No Rules

It occurred to me that one of the things I love about blogging is that there are no rules. (It immediately strikes me that I have learned the hard way that there is one cardinal rule - don't allow your work place to be identifiable.) No rules about what, when, how much, in what style, to what purpose you write here. Individual bloggers make their own of course, to suit themselves - create a house style, a theme or series of themes, things they do and don't do. But these can and do change. And as for me, I have made a point of making as few as possible. Then I don't have to apologise for breaking them. I experiment here. Sometimes I play, sometimes I seek attention, sometimes I explore creative possibilities or chat about what I think or feel about things. Sometimes I just show up in the new post box without a plan, and sometimes the result is very exciting, sometimes not. But the blog is mine and I don't have to explain or define, praise or blame its content.

When I was 17 I wore a little badge on my lapel that said there are no rules. It might have been pinned on my jumble sale waistcoat, which I wore over a collarless khaki shirt or a blue and white striped prisoner's shirt, red needle-cord Levi's, and big boots, first hand made crepe soled ones, later Doc Marten's. My hair was cut short and I was already 6 foot tall. Some boys in the school used to laugh at me as a matter of policy, loudly every time they passed me on the stairs, on a corridor, or out in the grounds, and I can tell you now that it hurt. Even though I knew they were the fools, I still felt foolish.

I liked the idea that I didn't have to follow anyone else's rules about my appearance or anything else. The idea, mind you - the many rules we unconsciously follow are hard to spot at any age, especially in your teens. Family rules, social rules, cultural rules. The badge was a kind of statement of intention - to explore life outside the rules, to question the rules, to break the rules and not to care if people laughed.

Coal

All the logs seemed to be damp, or something wasn't right, and my fires kept going out, so we went down to the coal merchant's yard and bought some coal, and have now got a lovely glowing coal fire going in the multi-fuel burner, to give it its correct title. Good to learn how to do this before the cold weather strikes, when we shall want to be able to keep it in overnight, and other such advanced skills. Alarming how upsetting I found the failure of my log fire this afternoon. I felt about three and ready for a tantrum. My great new love, the wood burner had failed me, or had I failed, or had the log man? Don't know, but coal to the rescue!!

Strike

Sorry to be so shallow but I am at this moment so happy to learn that next Wednesday's strike will close the school where I work, thereby giving me a morning off. I do of course support the strikers, and at the same time I will of course lose a lot of money by not working that day, but right now this little respite in my next week is making me feel (in anticipation) a lot more relaxed. It's Friday night and I'm barely coherent but made it through another week, so good...

Mind Is On The Blink

So tired of being tired, though also getting used to it.

In the pub with J, by a roaring log fire, the landlord fond of throwing anything and everything onto it including our empty tomato ketchup sachets, George the dog chews up beer mats, thrown to him to stop him barking, loud, harsh, single barks.

Today I learned that the husband of someone I work with had died unexpectedly, a blood clot in his leg travelling to his heart, felling him as he went to get into his car to drive to his first day in a new job. Really, we never know the day or the hour (and I know this originally referred to the return of Christ but still... what is the return of Christ if not a metaphor for death anyway?) This saw me beginning my day stunned, sorry and chastened.

Hats arrived today - lovely, cosy and astonishingly ornate hats. And suddenly everyone in town is wearing hats, as the temperature dips a little lower than the amazingly mild temperatures of recent days and I begin to believe I'll need a hat soon to keep my ears warm. Maybe it will also soothe my mind.

Grinding Halt

Ho well, it was good while it lasted, and I never made any promises anyway, so there we go.

I scraped that post out late in the evening on Monday, then deleted it, and there I was banjaxed! But I was trying to say something very very good, so it's a bit of a shame. And then Marcheline felt I was being a cruel tease, and I hadn't even thought of that! Truth is I got in trouble for blogging, rather unjustly, it had devastating implications, and now I am recovering step by step. The Phoenix rises slowly, and sometimes sinks and then has to rise again.

Now I'm having to teach my students a mini version of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and though it amuses me greatly to be the one to deliver this, and though I think it's probably not what 18 year-old students need to be doing, I find I am curiously susceptible to these ideas just at this moment of my life. Or at any rate it is giving me pause for thought. Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind is the main part of the teaching session I'm doing. It's about planning and goal-setting, and visualising where you want to get to. What it makes me realise is how I have never done these things in any significant way. Never had a career path, never had a game plan, never had goals, short or long term... And there are many reasons for this. Many reasons why I could never actually imagine a future at all, in which to visualise myself doing anything. And it has been in many ways the work of my adult life so far to understand this, to see what has happened to me, and maybe finally to have some other choice. To have hope at any rate. Even to think about looking ahead, planning ahead, thinking about what I want and going for it - all this is so revolutionary I can hardly believe I'm even thinking of it now. But I am. And only incidentally related to Mr Covey's formula! I am imagining how I might develop my work with young people, contact other schools, do a training. These thoughts are very new, but I feel a kind of hope and excitement I haven't even glimpsed for years.

Mean

A horse in a field means what? Freedom? Captivity? The instinctual life? A horse in a field is just a horse in a field of course and means nothing at all until the beholder adds meaning. Likewise a boy on a bike, a dog on a lead, the setting sun, a baby. What do I mean? I mean it's up to us how we interpret the world, I suppose. Glass half full or half empty. The way we can sit for years in a prison whose door is all the time open wide. But it takes a long long time to see what you do, even longer to accept it, and then what? Then you forgive yourself that's what.

Credit

I did write a post last night. It was about how far I've come from the situation I found myself in two years ago. How much I've achieved, despite the imperfection of the present state of affairs. L read it and counselled caution about how explicit I'd been about what happened. I was tired, and decided to err on the side of caution, and pressed delete. It was called 'Credit' and was about giving myself some for how far I've come. Sorry not to have posted it. Today will have its own post - later.