1) There is no way a child that age could do that.

2) How cute/sweet/adorable.

3) Chris King is a hero who should be knighted/promoted/extolled beyond even twitter and facebook. He seems a top bloke.

4) What a great PR strategy this appears to have been (we wish our company had thought of it).

5) What is a £?

6) How mean that Sainsbury’s should only send a £3 voucher.

7) How kind of Sainsbury’s to send a £3 voucher.

8) What is £3 in dollars/euros/baht?

9) What is Sainsbury’s?

10) Where can I get a Sainsbury’s? Next time I am in the United Kingdom I want to buy one.

11) What is tiger bread?

12) If there are no giraffes in it, we cannot call it giraffe bread, under EU trading directive.

The Huffington Post (UK) believe Sainsbury’s ought to rename it Giraffe Bread. My father believes they should sponsor a Giraffe in a wildlife sanctuary or zoo, preferably called Lily. Wikipedia briefly mentioned the story (under Tiger Bread), but the story apparently needs verifying. A number of other blogs around the world have written up the story now, mostly in the heart-warming category, but an Italian Magazine has capitalised on the marketing side too. The Sun now has a page on the internet also telling the story: Little Lily probes Sainsburys about tiger bread and I was obliged to spend 30p checking whether she was in print today (no, just online). Facebook has a page dedicated to hero-worshipping Chris King, gaining huge popularity today. From this I have learnt today that Chris, like Lily, is about to start nursery school, on placement as a trainee teacher. He will make a great teacher in my opinion if he is a natural at getting on to the children’s level. Perhaps the most bizarre twist is the analysis done by Laurence Borel which tries to trace how the story went viral.

My friend from university who originally posted the pictures to Twitter makes some insightful comments at the end of that analysis. Facebook couldn’t forward photos in quite the same way as Twitter back in June.

There is a serious side to all this humour too. We love our daughter and do not want to exploit her or cause her distress. She finds the story funny at the moment, but hasn’t got much time for it. Without protecting her, she could end up in a situation like this:

… which won’t be happening on my watch. £3 is quite enough really to make a whole lot of people smile.

When our son gets a little older though, perhaps he ought to send a letter to Ferrari…

Until… this week.

You need to know that Sunday was our nephew Eden’s dedication day, and therefore time for another tradition to continue. As each of our nephews and niece turned one and were christened/dedicated, I have written a short book for the occasion. None are really worthy of publication, and Marmalade Bee comes with a warning. The material is really not suitable for one-year-olds who are not versed in cooking, eating marmalade or honey, or spotting hymenoptera-related cheesy jokes.

Still, it is probably just about good enough to include here.

Most bees love making honey.

They put all their honey

in the honey bank.

Life is all

honey…

 honey…

 honey.

It’s what gives bees their buzz.

Marmalade Bee is

a bit different from most other bees.

Marmalade Bee just loves oranges.

Big, orange, juicy oranges.

Orange juice – Yum.

Orange pie – Yum.

Even barbecued orange with orange on top.

One day Marmalade Bee had an idea.

She didn’t drone on about it.

Marmalade Bee just decided she

could not make any more honey.

Instead, she collected

some oranges,

a couple of lemons,

a lot of sugar and

some empty honey jars.

She took all the peel off the oranges.

She cut some of the peel into tiny pieces.

She put the rest into a cloth

and cooked it in water for a long time.

Nobody knew what she was doing!

Can you guess?

At the right time, Marmalade Bee

took out the cloth

and measured the juice.

She added just the right amount of sugar.

She was a very busy bee.

The sugar soon disappeared.

The mixture smelt yummy.

Marmalade Bee made it very hot.

Ouch!

Be careful Marmalade Bee!

All the other bees started dancing.

They wanted to know what it was;

they had never smelt anything like it.

Marmalade Bee smiled.

She took her clean honey jars.

When it was soft like wax,

Marmalade Bee stopped cooking.

She stirred it and put it carefully into jars.

She tried not to spill any.

All the other bees were buzzing.

What was going to happen next?

All the jars were sealed.

Marmalade Bee was very pleased.

She had found the perfect orange recipe.

She never had to make honey again

and her mixture was the bee’s knees.

It was really very yummy on toast too.

‘What will you call it?’

All the other bees asked.

‘Hum…’

Said Marmalade Bee.

‘…I don’t know.’

‘Orange you glad

We are here to help’

The bees said,

And they called it

‘Marmalade’

I have learnt a lot about Canada. From a retired firefighter (with experience of helping at 911) I learnt about the education and political systems, building regulations, salaries and tax incentives while we flew somewhere in Santa’s airspace. At Vancouver’s stunning airport on arrival I learnt that for all the directives on importing food, seeds, imaginary animals and non-sensible goods of any description, it is actually ridiculously easy to bring in Christmas cake (2kg, iced), Christmas puddings (2, Cognac-laced), chocolate (rather a large amount, Cadburys), secret gifts from other people which I had not personally wrapped (a significant number, hidden) and clothing for wet weather (enough, just).

I did not bring any gifts for the cat my sister was minding. I hope she (the cat) would not mind. She (again, the cat) is known as Gorgeous, except at my sister’s where she is known as Betty, a far more aesthetically appropriate moniker. She is what is called a Cornish Rex. Somebody, at some point in Canada’s history (they have history as well as geography) for reasons not released to the public, imported a Cornish Rex and Got It Through Security. Let me show you a Good picture of Betty:

Now don’t go thinking she’s actually quite nice. She doesn’t have fur. What you are seeing is a thin fleece. She doesn’t have muscle either, which may explain her utter clumsiness. She also smells (sometimes deliberately, I believe), has a need to show her ears at close range, dig her ‘never been clipped’ claws into your best trousers and crawl on faces at night time. The solution to this is to not share a room with her. My poor sister, giving her bedroom for my stay had to endure Betty’s charms each night and for this I am truly grateful.

I am also truly grateful for my lightning tour of Vancouver and Environs. Considering we had 4 days, an evening and a half day, we did pretty well. The best weather was on my arrival, and I saw Rocky Mountains (several) in pink in the setting sun, as I squinted past several people with peepholes on the plane. After that we had rain, but apparently this is normal December behaviour for the weather there.

We visited key parts of the city, popped into some lovely shops, got our nails done, had proper sushi, admired totem poles and went on buses which looked like trams (as well as a sky train which turned out to be an underground, a greyhound which turned out to be a coach and a water taxi which was neither water nor a taxi).

I learnt that Canadians always have time for you, are even more obsessed with Michael Buble than the man himself is and have a passion for adverts featuring solutions to mucus and phlegm. They have pretty leaves printed into the concrete paths, clocks powered by steam and black squirrels who don’t stay still for photos. There are hummingbirds, homeless people and hummers.

My sister works in film (post-production editing things) and so we went to see a film she had worked on called Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows which was thrilling for me (especially as it was the first time I saw my sister’s name on the credits while sitting next to her) but for my sister and her work friend it was a big exercise in finding the editing mistakes and blaming ‘comp’. I felt utterly unqualified to comment, but enjoyed the story and the fun of it all.

On Christmas Eve, badly in need of some snow, we travelled up to Whistler, which is made of slush and nice shops, with a big mountain or two behind which come in handy for skiing and that sort of thing. If you are looking for normal socks you will not find them in Whistler. However, you can get a lovely steak or lobster, before taking a gondola up one mountain and then another across to the other mountain.

There are a huge number of families with young children in Whistler, some with gloves on, many who can ski well. There are also many many trees adorned with little lights. In Canada they do it properly (on the whole). Lots and lots of little lights, no flashing on and off, one colour at a time. Very pretty.

On Christmas Day we skyped home, visited a local church after my sister opened her presents and then she made a roast Turkey crown dinner, which was very tasty. Mum spent the past few months making her a quilt. It tells the story of my sister’s life so far and meant sourcing parts from old clothes, places she’d lived in and even printing some photos. The cat was, quite clearly, not allowed near the quilt.

Boxing Day meant (for reasons I cannot remember) braving the largest shopping mall we could think of and later going to a Canucks Ice Hockey match at the Rogers Arena. We got tickets from one of my sister’s colleagues. The match involves three periods of 20 minutes, and took from 7:00 until about 9:30. There was a bit of Ice Hockey, a lot of entertainment, and many more calories. Thankfully the Canucks (and We Are All Canucks I now realise) beat the Edmonton Oilers something in the region of 5-3. They did this by means of violence, skating skill, twins and breaking a lot of sticks and part of the perspex safety wall. Every time the Canucks scored the crowd went wild for a sensible period of time and rubbed the fact in very loudly with music and humour. Every time the Oilers scored the scoreboard registered the fact politely enough.

After very little sleep that night we visited Granville Island the next morning, which is as middle-class a wharf as you are likely to find in Vancouver and full of interesting looking shops, breweries and eateries. Having eaten our fill of local Bison at something like a bistro we took a zip car to the airport. I did not enjoy the travel home, but I did greatly enjoy meeting my husband at Heathrow and each of the children back at home. They had all had lots of fun together and with grandparents and since then we’ve done some fun things together while I try and get my body back into UK o’clock.

Bye for now Canada. Next time I’m bringing the family!

I am not in teaching at the moment, and my pension pot as it stands is pitiable. That said, I have a pension pot, which is more than many my age can say. I’ve been in a position to start one and am grateful for that.

I want to be responsible when it comes to retirement: thinking ahead about the kind of life it is reasonable to live when the career is no longer a sensible option. I am not alone in my profession as a teacher in wanting to be reasonable, reponsible and sensible. We know what it means to go the extra mile.

Well, apparently I will have to work until I am 67 and a fraction to get my full pension, which will pay less than it might have and will need more from each pay packet on the way there. These things may be fair. It may be reasonable that people pay more in and live on less. It may be fiscally appropriate for pensions to be worth less in the big picture. It may even be necessary for people who are unable to change careers in their sixties to continue to do the kind of work that saps fit and enthusiastic colleagues in their twenties, both physically and emotionally. But ministers telling professionals that they are not willing to review the TPS situation properly since Hutton shows a lack of understanding and caution and economic/mathematical sense. Let’s get to the bare bones of it.

The Department for Education emailed me. I doubt I was singled out, and imagine all teachers with an email address will have been included. Well, that’s all of us then, although how many will have had time to read the email is another story. Perhaps after organising the rest of autumn term, all the winter and Christmas events and collapsing in a flu-ridden heap for a week after the end of term some others may also notice it. For those who haven’t (yet) read the email, here are the things the DfE indicated we had asked to know.

What stays the same:

We get a pension.

We keep pension and lump sum already accrued as final salary scheme.

We may still retire between 55 and 75.

Those who are old enough will see no changes in any case (if they could have retired within 10 years).

What changes:

Final salary pension becomes career average pension.

Phased increase to Normal Pension Age in line with State Pension Age changes.

“A rebalancing of employee and employer contributions to provide a fairer distribution between members and other      taxpayers.”

Ok. (In fact, a lot of what was written is also available to read here. I guess they’re making their point by emailing. I wonder how they knew my email address? Perhaps through some quango that’s been disbanded… I do hope I’m not getting Cynical Teachers Disorder. I’ve not been in a staff room for years.)

For the first list – hoorah! And – I should blinking well hope so too. Now get on with your work and stop distracting people.

For the second list – humph! And - given that childhood is extending, people are living at home longer and having children later, perhaps we are all getting older more slowly. But my back is telling me otherwise and I can’t be the only one.

So what are our options?

A blogger with a fairly good understanding of it all has written here on why teachers should strike.

I have some other ideas, which will not indirectly cause long queues at Heathrow, risk the health of those whose operations need rescheduling, create delays in justice, cost the economy £ridiculousandfranklypulledoutoftheairbillions, cause those with decent pension options to smugly keep quiet and those with none to rave loudly. Bear with me. Striking is not a good match for the situation. Instead, consider:

OPTION ONE:

Low level resistance. This works in classrooms to great effect all across the country. I suggest unions concerned simply refuse to mark or set homework. Or equivalent really rather silly extra part of the job that no one likes to question.

OPTION TWO:

Get rid of year 9 and 10. This is one I have been mulling for a year or two. I honestly believe in more than 50% of cases it would produce the desired effect. So – children would continue to start school at an age when even Victorians didn’t send them up chimneys, they reach the age of 11 and go to high school where they stay for just 2 years. They then have 2 years in the Big Wide World learning about Real Life, minimum wage, experience and making tea before doing all their GCSEs in year 11 in one year. I bet the results would go up. And it would save a fortune in staffing, and therefore pensions.

OPTION THREE:

Brain drain. All move to Scotland, where house prices and university fees are better. This may backfire if the government realises what we are doing. But we might get Alex Salmond on our side and who knows?

OPTION FOUR:

Free schools. Oh yes. Hit them where it hurts. All teachers leave their current jobs and set up free schools. And manage our own pensions. Hmm. Bit hit and miss, that one.

OPTION FIVE:

Teach a better way. Live it. Model it. Create it. Responsible children who can be responsible adults. Do we have any choice? In a few years they will all be paying to keep us going anyway.

A time to buy cards and a time to write them.

A time to alter the address spreadsheet and a time to mailmerge.

A time to paste and a time to post.

A time to wish and a time to list.

A time to stock and a time to fill.

A time to file and a time to stick.

A time to give and a time to forgive.

A time to book and a time to write.

A time to cook and a time to light.

A time to watch and a time to listen.

A time.

Times two.

GMT. PST. How many hours behind am I now?

This Christmas I will be thinking in stereo. Probably with jetlag. But I am very excited because I will be seeing my sister again for the first time since her move to Canada. She cannot justify much time off work with tight film deadlines at this time of year and even tighter annual leave. And we cannot justify the expense and craziness of taking the four of us to Vancouver in mid-winter at an age when the children will be unable to remember it.

So, with the blessing of my family, I am going to travel out to see my little sister myself over Christmas. For me and for her, some well-earned catch-up time. For my husband and all four grandparents, quality time with the children. I am already missing them. Today marks ten years to the day since I met my husband and we still enjoy each other’s company the most.

Each day is precious in the company of the ones you love.

Wow, already?

We tell stories about bad behaviour not to glorify it but to provide a moral framework. And mock it perhaps. Some people list all the faults in characters in classic fairy stories and ask why we tell these stories to children. I have been wondering about whether seriously scary stories are important. Maybe not quite yet. But it is getting harder to avoid the trappings of halloween now Lily has such a social life.

I am not a fan of extorting and bribing, or in having to explain to a three-year-old why unknown people not much bigger than her in rather ugly dressing-up costumes might knock at our door and take away food we had got high hopes for (in our case, satsumas and bananas with faces drawn on). However, I do rather like playing with food and went in search of a good pumpkin carving on google. I recommend it for the sheer creativity. There are some wonderful nutters with more pumpkin and time on their hands than is necessarily good for them in the big wide world. And most of them have put the labours of their fruits on the web.

Does no one explain the dangers in putting your hands near a hungry gourd to youngsters these days? Maybe I need to carve one of these and leave it near the front door next year with a sign saying ‘treats inside – if you dare’ and see what happens. Except I am rather unadept at carving pumpkins. In fact, up until today I never had. Last night I reasoned that 1st November might be a good day to buy a pumpkin (turns out: not particularly) and bought one. I also reasoned I’d be good at thinking up what to do with it (turns out: they don’t have instructions). After a few minutes’ brain freeze with a not-as-cheap-as-we’d-hoped pumpkin I referred to my assistant, who dropped it. Just not the greatest couple of pumpkinologists.

Too bad. We will go to the Ball, and no amount of naughty children will stop me fulfilling my squash dreams. Out you go, Goldilocks. Learn some manners and next year bring me some fruit, biscuits, chocolate or cash, thank you very much.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When we moved to our terraced town house in a densely populated area a short distance from the centre of our lovely county town 6 years ago, we thought that catchment areas were worth knowing about but not stressing over. On checking I found there were 9 primary schools within a mile of our address and others just a short distance beyond. Since then another school has started up close by too, but more of that in due course.

Our next door neighbours had a son in the nearest primary at the time: let’s call it St Lemon’s. They indicated they were very happy with it and not to be put off by the tiny site, 400+ pupils, popular headteacher who was about to leave or multitude of languages (now over 20). Indeed, we shrugged this off at the time. Not a problem. St Lemon’s has a fair reputation. We both went to state primaries and didn’t do too badly.

But apparently the twin curses of being a parent are guilt and choice. Guilt that you have a choice when many do not. Guilt that you might have, on any given day made at least one bad choice regarding your child’s intake of food, amusement, learning, fresh air or morality. Guilt that you cannot know the full consequences of all your parenting choices until It Is Too Late. Leading inevitably to More Guilt.

It seems Choosing the Right School is even more of an issue than the daily non-reckoning of fruit and veg, or the minutes (cough) of television or the one-upmanship (or one-downmanship, depending on company) of your child’s development in the presence of other parents. I have recently noticed that everyone else’s child is a genius. This is truly marvellous. My fortunate children are blessed with the company of dozens of truly inspirational peers. Perhaps we should homeschool and just hope a little of what is so good locally rubs off on them too.

No. Homeschooling is not the answer. And this is the one thing I am certain of regarding choosing Lily’s school for next year.

I have found the relevant county document online which lists all sorts of useful data about applying to schools for September 2012. And I know people who have already applied, hoping an early application will help them get the place they want. Not true. But the document makes great reading. You can see which schools are undersubscribed (sadly, generally geographically placed near deprived social areas) and which are oversubscribed (higher Ofsted ratings, densely populated areas and more affluent parts of town). The most important column is actually the one telling you the criteria under which the final applicant successfully got a place for oversubscribed schools. Sometimes it is down to distance (in miles, to 3 d.p., or less than 2 metres). Sometimes in age difference between siblings at the school (in days). In the case of faith schools the number of points accrued matter, and then the other details come into play. Each faith school counts differently.

I learnt that Lily would have got into a nearby very popular Catholic primary school, let’s call it St Olive’s, which I had up until now assumed she could not have. St Olive’s is a walkable distance and impressed me when I visited as a trainee (and met some of my future form group, who are now in upper sixth). It is largely (previously exclusively) Catholic and feeds into the school I used to teach in. It is a smaller town school, but it has a larger playground area and some lovely classrooms and facilities, as well as great staff. I had not appreciated that St Olive’s would be on the table.

Also within close walking distance is a Church of England school, let’s call it St Bramley’s, which neighbours the park. We are out of parish, but very close geographically and would have got in this year, despite the one class intake. There are good things happening at St Bramley’s, which is well regarded locally and takes a lot of families who live near the park. Some of them gain extra points for attending St Bramley’s church frequently enough to guarantee a place. Most of them are white British. The uniform is rather nice and it is the kind of school a lot of people might expect us to send Lily to. Except I cannot condone walking past a multi-cultural normal school with people who didn’t have to score points specially to go to a CofE school which caters for rather nice families thankyou very much it saves on sending to The Cucumber School across the park and so much easier for the nanny too. Or even The Cucumber School for Girls, should we wish to remortgage.

There is another nice CofE school, St Runner Bean’s, where a number of our friends from church go and two of Lily’s NCT friends will be heading, but it is a much longer walk and we probably would not get in. They do a good fireworks night apparently.

Our nearest non-church school other than St Lemon’s (yes, it is a Saint school, no it is not VC) is Plum Lane Primary. But with a very large intake indeed and no chance of getting a place we will not be applying, despite the huge field and great special needs resources.

There are also the outliers, in both senses. There are small rural primary schools which do not receive enough applicants to fill all the spaces they can offer, and one we have been recommended by friends is St Blackberry’s, on the river Deben. Very small. Very local. Very is it time to go and get the kids again already? Not quite close enough to my husband’s work for him to do a drop-off.

It must be harvest. All this food on my brain. Making me hungry too. [Aside: just consumed a quarter of an apple we grew ourselves and very nice too. Of the 24 on the tree earlier in the year, a sixth survived The Big Prune, a quarter of what was left got Picked By an Undiscerning Toddler and a third of what was left has been Attacked By Something. So I don't expect I'll get any more, but what I had was good].

So sometimes I just want to take a lateral view of all these schooling options and see what I would do if I weren’t counting fruit.

Someone I know sends their child to the new Dinossori school. She recommended it to me. So I went to take a look with Lily last Tuesday. Ok, it was partly out of sheer curiosity as a teacher and undecided parent with extra helpings of Guilt and Choice. It does cost money to send a child to a Dinossori school, but much less than private. In fact, you only get two classrooms in the whole school too (Raptors and Sauropods, or something like it). So you’d hope that what was on offer was amazing, to convince parents to part with cash for the privilege. It was. The Raptors classroom, where Lily would start, was full of children all occupying themselves with wooden learning things, cooking, hammering or reading, as the spirit moved them. They were getting on with individual learning programmes in their own ways and loving it. They were owning their learning and had already spent time out of doors in the vast area alloted to them and were playing and enjoying what they were doing. Lily lit up. She spent the rest of the visit beaming, making new friends and getting stuck in to everything she could. The room was simply decorated and uncluttered. It was not noisy. It was happy. It was everything she loves. Lily was adamant that this was going to be her school. In fact, they could even have started her the next day and had it been up to her she would have. In case you don’t know, she’s not even 4 until November. It was a good thing that my husband had not got on board, as I was able to use him as a reason for needing some time to think it over. School at 3? But it was wonderful.

Except it is also self-selecting. And it is not walkable. All parents pay fees and although Lily might be well-suited to the learning styles employed (at least at first), Joseph may not.

High up our list is the practical item of location. And I think we are going to have to work through all the other variables we can think of to decide what else truly matters. Area of playground? Teaching style? Resources? Friendship groups? Ethical values? Acceleration or enrichment of able children? Lunches? Timings? Uniform?

And we are back to one of my prejudices. I like a proper uniform on a child. Something to be proud of. Unfortunately, at St Lemon’s, there just isn’t a unifying element to the uniform – it is quite varied and other clothes are also allowed (for good reason). Lily’s first day at the school nursery on Tuesday this week will not be in uniform, unlike many of her other friends. And it doesn’t matter, but it could be the first day of 8 years at this school. I want her to be proud of the school and feel part of a community. Of our community. I want her to start making lifelong friends and invite them round to play. Thankfully, we have lined up a visit to the School Proper straight after Lily’s induction, and I am hoping it will impress her as much as the Dinossori school. It may not be everything I want in a school. Architecturally it does nothing for me. I have felt let down already by the professionalism in their dealings with us. But it may be where we are meant to send our children. We do not take our children to church to get them into church schools with many others who have (perhaps hypocritically) done the same. Because we take our faith seriously we need to look seriously at sending them to the nearest school instead, and not be hypocrites about what we believe.

And who knows, maybe get a few more recipes for lemons.

But as this blog occasionally does look at some issues to do with heart care (don’t hold your breath on that: I’m no doctor), it is about time I linked to a useful article on keeping one’s heart healthy. In between baking my husband’s chocolate birthday cake, I may add.

Ever get the idea there may be better ways to stop toddlers climbing into bed?

Except in this case my husband or I would be sleeping on the floor (presumably on the left over bits of duvet and covers from the unusual shape) and children would still, somehow, manage to climb on.

I had a restful spa day with my mum yesterday, which was a fabulous way of obtaining new slippers. I needed new slippers so this was good. Also we rested a lot and chatted and read and got our nails painted and heads and necks massages simultaneously. Well, at the same time as each other.

I have another mini-holiday to look forward to as well – bliss! My husband and I are going to go and climb trees without the children (they are far too young for fun like that) and go to National Trust places. I am very excited. Mostly about the climbing trees. And the Segways. Here is a picture of a segway.

Not ideal for scaling trees, but great for horizontal efficiency. Like power steering, but walking. But not power walking. Simple.

I could get used to days off.

Back to the office, and the children. Neither of which I am paid for, so I feel the odd spot of blogging and dreaming about time off will not result in disciplinary action.