ghoti_mhic_uait

SOrry I didn't manage this when I got home from church yesterday morning - Andreas was still awake and needed help to get to sleep - or in any of our jam-packed day. We did have a wonderful day, filled with people and presents and playing and food, but not a lot of time to sit and spod. We had womump for the first time in over a decade! So obv very extra exciting. Thank you!


Anyway, we always go to Midnight Mass, which starts at 11.15 with carols and readings. It always annoys me when people laugh at people saying 'what time is Midnight Mass?' because almost every church has pre-Mass carols which are not at a set time. Ours involved 4 readings from Isaiah, and 7 traditional carols, which is a bit more singing:reading than other churches I've been to, but reasonable. And we always end with one of those over and over pieces that doesn't have a set length, in case timing is slightly different, to lead up to Midnight.
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Then comes the Mass itself, which is much as I described earlier.
Starting with O Come all ye Faithful and a procession in which an altar server brings the baby into the crib in front of the altar. We sing 'Yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning' and Christmas begins.

We had the Gloria for the first time since the beginning of the church year 'And suddenly, there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God, and saying...'
Readings were Isaiah 9:1-6, Psalm 96, Titus 2: 11-14, Luke 2:1-14

During the Isaiah, The people that walketh in darkness have seen a great Light... for unto us a Child is born, Judith leant over and said 'Is he talking about Jesus? Like the other day?' I think she meant Zephaniah 3:17-18 'The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in His love, He will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.'

Sing to the Lord a new song says the psalm; the grace of God has appeared, saving all says the epistle. The Luke is the nativity story, up to the shepherds.

Sermon was a bit rambly, but about how Christmas is not a clean package to be left in church, it's messy, blood and tears and screaming, like all birth is - it's about locating a time and a place for Jesus, growing a relationship, and taking that relationship into the world and letting it affect our other relationships.

Everyone's happy, everyone's singing their hearts out, and the church is packed. More carols at the Offertory (It came Upon the Midnight Clear), Communion (Silent Night, In the Bleak Midwinter and a 7th century carol sung as a solo by the church's prettiest singer. Not my favourite carol but redeemed by singing talent) and at the end Hark the Herald, meaning the organist can end with a glorious voluntary on the theme. It's a good high note to end on :)


Everything as normal, except the preface and Eucharistic prayer are special for Christmas.


Then on the way home, cjwatson sang Stille Nacht (very quietly so as not to disturb people in houses), which is my favourite part of Christmas.

What should images be used for? What shouldn't they be used for?
This is a really interesting question, and I haven't managed to come up with a good answer. I think for any purpose I would prefer text instead - instructions, places where the words are clearer than the picture, toilet doors etc, there will always be people who prefer pictures. So I think the answer is that I think that they shouldn't *replace* text but rather work alongside text, when trying to convey information, so as many people as possible with as many learning styles as possible can access the information.

And I'm sorry that all my thinking didn't come up with something more definitive, because that feels like it would be more satisfying for both me and you, the reader.

Are you a visual person, or do you respond more to audial messages, or the written word, or what?

Definitely written word, on the whole. I can be so immersive, and pick up so much more than with visuals. That said, I do love visual imagery too, I think maybe I like all the things? But if it were only once, then written word, and second choice music. Not spoken word, which I often tune out, and have to focus quite hard on, especially if I've nothing to do with my hands, but music somehow fits the fidgety part of my brain quite nicely so it makes focussing easier.

When I was little, I had a love of night time. The feeling of God in the velvet darkness of an autumn night, and the crispness in the air in the early summer morning just before dawn, the stars beginning to come out our the clouds passing over the moon. This was a way of reaching out to the Creator and creation that I understood.

When, as an adult, I read a description of the Egyptian goddess Nut, she resonated with me. This was similar to how I thought about God, this was the imagery I responded to.

I prayed and thought and prayed some more, and decided that maybe the Egyptians were right.

I spent some time like this, reading as much Egyptology as I could get my hands on and my head around.

Eventually, more praying and talking lead me back to the faith of my fathers. I still respond well to the imagery of the sky and of Nut, but feel it's more an aspect of comprehension, of communication with the Ineffable. I also have better understanding for both my own religion and other people's.

Tonight I'm having a dinner party and am making a modified version of this as a starter.

Take 100ml of soya milk and 150ml of double cream. Whisk in a sachet of vegegel, and bring to the boil. Add 2 dessert spoons of wholegrain mustard, a dash of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Whisk until combined.

Pour into moulds, and put in the fridge to set.

Clean and boil some beetroot - I'm using a mixture of candy and golden, for prettiness - in a pan with a sprig of thyme. When it's soft, leave to cool, then peel and cut into chunks or cubes.

Boil 200ml each of white wine vinegar and sugar, until reduced by about half. Chill that too.


To serve, unmould the panacotta, and surround with beetroot and salad leaves. Pour over the dressing.

Crumble some goats cheese , add roasted mixed seeds, stir to combine, and sprinkle over the plate.


I snuck some panacotta and beetroot for lunch, and the sharpness of the mustard and sweetness of the beetroot worked fabulously. So I have good feelings about this.

Sometimes I'm good at this and others, not so much. I think a thing that helps is that my aim in learning a skill is to see whether it makes me happy. So I have to try until I at least understand what I'm doing a little bit, or I don't really know the answer.

To a certain extent that works for physical things. I can try a craft, and I'm fairly certain I will be able to get something at the end, so I just carry on until I do. Or I take a class or follow a course and decide I'll get to the end before I judge how I'm doing. And that usually works well.

Sometimes what I learn is that it doesn't make me happy. That's more or less what I learnt from my time designing the local NCT paper, for example, or the time I tried to learn to draw. I still draw occasionally, but it's not something I care about.

Sometimes what I learn is that my colour crochet looks much better than I expected!

More mental things - I guess knowledge rather than skills? - I have a real difficulty getting over the hump. For example, I stated a coursera course, and it was interesting and fun, but I just didn't have the time to keep up with it. Hopefully one day I'll go back to it.

Or I've been trying for 4 years now to learn to programme well enough to give something back to the free software community who have been so welcoming, socially helpful, and practically too. Colin gave my a task recently but I'm a bit scared to look at it.

Someone asked what I do if I ever get a day off. Well, it's true that it's not very often but it does happen occasionally!

I occasionally do a thing where I would go to a bookshop, buy a book, and go and read it in a cafe. That's nice. More often, I gather the children onto my lap and sit and watch a film.

Even more often I spend the day in needlework or cooking. On Saturday, for example, I have a dinner party planned so I'm going to spend the day hidden in the kitchen. I just say this is a day on which I'm doing a thing for me, and do it.

There are a couple of games groups I could go to, which would be a day off thing to do, and poly meet, which is full of nice people but I still have to work my way up to it, so it's more of a date thing than a day off thing. I go to karate, which is just for me, but again, I take J which is educational. There's lots of stuff like that. The line between 'time off' and 'useful time' is just really blurred.

When I was little, there was a quad who lived next door. They were very similar to us, two couples who lived in separate halves of a semi, but were romantically involved and basically lived as a family, with occasional other adult hangers on.
From the children's point of view, it seemed great. There was always an adult around and available to help with whatever they needed, always an adult who was enthusiastic about their current obsession.

I knew others like that, when I was at secondary school, and again, it always seemed good. More adults, more time, more experience.

I'm always attracted to big families, whether it's more children or more adults, maybe? Anyway, i saw the upsides more than the negatives. Now, of course, I see lack of time and a careful balancing act but the benefits still seem to out weigh the negatives.

When I was wee, our house had the same guideline that our house now has - the pastry is made by the youngest person available and capable. It's J at the moment, but A isn't far off being handed the job, and, me being the youngest, it was me until I left home. For some reason I now forget, I picked up the job of making the salad dressing, too. Maybe because I'm a super taster so I could get the balance just right? IDK. But the way it made everyone happy if I got it just right, that I remember. The glow of pride when my creation was admired, and the satisfying feeling of food that works.

When I was 15, the local technical college came to my school and we were encouraged to try one of their courses. I tried cooking, and we made crêpes suzette and some kind of flambeed beef, very impressive looking, exciting stuff. And I considered going to culinary college instead of sixth form. I already cooked family staples, but this world of nice ingredients and fast, beautiful food, was new to me.

Later on, I met bjh21 and a ridiculous bet turned into years of obsession with dinner parties. I love that I can make something beautiful, learn new techniques, new combinations, make my friends dress up pretty and make them happy. I love the strict rules that attend, the arbitrary nature. It's like a particularly fine cooperative game in which we win if we're happy and slightly glowy by the end of the evening.

So, that's where I'm at. I love to try things that are slightly too difficult for me, or things that are comfortingly familiar. New things, old things, exciting things, anything that makes those around me happy. I find it difficult to cook for just me, often defaulting to cereal if I'm on my own.

As a parent and educator, my aim is that my children will be able to feed themselves when they leave home. Benedict has a small repertoire of recipes he's been adding to, and he can fend for himself if left alone. He makes his own lunch, but doesn't cook in the evening much at the moment. The littles are learning how food should feel as you make it, they help me when they can and that's increasing as they get older, and hopefully they will have their own recipe file by the time they leave home, based on what each child likes.

Eta: Last year, I wrote this on the subject (comment elsewhere): " I started basking in the compliments people paid my cooking at about 6 or 7, considered going to culinary school instead of university, decided that that wasn't going to be as much fun long term and I should stick to amateur, gave my first dinner party at 19, with multiple courses and pretty clothes, decided that was so much fun we should keep doing it, did so for the next 7 or 8 years, got married, moved into a smaller house and somehow stopped cooking anything more complicated than Thanksgiving/3 or 4 course romantic dinners, but still did those occasionally; in particular, the intervening years of ice cream practice really paid off, that was my best sorbet ever; and then as we started focussing on what sort of socialising I like, and as our house started to become presentable again, I remembered that I really miss being the sort of person who gives dinner parties and wanted to regain that."

Apologies in advance if this is a little short/underdeveloped. I thought our last Wednesday (all-the-activities day) of term would be a great day to talk about HE, but I went out at 9:45 for Judith's drama, got home after her football at 3:45, went immediately to Benedict's parents evening at Long Road, came home via 5 Guys for tea and Hobbycraft for supplies, getting home about 8:20 and got distracted by art so I'm a bit tired.


When I first moved to Cambridge about the only people I knew were a home educating family. I missed being around small children and I liked the family, so I spent a lot of time with them, and saw them interacting with other HE children, learning at home and outside, and generally growing into lovely adults. The little boy I sat on my knee and taught to knit is now a father looking to home educate his own child, and I see his wife on mailing lists and such, although I've never met her.

Then I had a child, and I wasn't sure how I wanted to educate him. We talked about it, but didn't have a lot of confidence, so he went to the nearest school, which turned out to have been a bad idea. By that time, though, I was working in a school so rather than pull him out, we moved him to my school. There he had an absolutely fabulous succession of teachers, but I'm going to shout out to his year 2 teacher, who took a violent, unhappy, underachieving 6 year old and helped him become a calm, happy, educationally thriving 7 year old. He and I were very happy at that school, a friendly community, so when he got to 11, we looked at schools some more. We thought about private education then, either DIY or more official, and we applied to a variety of schools, but he ended up at the nearest again.

This was, again, stuffed full of enthusiastic and talented teachers who were very good at helping children achieve their potential. It also had a head who was keen to encourage interests and offer opportunities, plus it was in special measures, which means more money and more opportunities for the children. Then they turned academy and got a new head. One who thought it was OK to schedule an evening talk for one time, get all the students into the hall waiting, and then postpone half an hour. One who said things like 'if a course isn't financially viable, we won't run it'. One who casually ignored or disrespected his charges and turned an exciting school from focussed on individuals and education to one run more like a business. This will be relevant later.


Now, during this time, Judith got to the age where she would go to playgroup. But we had a good routine, things we did at home, toddler group, knitting group with a few other little ones who came. I didn't want to totally change that, but I wanted to add something more aimed at education. So we signed up to a monthly HE art club. And she loved it. She loved being around those children, she loved being with me a lot of the time. And so did I. So slowly, we added more in. More activites at home, more HE activities. I got pregnant and couldn't get out so much but then afterwards, the three of us did groups, either in special places - the Whipple, Shepreth Wildlife Park, the Botanic Gardens - or in more homely settings. We kept exploring the world and adventuring and slowly adding more contact with other people both for social and more academic pursuits. When it came time for school, we didn't even stop to consider our options, we were already immersed in education for both little children, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Now, it's time for Andreas to have registered for school already. And he does do a couple of groups mainly or just for him, and he will do more as he gets older. But we're happy as we are, able to be more flexible about travel and days out, and doing our groups, and growing and learning and learning and growing.

At the same time, we noticed that, had B less time to go with the new management of his school, I'd be pulling him out because I wasn't happy with it, and I started to think that 'we do this as long as it's working well and then we look for the best alternative' was probably going to lead to HE until sixth form at least. Although some of the teens I see on a weekly basis are starting to look at A levels and equivalent, so who knows? For now, it's working and we're happy.

Also, no early mornings. It's enough of a cliché that HE is great because you don't have to get to school for 9am that I had to put it in there, but really, it's just icing on the cake.