Tuesday 14 August 2012

What I've learned this summer; Part 2

... that I could never home school my children.  Well - actually, make that one of my children.  Whilst Boy #1 isn't exactly delighted about spending time on his books over the summer he will do it, but getting Boy #2 to do even 30 minutes of school-related 'stuff' a day is mentally and physically exhausting for both of us once you factor in the negotiation, reasoning, explanations, chasing around the house, and coming up with yet more reasons why learning to read could possibly be something worth doing.

How we've managed 8 weeks of this is something that will never cease to amaze me.


... that sometimes celebrities really DO act the way you imagine they would.  We're staying with friends in our old stamping ground in South Kensington right now and yesterday bumped into a UK B-lister in the supermarket.

I had always assumed that in 'real life' the celebrity we encountered would be a little more low key than in the press, but as she breezed past us in the queue for the tills (calling the Boys 'dudes' as she did so, much to Husband's delight when I told him about it later), struggled with the self-service tills before asking for help from the cashier - thus getting herself to the front of the normal queue and allowing her to add a last minute purchase of a couple of bottles of vodka to her basket - all the while looking glamorous, babe-licious and a good 10 years younger than she has any right to considering the amount of - ahem - 'living' she's done, I realised that some of the time at least, her private and public personas are the same.

This impression was compounded when I followed her out of the shop to find her convertible parked half-on, half-off the pavement as she strode across the street on her sky-high heels to use the cash point, before climbing into her car and driving off, only to stop again 30 seconds later in the middle of traffic to talk to a bunch of male cyclists (doing a cancer-related publicity stunt wearing nude-effect body stockings), as she found out what they were up to and promised to give them a mention on air.

And no - I am not going to tell you who it was...


... that coming back to your old stamping ground - which you still love, and where you still own a flat - is not necessarily going to help you make an objective decision about how long to stay away from it or indeed, if you should even aim to return there at all.

3 comments:

  1. I'm dying to know who that was now - please PM, give us a hint?

    Couldn't home school my children either - have just spent a whole morning persuading one to practise the piano and the other to do some maths. Getting them to clean up the playroom is hard enough!

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  2. Ditto on the home schooling. Me and the 9 year old "agreed" yesterday that he'd do 20 minutes a day of piano practice and a lot of reading in the run up to going back to school. Day two and that seems to have gone flying out the window. Man-Child has to take a practice very important test on Saturday and seems to think he can breeze in without even looking at previous examples. I have even gone so far as printing out a sample from the test web site, putting it on his desk and telling him he has to do a bit every night. Ha...

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  3. I don't know if I could home school either (and I'm a teacher!), but I did enjoy the fun of 'sneaking in' the 3 Rs in the summers when the boys were small (Son#2, age 8: "Mom, why are you always trying to educate us?") I have fond memories of the 'reading forts' they built in the living room in the too-hot afternoons in Phoenix. They rigged up their forts and I supplied them with nifty flashlights (only to be used in the reading forts)and good books and they thought they were getting away with something while I laughed up my sleeve. Both are avid readers to this day, although Son#2's Kindle expenditures occasionally give me heart failure...

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