Looking back, looking forward

Change can come suddenly, unexpectedly, catastrophically. Change can creep slowly, erosion over time, unnoticed until comparison with the past forces focus. Today, it was the cheese. As I ate my lunch and my supermarket Stilton, I had a moment of regret, of noticing.
One of the life-style changes we actively embraced on moving from suburbia to rural was our weekly trip to the village market: the fresh fruit and veg. from the greengrocer and a new cheese as well as a favourite from the cheese van. It's one of the little losses that have slipped away in the last year. I don't realise how poorly I've become and how furious our current pace of life is until I remember that we always went to the market on Fridays and now we just don't have time. My energy levels mean that I get much less done in much more time and my partner has far more on her shoulders than is equal. Growing a business in which our product is ourselves, our time, our energy and our motivation and running this business in two locations, three-hundred miles apart takes its toll.
We are counting the weeks: six until our last work-trip South; eight until surgery; thirteen until the last exam paper is marked and we head on holiday to Scotland and a caravan on a quiet island where otters play.
Then. Then it will be different. We have to make it so. We have to remember the life-style we chose, reject the adrenaline rush of busyness and the other-people-impressing activities and possessions. We have to remember the list we wrote when we moved in of all the things that life here was supposed to be:

Happy
Cosy
Candles and shovels when we're snowed it
Dinner at The Farmer's Arms
Old hats and scarves for snowmen
Sitting in the sun, reading
Sitttng by the fire, reading
Snuggling up watching T.V.
Home-laid eggs
Swimming in the Swale
Lots of walks and hills and hot chocolate by the fire and talking
Playing hide-and-seek
Driving an off-roader
Baking
Painting
Catching the bus to Reeth
Writing

Daffodil Whisky Pigeon anyone?

Having taken the plunge to get back into my blog, I think it's important to keep going. It's just that life is so, so busy right now. Having arranged an Easter Revision week with my students in London a long time ago, I have now taken on many more students in the local area and so am fully booked this week too. Not that I'm complaining and we have treated ourselves to a coffee machine as an Easter "bonus". It's so lovely to be working from home, the sun is shining, the Dale is beautiful and the lambs are frolicking.
The children are happy to be home and kept us amused on the last part of the journey home with wild tales based on three random nouns chosen by the others - chocolate lamp-post muffins, ginger raccoon jumpers, daffodil whisky pigeons...
It's a little thing, but moments like those give me a warm glow - somehow I think that our lifestyle and home ed has nourished these imaginations, this confidence and these easy relationships in a special way, and the fruit of that is three laughing children in the car at the end of a long journey,

Calcium - who knew?

It's a long time since I've been here - a really long time! The last photo is of my son's 14th birthday and I am now mulling over what to do for his 15th. It's tricky, because I'd like to take him to the theatre but I will only just be out of hospital and, possibly, recovering from open chest surgery. And that, I guess, it's what has really defined this last year.
I have hypercalcaemia, caused by an over-active parathyroid gland.* I'm tired - all the time. I don't sleep well, which makes me tireder. I can't quite think straight and I have to lie down if I walk more than a few miles. And I'm tired. Did I mention the tiredness? Gradually my life has got smaller and harder and just a little darker. One of the symptoms is anxiety and depression. And I'm anxious and depressed about how little I can do, how hard I find everything and how little energy I have. I'm losing my sense of what's real.
I'm also working too hard. I moved up to Yorkshire at Christmas 2012, keeping on my work as a private tutor in the London area and committed to commuting twice per month. It's worked, it's worked just fine, but gradually the work in the North has picked up and I can leave London behind in September and my partner and I - Bespoke Tutors - can base ourselves entirely at home. So we have taken on every student enquiring in our local area while still holding down a full timetable in the South.
It's all good. I love our life. I walk the dogs (that's another thing, another dog, and another two on their way in June - one to keep and one to train and sell) along the bridle-path at the back of our house every morning - stopping to feed our free-range chickens and check for eggs - and am astounded by the fact that I live here, this is my home. I get to live here every day. I love my life, I love my children, my partner, my dogs, my home and the countryside surrounding me.
But it's hard; It's really hard right now. I don't Home Ed the way I would like to. I don't run any more; I don't read; I don't paint; we don't do days out. And I don't blog. Well, I am now. A dear friend of mine said she'd be mentioning my blog on hers and it's motivated me to show up - I don't want people clicking over and finding that the last time I wrote was last June! What will the neigbours say? And it's a way of getting a little something back. A place to reflect on the good things that are happening, my three children who are thriving and to build up my goals again for that time on the horizon which glows with hope and opportunity - Post Surgery.


*Last June my GP told me that my calcium levels were high. Not a problem, I thought, just cut back on the cheese and yoghurt. No, one of my parathyroid glands has gone into overdrive and needs removing: minor surgery. The appointment to see the consultant was not until September and he sent me off for more tests. These took a few months and I finally saw the surgeon in early December. At this point I was still, naively, wondering if I might get squeezed into the Christmas period. It wasn't to be. My gland gone rogue: in the consultant's words, it is a "cheeky monkey". I have had two ultrasounds, a radioactive tracer test and a CT scan, which have all been very interesting to an A Level Physics teacher, with no positive result. Instead of key-hole surgery, the operation is more like a search and rescue. If opening my neck up with a four-inch incision doesn't find it, a heart surgeon with a video camera will come and help. If he can't find it with the camera then he'll be getting the saw to my sternum! Because the heart guy has to be available, scheduling the op became difficult task and, only by cancelling our family holiday to Spain, has it become possible to find a date in the first half of this year.

School's out!

I have not died, emigrated or been abducted by aliens. But I have been teaching in London, taking my sons to an Open Day at Oxford University and taking the whole family Trafalgar Square and Harrods after our planned Thorpe Park day out was rained off. I've been down to the south coast to visit family and returned home to begin marking 400 exam scripts. In the midst of this we have celebrated my eldest son's 14th birthday. It's been busy and we're all a bit weary but term has ended, the sun is shining and every time I look out of the window I remember that I live in the most beautiful place in the world!

Within the blur

Life is fading out of focus - this academic year is nearly done for us and I am beginning to draw together our various activities. My eldest has completed two IGCSEs this year and is aiming to finish a Literature assignment for his "1000 Years of Poetry" course so that he can put it away over the summer. My younger two each did a maths assessment this morning. Having been very excited by the idea of a maths exam, my little girl puffed her way through an hour of angles and I was surprised at the lack of her usual neatness that her work showed. It was only on marking it with her that I reflected on the fact that it was from a Year 7 textbook and she had got pretty much all of it right. (She's 10.) My student contact for the year is nearly over, the marathon is done and there is a sense of completion.

At the same time, my thoughts are turning to the future. My partner and I are in the process of transforming our tutoring into a business and launching my English teaching here in the Dales and I am beginning to put together my part-time teaching timetable for September. I am about to start exam marking and have just this morning seen a working-from-home opportunity in a local sixth form college which I will be applying for. I am considering options for the childrens' studies for next year, including Open Learn self-study courses available from the Open University and finding centres where the children would be able to take a Modern Foreign Language IGCSE and my two boys are busy planning our schedule for this coming Thursday when we will be at the Oxford University Open Day visiting the English and Engineering departments.

The image I have is of a slide-show, where one picture blurs into the next. For a while nothing is clear, it is just a mess of colour. The old picture is going and the new is not year clear. I feel as if I am living within the blur.

I did it!

I did it. All 23.1 miles of it. The Swaledale marathon. It was pretty hilly, it was very hot, and it was a blast. The best jam sandwich I've ever eaten at 13 miles, ankle-deep mud at 20 and a hot meal at the end. Today has been the first day I've been able to take the dog on a decent walk and come down the stairs without wanting to cry. It's been a long and hard road and I thought that running in snow and bogs was never going to end, but I did it.

Tired

I'm tired. I''m tired of worrying if they're ok and if I'm doing enough, if I'm good enough. I'm tired of worrying that, right now, they are not learning anything.( I remember feeling that way while I changed the baby's nappy and my  eldest watched Teletubbies.) I'm tired of the relentless argument in my head that it really is ok, they really are learning and that they really are at least as educated as their schooled peers. I'm tired of the doubt. I'm tired hearing that the children feel an insidious pressure to go to school, to achieve 10 A*s and that owning a tea-room isn't ambition enough.
When they are excited about grasping vertically opposite angles, or proving the formula for interior angles or writing an essay comparing Shakespearean sonnet form to Spenserian, my confidence flashes for a moment and is gone, like a match flame.
When they are bored, or sneaky, or ungracious, or can't recite their times-tables, the slow-burn of my fear deepens.
I wouldn't have lived any other way. I just wish it wasn't so darn scary. And I wish I wasn't so tired.

Where am I looking?

It's that time of year again. The time of year when the sun is shining, the summer feels tangible, a picnic beckons and formal education feels like too hard a mountain to climb. We are all tired. My eldest is growing weary of revision: he has one more paper to go and he will have completed two IGCSEs. The younger two performed in the Swaledale Festival on Sunday: they played the parts of ghostly children in the poignant and funny, locally written "Deckchairs". I am beginning to panic that we haven't done "enough" this year, that there isn't enough on paper, that the fictional inspector would not be satisfied, that the voices of discontent would be, well, discontent.
I can see that what I often fail to do it to count our successes as weighty as our failures, that new and unexpected opportunities do not matter to me as much as the plans that got left behind. I like to tick boxes, see completed workbooks and have something to show on paper for a year's education.
What I do have to show is three happy, healthy and thriving children. They are increasingly independent and self-motivated. They have all become much fitter and eat more healthily since our move North. My eldest has taken his first qualifications. We have read books, studied maths and science, become part of the local parish church, my daughter has taken up dance, my middle son joined his first football team and my eldest become part of Youth Theatre in Richmond. For my own sake, I can keep repeating their achievements but I'm not sure that it really matters (or is very interesting to read), what matters is that we keep living this life that we have chosen, that the children keep on developing and growing and that I turn my eyes from what we haven't done to what we are, this moment, actually doing.

You are not on the bus!

I work as a private tutor. It is work that I really enjoy and feel passionate about. The students I work with have more going on in their lives than their study of the particular subject which I am working on with them and often this will impact their learning. I see a whole range of approaches to education and to learning, not just from the students but from their parents and, broadly, their are two main schools of thought. For some parents, they are in the driving seat, or beginning to coach their child in taking control. The education, the study, is their thing, to be undertaken, engaged in, over-viewed themselves. This is true of families using schools and of home-educating families. For some, they are out-sourcing: someone else has been brought in to deal with this subject and that person - in this case me - is responsible. This is something I have had to struggle with. Where does my responsibility start? Where does it end? And I find that the more the responsibility gets shuffled my way, the more anxious and involved I get. A parent enters their home-schooled child for a different exam board than the one they are working towards and I notice this and provide the student with the correct specification; work with her to locate which areas of the spec have not yet been covered and which have been learned but can now be left; print off past-exam papers and make sure the student knows what materials they need to take with them. Another student desires an A grade because but fails to put in the question practice necessary, telling me that it is futile or that another subject's course-work needed extra time, and then can only manage a U grade on a mock paper. What is my responsibility? What is theirs?
My own children want to go to University and I have put time in to finding out the entry requirements and have put things in place to move them towards being ready to put together a strong application but they hear contradictory messages and are told that they won't have enough GCSEs. They are unsettled and so am I, and I encourage them to access the information themselves. I will take them to another open day, but I will expect them to plan our agenda, prepare what they want to know and to ask the right questions.
Students and children: I tell them that in the end, it does not affect my life - it affects theirs. They are not on a bus towards Higher Education, they are on a guided trek. I have the experience, the subject knowledge and the motivation to journey with them, to show them the way and to model the techniques  but I cannot (not, will not, but physically cannot) move them along this path myself.  It is their journey, their effort and one that they have to engage in. The answers do not come easily, tears will be shed and huge amounts of effort must be expended.
As this academic year begins to draw to a close and young people are filling exam halls, I am filled with this conviction and seeing the necessity of stating this expectation clearly with new and old students as well as with my own children: You are not on the bus! Get up on your feet and get walking. I will walk with you, I will lead and encourage you but the steps are yours. And at the end, the satisfaction, pride and achievement will be yours too.

Leaves

I am trying to support my eldest as best I can in his last minute revision for Biology IGCSE which he takes next week. My plan this afternoon was to take a part of the specification and teach it to his brother and sister and he could join in. Interactive and fun, I thought, and better than sitting with a text-book. He did not think so, and with gentle politeness said he'd rather revise alone. So I took his younger siblings to the wood just behind our house and we collected leaves: big ones, little ones, spiky and smooth ones.
We looked at them, listed their similarities and differences and discussed what leaves do and then got out the paints. We made Lego water and carbon dioxide, dismantled them and made Lego glucose and oxygen with the pieces. By this stage their big brother decided to join us. He looked up xylem and phloem for us and made sure that our Lego equation balanced.

The younger two had had enough by this point so they left and my eldest and I broke up our Lego glucose and "respired it" to return it to carbon dioxide and water. We talked about the energy changes and my son was deeply impressed that something as amazing as the breaking of inter-molecular bonds could happen in something as ordinary as a leaf. It was interesting, I hope it was memorable, and it was a good afternoon's work.

Isles Bridge

A perfect home ed day. Really. It doesn't get better than this.
My eldest son is preparing for his first GCSE exam on Friday and the twin priorities this week are practicing differentiation and keeping him relaxed. We did an hour of maths at the table, packed a bag and walked 10 minutes to the river. Paddling, it seems, is irresistible.

It wasn't long before my middle son had waded to the other side with his sister anxious to join in. My eldest sat down with me while I painted and we talked over the things on his mind and he drew a little. We had lunch and I read to them from the Science book (he is also revising for Biology GCSE) and we discussed genetic engineering and genetically modifed food. There are frost-resistant potatoes with the DNA of Antarctic fish which they thought was "cool" but were concerned about whether they were vegetarian.

The younger two returned to the river to dare each other to swim and my eldest and I read more about cloning and developed the dystopian idea of  football clubs cloning their best players and training them from birth to be even higher levels of brilliance. Who would the parent be? Would corrupt clubs produce clones with defective DNA and sell them to rival clubs? What if the child did not want to play football? My son's DNA clearly hold more novel-writing genes than engineering genes! I left him revising Biology on my iphone app as I responded to the calls of the younger to to watch them swim.
By this stage they were blue with cold, even in the bright summer sunshine, so we headed home and sat in our garden with hot chocolate and cake and read our current chapter book pausing only to gloat when tourists strolled passed, quietly and to ourselves of course, that we actually live here.
The younger two went out to rehearse for their play after dinner, I had some time to head out on a long run and my eldest enjoyed a solitary couple of hours.
Everything I had planned to do was done: Biology and Maths were revised, chapter book was read, art was available and so much more importantly, emotions were heard, attention was given and life was lived!

Snippets

I only managed five posts in April. My highest total so far has been January ,the month in which I didn't have internet connection. Nearly two weeks have gone passed since I last wrote and it has been so busy that I have barely had time to think that I  haven't blogged, let alone actually type!

My little girl celebrated her 10th birthday,

our first family birthday in our new home. She is such a delightful young lady, with so much will and character and imagination and love.

I have been down to London to teach and had sessions with two students here in Yorkshire. Private tuition is taking up more of my time and my mind as exams creep closer. I been thinking and talking to my partner a lot about the boundary issues involved. While many of our students' parents buy in our services as part of their own active support for their children, there are some who seem to feel that by paying for a tutor they have employed someone  to take on responsibility for the child's learning and grades. 

My eldest is approaching is first IGCSE on Friday and I am so proud of the way he is self-motivated and clear about his own goals. He has Maths and Biology this summer, is taking an on-line Latin course and is still busy writing, writing, writing. We are working hard helping him with his work, supporting his time-management and keeping him in the challenged-but-not-overwhelmed zone.

My middle son has fallen in between the obvious needs of his brother and sister and we have become more aware of the need to carve out the necessary time and focus for him. He is happy working his way cake-by-cake through his Christmas recipe book and taking himself on short walks in preparation for his self-selected 25-mile Keld to Richmond Challenge later this year but is in need of more cuddles and supervision than he has been getting in recent weeks.

We have had family friends staying in our annex and viewed some houses with them with the possibility of them moving to be near us. It has caused no small degree of heart-searching as we have considered all sides of the issue and begun to realise how much it would mean to all of us if they did and how it is probably not going to happen. In opening our hearts to begin to care we have, inevitably, opened them to the possiblity of hurt and disappointment. 

On top of  all this I am still trying to run. I am no longer sure that I will be able to take part in the Swaledale Marathon; I am just not sure that I am fit enough. I seem to have been fighting a virus which brings me down every time I take on too much but I ran 13 miles yesterday so I shall see.

So, it's been a busy time, but much of the busyness comes from fitting in more of the things we love and, as I look out over the Dale in the early moring mist, I cannot say anything else but that life is good.

Drama

I like to plan and to know how things will work out. Sometimes it's just not possible and the natural twists and turns of life write a much superior script to mine.
I have always thought of my eldest son as an introvert, typically quiet and not always forthcoming. He is at his happiest with a book or a pencil, indoors, often alone. He loves to write and has ambitions to be a published author and has never really been a "joiner-in-er". Last Autumn I came across a Shakespeare workshop being held at half-term. He has never shown any interest in acting, but I thought he might enjoy a week working with Shakespeare. The tutor was very encouraging, helping him to see the connections between excellent screen-writing and thorough understanding the acting process and so, nervously, he signed up. He had a great week and most of all loved the chance to stand up and act. He didn't have a big part but he loved what he did.
When we moved north, he was the one I was worried about finding friends. The other two had natural niches  to slot into but not my eldest. Given the success of the Shakespeare workshop, we thought we'd try drama and eventually tracked down a Youth Drama group at the Georgian Theatre in Richmond. This is now the highlight of his week and a place where he has found like-minded young people by whom he feels welcomed, valued and accepted in all his individuality and quirkiness.
So it has come as a surprise to find myself rehearsing lines with my younger two children. They are taking part in a play being put on in June as part of the Swaledale Festival. We know the author and producer quite well and the parts of two other-worldly children who act as one and link the whole play together were just right for them. My eldest is just too... well... old; and too young for any of the adult parts. He has struggled with understandable feelings of jealousy but is looking forward to his own week in the summer with his drama group and the play to be put on at the end of that.
He is also busy revising for two IGCSEs in Biology and Maths and my partner and I are spending a lot of time working with him at the moment and so he is recieving a lot of one-to-one attention. Which means that it is all balancing out rather well: he gets our focus academically and the others don't miss out because we are spending time rehearsing lines with them and they all have a goal in the coming months. I wouldn't have planned it like this, but it seems they all have just what they need.

Home

I'm home. I notice that I haven't blogged in well over a week, not since 8th April ,and I realise that it has all been rather busy. I had a nasty virus and it feels at the moment as if I'm ill as often as I'm not. Nothing serious, just a general feeling of being run down. Or, perhaps, over-run. I was stuck in a cycle of trying to increase my longest run, struggling into double digits and then being to tired to run properly for a few days. It came to a head last week when I set out for ten miles, only to get lost after two. Cold, still running ankle-deep in snow in places and slipping in the mud in others I conceded defeat and headed home. I found myself a "last minute" six-week marathon training schedule took a week off.
I've also worked the last six days in London and come home to work two more. But I am home. I am sitting on my bed looking straight out of my window across Swaledale, astounded by how very green it is: there is not a trace of white left. I ran a couple of miles this morning, just enough to remind myself that running is fun and I really do enjoy it.Getting home and going running as soon as I can helps me to reconnect with my home and I can remind myself that in all the work and all the busyness, this is my life. I have taken hold of what is right for me and am living a life I love.

Reviewing the Twelve....the last six

Oh dear! As I look up the twelve goals I set myself this year, I quickly run my eye over the last six with a "no, no, no ..." I haven't really got far with these.

7)One day out per month. This hasn't happened in any kind of way at all. We have found the regular trips down to London to take up so much of our time that we just want to be home when we're home. We certainly don't want to spend any more time in the car than we have to and we live somewhere so beautiful that we don't feel any urge to go anywhere else. There are all kinds of interesting places around - York, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hadrian's Wall - but it just doesn't feel right at the moment. Also, the weather has been dismal, cold and snowy and not at all enticing. Perhaps the summer?

8) Painting. I've hardly painted since I arrived. This is something that I self-sabotage, procrastinating until there is not enough time left. I did paint dragons with my daughter, and a few trees in January, so maybe they can count for the first two months and I've still got stacks of time in April. Again, maybe it's something that I will find more mental space for in the summer.

9) Personal admin. Perhaps I'm being harsh on myself here. I have taught two students a creative writing curriculum which I am gradually developing myself. I have completed all my change of addresses and the last few changes of name. I have signed up with a tutoring agency and applied for my criminal records check which will mean I can also sign up with some on-line agencies. I've contacted a few people with whom I've not been in touch for far too long and I've been all the way through my filing system discarding pieces of paper I don't need any more. It's not quite been the clear, one-a-month series of projects I had envisaged, but I have not been idle!

10) I am doing much better with reading: "Never Let Me Go", Kasuo Ishiguro; "The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year", Sue Townsend, "The Help", Kathryn Stockett, "City of Beasts", Isabel Allende; "The Lifeboat", Charlotte Rogan, "All The Things We Didn't Say", Sara Shepherd and now I am reading "Lone Wolf", Jodi Picoult. Seven completed in three months. Definitely hitting my target. It's becoming more of a habit now to pick up a book after last term when it was usually the remote control! We have just cancelled our tv licence so I have no plans to change.

11) Breastfeeding Counselling. This has not so much taken a back-seat as snuck out of the fire exit! I was all set to return, beginning with telephone counselling, but I did not hear back from my mentor before we moved and then we had so much trouble with the internet and phone that it just wasn't possible. Now, I just can't imagine finding the time. And, if I'm honest, my heart's not in it. My passion at the moment is for my tutoring and I would love to build it up and do more if only I had the time so I'm not making the time for the BreastfeedingCounselling. Maybe I need to make a decision to let it go. I'll see. Another thing to look at properly in the summer.

12) Blogging. Well, I'm still here but Internet arrived mid-February and I still didn't hit 12 posts in March. This is number three for April so I'm not quite on track this month either but a few people have commented to me that they're glad I'm back posting so maybe I'll just keep plodding away, aiming for that elusive 12!

The Maths Demon

Maths has always been a thorny subject. My eldest is approaching his Maths GCSE in May and is motivated by the knowledge that once this exam is over he will never, ever have to study Maths again. He is apologetic about this, even asking if I am disappointed. but I am not at all worried. In talking it through with him I was able to explain that this is the case for most students: Maths GCSE marks the end of formal Maths study and, unless they take a Maths qualification post-16, most people never go near a Maths problem again.
My middle son is a much more natural mathematician, maths just seems to make more sense to him, numbers are more concrete and the ideas flow. He has worked hard this year and, even though we moved house and life was quite disrupted, had finished his Maths for the year by mid-March. He was hugely excited by the prospect of starting his GCSE studies and so he began last week. We have, however, run straight into the quagmire of misery, confusion and over-burden and I have been confused as to why. Every time I sit with him and work through his exercises he seems quite happy with the concepts but as soon as he is left to his own devices he is lost again. He is not resistant and is trying hard, testament to his eagerness to study at this level. My frustration levels are rising and his morale is falling.
On chatting to my partner about it, we began to see that he is learning so much more than Maths and, as with any multi-skill learning experience, it is too much for him to be putting it all together immediately. My son and I sat together and I wrote a list of all the skills I can see that he is using and developing:
1) Laying his work out neatly. Up until now he has had workbooks and not been responsible for the clarity of the page.
2) Organising his time. Once the initial subject has been explained, he is responsible for finding time in the day to complete the exercises.
3) Aiming towards a big and distant goal. Workbooks were tangible in size and once every page was complete they were done but GCSE has no such physical "size".
4) Concentrating for longer periods of time. There is no doubt that it is a greater workload and he will have to sit at the table and work for longer.
5) Copying a question from a textbook, especially difficult with brackets and indices. Here, I am seeing the value of all the copywriting we have done together and reminded of attempting copywriting in a different language. Without the sense of words and letter sets that already have a place in the memory, copying is hard and even harder when it is dense text on a page.
So, today, I will copy some of questions into his book for him which will automatically set out the page for him and reduce the copy-writing burden. I will write a time-table for the day with short blocks of maths and we will start with a pep talk about his goals which are admirable and tough. He has much to be proud of - starting maths GCSE at just 12  is no mean feat - and that is the most important message he needs to hear today.

The Owl Bishop

The Easter Day service in our tiny village church was led by the Bishop of Knaresborough: he was quite taken with my daughter's owl hat - which she is seldom see without - and evidently arranged a swap! I am impressed with this church man and his humour and humility and the laughter on his face is testament to his joyful personality.

Bishop James also led the Maudy Thursday service, held in a neighbour's house as the church path was still blocked by snow-drifts. This was an intimate and beautiful occasion which I found deeply moving. I went with my partner and children and we sat with, perhaps, a dozen others and listened to a re-telling of the events surrounding Christ's arrest and we shared communion. I felt welcome and included, accepted and even loved. Bishop James spoke the words of the communion liturgy with a liveliness and enthusiasm which I found surprising in a man who has read these words aloud hundreds of times. He opened the service with words to remind us that Jesus welcomes us all, all of us, everyone. My choices in the last couple of years have led some to comment, judge and criticise and my heart was touched to be reminded that I am welcomed by Jesus and that I do have a place in his church.

Drifting - photos

A morning of sunshine has melted lots of the snow - but not all of it!

Drifting

It is almost impossible to believe that we are at the end of March, past the spring equinox and enjoying the sight of new-born lambs. There is more snow here in North Yorkshire than there has yet been this winter and the Met Office "feels like" temperature has not yet topped zero.
A lot of snow fell at the weekend while we were away but the roads have been ploughed and travel is straightforward so I set off on Monday evening for a 12 mile run happy in the knowledge that the whole route was on roads. The last part of my journey was over the moor road behind our house crossing the Watersplash, made famous in the credits of James Herriot, and Surrender Bridge. It's not an easy way to run - there's a lot of ups and downs - but it is an easy way to navigate. I checked sunset time make sure I would be home in the light and set out, a little later than planned maybe, at 4.45pm. The first 9 miles were no problem, along the main roads, enjoying the views and not even minding about the gathering snow shower. I turned up the moor road, noting the sign to my village - 3 miles. I followed a tractor for a while and felt confident that if a tractor could get through then so could I. Then the tractor turned in to a farm and the road turned into a snow-drift. I was running into bad weather, up-hill, with 10 miles of tiredness in my legs, and suddenly realised that no vehicle had been over this road in a good few days. No 4x4 would get up here; I was knee deep in snow in places, walking quite slowly as I picked out signs of my route and getting colder as the dusk drew in. I took out my phone to take a picture of a snow-drift higher than my head and the battery died. Less than two miles from home I was aware that I was in a situation a whole load scarier than I had imagined!
As I plodded on, running when I could see the ground scoured bare by the wind, and trudging through the drifts where there was no road, I wondered if I should be more worried. I did have a rucksack with water, food and and extra jacket; there is a limit to how lost it is possible to get simply trying to get up one side of a hill and down the other; I knew there were a few houses dotted about, including the farm of the tractor driver; and while I could still walk or run, I was heading home.
From the warmth of my living room it became a bit of a story to tell but I am learning a lot about assessing the risks of an "easy run" in this new landscape - I never contemplated having moutain rescue called out on my behalf in Bushy Park!
We're going to head up on the moor after lunch with the children and have another look at the impressive and beautiful snow-drifts: I have never seen so much or so elegantly scuplted snow before.  But we'll make sure we're home long before dark with tea and cake in front of the fire.

Pictures to follow...

Goodbye to Flora and Penny

We returned from our latest London trip on Sunday night and another of our chickens was "off her legs". This has happened before and we tried last time to revive the sad creature but soon realised that a swift end was better than a prolonged one and we arranged for her merciful dispatch.
Our chickens have not been a great success. Huge - really huge - and with constant runny droppings, they did not fulfill my image of cute hens pecking and scratching around our garden. They also did not lay any eggs and were costing us dearly in pellets, disinfectant and natural remedies to encourage them to full health. We tried hard: we fed and watered them, we swept up after them, we gave them celery and spinach and cooked egg-shells, but they remained cumbersome, lethargic and poorly birds.
Whatever infection they had wasn't clearing up which meant that we wouldn't feel safe eating their eggs, we wouldn't want to introduce new chickens and we couldn't give them away. Both seemed in poor health and, when the one couldn't stand up any more, we knew what we had to do - again.
We had a conversation with the children about the fate of the chickens a few weeks ago and they were understanding of the situation. We had worked since then at improving the state of the hens but had clearly failed. The children were sad, briefly, but quite excited about the prospect of new, small, cute, healthy, egg-laying  birds. The lady from the village who had fed then chickens while we were away was willing and able to help us out with ending their lives as neither my partner or I felt we had the experience or stomach for the deed. Not only that, she will be providing us with chickens from her father's farm in the next month: hardy Scottish chickens from healthy stock, unlike the rather odd creatures we had hoped we were rescuing from a battery-farm but I now wonder if came from a more suspect background.
So we have cleaned out the hen-house and disinfected the feeder and reflected on all that we have learned about chickens. And I am looking forward to some cute, speckled hens.