The two-way street | nancy

I have to admit to a secret weakness for those short videos that make their way round social media. I like the ones where you see how milk bottles are washed and refilled ( there is something equally mesmerising and taky back to the childhood yearsy about them), where kittens crawl over each other (amusing) and even the occasional feat of derring do (although I don’t like to see people hurting themselves). I’m always happy to share something along that has made me smile, and, occasionally, brought a tear to my eye.

Every so often, a video that I share turns out to be incredibly popular….

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Welcome back, the weekend wash | nancy

It’s the start of September and I, like my teaching colleagues, am gearing up for the new year by having recurring anxiety dreams (mine involve no one listening to me) and wondering how, after a summer of baguettes, I am going to fit into my work trousers. I have browsed my favourite clothing websites (lovely) and completed as much planning as I can before the starting gate opens (mummy, you have worked for FAR too long today). I have bought the shoes, checked the bags, lunchboxes, pencil cases and stationery supplies, looked at the forms (they are under the fruit bowl, their clamour for…

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The Promenade | nancy

When I was 17, my mum took me to a prom concert at the Albert Hall. Being from Devon, we made a day of it; she took me to see where she went to college, bought me a t-shirt from some sort of brown paper bag, organically woven, rustic varnished floorboarded shop, you know, the sort that you only find in London (or on Gandy Street in Exeter). I wore it a year later, when I went to college. She’d got us seats, right at the front. I remember watching, fascinated, as the percussionist sweated through the soundtrack from a TV show, gaining a round of applause, all to himself. My uncle, a long…

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What about the rest? | nancy

It’s been a busy week in edu-world. Some of us finished (at long last) on Wednesday, some of us have a stack of work to do (and, somehow, entertain the kids and the rest of the family, sort the kitchen cupboards out, unpack the last of the moving house boxes, pack for a holiday etc etc etc) left over from the end of term (I reckon at least two solid weeks – I suppose it could be worse, at least I don’t have a book deadline looming), and many of us have been taken up by the Education Select Committee report into the state of exclusions. Personally, I haven’t had time to read it (too much work…

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Consultation Response | nancy

I thought you might be interested in the response I wrote to the Education Select Committee on how the 2014 Children and Families Act is working out from my perspective.

Obviously, as I have responded as an individual, I have a particular view that is coloured by my personal experiences, but I do wonder how much of it I share with others, both professionally and in my private life.

Anyway, here is my response – edited because it is long, and because I am not quite sure what the rules are about publishing it in a different place (so I have made it slightly different ie. shorter!). I am…

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Capacity | nancy

When I was a little girl I got involved in stuff a lot. I wouldn’t say that I was a joiner-in particularly, but when I look back, and count up the activities I did as a young person, it comes to quite a lot, especially when you consider I grew up in a Devon valley ten miles away from anywhere. For a small village, there was a lot going on, from amateur dramatics (adults and children) to gymnastics. The only fly in the ointment (for me, anyway, other children had differently inclined parents) was that if it didn’t happen in the village, it wasn’t happening for me. Hence, any dreams I had of…

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The Roman Bath | nancy

The first time we visited the Roman Bath, it was snowing. Newly married, we had booked a City Break; it snowed, R had the flu and I…well, I convinced him (through some sort of Early Marriage Force) to ignore both the weather and his internal temperature. It was not the most successful weekend away there has ever been. We squashed ourselves against an 18th Century window, I failed to convince him of the exciting ness of Jane Austen and it was some years before we attempted to take the waters again.

The next time we visited, taking a young S and an even younger A, it wasn’t so much an Austen…

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