Mind your language

I've never quite got to grasps with swearing. Social situations and generational differences dictate social norms in ways that fluctuate quite a lot which can be confusing for anyone, let alone a pre-teen whose peer group has recently exploded to 6 times the size it was before the Summer. And which now includes much less supervised adult time and far more exposure to people just like him who are all trying to decide who they are by loudly and confidently pushing the boundaries of risqué language now that there are no parents around.

Bedtime, October-ish, year 7
Him: Why is the world so confusing??! Some people say all kinds of stuff that doesn't make any sense.
Me: (Naively thinking this is about homework) Give me an example.
Him: I'll need to spell it out to you cause they aren't very nice words.
Me: Oh, OK. That's fine. Go for it.
Him: Well, I think I know this one, but D.I.C.K.
Me: That's a penis.
Him: (Congratulating himself) Yesssssss! OK - B.I.C.H.
Me: Bitch? (Nods at me) You can use that word properly to describe a female dog, but when people use that badly it's to insult a girl and be really mean to her. Usually for no good reason.
Him: Why compare a person to a dog?!? It's all a bit strange.
Me: I agree.
Him: I have a few more: Doing-it-in-a-girl's-bits-off.
Me: Fuck? (He nods). That's having sex.
Him: Yes, but 'Having sex off??!' That makes NO sense. It's not even proper English. I know that and I'm still learning to spell.
Me: I know babe. It's weird to me too.

Him: People should use their words properly! I'm going to have to tell Coby tomorrow because I'm pretty sure he doesn't know either.
Me: You're probably right there. The thing is - no one wants to be the first to ask the question in front of their mates as they think everyone else knows. It was like that when I was at school too.
Him: OK - Then there's G.A.Y.
Me: Gay? Tricky one. Who says that?
Him: Lots of people. They shout it to people to annoy them, like 'You're so G.A.Y!'
Me: Gay isn't a swear word, it's a feeing. It's when a boy doesn't fancy a girl but fancies another boy instead. Or a girl not wanting a boyfriend, but a girlfriend.
Him: That's so weird!
Me: I think so too - but not everyone feels that way. And it's hard because I think God doesn't want that for anyone but some people DO feel that way, maybe for their whole lives, maybe for just a little while and no one should be bullied for how they feel, should they?
Him: People say that a LOT in school.
Me: But just say someone - maybe even one of your friends - is all stressed out about it and is like 'Oh no - I think I fancy a boy!! And I have no one to talk to about it because if anyone finds out the whole class will know and I'll get called gay and be teased Every. Single. Day.
Him: That would be horrible.
Me: Which is why you never use gay to be mean to anyone. Or any word for that matter.

And then it hits me. Isn't the intention behind the use of language, or the purpose of using certain words or ideas - isn't that more important than the actual individual words we use? Or avoid using?

I mean - you can lie to someone to hurt them, which is not OK.
You can lie to someone to protect yourself out of cowardice - also not OK.
But you can lie to someone to protect their feelings and that's kind of noble.
Then you can lie to someone when you have a surprise birthday or holiday planned and that's completely OK, even though you lied.

And then there's the truth, which should be straightforward, but it's really not always that neutral.

You can tell the truth in order to hurt someone's feelings.
You can tell the truth to gossip.
You can tell the truth to manipulate a situation and gain favour with someone.
You can tell the truth and give far too much information than is useful or helpful or loving.
You can choose to tell the truth for completely the wrong reasons and be wrong in doing it even though what you said was technically correct.

Which brings us back to swearing, because I still don't have the consistent approach to the whole thing that my preteen seems to require.

Me: Do you end up thinking the words in your head just because you're hearing them a lot?
Him: (Sadly) Yes.
Me: Why.... Do you think you don't say those words too?
Him: I just don't think it's a good way to talk. And it's not 'me' - if you know what I mean.
Me: I know exactly what you mean.
Him: It's like I drift.. slowly... away... from God at school (demonstrates with his hands) and then at the weekend when I'm at church I sail right back to him (clasps hands together again).
Me: That's pretty cool actually. Because you can't ever drift away completely. He won't let you.

We talk and talk about this stuff for ages. So much so that ManChild comes upstairs to collect his shower things and hangs around in silence for a while (and maybe learns a thing or two, who knows?) when eventually we are all theorised out and I have to go downstairs because bedtime tonight has taken more than an hour and a half.

Him: Thanks for this. I'm going to write all these words down in case I forget them.
Me: Uh... OK. But where will you keep the notebook?? It has to be someplace safe where no one else can accidentally find it.

He decides on a safe place, which is so safe I'm sworn to secrecy and can't type it because that would be too much of the truth (see above). I continue my theorising downstairs in a more appropriate way with my husband, who can cope with most words in the English language - unless 'tidy up', 'unit' and 'skip' are used in the same sentence.

So.... There has to be a careful balancing of censorship vs freedom in any society that values democracy. It's essential to be able to challenge the status quo or campaign to change stuff that the powers that be are a bit too comfortable with. But isn't it miserable when that freedom is played out in an 11 year old's world with people not bothering to find creative alternatives to 'Fuck off' when they are only moderately (or not at all) irritated by something/someone? Surely the most extreme, emotive and potentially insulting vocabulary that exists in any language should be reserved for things that carry more weight and consequence? Things that mean something.

• the fluidity of the term 'terrorist'
• NHS funding cuts
• climate change
• corruption
• cancer
• injustice
• trident
• tax avoidance
• the arms trade
• FGM
• Walmart stocking guns but not Kinder eggs
• murder of 2 women/week by a partner (UK)
• preventable death of a child every 3 seconds
• carpet bombing civilians who didn't drown on their way to Calais
I don't like the way you just looked at me right now.

• I am full of adolescent bravado right now and you are annoying me
Fuck off

See the weirdness in all of this?

I am all over the place with this post because I'm actually typing my way towards a realisation that started in my head a long time ago that I need to now act on: Blogging / Facebooking / tweeting is a massive waste of time and I need to rein it in. Instead I need to fill my mind with stuff like this and constructive information about the issues listed above and start bugging the hell out of my MP again. Because I used to do this a lot and he's probably missing our correspondence.

BTW, the following bedtime was less intense, quicker and included a sentence I didn't anticipate ever saying to my kid: 'Babe, you forgot the 't' in 'bitch'...'

It's all about the money, money, money

Christmas this year in our house was filled with the usual great stuff like switching off the alarm for 2 whole weeks, lots of nice food, a 6' blue spruce tree with accompanying real tree smell, carol services, seeing lots of friends and family, a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas day, a New Year 's Eve party and spending many of the days in between playing the wii in our jammies.

Oh - and presents. We had those too. For the past few years, we've gradually received less toy & game based gifts and more cash & vouchers. Which is fantastic. The sales generally coincide with the realisation that after a week of non school uniform, everyone has less clothing that still fits them than we previously thought. Cue after Christmas Next sale.

This emerging tradition is enjoyed tolerated according to several factors and the Overall Retail Experience (ORE) can only be measured by considering them all:

How busy the store is
• Do you ever watch the news and despair about man's inhumanity to our fellow human beings? This should come as no surprise. Give 300 people access to a building containing half price clothing and homeware at 5am on Boxing Day and just stand back and watch the carnage. 

How long we spend there
• Closely related to point number one. The more people in a confined space, the longer the tail backs.

How big the queue is
• Again related to how many people are there and the manager's discretionary approach to having people queue up outside for too long and wander off before they even get in, vs having more people inside the store than is safe or pleasant resulting in the abandonment of clear carrier bags of half price treasures that didn't QUITE make it to the till.

How hungry everyone is
• McD's breakfast when we get out of here.... McD's breakfast when we get out of here.... McD's breakfast when we get out of here....

Finding items that fit
• If there's not a single thing that fits any of you, then this whole experience is an exercise in time wasting and Christmas joy erosion.

Having carefully considered the points above and wishing to maximise the ORE, we carefully hit the sales at 10am on Boxing Day halfway between where we were (Scotland) and where we are going (home), choosing not the biggest outlet in the area, but the one easiest to park at and which offers the bonus post shopping reward of brunch with some friends. Yay!

Results: Excellent. Best for 3 years or so. No early morning scrum and ORE pretty good. Me and Madi get a huge carrier bag of stuff between us that cost £3 more than the vouchers. Brunch and catch up with friends also excellent and everyone's happy.

Or so I thought. A few days later we are discussing the spending money situation when we realise there is a problem. Historically we've put half towards clothing purchases for the kids (aside from when they were teeny weeny and we could spend their money on whatever they happened to need at the time). But the last post Christmas clothes shop was a whole year ago and Madi has forgotten all about the 50/50 thing. And I was so caught up in the excitement of finding stuff we both liked and that actually fitted her that I didn't think to remind her. Now she is upset to discover she has £15 less than she thought she had.

Hmm. I try several approaches, including distraction, humour and reinforcing the choices she (unwittingly) made, but she's still not having it. I try another tact along the lines of don't feel bad because I love you very much, it was our choice to have 3 kids, and we wouldn't change ANYhing about our family even if we could, but do you know how much it costs to look after a baby until they are all grown up and can get a job? (She guesses £20,000 - probably the highest actual figure she can think of that doesn't sound like a made up thing, like a Million). It's actually almost £230,000 (Oh, that IS a lot...) I think on this occasion you could give me and dad your £15 and not be cross about it. And the next time we're shopping together I'll make it really mega clear to you what things are going to cost you in advance...? (Yes - that would be helpful. Please can you do that?). And you know E's new trainers and coat? He paid half towards those too - so isn't it fair to HIM that you pay for your half as well? (Yes - I suppose that IS fair, you're treating us all the same). Thank you. You're being very grown up about this.

Then I'm caught up in the guilt of bringing my (numerous) financial issues into her childhood. I've just congratulated a nine and a half year old for being an adult for goodness sake! Isn't that a bit twisted?! Ploughing time, affection, sweat and cold hard cash into a small person who has no means to support themselves is an act of pure love and commitment that can't and shouldn't ever be repaid.

No one ASKS to be born, do they?

And yet, part of the adult responsibility of raising a small person is to help them become a medium person and then eventually fully grown up person who understands cause and effect and budgeting and cashflow and pensions and overdrafts and mortgages and hedge funds and discrepancies in imperfect markets, isn't it...? Otherwise we end up a nation of affluenziacs who horrendously overspend then vehicularly slaughter innocent pedestrians after mounting the pavement in an uninsured car that we're not even licensed to drive. Or die prematurely after selling both kidneys to the Chinese because they now own everything anyway. Gosh I'm tired. And a little overwhelmed. One minute I'm celebrating the birth of the Saviour of the whole world and BAM now this. Sorry. Normal service will resume shortly. I hope.

(Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep)

Are we nearly there yet?

I am in the car alone and it's dark. Despite having driven to Bristol airport and back a dozen times before I've never quite memorised the route. I can't seem to find the same road there and back twice in a row. It's the weirdest thing - maybe they hide it like the entrance to 12 Grimmauld Place or something. I am on a route that is familiar from 3 or 4 journeys ago and I have just enough time to pick up my in laws. I have less battery life on my phone than I'm comfortable with but it should be enough. After 20 mins or so there's a left hand turn at some traffic lights then a right hand turn almost immediately after it. I miss the second turning. I missed it last time as well. This is strangely comforting. Siri says turn around when possible, but it's not possible right now so I drive on in the darkness trying to remember how things panned out last time. Did I turn back or keep going? I think I kept going. Eventually Siri gives up telling me to turn around and re-calculates another right hand turn instead. This road is kind of familiar too. That's good. But then he wants me to turn left and the road narrows and I remember that this happened last time too and I didn't like it. I have flashbacks to a B class road with infrequent passing places that seemed to go on uphill forever making my ears pop. I don't have forever. I need to be at the airport in 17 minutes. 

Soddit... I'm back on the stupid uphill B road. Please let me not meet anything coming the other way.

After a few minutes the fuel light comes on with a dinging sound. Not good. But not disastrous. The incline of the hill makes the car think it has less fuel than it actually does. I still have plenty to get to the airport and get home again. Don't panic. Even though the persistent orange light is glowing thirsty... thirsty... thirsty... much brighter than it ever does in the daytime. Then a battery level low message pops up obscuring the map on my phone screen so I can't see where I'm going anymore. Charging cable... It's here somewhere.... I scrat around in the dark with my left hand but can't locate one. Soditsoditsodit... I close the pop up and continue climbing and yawning to unblock my ears.

Just keep driving. This will be over soon. The road can't go on forever. That's just not possible. The kids are at home alone and only know I'm somewhere between home and Bristol airport. That's not enough information for the emergency services. Plus in laws will be landing soon and have been travelling for most of the day now. I don't want to not be there when they emerge from the arrivals gate. It's an uplifting place to be, actually - the arrivals gate. Even in a really small airport like Bristol. Lots of embraces and smiles and warmth. People being reunited with those they love. It makes me hopeful for humanity just watching strangers at the moment they register a loved ones face... Anyway I digress - and another flashing pop up message draws my eyes back to the screen.

No no no... I have 2% battery left - how is that possible? I'm proper wetting myself now. Cue more fumbling around in dark with my left hand in a vain attempt to find a charging cable. I unearth some loose change, scrunched up bits of paper and a small collection of metallic speaker jacks that shouldn't be here. I chuck an empty IrnBru bottle on the floor in frustration. Must find somewhere to stop and look properly...

After another few minutes there is a driveway on my left. I pull in and put the light on. The charging cable is on the floor under a pile of child's drawings and a crisp packet. The phone blips reassuringly as I plug it in and we're off again. After a few uphill minutes into the darkness, the ground begins to level off and then drop. A few minutes later and the road starts to widen again. Good good. The B road is coming to an end. Judging by the screen Siri should be instructing me any second now...
Any second now...
Any second now...
C'mon - the road is less than 500 yards away...
TALK to me Siri - What's wrong with you?!

Siri is blanking me. What's that about? What did I do to you anyway, aside from plug you into your energy source? The screen continues to show me the route but all verbal instruction has ceased. 11 minutes til touch down. I can still work out where I'm going but the gear stick is in the way and not having him talk means taking my eyes off the road more often than I'd like. Honestly - what's going on with you? Maybe this is some sort of personal development plan. He thinks I can do this. I'm too reliant on him so he's encouraging me to think about the route more. Great plan. Just wonderful. It's just I now have 7 minutes to get to where I need to be and it's pitch black out there so flicking between the darkness outside the car and the glarey brightness of the screen (albeit in night mode) inside the car is not ideal. The human eyeball needs time to adjust to that kind of thing. And you have no concept of that, do you? Because you only understand 256 web safe digital colours and not the 2 million shades I have to deal with. And I have almost no fuel. And I'm rushing and feeling ever so slightly anxious right now. And you're meant to be helping me because that's the agreement we make when I launch TomTom. And now I'm so frustrated by your silence I'm actually shouting - happy now, are we?!?

Does anyone else ever feel like God is blanking them? Like he's not left the vehicle or anything, but just pretending to sleep and you can't shut your eyes even though you're really tired because you're driving and there's no safe place to pull over and stop. You feel his presence. The wifi connection is still there. You can see the glow of the screen in your peripheral vision even when not actively studying it, but the clarity is gone. Instructions are fuzzy and you need more. C'MON - TALK TO MEEEEEE. I know you're there...

Oh I know where I am! I'm not lost and ending up dead in a ditch - I've come the back road that brings you out by the tavern on the hill and the airport is 40 seconds away - Wayhey! All is well with the world. Siri, I love LOVE LOVE you and I'm sorry for yelling Xxx

The weather

When our youngest was 3 and a half we sold her buggy on eBay and I purchased a corporate wardrobe of clothes. All within a six week period. My head still hurts a little bit to think about it. My relationship with modes of child transportation is not dissimilar to the one many grown men have with their motor vehicles and I don't enjoy clothes shopping unless it's for denim.

The whole thing was like Bam! - your pre-school stay-at-home years are over and your world is now juggling childcare with spreadsheets and never finding the dishwasher empty. Welcome to the season of always feeling like the thing you should be doing has sneakily been gazumped by the thing you're actually doing right now and sending the kids to breakfast club when they don't want to go because there's no bread or milk in the house. Again.

I missed the season I had just left. I actually missed it in the same kind of way as I missed the last few weeks of coupledom after child#1 arrived four and a half weeks early and then wouldn't sleep for longer than 45 minutes at a time unless the Hoover was on or he was attached to a boob. Hoover frequently lost. Neighbours get a little irritated if you try to vacuum at 3am.

I don't know if new seasons are hard purely because they are hard, or if they feel harder than they actually are because they are new and different and sometimes arrive when you're still dressed for the previous one. And when you're in the middle of a season it's hard to imagine life ever being any different one day. But the days gradually get warmer and the hours of daylight resolutely increase until one day you can't actually remember the last time you wore gloves - just that you don't need them anymore so maybe now's a good time to wash them because they stink of Wotsits.

And so it is with family stuff. Kids drift into and out of seasons so gradually sometimes that things can go completely undocumented until you look at old photos or spend time with a family who are at an earlier stage.

I don't know the last time child#1 asked me to read to him. It was years and years ago. He just gradually stopped asking and other things naturally took their place.

I don't know when child#2 last lined up all his Brio engines in front of the TV so they could watch 'Thomas & Friends' with him. Or when he finally stopped head butting nearby surfaces or the floor whenever he was cross.

I don't know when child#3 stopped her post shower game of wrapping herself in a bath sheet then curling up on the bathroom floor and barking until I arrived and unwrapped the towel to unexpectedly discover a puppy. Every. Single. Night. I might have recorded it just once if I'd not been absolutely sick of the game unable to envisage a time when we'd not be playing it anymore.

Today's weather:
• Child#1 enjoys reading lines and lines of spurious code off his laptop screen to me. These words are in English but their position next to each other in big long sentences (and I use that word rather loosely) means nothing. He's not good at addressing my questions without repeating the same meaningless words back at me in a slightly impatient voice, but he IS good at testing websites and new booking sites for work, finding typos and fixing broken code.

• Child#2 is the most laid back, sociable person I know. It's like a lifetime's worth of aggression was expressed in the first 3 years of his life and now the diplomacy gene is in overdrive. He hates conflict and often mediates between opposing viewpoints (either that or it's all there, waiting to explode again at puberty).

• Child#3 spends a long time after her shower sorting through her cuddly animal collection to select her 'bedtime crew' for the night so no one feels left out. Inspired by Sue Bentley's magic puppy books, she writes stories about talking dogs, draws pictures of sparkly dogs and would love to own a real live dog. We are not getting one. We own a low maintenance cat and 2 mice, who are a year old and therefore due to die off soon. 

I don't know when life got a bit saner. Maybe the season was so mental because too many different types of weather were all happening at once. I was most definitely still dressed for a different climate when it started.

Today's outlook: 

• Child#1 can be left in charge of Child#2 and Child#3 for short periods without expecting payment or major incident.

• Due to my redundancy by stealth programme, Child#1, #2 & #3 get up, dressed and organised for the day with minimal adult intervention, then journey to and from school independently.

• We still occasionally run out foodstuffs, but Lidl is just around the corner and everyone in the house is capable of going for bread and milk.*

Forecast: Who knows? These things are never accurate anyway. There will definitely be weather of some description.

* Except the cat- who is a pure free loader.

Fake teeth and farming before the internal combustion engine

My mouth is ageing faster than the rest of me. For the past few years I've worn a partial denture to compensate for 2 missing lower teeth. The first of these could have been saved by a root canal filling, but given the time involved for this vs a simple 20 minute appointment and 40 quid for an extraction I went for that instead. Against my dentist's advice. Then about 2 years later I found out why when the tooth next to the space became infected due to being ever so slightly wobbly.

A wobbly tooth is an exciting thing when you are 5 years old. It's a rite of passage ushering in the era of the toothless smile, comments from older relatives about kissing boys and finding £1 under your pillow for every one of them you can wobble out. But by the time the Tesco people are happy to sell you kitchen knives or Jack Daniels without an ID, a wobbly tooth is no longer a good thing.

When you can be bleeped through as a Customer clearly over the age of 25 without anyone ever properly looking at your face, then any space in your mouth where a tooth used to be is already putting pressure on remaining teeth making you more likely to loose another tooth in the future. Who knew? So my wobbly tooth was removed and I got a partial denture instead of a pound coin. Welcome to middle age.

For 4 years after that I didn't think much about my old lady mouth at all. Brushing took longer as the fake teeth need cleaned separately then you need to clean the sides of the real teeth next to the gap, but it's no big deal. Then one day I was cleaning the denture when it broke clean in half.

Annoying. It's amazing how hard the opposite jaw has to work to crunch up cornflakes when the fake teeth aren't there to help. But my ever so lovely dentist quickly arranged a repair (I love the NHS) and a week later the denture was returned as good looking as new. Honestly- you couldn't even see the fault line where it had snapped. I clicked the fake teeth back into place and ... Owwwwwcchh!

This wasn't good. But I figured they just needed wearing in like a new pair of Doc Martins. Forgetting of course that a) this most certainly did not happen when the denture was originally fitted and b) every pair of Doc Martins I have ever owned have seriously shredded the skin on both heels for at least a month.

But I am forgetful and stubborn that way and wore the fake teeth for 4 long days. Sleeping was OK. Not eating hurt a little bit. Eating anything hurt more than new Doc Martins. But the more it hurt the more determined I was that it would be fine. Most of the time it felt as though I had a localised throbbing headache in my jaw. A wad of swollen tissue developed under one side of my tongue causing a slight lisp. I eventually gave up after realising how stupidly asymmetrical my mouth was and made another appointment.

My lovely dentist sorted me out in under 5 minutes after buffing the fake teeth with a metal whizzy thing that removed the extra bit of resin that must have been jutting out. I clicked the teeth into place and... Yay- A perfect fit! Like the teeth were made for my mouth. The tiny bit of material she filed away was almost insignificant, but it meant the difference between functioning normally and being constantly distracted by pain and having an unhealthy interest in soup, milkshake and anything else that didn't need to be chewed.

Then Jesus said, 'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.' (Mat 11: 29-30)

Before the industrial revolution, bulls or oxen were used to pull farming machinery so Jesus' audience would have been familiar with this image. Apparently the animals would work either alone or be paired up and fitted for their yoke which would be individually contoured to the unique curve of their muscular backs and shoulders. The harness was never off the peg, but made to measure. The farmer would try it out, then return with his animals to get their yoke adjusted, perhaps several times, until it fitted perfectly. The animals' strength was vital to their task, but so too was their comfort and health.

Pulling a plough.
Munching up cornflakes.
Walking around in shoes that fit you.
Doing most things in life involves surfaces making contact with each other.
Movement proves we are alive.
And things have got to fit well together or they become worn and damaged.

Especially if you're talking about solid wood vs an ox's shoulder blades.

Or new Doc Martins or rigid plastic vs human skin.

My yoke is easy to bear and my load is light. What does that mean then?

The religious system back then was complicated, entwined within the overarching control of the Roman empire. There were laws and some more laws and then even more laws to regulate the original laws. It was unnecessarily complicated and underpinned by a corrupt multi-layered power structure that was designed to keep people subdued. To keep them on the fringes. To oppress.

Religion was hard.

Jesus' method was groundbreaking in its simplicity: Love God and love people. That sums up everything you need to know. It's not easy, but neither is it difficult to understand.

Because it's life.
And growth.
And movement.
And work.
The seasons don't stop and there's farming to be done.

The work required might be demanding, but it's designed for you and I'll kit you out with what you need. It's tiring and exhausting sometimes, but following me is not damaging. The yoke was crafted for you and look! I fit at the other side.

There has always been inequality and power struggles. In every society that ever existed and is yet to emerge there are corridors of power and those who fight to maintain them. But when God says We're in this together, he means it.

Going barefoot

Home [həʊm], noun

1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.

2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.

3. an institution for the homeless, sick, etc.: a nursing home.

4. the dwelling place or retreat of an animal.

5. the place or region where something is native or most common.

6. any place of residence or refuge.

7. a person's native place or own country.

Scene 1: We are all at ManChild's new school for a scheduled progress update with his form tutor, a bloke who has known him for seven weeks. The conversation is short, positive and pretty much contains all the information we expect to hear. He works hard. He performs well. He behaves. He appears happy. He's abnormally good at maths, computer science and all things geek (the teacher does not actually use the word geek). He's VERY quiet.

Teachers have been saying similar things about him for the past ten years. And because teachers like goals and action plans and filling in paperwork which proves there are goals and action plans in place, they usually follow it up with 'If you know the answer, put your hand up.' But this teacher doesn't suggest that. This teacher has already discerned that on pretty much every single occasion when an answer is requested from the class, Manchild could probably provide the correct one but chooses not to. Unless he is asked outright - in which case he will provide the answer in a clear, concise way and not whisper something unintelligible while looking at his shoes as he did until year three. (See? That's progress right there). This teacher concludes with 'He's quiet, but it's obviously his personality and part of who he is. We won't try to change it.' 

I like this teacher. He gets my kid. We all go for a McDs tea to celebrate the geekiness and avoid the end-of-day traffic nightmare that is Bristol every weekday evening.

Scene 2: It's 3am and me and a friend are in the 24/7 prayer room, working our way around the stations from opposite directions so it's like being there alone. We're both in our jammies. The heating is on. It feels like the rest of the whole world is asleep and it's wonderful. Thermos of tea in hand, I plod barefooted around the carpeted room having abandoned my crocs at the door. It's a lot like being at home. But it's church. But not church as we know it because there's all this creative prayer clutter all over the place that's helping me think and pray and formulate thoughts about what I believe and why. I sit for the longest time at the foot of a wooden cross which has been upcycled from an old pallet, reading Psalm 65 from The Message:

Blessed are the chosen! Blessed the guest
at home in your place!
We expect our fill of good things
in your house, your heavenly manse.

I am fixated by the home thing and make a list about what HOME means:

Shelter

Basic needs met

Family

Love

Communal living

Discipline
Getting along after an argument

Bringing friends round for tea

Boundaries / structure

Fun

Entitlement / inheritance

Chores
Responsibility

Belonging

Being understood

The first thing I do when I get home is kick off my shoes and put the kettle on. It's all tied in with relaxing and being at home in your own space. (If you ever find yourself in a position where can do this in someone else's house too, then this is a wonderful thing. Hang onto that friend).

So being at home in church - what does that mean when you're NOT wandering around there barefoot and in your jammies (i.e. most of the time)?

It can't be a license for a 'This is who I am and I'm not changing' type of thing. That's kind of arrogant and puts huge limitations on what God is capable / incapable of. He's paid the mortgage and legally owns the house.

But equally, having a healthy sense of who we are and how we belong is a liberating thing and actually frees us from the tyranny of comparison. The form tutor who has known ManChild for a mere half term can already make observations about his character and adjust his approach accordingly - because he understands something of the raw material in front of him.

So how much MORE so does God? The one who knows and understands our deepest thoughts and motives when we don't even get them ourselves? The one who always knew we would be. The one who created the raw material in the first place?

Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? (Luke 9:23-25)

The real you. I love that. 

I'll never be a worship leader. But I'm not meant to be. I'm meant to be a worshipper. 

I'll never be a teacher. But I'm not meant to be. I'm meant to locate good teaching, listen to and apply it, ask questions when I need to and share what I learn along the way. To be teachable.

I'm really, really not a morning person. I have tried the whole get up early to exercise / read / bake cookies nonsense. It really doesn't work. But I can do creative middle of the night barefooted praying in my jammies with sharpie in one hand and cup of tea in the other.

There are other goals on the action plan. I won't bore you with the details. But the form tutor gets well excited when I reach them.

Randomness

• Pressing snooze on alarm then immediately falling asleep and starting the day in my head. Perform mundane start-of-the-day activities until alarm goes off again. Get up and have to do activities for real. Feel confused that I've been awake less than 5 minutes and have peed twice.

• Pressing snooze and fight the urge to do boring getting-up-stuff in head and will myself to dream of flight instead. Unsuccessfully. This is disappointing. I was born to fly. Something inside me is perpetually frustrated by gravity.

• Walking around the house while brushing teeth in order to do other things with free hand. Then gag due to volume of toothbrush foam and sometimes almost vomit during the sprint back to the sink.

• Getting annoyed at cat for just sitting there watching me rush around doing 5 things at once and not offering to help. (Certain tasks are still possible without opposable thumbs. Cats just wants us to THINK they are useless).

• Silently curse neighbour's tree for shedding leaves onto the patio that I swept clean only yesterday. Tree should clean up it's own mess. That would be like me shedding teeny tiny skin cells all over the place then never dusting. Then remember tree produces Oxygen and I do quite enjoy breathing. Forgive tree.

Falling and drowning

Everyone who is old enough to remember 911 will probably remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when the news broke. I was pushing a buggy down the main street of the city where we lived when I realised a crowd of people were gathered around Currys' window, watching the headlines develop. (Before the age of the smart phone an electrical shop was the place to hear breaking news while outside the home, should there be any). A squalking baby and the lack of a soundtrack to the breaking news meant the story was hard to follow, but I knew something massive had happened.

At home I watched the news and fed and changed and bathed my baby and cried at the world I'd brought him into. When he woke in the night, I put the TV on while I fed him and watched yet more of the horror unfold. Onsite reporters. Back to the studio. What we know so far. CGI schematics of the towers. A statement from the president. This was not good use of a sleep deprived parent's time. Now I had multiple things to keep me awake.

There are many iconic images of that day. Many stories of heroism and selfless acts of bravery. The anonymous falling man is one of the best known and most uncomfortable, especially as there are many who cite that no one jumped that day. No one chose to die. All deaths were homicides.

Obviously. And even if people DID choose to jump, how horrendous were the conditions they chose to leave? Breathe sweet, smokeless air for the last 10 seconds of your life or spend slightly longer in an inferno, choking and vomiting, lungs blistering until they stop functioning and having your internal organs cook inside you? Jump or burn. Those are unbelievably shitty options.

Unlike 911, the refuge crisis making front page headlines does not have an exact death count. The symptoms are chronic rather than acute. The desperate people fleeing what's left of their countries after years of western sponsored violence have had longer to weigh up the options and decide that the possibility of drowning at sea is preferable to remaining in the rubble of their lives. But like the falling man, at some point they decided that leaving was more tolerable than staying.

I'm genuinely confused about the hostility and lack of compassion in the media regarding images such as these. We don't consume chronic problems as well as the train wreck type catastrophes that are immediate and change one's life within a few hours or minutes. Misfortunes that you didn't plan for while eating weetabix that morning. Tragedy that sneaks up on you and pounces when you think life is going just fine. We like those stories. Deep rooted, persistent suffering is more problematic. It's messy and complicated and less sensational.

And the media reflects the sensational stuff far more favourably. Because it's not a sentient being but a social creation. A tool of commerce that reflects life back to us the way we like it. Papers get sold. Links get clicked on. Income is generated. Win win.

Unless you're the falling man.
Or a citizen of Syria.
Or Iraq.
Or Afghanistan.

The list goes on and on...

I won't pretend I know how to fix this. After so many years of hostility and complication and layer after layer of half truths and lies, navigating the complex web of international relations would take the greatest minds on the planet many years more to unpick and even start to put right - even with an international commitment to unity and justice and a shared understanding of what minimum human rights even look like. But I do know we can't profit from political instability, conflict and repressive regimes without some consequences eventually knocking on our front door. Or flying into our skyscrapers. Or washing up on our beaches.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. (Desmond Tutu)

But until the international community gets its act together we need to carry on pulling people out the river (or the sea) And supporting the lucky ones that manage to stumble onto dry land again:

Amazon wishlist: donate to the refugee crisis
Petition: Britain must accept its fair share of refugees
5 Practical ways you can help
London 2 Calais refugee solidarity 

Stop the war
Weapon sales up 70%