When the Priest bound their hands, at their bizarre, disorganised, beautiful wedding – the same Priest who would Christen their children – I realised it was all I would never have.

Twice, it hadn’t been right.

Twice, I’d shrunk from the question.

And instead, I would stand, years from now, bound in sequins and red cloth, shaming my parents and his.  Twice, I would be blessed by Gods I thought I cared nothing for – his and mine.

And stood in that church, holding flowers, holding hands, I knew I’d look back on that day, breathless in a corseted dress, afraid in the unfamiliar eyes of God.  I knew right then, in that moment, that I’d look back and I’d wish that that day had been mine.

And, it could have been, would have been.  I’m not sorry, not regretful, but ashamed.  Of what he is, of what we are, of what I have become.

Holding on, keeping faith, and all the time knowing – I’ve given up the world for someone who can’t shake the shame of me.

On his wedding day, my Best Friend held my hands in his, and whispered,

“It’s all wrong.”

And I’ve searched and searched, at the bottom of every bottle, to find the meaning, find the answer.

My first thought was that he meant his marriage.  But seeing how happy he was, erased any doubts I might have had.  He wasn’t talking about his relationship, or mine.  He wasn’t talking about us.

Our relationships are built on different stones, with meanings and reasons that couldn’t be more different.  We might be wrong together, but does that mean we’re right with the people we’ve chosen?

He loves his wife, and she loves him – the only thing that stands in their way of happiness is her lack of desire for children so early on in their marriage.  But he knows he’ll turn her to his way of thinking, whether it’s right or wrong to do so.

And me?  The only thing really standing in the way of my happiness, is me. 

I’m all wrong.

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
- Ella Fitzgerald.

I’ve always been good at giving up.  First came ballet and horseriding, then meat, and church and God.  At times I’ve given up trying, given up my self respect.  I never thought I’d give up something I’d worked so hard for.  Infact, I was adamant that I wouldn’t give up teaching with The Other-Half asked me to.  But, things change.

Many teachers manage to be wonderful mothers and wives, while still being wonderful at their job.  But I’ve waited so long to be a mother, that I want to give it everything I have.  We’re lucky enough to be able to afford for me to be a stay at home mum, and I believe being at home with my kids will be better for them than putting them in day care.  And so, after lots of discussion with the Other-Half, I’ve decided to give up teaching.  You see, there’s a proposal looming, followed by a swift wedding and plans to start a family straight away.  I don’t want to waste time studying for teaching qualifications, only to give up the job almost as soon as I’ve started.

And so, I’ve decided to continue with the next best thing, for the time being.  I’ve had various roles in various schools, but have recently been working as a teaching assistant in a school nursery, and the job I’ve just taken for September, when I would have been starting my teaching course, is doing the same role, but in a very different school.

‘Quitting’ my course has raised a few eyebrows.  I worked hard to get a place on the course, I was over the moon when I got one, and talked constantly about being fully qualified, having my own classroom, setting my own lessons.  The truth is, I know I’d have made a wonderful teacher.  But I don’t believe I’d have been the best mother I could be.  I have a lot of respect for working mothers, and I understand that to some women – their career is an important part of their life.  I’m not saying that women who work are bad mothers – some have to work, some want to.   But for me personally, I see no benefit in paying to put a child into daycare when you’re willing and able to afford to stay at home and care for them yourself.

The children I’ll be working with in September are in the 2% of children in the UK who are classed as the most deprived.  In other words, 98% of children in the UK are better off socially, emotionally and economically than the children I’ll be working with.  I visited the school before I took the job, and fell in love with the pre-schoolers that I’d be working with.  These kids have nothing, and are a world apart from the children I’m working with at the moment in a typically white-middle-class nursery school.  The role of staff in a nursery school is to firstly educate and secondly care for.  But in schools like the one I’ll be working in, the children are mentally younger, and require more care than education.  That is, these kids need cuddles and reassurance, not counting rhymes and art equipment.  The benefit of being the teaching assistant rather than the teacher, is that you’re able to spend more time getting to know the children and less time worrying about teaching and assessing them.  My mental stability has been questioned by friends for taking a job that will undoubtedly take it’s toll on me emotionally.  But if you’d met these kids, you’d understand.

Do I regret withdrawing from my course to be a mother, before I am one?

No, because I’d give up the world to be a mum.  And before I am one, I’ll do everything I can to be fill the gaps in the lives of  the kids I’ve met who either have no mother, or would be better off without the one they have.

I haven’t been this excited since my Mum bought me a Cindy doll in 1988.

Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are is my favourite book of all time.  My Granddad bought me it when I was five years old, and a few months later I had listened to the story so many times that I could retell it word for word.  I made boats out of cardboard boxes and bed sheets, and pretended to sail away to the land in the story.

The book tells a tale of a little boy called Max, who’s mother calls him a Wild Thing.  His bedroom turns into a jungle, and he sails away across the sea to the Land of the Wild Things.  The Wild Things make him their king, but he misses home and sails back to his mother, where his supper is waiting for him.

Every class of children I’ve had have been told this story.  We’ve talked about our own families and about whether we’d like to go and visit the Land of the Wild Things.  Then we’ve made boats out of cardboard boxes and bed sheets, and ‘rowed’ across the ’sea’ to the other edge of the classroom, where vines hang and children in masks pretend to be Wild.

Needless to say, most of the children I’ve taught have grown to love this book as much as I have.  And I can’t express how excited I am about the movie.  Not because I think it will be better than the book, but because it will open the minds of children (and grown-ups) who don’t yet know the story.

The movie is out in October this year.  Do me a favour, and try watch it through the eyes of a child.  You never know, you might learn something about yourself.

Click here to view the movie trailer.

The school I work in has started introducing The Creative Curriculum.  To cut a long story short, let me explain..

The Creative Curriculum is a thematic approach to learning and teaching, designed to support children’s natural curiosity and stimulative their creative abilities.  It puts a high value on direct experience and the learning experiences that the local community of the school can offer.  This allows for learning in meaningful contexts – no more learning about obscure places and events that children can not relate to real-life.  Hurrah!

For our kids, this means one thing – learning is going to be fun.  For teachers?  It means that initially, planning is going to be a bitch.  But in the long term, children are going to enjoy a meaningful learning experience that teachers actually enjoy teaching.

For someone like me, on the brink of going into teaching (by which I mean, after a year of being paid peanuts, and another year of studying, I’ll finally be there), this is all pretty exciting.  I remember being back at school, and constantly wondering why we were learning about things we would never use after we left school.  I remember sitting exam after exam, based on abstract concepts, knowing full well that I would erase the knowledge I’d learnt the second I stepped out of the exam.  Back then, graduating primary school, middle school and high school could all be related to passing a driving test…  Driving lessons didn’t teach you to drive, they taught you to pass a test, and you learnt how to drive afterwards.  School didn’t teach you how to live, it taught you how to graduate, and you learnt how to live after you’d left.

In the words of Vampire Weekend – who gives a fuck about the Oxford comma?
Or to put it another way, why teach children things just so they can pass exams?  We should be teaching them how to learn, giving them the skills to go and learn about the things that interest them.  Aside from basic numeracy and literacy, who gives a fuck about ancient history and algebra?  I certainly don’t, and I can honestly say – with a full set of qualifications, I couldn’t do algebra if someone held a gun to my head, and I couldn’t tell you one single thing about the ancient Greeks.

I fully support The Creative Curriculum, and think although it may have it’s flaws, it’s a wonderful idea.  I’ve seen the beginnings of it implemented, and the change in attitude from both teachers and kids has been wonderful.  Learning should never be a chore, it should be an interesting, exciting experience that leaves you wanting more.  The CC is the first of what I hope to be many steps to ensure learning is a positive and relevant experience, and I think it’s fab.

If you haven’t already heard of The Creative Curriculum, or you’re interested in how your school might implement it – click here.

Have The T-Shirt’s recent post has inspired me!  With the dismal cloud of Christmas looming over us, I’m going to follow in her footsteps, and make a list for Santa!

This isn’t a list of presents I’m going to buy other people, nor is it a list of presents I’d like.  It’s a list of (mostly unrealistic!! things I would love to have for Christmas (if I had a magic lamp, and a totally hot genie)..

- I’d like a dressing room.  Yes, an actual room.  A whole, enormous room dedicated mostly to shoes.

- I’d like a disgustingly enviable collection of shoes, of which at least 60% should be made by Jimmy Choo or Gina.

- Obviously, I’d need a bigger house in which to accommodate my enormous shoe collection.

- I’d like two Shar Pei puppies, who would absolutely, definitely, not eat/bite/annoy my little bundle of fluff (that would be my erm, cat.)

- It would be wonderful to not be allergic to my little bundle of fluff, whom I love dearly, but brings me out in a bugger of a rash.

- I want an extra button in my car, which, when pressed – emits a deafening voice that says “Stop driving up my ass, you incompetent dickhead.”

- Oh, and another button which (somehow) bitch-slaps any incompetent dickheads (particularly those driving 4×4s, who seem to think they can railroad my car off the frigging road..)

- Screw it, I’d like a super fast, super speedy, kick-ass, midlife-crisis car.  I don’t know what kind…  A sexy, dirty-hot one! :)

- I’d like to actually want to give up smoking, let alone have the willpower to do it.

- I’d like to just be qualified to teach, now, without having to actually train to do it (obviously all the knowledge would be stored somewhere in my brain, without me having to learn it).

- I don’t ever want to see a child suffer.  I want all the children I teach to come to school in warm, clean clothes, after a good nights sleep and a proper breakfast. I want to see parents who actually give a shit.

- I want my own childcare business, with wonderful staff, and plenty of money behind it.

- And a great big stack of cash.

- I’d like the finances, and the guts, to travel the world.

- I’d like to put my old boss out of business, and be able to laugh a great big “fuck you, lady.” right in her face. :X (Yes, I realise that makes me a massive bitch, but she totally deserves it.)

- I’d like my best friend to just not make a massive mistake, and to either get married and have it work out, or not get married and be ok with that.  Either way would be quite satisfactory, thank you!  Oh, and if he has to get married, could I please not look like a total dickhead in my bridesmaid dress? Pleeeease?

- I’d like the prospective-mother-in-law to not be such a racist assbag.  Or, if that’s slightly impossible, to just come with a mute button, so I can stop her mouth making so much pointless noise all the time.

- I’d like to have a steamy, kinky threesome with Alan Rickman and Mel Gibson (I’m aware he’s an ass, but my God, I would totally violate that man).

- I want to no longer be reliant on medication, for anything at all – to be healthy, without help.

- I want to live in France, with a vineyard at the end of my garden, and a filthy-hot gardener with a tight little bum and some polished abs, to erm.. garden?

- I want a baby.  And for the other-half to actually want a baby. Now. Or at least in the next year or so..

- I would love multiple orgasms. On a daily, is not half-daily basis.

- I’d like someone to say ‘Thank you’ for working so hard to make a difference to childrens lives.

- I want gambling to just disappear completely.  It ruins too many lives.

- I want an apology from a whole host of people, and forgiveness from a whole host more.

- I want fifteen minutes with my Granddad, to tell him how much I love him, and to ask him if he thinks I’m doing the right thing.

- I want a Happy Christmas, this year, just once.  No tears, no arguments, no stress, no fuss.

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
- Burton Hillis.

- Oh, and I want a totally hot, six foot tall Santa to appear on my doorsteps on Christmas Eve, so I can sit on his lap and tell him what I really want for Christmas. ;-)
(That’s such a sordid fantasy, I know, haha).

What’s on your list?

Visit Have The T-Shirt – you’ll love her as much as I do (I promise!).

Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated
- Allphonse de Lamartine

It’s over eighteen years since my Granddad died.  I’m close to the majority of my family, but I was closest to him.  And since the day he passed, the world has seemed a little emptier than it should.  There’s been a hole that nothing can fill.

The night he died, just before my 13th birthday, my Dad told my sister and I that our Granddad had passed away, and turned into a star in the sky, that would watch over us and keep us safe.  It was the most beautiful explanation of death I have heard, to this day.

And somehow, on days when I need them to, all the stars seem to shine a little brighter than usual.  As if someone really was up there, watching and guiding me.

I haven’t been inside a church since the last Sunday he was alive.  I don’t consider myself to be religious, and I don’t believe in God.  But I do believe that people live on.  And I know that he will live on in the hearts of everyone who was blessed enough to know him.

Happy Birthday, Granddad.  I miss you almost as much as I love you, still.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, not touched.
But are felt in the heart.
-Helen Keller

It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference. ~Tom Brokaw

The other-half had become quite accustomed to me not working. He came home from work to find his dinner on the table, his lunch packed up for work the next day. His washing and ironing was done and put away, the house was always spotlessly clean, the fridge was always stocked. In short – he had little to do except go to work, earn some money, and come home.

He explained that he couldn’t understand why I wanted to go and work as a Teaching Assistant, earning an appauling wage for dealing with the kids that no one else wants to deal with. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to go back to University eventually, and train to be a teacher. He couldn’t understand why I loved nothing more than working with children who had severe behavioural problems or special educational needs.

The bottom line was, he just didn’t understand.

He made various efforts to persuade me not to go back to work.

We don’t need the money.
You don’t need the stress.
I like you being at home.
We can have kids of our own, you don’t need to work with other peoples’..

Now, I’m stubborn at the best of times, and this was one thing I wouldn’t budge on.

I had been the ‘breadwinner’ long before he had. While he was still a student, I bought a house, ran a car, and paid for most things that we shared. When I decided to give up a well paid and successful job, to try get into teaching, he was very supportive, and moved in with me, on the condition that I would let him pay for everything except my own expenses (car, phone, etc). It was incredibly kind, and gave me the opportunity to do a job I could have never afforded to do otherwise. That said, I found it very difficult to suddenly go from being able to pay for everything myself, to relying on someone else to give me money to even go do the grocery shopping.

There are two reasons why I will be going back to work.

The first, is that I will be on a piss poor wage for a few years until I’m qualified, but a tiny wage is better than no wage, and I can’t justify relying on someone else for everything.

The second, and arguably the most important reason, is that I love my job. Since the first day I spent surrounded by kids instead of men in stuffy business suits, I have known that teaching will make me feel complete, as corny as that sounds. I look forward to going to work, and in my experience, that’s a rare blessing. I’ve worked with kids who spoke no English, I’ve worked with kids who have been violent, who have been unable to sit still or to respond in the same way as other children their age. I’ve worked with children with special needs, I’ve worked with kids who know far more than I ever did at their age. And in them all, in every single one of them, I saw something that made me smile. Even in the kids who teachers dreaded having in their classroom, the kids who spat at staff, the kids who beat the crap out of their classmates. I’ve found that if you can find a way to inspire any child, you can find a way to get through to them, and you can see whatever it is about them that’s wonderful, no matter how deep it may be buried.

When I worked in a nursery school, I worked closely with a little boy who had severe behavioural problems. When I left that job, he hugged me and said

“I have lots of friends now because you showed me how to be nice. You’re really nice and everyone likes you, Miss, so I’m going to try extra hard, all the time, to be really nice so that you and Mummy are very proud of me.”

It took every inch of strength I had, not to burst into tears.

The very nature of working with children, is that you give and give, and some might argue – get nothing in return. But in my experience, I do give and give, to the extend that it’s exhausting sometimes, but I get so much in return that it’s worth every second of underpaid, overworked, time.

I recently got a position working with children who are slightly older than what I would have chosen. I miss being with the little ones, but I still love my job. And the Other-Half’s tea isn’t always on the table, the house isn’t spotless, and we often have to do an emergency grocery shop because I haven’t had time to go. But, I’m happy. And so, he’s concluded that it doesn’t really matter about all those other things, as long as I’m happy.

I’m well aware that I, along with every other educational professional, should be paid triple what I actually get paid. I’m well aware that there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t even consider working with children, let alone working with the ones that struggle to behave well.

But I’ve yet to find anything that gives me the same satisfaction that working with children does. It’s often a hard, thankless job. But I feel privileged to know the children that I do. I feel privileged to share their secrets, smiles and sadness.

And I wouldn’t give up my career for all the tea in China.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Marie Curie.

What were you most scared of as a child? Are you still scared of those same things now?

When I was a kid, I wasn’t scared of anything. There were no monsters under my bed, there were no skeletons in the closest.

Falling over and hurting myself was a daily occurrence – that certainly didn’t scare me. I wasn’t scared of children bigger than me, grown-ups, animals, birds..

Daddy would get rid of anything scary. Nothing could hurt me, because Daddy would get anything that was scary before it got to me. Simple as that.

And now?
I’ve got a list.

I’m scared of moths, dogs, small enclosed spaces, spiral staircases, being buried alive, failure. And that’s just a small selection of things that freak me out.

What Marie Curie said, in my opinion, was complete crap. In understanding comes fear. I understand that dogs can bite me, that I could swallow a moth in my sleep, that I could get trapped in a small enclosed space, that I could fall down a spiral staircase to my death, that I could accidentally be buried before I’m dead, and that I might fail when it matters most.

It always makes me smile a bit when I watch kids on climbing frames, clambering as high as they can get – then holding on with just one hand, waving and shouting for me to look at them. They’re afraid of nothing. There’s no chance, as far as they’re concerned, that they might fall and crack their head open. There’s no fragment of doubt in their mind that they will succeed, and if they don’t – someone will help them to find the way to the top.

Nothing’s scary when there’s someone to hold your hand, to turn on the lights and chase the monsters out from under your bed.

But if you’re out there on your own – whether you’re five, fifteen or fifty – the world’s a quite a scary place.

Joshua Hoffine - Horror Photography

I am s l o w l y losing a grip on reality.

I walked out of my job after I saw one too many kids being left with fifteen year old students, with no CRBs, no qualifications, and absolutely no common sense. I saw staff being reduced to tears by a manager who was nothing less than a bully, I saw higher management turn a blind eye.. And so, I told the MD that I was frankly too good for her sham of a company, and walked right out of the door – fairly confident that I’d find another job easily.

Unfortunately, I picked the wrong time of year to walk out of childcare. The new school year is starting, and all the jobs have been taken. So, I’m relying on agency work – the kind where they phone you at 6am and ask you to go teach a class of 25 preschoolers at 8am, the same day. It’s not working out so well..

And so, in the realm of unemployment, I’m slowly going mad. My house is absolutely spotless (I even dusted the lampshades yesterday, for fucks sake), I’m actually cooking (real, proper food, that wasn’t bought from a supermarket), and I’ve applied for more jobs than I have ever done in my life. At least, that’s how it started. Now, I’ve become a regular slob – sitting around doing very little at all. My daily routine consists of getting up, showered, dressed, caffeinated. Then applying for permanent jobs, explaining to interviewed on the phone that while I’m not a mum, I’m great at my job. Then slobbing around feeling sorry for my motherless/jobless self.

The problem seems to be, that any jobs that are available, are aimed at mothers’. Part time jobs, that fit around taking the kids to school and picking them up again. Unfortunately, I’m not a mother. Even more unfortunately, it seems to mean that no one really wants to look at me twice.

Because naturally, you’ve got to have dropped a kid or two before you could possibly understand how to control a whole class of them.

I’m not a mother. I haven’t really got any close relations with kids. I can, however, transform a box full of pompoms and a couple of plastic bags into a fun and educational activity. I can make up stories on the spot, and I’m fan-fucking-tastic at hopscotch. And yet, no one seems to want to know what I can do. Everyone wants to know the answer to the dreaded question,

“So, do you have any kids of your own?”

No. I don’t. There’s no chance of me having to miss work because my kids are sick, and there’s no chance of me being late because my brat covered me in orange juice at breakfast time.

Being an un-mum, and wanting to work with kids, seems, apparently, bizarre to the majority of childcare employers that I’ve come across.

And so, I’m stuck convincing employers that I can do my job perfectly well, without having raised kids of my own. I’ve seen plenty of royally crap parents, and quite frankly – I’ve had more of a positive impact on some of the children I’ve taught, even for a short time, than their parents will ever have.

It’s unfair.. In fact, it’s worse than that – it’s discrimination. But how do you fight something like that? Unless someone says you’re not going to get the job they’re offering, because you’re childless – then you haven’t got a leg to stand on. And naturally, no one’s going to come right out and say it. Instead, it’s insinuated, it’s implied, it’s obvious.  It’s ridiculous.

Sperm donors – apply here! :-)

…Sarah Palin, and her seventeen year old daughter who’s got a proverbial bun in the oven.

Let me just make it clear – I am not interested in politics, I couldn’t really give a toss who wins the election, nor could I care less about one scandal or another.

But I do think that so what if Bristol (poor girl, what an awful name..) got pregnant before she got married?

So freaking what?

It’s 2008. People get pregnant. Sometimes, people even do it before they’re married! Infact, some people never get married at all! Oh my gosh!

Get over it, America. You discovered that your politicians lie, cheat, and have skeletons in their closet. Shouldn’t you be giving some serious thought to which muppet you’d like to rule America, rather than concerning yourself with the way in which the Palin family conducts family planning (or lack thereof)?

I agree with Obama – leave people’s families out of it. It’s not the kids fault that their parents are running for president – and if parenting skills made for a wonderful president (or not), there’d be a hell of a lot of mothers better qualified than any politician I’ve seen run for power in any country.