Conjunctive Adverbials and Stiff Grey Trousers

The summer holidays have been and gone and I’m so behind on this that there seems almost no point in writing it anymore. But we can’t just go around telling stories with massive gaps in the middle of them, can we? And I’m determined to keep it going, even if nobody reads it but us!

Much has happened in the last few months. Many interesting and enjoyable days out at cool places with newly made friends, camping trips, visitors from Oz, new schools, new jobs, new cars and new houses. So many stories to catch up on. I got bogged down with editing until the end of August, and with continuing Uni online. With job applications and interviews, with dealing with life in a new place and everything all that entails. But it will all have to wait its turn.

So here we are in November (when I originally intended on posting this it was October!). We’ve just moved into a new house, new town, kids are all settled into a new school, the leaves have turned colour and there’re more on the ground than the trees. We watched the apple tree in our front garden at Devington Park dropped the last of its fruit, we’ve got conkers and acorns collecting on shelves. There’s dark mornings and frosty air on the walk to school. But I’ll have to return to all that. I can’t go forward until I’ve gone back. Five months back. To May and the beginning of things. To the start of a brand new school with a rainbow logo and the discovery of psychopathic cows.

Why do we all have to dress the same?

Penguins'll do it!

It was hard seeing our kids all trussed up in uniforms, long white socks and boring black shoes the same as everyone else’s. P.E bags and plimsoles (tell me why?) and book bags that never got used in the end. School uniforms aren’t our bag, and it was the first time A and N had ever had one, so that was a bitter pill to swallow in the first place, not to mention the cost of it. £200 all up, because that’s what you’d expect to pay for a couple of polo shirts and grey skirts and trousers isn’t it?! It seems ages ago now, those weeks when I woke every morning with a feeling as heavy as grief, when I lay awake fighting tears and regret, wondering what on earth we had done to ourselves. It lasted two months, that feeling. I normally lose weight when I’m stressed. Too bad Chocolate Digestives are so bloody cheap. And beer. And red wine. And Minstrels. And Hoola Hoops. And French Fries. And Double Deckers. Hang on, what was I saying?

Not happy Jan!

A broken wrist in week 2 P.E!

I’ll never forget Noah in those stiff grey trousers and yellow triangle collars sitting perfect and neat on that dark blue school jumper (and me thinking ‘who are you and what have you done with my son?’), trying his best to join in with the before-the-bell football in the playground, but not knowing who was on his team because all the players wore the same. And I’ll never forget the lump in my throat when the bell went, and the rush like a mass exodus, of children fleeing the playground towards the school entrance, and my little boy swept up in the middle of it, too bewildered to even look back, not knowing why or where they were all going. And I’ll never forget leaving my little Milly hanging her bag up outside her classroom and me scooting off too soon, before she could see the tears in my eyes. It wasn’t what I wanted, nothing remotely similar to what I had in mind. And if you know me well you’ll know how serious and passionate I am about these things, about getting it right. And I couldn’t help feeling I’d let them down on this one. The guilt I felt was enormous.

The Wrong Trousers

A public footpath

But we both knew it would be a difficult day, so we’d planned to spend it hiking round the country-side to keep our minds off it. That was the day Maciek got soaked walking through a corn field because he’d worn the wrong trousers. I think it was corn, anyway, but I’m no expert on fields. It was taller than us whatever it was. Well, taller than me at least! (Obviously!)

Watch out for them cows!

Phone box library in Kenn

And that was the day we encountered a menacing gang of cows who ambushed us and surrounded the step-over stile and called over their mates from down the far end of the paddock and forced us to walk the long way round the wrong side of a hedge, following us all the way as far as they could, mooing and stomping and looking dead scary in general. Not sure if it was aggression or curiosity or both, but neither of us were game to find out. It’s the first time we’d ever encountered that type of behaviour from cows and for the remainder of the walk each open field was carefully inspected from a distance before we dared venture into it, just in case there were some psycho cows hiding in it, just waiting for some inexperienced ramblers like us. 

Dead worried face!

Sheep. They're nice.

We walked 10kms that day and I cried for 3 hours of it, despite all the fun and fear. We found ourselves in the villages of Kenn and Kennford, and that eased our worries. Beautiful spots where we found a red telephone box converted into a library and chocolate-box thatch cottage complete with a stream running through the front garden. My dream.

Dream Cottage

Old pub in Kenn

There was a lot to do in those first couple of months and we were kept busy with setting up life from scratch. But all was not well on the school front. The one we were most worried about seemed to be coping better than expected under the circumstances, and the one we thought wouldn’t batter an eyelid struggled the most. Every day. He wasn’t himself at all. The depth of frustration was plain on his face and apparent in his behaviour, and his enthusiasm for things he had previously loved about school quickly waned until he’d shout that learning was stupid, school was stupid and what was the point in it anyway. He’d loved to write stories and now he believed he couldn’t, and the stories and interesting questions about anything and everything stopped coming. He was heartbroken, which meant so were we. We’d talk at bedtime and he’d start reminiscing and it wouldn’t take long to all end in tears. Real, proper, heartbroken tears. And he’d cry himself to sleep. And of course it was all my fault.

One had a day off

One of the reasons he had come to believe he didn’t know how to write was because of the new primary grammar curriculum which was devised by four academics from four universities, given the task of putting it together, and who obviously had never stepped foot inside a classroom of 7 year olds. Obviously, because anyone who has worked with a classroom of 7 year olds knows that there’s nothing engaging or interesting or remotely necessary about 7 years olds having to learn what a conjunctive adverbial is and how to use it in their writing. Never mind a subordinate clause or a fronted adverbial phrase. Seriously? Who in their right mind would approve a curriculum which would expect 7 and 8 years olds to learn that? No wonder the kids were coming home so dejected. The teachers I spoke to shook their heads in agreed disapproval, because they didn’t even know the material themselves. But they had no choice because, of course, it’s in all the tests, and if the kids don’t know it the school ends up with a horrible Ofsted report and a bad reputation. And even more ridiculous is that it doesn’t even continue into secondary school because funding was pulled before that part was finished, no doubt to the utter disappointment of those academics, who had only taken it on for the ‘real’ stuff. How do I know all this? I read an article in The Guardian. So who knows if it’s true or not, because you can’t always believe what you read in newspapers or blogs! Even if the grammar is top notch. Which mine certainly isn’t. Before my kids started school here I’d didn’t even know what a conjunctive adverbial was. So my challenge to you: circle each one you can find in this piece of writing (hint - I don’t think there are any!)

Milly getting in there too!

Happy scootering in own clothes!

 Anyway, we’ve moved on now and the stiff grey trousers (and skirts) have been left on the second-hand rail in the corridor (information concerning the existence of that would have been handy before we forked out £200), and Noah is back to creating stories full of ambitious adjectives instead of conjunctive adverbials - they’ve run off back to the academic essays in which they belong. Imagine what would’ve happened to the Roald Dahl’s of the world had they been made to learn such advanced grammar at age 7? I know what he’d call the whole idea. An enormous stinking bogswamp of codswallop, that’s what. Now, circle the conjunctive adverbial in that, if you will.