Waterproof children

There’s so much to see and do in the rain: you can study the reflections and ripples in puddles, then you can jump in them and see how big a splash you can make; you can notice how the puddle gets smaller as you repeatedly splash the water out; you can watch the way leaves and flower petals ‘ping’ as a raindrop hits them; you can wait as a drop forms on the lowest point of a leaf, trembles for a moment catching the light, and then falls; you can tip your head back and feel the raindrops falling on your face; you can catch them on your tongue, or hold out your hand and collect them in your palm; you can listen to the different sounds of the raindrops landing on leaves, or the plastic roof of the playhouse, or into a tin cup...

As a full-time parent, I have found that there are some days when it is quite simply essential to get out of the house, come rain or shine. Today was one of those days. And my daughters are quite happy with that. We bought them waterproof clothes and wellies pretty much as soon as they could walk (a necessity for Lakeland holidays anyway - Poppet, then aged 2, pictured above having a sandwich break in Keswick as we tackled the Keswick Railway Path in driving rain), and they are much happier to go to the playground like that than stay at home watching raindrops sliding down the window pane. Besides, the playground slide goes magnificently fast when it’s wet and you’re wearing slippery waterproofs! 

I was disappointed therefore to discover this week that Poppet's school still persists in the whole wet-play routine of keeping children indoors at playtime if it rains.This is despite worthy announcements at the beginning of the school year that they have an “open door to the outside” in her Foundation Stage classroom, and strict instructions that we should send our children to school with appropriate outdoor clothing...

As far as I know, people are pretty much waterproof. Modern clothes, by and large, wash easily and dry quickly. Schools seem to be centrally heated all year, and children undeniably get ratty if kept indoors all day. All this is manifestly true, so why persist in holding children captive in the classroom if it happens to be raining at playtime? I remember hating it as a child, and when I was teaching, those ‘wet-play’ days were always dreadful, with children and staff bored and full of pent-up energy by the end of the day.

Surely the perils associated with inactivity and lack of fresh air are much greater than that of getting a bit wet (Jane Bennett always excepted). So let's not be so precious about our children: put on their coats, and let them go out in the rain.

Elderflower cordial recipe

 

This is a recipe given to me by Liz, a family friend famous for her hospitality and good cooking. I make it every year, and it's wonderful! These quantities make about 4 pints of cordial.

  

You need: 

20 heads of elderflower picked at the end of a sunny day

3lbs caster sugar

2 pints water

Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons 

2oz citric acid powder

Method:

Dissolve the caster sugar in the water, add the grated lemon rind and juice, add the elder heads and leave to stand, covered, overnight. I do this in a really big saucepan, but a large mixing bowl would do as you don't need to heat it.

In the morning, add the citric acid powder and stir thoroughly. Then strain the liquid into plastic or glass bottles and keep it in the fridge.  Mix to taste with sparkling water (I use about 1 part cordial to 5 parts water), or sparkling white wine - Liz says it improves Lambrusco no end! Garnish with borage sprigs if you have any.

Notes:  

•  The sunny day specified is desirable but not critical; I made my latest batch on a rainy day and it tastes fine.
• Don’t wash the flower heads first, even if they have little bugs on them. Straining the mixture later will get rid of any such critters, and they don’t impair the taste. 
• Citric acid powder is sold in most chemists, and is not expensive.
• To strain the mixture I've found the best method is to use a muslin cloth (as bought for babies to be sick on, or sold for jam making): line a big mixing bowl with the muslin cloth and then scoop the elderflower mixture into it with a ladle (don't pour it all at once or the flowers will drop in with a splash and spill sticky cordial everywhere...). Then gather the corners of the muslin and carefully lift it, allowing the cordial to drain into the bowl. Resist the temptation to squeeze the muslin as this makes the cordial cloudy. When it's stopped dripping, dump the muslin into the saucepan or bowl you began with, and then using a ladle and funnel, fill the bottles with the cordial.
• I sterilise the bottles first with Milton but if you're planning to drink the whole lot quite quickly it probably doesn't matter. 
• You can freeze the cordial; if you're planning to do this, fill the bottles only about three quarters full.
• The cordial is very sticky so be prepared to clean the kitchen thoroughly afterwards, especially if small people “help” you with stirring and pouring.

My first necklace

This is me, aged about 7, I think, wearing my favourite necklace. It was the first necklace I ever bought, from a stall at the Saturday market in my home town. It was an old fashioned market, with all sorts of bric-a-brac and food (the bags of broken biscuits were a family favourite!), and exploring for hidden gems became a bit of a family outing. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I do remember picking it out on the stall, determined that it was mine. 

And I wore it and wore it, until one terrible day the string broke, and even now I can picture the beads pinging across the room, and hear that skittering noise as they disappeared under the furniture, and down gaps in the floorboards. I’m sure I collected what I could, but it was never mended, and the beads I saved are long since lost. Now when I make a necklace for a child, I use knotted silk, so if the worst happens and it breaks, only one bead will fall. And one of these days I’ll make a copy of this one just for me...

[This blog post also appears on my jewellery website www.morganandpink.co.uk.

Commissions for children's necklaces or other designs are always welcome!]

Peony

My neighbour's peonies are in full bloom, which reminded me of this beauty. I took the photograph a couple of years ago, in the garden of the house we were then renting, and seeing it again now is prompting me to vow, publicly, right here and now, to plant one in our garden here, so that I can see blooms like this next year. To that end, if anyone can tell me which variety this one is, I would be very grateful!

Book Review: Someday

Someday by Alison McGhee and Peter H. Reynolds is my new favourite book about what it feels like to love a child. It's very simple, and very powerful (it has made me cry every single time I've read it so far...). It begins at the beginning with mother and child:

And as the child grows, so the mother's thoughts turn to the future:

The mother imagines the child growing up, and leaving home: "Someday you will look at this house and wonder how something that feels so big can look so small." It encapsulates perfectly that love that encompasses pain, as the child leaves home, and the mother is left standing on the porch watching until she can no longer see her daughter. That's not to say it's a sad book; rather it illustrates the complexity of parental love, and its lasting power.

It's a beautiful book, with Peter H Reynold's pen and ink and watercolour illustrations displaying his trademark fluidity and life, and the hand-lettered font perfectly matching the simple text. It's one to buy for yourself if your children aren't old enough to appreciate it yet!

http://www.peterhreynolds.com/
http://www.alisonmcghee.com/index.html

Word and pictures?

What do you think of when you hear a word spoken? Is it different if you hear the word in isolation, or hear it as part of a description? Can you think about it without altering what you think of? 

So if I said "cat", would you think of this?

 

Or this?   cat

This is not in any way a scientific piece, but it is prompted in part by something I realised a little while ago; asking friends and family, I have found two distinct responses to the first question posed above. The first group of people see the word itself, usually printed in black on white paper; some people saw the same font every time, for others the font changed depending on the word itself, or other factors. The second group see an image: either still like a snapshot, or moving like a video, or sometimes an immensely quick visual collage of images, both still and moving.

I discovered these two responses as a result of a problem which developed during my post-natal depression. One of the things that plagued me then (and which still lingers and flares up when I’m tired and vulnerable), was my mind’s ability to conjure up very real and graphic images or “videos” when I heard or read something unpleasant or violent. So hearing about Baby P, for example, gave me mental images of a tiny child screaming in pain, bruises all over his body. This in turn triggered a physical distress response so that I felt some of the same physical sensations of distress that I would feel if I really witnessed someone harming a child (a sick feeling in my stomach, adrenalin surging through me, fear, anxiety, fury, etc). It was the same with anything distressing on the news, or in a novel, or even just a chance comment. It has largely faded now, and I have learnt some strategies to control the images, but it's still there: my mind still responds very visually and viscerally to language. It also affects my interpretation and response to everyday sights - seeing a field of yellow rape flowering, there is a part of my brain that begins a distress response to the idea of the act of rape.

One book in particular, “Mister Pip”, gave me waking nightmares for several years about the denouement (which, without spoiling the whole book, involves a scene of gang rape, two people being hacked to pieces with machetes and fed to the village pigs, and the torturing of a mentally disabled child to death; and by the way, the Times newspaper reviewer who said this book was about the “redeeming power” of Dickens clearly hadn’t read it to the end, and should be struck off immediately.)  

  

I began to be much, much more careful about what I read, sticking by and large to the classics, things I'd read before so I knew they were “safe”, and children’s books. I stopped watching the news, or listening to it on the radio, and bought newspapers only for the magazine and culture sections. I cut out most TV dramas, and any films with a 15 or 18 certificate; and I still don’t open a book if it has words like “gritty”, “hard-hitting”, “tragic”, or “violent” on the cover blurb.

But still things get through, and my husband is occasionally the guilty party for casually mentioning something he’s seen, in language that then causes this distress response in me. When I challenged him, he was surprised by my response: he, I discovered, is one of that first group of people who just see the word(s) on paper, black on white, without any emotional connotation at all. Until that conversation, I hadn't realised this was even possible. Sometimes when he’s listening to something he’ll actually be analysing the syntax, rather than becoming involved in the meaning (and I get very cross when he does this to something I’m saying – he should be listening to what I mean, not being pedantic about the way I’m saying it!), whereas my response is almost always more visceral. I constantly puzzle over the way so many people seem to find violence a suitable, even relaxing, subject for entertainment, when to me, it always feels personal, real, brutal and horrible in every way.

What about you? What do you think of or see in your mind when you hear a word? If you are a visual person, do you also have difficulty watching or reading about violence, or do you think this is a separate issue? Do let me know, using the comments below. Thanks!

And before I finish, I’d like to do a shout out for Mental Health Awareness Week – happening this week, 21-27 May 2012. You can find out more about it here.

Ullswater

This is where I'd like to be right now: