages, it actually looks really interesting, so I think I might see if I can read it next time I'm visiting my parents.

(The illustration with this post, by the way, is a doodle I drew when I was supposed to be working on an A level essay for Antony and Cleopatra over two decades ago. If you look carefully, you can find the words 'Antony and Cleopatra' within the doodle. My brilliant mother had kept it all these years, along with my strange guitar case picture with the 'Imagination' poem and the watercolour I did of the view from my bedroom window at 'Penn'.)

Things I've done this weekend

2009-01-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

Shifted furniture
Shifted boxes
Made beds
Walked the dog
Written thank you letters
Created a four foot tall tower of newspapers in the hall
Logged onto Facebook
Thought about things
Played with the dog
Played with the children
Played with Robbie's new Hornby railway set
Helped Robbie play games on the Bionicle website
Got sense of satisfaction from beating the baddies on the Bionicle website
Got bored with completing quests on the Bionicle website
Spent too long on the computer
Failed to think of anything to rant about
Read the Books section of the Saturday Times
Cooked pasta
Read the Body & Soul section of the Saturday Times
Read the Saturday Times magazine
Read 'The Seige of Gondor' from Lord of the Rings to the children
Designed a website homepage
Been to see the doctor
Not had to wait too long in the doctor's waiting room
Found out that my shoulder tendons have gone into spasm and I need physio
Lost the piece of paper with the physio's phone number on it
Read the first pages of 'The Ride of the Rohirrim' from L o t R to the children
Watched bits of 'Celebrity Big Brother' and most of the 'Sunday Night Project'
Written this...

What I think about recycling

2008-12-31T09:24:00.000-08:00

We should be recycling less!

People are inherently lazy, so here are a few reasons I have heard for not recycling:

1. It takes up too much time and space
2. The council just throws it all in landfill anyway
3. Global warming - it's just a load of b****cks

Taking them one by one:

1. Yep, it is time and space greedy. At the moment, I have two dustbins full of tetra packs; one dustbin full of shoes; a big green wheelie bin half-full of waste food, cardboard and shredded paper; a tower of newspapers four feet high and three small recycling bags full to the brim with bottles, cardboard and squashed tins.

The sheer quantity of it does drive me bananas!! But I don’t mind doing it. It makes me feel good. I have a sense of achievement after I’ve sorted it all into the various bins and boxes. Feeling good is good for you.

2. I don’t know about this one. Some of it might end up in landfill, and it really shouldn’t. But if even some of it gets properly recycled (and it certainly does), that’s good.

3. You'll always get the sceptics. Another comment I’ve come across more than once is: 'They try to scare us with all this global warming but it's just the world going through its natural cycle.' I think they’re both wrong. Besides I don't think that's the point. Whether global warming is happening or not, it really isn't the point.

The point surely is that we need to reduce the amount of waste we produce and reduce the amount of energy we squander.

I think the 20th century will be remembered in future centuries as the century of obscene consumption; the century when most of the world's resources were squandered. This century is going to be different - because it has to be. Not just because we'll run out of all those resources, but also because the mood will change. That way of existence is too exhausting.

Sometimes I think humanity is like a rampant cancer, eating away at the world; run mad - like cancerous cells multiplying too fast and threatening to destroy their host. But that's just me being fanciful.

Back to the point: Reducing our carbon footprint is surely the point. And that means firstly recycling, but ultimately drammatically cutting the waste we produce in the first place.

We have to stop producing so much rubbish. Less packaging, less throwaway culture, less print, less energy consumption, more patching up, more mending, more writing on the back of an envelope.

So, recycling? Yes, do it. It helps. But it has to be so much more - there needs to be a seismic cultural shift away from producing the waste that needs recycling in the first place.

Take the Elizabethans - I've been reading Bill Bryson's Shakespeare. He writes about archived records from Elizabethan times - almost impossible to decipher, because they are written in cramped hand-writing, with no new paragraphs, no white space, writing in the margins, sometimes written over, horizontally, across the text to use up more space. Paper was an expensive commodity then and used sparingly. Nowadays paper is cheap. Its price doesn't take into account its cost.

I Googled 'waste paper' and 'recycling' and various other green words and there are reams of pages out there on how to reduce your carbon footprint. I'm not going to have much of an impact on anyone else's, so I'm going to focus on my own.

At the moment, our household's waste production per fortnight is as follows:
1 black wheelie bin full of rubbish (could be better)
1 green wheelie bin full of compostable stuff (okay)
2 recycling boxes-worth of glass, plastic and metal (could be better)
1-2 recycling box-worth of paper (could be better)
too much electricity
too many short car journeys

My new year's resolution is to try to cut this down.

Ofsted inspectors and the culture of complacency

2008-12-30T04:28:00.001-08:00

Recently, my children's school was Ofsted inspected. The inspection focused on three very specific areas. Other aspects of the school 'were not investigated in detail' the inspectors' report said and so the school's own assessments 'were included where appropriate' in the report.

I haven't read the school's own assessments. I don't think they are in the public domain. So it is impossible for me to distinguish between the inspectors' words and the words of the school's senior management. For all I know anything from 1% to 99% of the inspectors' report may be the school's own report simply regurgitated and rubber-stamped by Ofsted.

In some ways, this doesn't matter. Our school is a reasonably good state primary school and should be capable of producing a reasonably balanced and thorough self evaluation.

But I can't see any positive value in this kind of school inspection. It won't help a school highlight areas of weakness and find ways to improve them, because of the intense pressure on schools to impress the inspectors. A school's standing is hugely affected by its Ofsted rating. Parents can be influenced by Ofsted reports. Schools broadcast their outstanding grades with pride - try Googling joy at outstanding ofsted grade. So it is in a school's interests to gloss over its failings and present as slick and positive an image to the inspectors as it can. That way, it's more likely to get a glowing report and the best possible grade.

Ironically, the thought process behind reliance on school's own self-evaluation is positive: Ofsted has recognised the need 'to trust schools more and to draw on the professionalism of teachers' in their inspections. But the system is flawed. There is a reliance on an organisation's self-evaluation while simultaneously putting pressure on it to impress.

A school's self-assessment will have been produced with that pressure very clearly in mind; and by echoing back the school's self-assessment within an official report, the inspectors give it formal validity. There is a danger that this system encourages complacency and self-satisfaction, and positively discourages a more self-critical approach.

The inspectors' report for our school stated that there was 'no evidence' to contradict the school's own assessments. That's great; but out of interest what constitutes 'evidence'? What would have happened if they had found any? Would they have had to investigate further? Would that have thrown out their schedules? Have they got a vested interest in accepting the school's assessments at face value? You bet they have! Nice school, all okay, job done, on to the next one...

In which case, what is the point of it all? My biggest question is: do schools need to be inspected so much and so often? If the school is clearly capable of making its own comprehensive and generally accurate self-assessments, why do external inspectors need to keep coming round every couple of years anyway? Let the schools just get on with it - they would be able to produce a more honest and full report for themselves that they can then work on unimpeded by Ofsted.

Final point, the school was judged as outstanding in all the areas that the inspectors didn't look at closely. I have no idea whether it is outstanding or just good, but how can the inspectors be sure of it when they weren't actually looking? Meanwhile, a friend of mine who is a childminder got Ofsted inspected recently. She was judged as 'outstanding' in absolutely everything except one very tiny thing - she hadn't produced a written complaints procedure. So she was judged overall as 'good'. She childminds for goodness sake! She's fantastic at it! And they've marked her down as 'good' because of one piece of paper! And yet a whole school in charge of the education of two hundred children gets 'outstanding' for whole areas they aren't actually looking at. Where's the consistency in that?

Inspiration

2008-12-28T06:13:00.000-08:00

I wish I could pluck you from the air
Or hear you whisper in my inattentive ear
Not wake from sleep amongst the moon shadows
And miss you rattling the night-black windows.
You creep into my too-wakened dreams;
By morning you have gone with the moonbeams
And I am left with a throbbing head
From too little sleep in my fretful bed.
Sometimes when I’m stirring soup or pasta,
Stopping the mouths of children with food not rhyme,
The thoughts come tumbling quicker and faster
And all I need is pen and paper and time –
Which is what I lack –
And you leave again and don’t come back.

Working for Dorothea

2008-12-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

The ground is hot. The red dust is a dry taste on her tongue all day long. Lisa runs the tap, quickly, so that Dorothea doesn’t see, letting the water spill over her hand as she holds a cracked cup under the tap. She gulps down the fresh cool liquid, feeling two rivulets running down the sides of her chin.

She wipes her chin on her apron. Then lifts up the two heavy steel saucepans, one nested inside the other, full of hastily-washed earthy potatoes. She carries them outside.

Annie is already sitting there, bowl wedged between her knees, slicing tomatoes. The juice oozes through her fingers and drips onto the dust.

Lisa sits down heavily on the step beside her and drops the pan. It lands with a loud twang. Must have hit a stone.

There is no other sound. Annie is slicing silently. No birds sing. The valley is utterly still.

The high-edged woods loom over the farm. The air feels close, as though the woods are pressing inwards.

Lisa sets to work on the potatoes. The peelings drop onto the earth. They become caked in red dust once more. The peeled potatoes she throws into the larger saucepan where each one lands with a thud.

Annie looks up. Lisa catches her eye. Annie’s expression is veiled. Like a cat, she thinks. Sometimes Annie is –. Annie looks back down. She watches her. Annie is looking at her hands, red and raw, wet with sharp tomato juice.

Lisa looks at the paper cut on her own hand. She thinks – I’m glad I’m on potatoes today.

They work in silence for a while.

If it wasn’t for the silence – she feels the warming glow of sunshine sinking through her skin, revitalising her. No, it’s not the silence, it’s Dorothea.

She sighs. Suddenly her skin feels colder. A chill creeping round from the back of her neck.

A fly lands on the rim of the larger saucepan. It tiptoes round the rim, twisting left and right as it goes. Doing a kind of dance. She watches it fascinated. Then she throws the next potato into the pan. The fly flies off.

Suddenly, Annie speaks. Her voice is so low – quieter than a whisper – that Lisa doesn’t catch the words.

Annie says again, ‘Is O still in the kitchen?’

She nods, with the hint of a grimace, hardly there at all.

Annie’s shoulders droop.

They work their way on down through the heap. The pile of peelings gets larger, moist potato skin glistening through the red dust. She can see Annie beginning to wince with every fresh dousing that her work-worn fingers get.

The sun is too hot, she knows it is. But she likes it, defiantly. Dorothea doesn’t approve of sitting in the sun. Dorothea has had skin cancer.

So she and Annie sit in the sun, challenging the sun to do its worst. Its worst can’t be worse than Dorothea’s.

Penn - A Ghazal

2008-12-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

I found a picture of you pressed between dull leaves,
A painting from my window across brick-red eaves.

Grey roof tiles glossy with rain-wet sheen,
A look of drab urbanity that deceives.

The view from my brother’s window was of woods and fields.
A world of birdsong, endless summers and day-long make-believes.

Your far-off landscape still permeates my sleep,
Gilding the dream that my subconscious weaves.

There is no return to my exiled homeland.
Time and distance have been unwitting thieves.

You have been gone seven months, twenty-two years.
Yet the very core of me still grieves.

There is no prejudice in my affection for you. Nor pride.
Only my love for that which memory never leaves.

The Dorset of my childhood

2008-12-28T04:35:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here alone in the darkening room. I have been watching the sun going down. Now you can just about see the shape of the cows, still grazing, silhouetted against the pale blue sky. There is a row of trees along the fence, dividing the cow field from the track. Black forms against the slate grey grass.

The windowsill where I sit has grown cold while I have been here. I can feel the air slipping gently past my bare feet and over the curved white edge of the sill down onto my bed, like a stream of spirits coming in with the night, curling themselves up contentedly on my bedroom carpet. I fancy they are the spirits of cats.

I look down at the floor, trying to see them. I know they are not really there, but my spine thrills with a shiver anyway. The cows on the hill are walking along the skyline slowly towards the blackness of the woods. There is something ancient about the way they walk and about the stillness of this evening. I feel a deep closeness to the ancestors who watched the self-same hill and the self-same sunset, now taking their rest in the churchyard two miles from here.
At times like this, I think that they are only sleeping. Dreaming perhaps.

The house has become very dark now. I can just about make out the solid blankness of my bedroom door and the soot-blackness of the fireplace. I uncurl myself from the windowsill and slip down gently past the end of my bed. The cold air wafts round my ankles as I step across to the door, making me skip sideways away from the spirit fingers that seem to be trying to grab me. I hurry out onto the landing.

The darkness is heavier here, speeding me to the stairs and down two-at-a-time. I could do it with my eyes shut. I often move about the house in darkness. There is something about knowing a space so well that you can see it in your mind and not need to use your eyes. It makes it more truly yours. And that slight fear of the supernatural lends it excitement. I know that they don’t really exist, these spirits, like the monsters that used to live under my bed when I was a small child. I am old enough to know that they are not really there. But there is something about a very old house like this, something about the way it creaks and groans that makes it feel companionable.

So I hurry down the stairs and across the hall and push open the door and step into the sittingroom where the orange glow of the dying embers takes me back to my childhood.

Dave, Cobra beer ads and pink for girls

2008-12-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

We watch the Dave channel in our household. QI, Red Dwarf, old Have I Got News For You... Top Gear... Ray Mears ... excellent stuff.

So Dave programmes get the thumbs up as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I reckon I watch more Dave than any other channel. But there is one thing I can't stand about Dave. There's one thing that really makes my stomach churn and makes me switch channel whenever there's a commercial break.

The Cobra beer ads; the ones with the hand-drawn blokes in the bar. The dialogue is inoffensive enough in a pointless nondescript sort of way; but there is something unpleasant lurking behind the bland blokes-in-a-pub-ness of those ads.

It's the women bar staff. It's not just the way their breasts bounce up and down as they walk across the screen behind the men. Though that's kind of weird. It's the fact that they are entirely silent. They don't say a word. There are no women saying anything in any of the Cobra ads. The men do all the talking. The women just glide around silently in the background with bouncy breasts. They are anonymous anywomen. Anonymous anywomen from a certain simplistic kind of male fantasy.

Do the Dave executives think only men watch Dave? I doubt it. I think they just don't give a toss. They know that women are so used to accepting that that is the way things are. Women will carry on watching Dave despite the fact it proclaims itself to be the blokey channel, because the programmes themselves appeal to anybody; even the really blokey programmes - like Top Gear for instance. Jeremy Clarkson may come across as a totally unreconstructed male throwback, but he treats women and men pretty equally as far as I can see. He and the others take the mick out of men as much as women. That's equality.

I believe in equality. And I think that life is becoming less equal for women now than it was twenty years ago.

Take colours for girls and boys. When I was a kid, merchandise for boys and girls was sold in the same range of colours - blue, red, green, brown, grey etc. etc. I would imagine you were more likely to get girls' stuff in pink than boys', but I never had anything pink. And I know that when we went shopping, we weren't presented with the segregated merchandising that you get today: Go into John Lewis and the girls' clothes and furnishings are dominated by pink, lilac, sequins, baby animals and fluff; the boys' by red, blue, camouflage, cars and technology. It's the same in many stores. Girls' trainers', girls' curtains, girls' duvet sets - you name it, they come in pink and lilac; or if you're somewhere a little more daring, they might come in pale green...

So what does this say about modern society? Is this conditioning? Is it nature? Either way, I think the conditioning has become more dictatorial in recent years.

Two years ago, The Times gave away a poster each day for a week, each one entitled 'Dangerous Poster for Boys'. One poster, for instance, was about flags and codes - semaphore, morse code and the NATO phonetic alphabet. My daughter (aged 8) loved them. She memorised morse code and the phonetic alphabet. The posters were great - informative in a fun and exciting way. My parents still have a couple of them up in the bedroom the children sleep in when we visit.

This was followed by a book in time for Christmas 2006, called The Dangerous Book for Boys, packed with exciting examples of Boys' Own type adventurous stuff.

But why did it have to say for Boys? Presumably 'for boys' is more snappy than 'for children'; and it isn't child-specific. A boy can be any age. But that really isn't good enough. It comes down to the same thing as the Dave beer adverts. Women and girls will watch or read things that are marketed exclusively for men and boys. But the same thing doesn't happen the other way round. So marketing executives are lazy. Rather than think up a gender-free alternative, they use the easy 'male' option.

Or perhaps it's more prejudiced than that. The Dangerous Book for Boys was followed by the Girls' Book of Glamour (A Guide to being a Goddess) ... in pink. What does that say about the media view of girls versus boys?

Random thoughts in the early hours when I wish I was asleep...

2008-12-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

It's 4.30 am and I should still be asleep. But I'm not. For about six months I've had this painful ache in my right shoulder... I can't straighten my right arm above my head. My back aches. The muscles in my neck feel tight. I wake up in the early hours with this stabbing pain in my shoulder.

Why? Because we have a dog who pulls on the lead. He's better than he was... he now walks to heel some of the time. But he'll suddenly pull away, yanking the lead hard - and each time it happens, I get this sharp stabbing pain around my shoulder socket. And as it happens several times on each walk, that's a pretty hefty amount of repetitive strain going on.

I've taken him to puppy classes; I've had a dog trainer round here for several one-hour sessions. The puppy's great with the trainer.

He's a really good-natured dog. Half Springer spaniel, half labrador; sweet with children; totally unaggressive with other dogs; always incredibly cheerful. But I'm beginning to wonder if I'm ever going to get him under control.

We met a springer/collie cross yesterday. She's seven years old. She runs just like Frodo, ears flapping, uncoordinated in a loveable gangly sort of way, full of the joys of life. In fact, she had even more energy than he had... She kept getting his ball and running off with it, bounding round the field with a big doggy smile on her doggy face. She didn't take any notice when her owner called her. She didn't drop the ball when commanded to. She just bounced around happily doing her own thing. And she's seven years old.

When we first got Frodo, everyone said, 'Oh, they settle down when they're about 18 months old.' Then we were told, 'Labradors settle down when they're two...'. But I'm starting to wonder whether the Springer spaniel-labrador mix is hard-wired to stay bouncy for ever...

So the question is, what am I going to do about it? He has to be walked. I have to walk him.

I've tried a halty: he pulls less, but still pulls; and he hates it so much that he won't come back if I let him off the lead. I've tried a harness: didn't make any difference. I've tried a choke chain. I do training exercises with him at home; he's pretty good in the house. But somehow the work doesn't translate into the big wide world. So what do I do?