Toodles!

We're visiting my parents for a long weekend, have checked out TLM's hospital and now it's icecream, custard and cream teas all the way. Rented a beach hut yesterday, played that sticky-hand catch game and made daisy chains.

SO in need of a holiday!

There's a local arts festival going on at the moment, how we managed to miss this event I don't know.

What a band name. And I particularly love the concluding line :)

Weekends Return

now the weekends are no longer consumed by revision we can get on with what we like doing best...

Having days out!I wonder how many 'concerned' members of the public have told a fatigued zoo-keeper that the elephant has their head stuck in the railings?

Loved this higgledy piggledy house so much. Very Alice in Wonderland, and the biggest tudor house I've ever seen.

Good times! As you can tell, we have a bit of a list to work through now.

Reeeeeeah Aarrrth feeeeecoooo Waer Ma Garrrr Glaaaaasgowwwww

So after picking my way through the people who were drinking Carling at 8:30am, this was the view from work at lunchtime (I work at the top of a tall building!):

Lots of portaloos:

Once word got out that all the trams/buses/trains were either cancelled or heavily delayed we were allowed to go home early! Woooo! Luckily TLM was able to pick me up in the car.

Unfortunately, this meant waiting around until he could get through the crowds to near where I was. I have done a lot of smiling, humouring drunk Scots/Russians, kindly pointing people to the nearest ASDA, wishing people a good time and declining kisses from men in kilts. I totally hated the whole experience of it and started to have a panic attack when one particular group of loud men were parading towards me and 'singing' at the top of their voices. Ugh.

The whole place had such a different atmosphere to, say, the giant Berlin gay pride parade I found myself in a couple of years ago (I got off the train into the middle of it!) I didn't like today and just hope I'm not stepping over too many drunks tomorrow morning.

STRESS!

TLM is sitting his medical finals this week. I'm feeling it all too, and having to pretend not to be stressed out on top. Instead I act nonchalant, sidling up with fresh drinks and snacks to keep the revision in full flow or suggesting revision in a sunny park to keep motiviation levels high. We duet. I call "SMEAR CELLS" and he responds with "CLL" I trill "AUER RODS" and he answers my call with "AML". Now even I know the symptoms of Edwards, the normal values for creatinine kynase and all the ins and outs of AV fistulas and stomas. But I am slowly c-r-a-c-k-i-n-g.

Yesterday he had a paper exam (totally-unpredictable-cannot-possibly-judge-performance scenario) and all day at work I had a crushing sympathy headache. Friday is the next and last exam, and it feels inevitably bathetic. Today he's had the practical exam (OSCE) which was due to finish at about 4:30pm. I knew he was going in at around 12:30pm and by 2:30pm I was tapping my pen frantically and watching the minutes spiraling on the computer clock. By 4:20pm I was packed up at work, sprinting away, with my phone in my hand and my stomach in my shoes. I got on the bus and looked at my phone all the way home. At 5:10pm I rang, with no answer. At 5:25pm I rang and he answered gave me a brief outline of the stations and let me know he'd be going out to play pool with a friend. Home soon. He rang a couple of minutes later to say that his friend would be coming to the flat first, but not to worry he'd be at least an hour yet. We’ll have time to discuss the day before he shoots off. So I'm putting together all the stations in my head with the revision I know he's done and not worrying too much about the state of the flat house.

I strip off to my undies, because it's so hot and I'll have time to do a quick whip-round and tidy up and have a quick shower ready to welcome two stressed out finalists to our little sanctuary. Instead, I heard TLM's car pull up as I was flinging the back window open for operation flat tidy: stage one (good airing). I wave frantically with the net to the side, the window open, and me in my unmentionables. And what appears his friend in the passenger seat.

Oh. Dear.

As I run to the door, TLM opens it. He gives me 'warning eyes' and says "he's here!" I revert to the snappy, loudly whispered "well he can't come in" So TLM makes a quick excuse, comes in, asks what the matter is. I gesture towards the heaps of cups and plates, the general mess of the place and my state of dishabille. We have a whispered powwow, he discards the paraphernalia of the day (stethoscope, alcohol gel, last-minute notes) and heads off.

So now he’s analysing the day over a game of pool, and I’m here feeling like a hysterical woman. I’m fretting over wanting a proper post-mortem of the day (and feel like he’ll be all talked out by the time it’s my go) and feeling totally uncool about the fact I was naked and flustered and unreasonable in front of his friend. I also feel a little miffed that I’m not the one having fun with him after the weeks on end of exam-induced anxiety and indoor living.

I’m so glad I have this blog to let off steam. And flex my vocabulary. Think I did quite well today on that front.

A School for the Worst Children

The above title is how this article is headed on the Times Online, which appeared in today's Sunday Times Magazine. It's rare that a news article really shakes me up, but this did it today.

The article is about a school that caters for primary-aged children who have suffered extreme neglect, followed by abuse, who have become unable to live in a foster family or function in a mainstream school. We forget that some people in our society do more than 'just' neglect to do the best for their children.

Some of the individual stories told are enough to make you cry:

Sam is so upset today he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He is a tiny little boy with a fury boiling up inside him that he can’t contain. He picks up a chair and throws it. “I don’t want to sit there! I don’t want you to touch me!” Then, yanking his hand away from a care assistant who is by now holding his arm: “Keep away from me, you motherf***er!” He is spitting now, giving it his all. I’m not even sure how this began. It could be anything – wrong chair, wrong book.

Shocked? You will be when you hear Sam’s story. His mum had mental health problems, and from toddlerhood he roamed the streets with his sister, Mandy. When he was five and she was seven, they were abducted and sexually abused at gunpoint in a flat minutes from their home. Their mum was regularly involved with abusive men, who in turn abused Sam. Alone in the house with his baby brother one day, Sam, aged barely six, found a cigarette lighter and set light to some paper; he tried to put the flames out with a glass of lemonade, but the blaze quickly became an inferno. Sam managed to escape but his baby brother died in the fire. Afterwards, his mum’s boyfriend held a knife to Sam’s throat and told him it was all his fault and he didn’t deserve to live. All this guilt and loss and he’s still only seven.

But it's not just the bad behaviour that the school deals with:

Eight-year-old Lucy, who has a thick, messy plait, is making a card for Pete. She’s applying masses of tinfoil, creating an “arch” for Pete to walk through. “Wouldn’t it be lovely,” she says suddenly, “if you could turn a key and go through a door to a place where everything’s comfy and you could just go to sleep and no one would bother you? Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

Lucy comes up very close when she talks. She’s been so comprehensively abused, physically, sexually and mentally – not just by her own family but by a paedophile ring – that she doesn’t know where I end and she begins. Children with attachment disorders don’t just rage and spit and climb up on roofs: they connect inappropriately to total strangers, looking for warmth. “Can I hold your hand?” she says. “I’m good.”

The article emphasises how much the school costs to run (£123,000 for 38 weeks of care - the other weeks the children are shipped off to foster homes, sometimes without finding out until the day before) but balances it with the long-term savings to the criminal-justice system. Unfortunately, the local authorities cannot offset the cost in this way and have to cater to these irrevocably scarred children now.

Reading this today reminded me of my PGCE year, and brought back a thought I had then. We see such bad behaviour in the classroom, so frequently and in cases such as these we can easily see the causes. With others it makes me want to ask, "well what's your excuse?" It also frightens me how much as a society we have been rallied into thinking that school is where problems are solved, rather than at home.

It also brought back memories of a placement I organised with a local unit that takes secondary school children referred by CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services). There were two distinct sides: one served school-age mothers and their babies, the other served children who could no longer be at mainstream school. I heard many stories that made the bottom fall out of my stomach. My time with the unit was difficult to summarise, but I learnt a lot about how savage people can be to those they are supposed to love and protect and I saw the devastating effects. There was swearing, violent outbursts, spitting etc regularly. Once a week something really out-there might happen (such as the student who broke a glass door and tried to slash their wrists). But in each and every teen I worked with in that short time I saw how little they trusted anyone or anything. Many had no value for society and its conventions and constructions - evidently learned behaviours. Trying to teach them Romeo and Juliet for their GCSEs seemed like the least important thing they should be learning in English. How will they fare in the future?

Breaking the cycle is what is imperative. Thankfully, the school featured in the article has a huge success rate in enabling the students to access learning (that's fancy speak for sitting still, listening, being able to read and wanting to do well at school) and allowing them to finally be successful in a family situation. The testament of an ex-student closed the article:

“At three and a half I saw my mother beat my sister to death. I was
sexually abused by my aunt throughout my childhood and endured the worst
physical abuse imaginable. I will never forget the school, the love of one
teacher, Lorna, in particular and the profound effect it had on me.

“Our only crime was to be born to parents or situations that were at the very least
toxic. Sitting under the big oak tree in front of the school with Lorna and all
the others whose names are lost to time, they could never have realised the
difference they made.”

I shall definitely be watching the programme called "Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go" which airs on Thursday on BBC 4 and I fully congratulate the staff who seem to work so hard.

Blossom in the trees...

Ah, at last the sun has broken through and spring is here. This weekend has seen me feeling like we're getting to the good stuff - the British spring/summery season. What caused the turn was the "first of the year" things:

• first bluebells
• first cream tea
• first pint of cider in a beer garden
• first strawberries (admittedly Dutch, British ones signal real summer)
• first field filled with men in white playing cricket

and of course the first blossoms shedding their lovely petals over me. In a matter of days, maybe even hours, all the blossoms will be gone leaving unsightly brown tide marks over the pavements. But that doesn't matter - I'm feeling good.