Education

Oliver went off with Mark this morning.

He was not going to work with him. I do not imagine in the least that Oliver would enjoy the icy February winds or the bitter chill of the rain on the Cumbrian fellside whilst battling with recalcitrant radio masts.

He was going to visit his old school.

You might know that the children had a brief plunge into state education, the sort provided for free by the Government. This was when they were much younger, I think Oliver might have been four or five.

They had been attending the local independent school, which despite being beautiful and ancient and good at hockey and surrounded by trees, turned out to have a shocking problem with bullying, and both children were unhappy.

Some visits by me accompanied by sharp words had no effect whatsoever, and so Lucy and Oliver were withdrawn, along with their substantial contribution to the school finances.

This left us with a dilemma. There was nowhere else locally, and they were too young to board.

We decided that if they were going to be miserable at school they might as well be miserable for nothing, and put them in a small village primary school, about twenty minutes drive from our house.

It was not very close to our house. We chose it for its reputation for gentleness and warmth, by way of countering the savagery of their sad experience at the independent school.

It proved to be splendidly gentle and warm, although not outstandingly academic. In fact it was so far from being outstandingly academic that we promptly engaged a private tutor to compensate for this deficiency, one who had no truck with airy fairy ideas about the natural loveliness of children. She taught them grammar and spelling and their times tables, in between her other work at the local Borstal, and school taught them the value of community and being kind to one another.

We thought that this worked perfectly well, and took them to Florida for a fortnight with the cash that we saved on the school fees.

It was all very rural and enchanting and local, except obviously we could not do it for ever. The end of year concert came to a sudden, blacked out halt in the middle, and the audience had to have a whip round to find some fifty pence pieces for the meter. The teachers cooked dinners occasionally, and breakfasts, and they hugged the children and grew their own vegetables at the bottom of the playing field, but there came a point when a real education had to happen, and so we took them away and packed them off to proper schools, not without some sorry regrets.

Today Oliver had arranged that he would go and visit them, and Mark dropped him off there this morning.

I took the dogs off up the fell, and then considered my Challenge of the day, which was to purchase some mesh which could be laid underneath our conservatory floor.

This would not have been a problem had I been the possessor of a truck, but I wasn’t. The builders’ merchant in Bowness did not have any, and the one in Kendal could not deliver for ages, which left me and my taxi.

The mesh came in a sheet which was three meters square. This  is not a shape which fits handily into the back of a taxi. I rang them up and asked if they could cut it, which they couldn’t. I wondered if they could tie it on the roof of my taxi. They said that they didn’t have anybody trained to do that, so I would have to do it myself.

I explained that I am not trained either, and also am not tall enough to reach the roof of my taxi. They grunted and pondered, and eventually said that if I were to turn up, we would probably think of something.

I went to Asda and blew all of our spare cash, and then went to the builders’ merchant.

The rain was lashing down with a reckless lavishness that very quickly   soaked everything, mostly my clothes, which were quickly wet as far as my vest.

We contemplated the enormous rusty mesh sheets speculatively, in the rain.

In the end somebody suggested that perhaps we could fold them. It might have been me.

I stood on one end and the girl pushed the other end and I pulled it, and in the end a stout sort of chap came out and jumped up and down on it.

We all jumped up and down on it together then, splashingly, in the rain.

The mesh squished beautifully into large rusty squares.

We stuffed it, rustily, into the back of my taxi. I had to clean it before  could go to work.

After that I went to the school to get Oliver.

It is a lovely little school, kind and accepting and tolerant and friendly. The same teachers were still there, and they remembered Oliver.

He had talked in Assembly, and told them all about boarding school. He had answered questions for over an hour, and then he had read stories with the little ones and watched some classes with the big ones.

He was very quiet.

After a while the words came tumbling out.

They were all so lovely, he said, so welcoming, but they didn’t do anything. No geometry, no Latin, no algebra.  And the day was so short. Nobody wore a tweed jacket and scowled about forgotten prep. The children didn’t have to be absolutely quiet and listen hard. It was a lovely day, but more like a Sunday than a school day. It felt like the sort of day you might have when you had a day off from being educated.

He helped me unload the shopping and the mesh.

Then on his way back to the computer he stopped on the stairs.

“I’m having a brilliant education,” he said. “It’s hard work but I’m really glad. Thank you.”

I was really glad as well.

Have a picture of my walk. It is more beautiful than rusty wire mesh.