I Decorate A Bowl

I've been meaning to get my paints out for months. Passers-by may have got the impression that I have, may have noticed that I recently applied a coat of grey eggshell to my front door, and I touched up the external frames with white gloss. But I did these things in adult mode, thinking about weathering and rot. Getting my paints out means something else. It's what I do when I want to take my inner child out to play (I Paint A Canvas). 

Last week, I met my goddaughter at the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke. She'd booked us into the painting studio so we had a table for two and a couple of hours. There was a choice of ready-made pots to paint, a wheel of colours, sponges, brushes, pencils and a sander for rubbing out mistakes.

I was choosing from the ready-cut sponge shapes when I let myself be drawn to the dinosaurs. I chose the one that looks like a brontosaurus: the one I grew up with but now have found out never existed. 

Dinosaurs weren't in my plan, nor was green, not that I had a plan. Somewhere in the back of my mind was lodged the thought that I'm not the target market for dinosaurs. Being in the easy company of Ruth, an early years teacher, made all the difference. She was encouraging about dinosaurs - no shape out of bounds - and her enthusiasm released my inner green thunder lizard.

Having started with the dino, representative for me of my elder son, the next choices were easy: musical notes, flowers, a swallow, bees and three cakes; symbols of our family sponged onto a French bowl.

All the while we were chatting, and Ruth was painting her pottery too. It looks amazing and I can't wait to see it once it's been fired. I can't tell you more, though, as it may become a present for someone. Mine's a present to myself: reminder of my children, myself as a child, the child I am still becoming. 

I Know My Onions ...

... which, according to the saying, means I am very knowledgeable about something, but what, exactly? Not onions, that's for sure. Growing onions is not in the curriculum of subjects I teach, although I do know that they are an essential ingredient in onion soup and risotto. 

I planted a clutch of seed onions back in May during the time I was looking after my cousins' garden. To do this I followed onion-planting instructions I'd been given. After that initial digging and setting the onions with their tips just above the soil's surface, they grew of their own accord. 

I watched over them on my daily turns around the garden, was pleased not to lose any to onion predators, but did little else. Even in the long summer heat and drought, I watered them only occasionally. I was too busy focussing on the thirsty hydrangeas. That they flourished makes me think there isn't that much to know about growing onions.

I had finished my garden-sitting before the onions matured. It was my cousin who watched over their last growth spurt and harvested them. Last weekend, she kindly presented them to me in a long braid. I didn't recognise them at first.

I think this onion story may be a metaphor of some sort about knowledge: about how it is part of the fabric - the soil and air, the rain and sunshine - of our environments and communities. About how it is held in common. My teaching (though it doesn't always) has felt like that this week. I've been able to set up the contexts in which learning can happen - I've gathered groups of students in communities, set them, gently as I can, with some patting of the soil, into place: watched as they went about their own growth potential. I've tended and encouraged when I've noticed a root reaching down, or a shoot heading up. 

It's not always like this. There are times when knowledge within education institutions seems to get stuck in thick books, or choked by bureaucracies, by power and personality, and, recently, by the tension and challenge of enforced social isolation, and by the sterilisation of communication in technology. But then again, when the natural inclination towards growth is enabled, it feels great: it feels like I know these onions. 

And look, here they are grown, and full of potential. 

I Hang Curtains

My living room curtain adventure began in lockdown no. 1. Sure that I'd have time to spare on sewing as a moderate act of independence, I ordered some fabric samples, held them up to my imagination, then plumped for powder blue velvet. 

When the parcel arrived from the textile shop, I psyched myself up into curtain-making mode. I measured the drop needed, and then again, unpacked the fabric. I found that the length I'd been sent was one metre shorter than the length I'd ordered. You could know even less about curtain making than I do and still appreciate that this presented a problem. I contacted the seller, who was apologetic and sent a two metre length the following week.

With diminished enthusiasm, I embarked on take 2, measuring the windows again then, very, very carefully, cut the first drop. Too short, it turned out. 

If I were still in therapy, my psychotherapist might identify this mistake as self-sabotage. I identified it as enough to stop me in my [curtain] tracks for a couple of years. I bundled the fabric into a bag, and in a move the same therapist might've described as a defence mechanism, or possibly repression, stuffed the bag in a corner of the attic. 

Looking at the bag of velvet from time to time, I noticed my enthusiasm for blue curtains waning but my dislike of waste and unfinished projects nagged at me. I sought advice from my eldest son who is, after all, an expert sewer and measurer. He delivered the message I wasn't prepared to hear: You need to buy more fabric, Mum. I promptly set about going into denial.

This June, under the influence of my longest-serving friend, I attempted to buy my way out of this fix, purchasing curtains when we were on our camping holiday in Norfolk. This is what friends are for: to point out, at the right moment, that it's okay to buy curtains someone else has made. Even better, doing this, reminded my longest-serving friend that she needed curtains too. We broke together our long-standing tradition of not buying curtains while on holiday, each returning from Norfolk laden with velvet and the happiness of a week spent outside in good weather.

Once home, I realised that the curtains were not quite right for my living room, but would look perfect in my bedroom. And so, last weekend, while under the influence of my longest-serving friend again, this time in London, I bought a second pair of curtains for my living room. I hung them up when I got home, and they look just right. They are not blue, and they are not made from velvet. 

The new curtain happiness gave me the prompt I needed to hang the Norfolk set (which have been in a plastic bag since June). Luckily, this gave me the opportunity for a moderate act of independence: putting up a curtain pole, and putting it up straight, unlike that long ago shelf, at the first attempt [See I Put Up a Shelf]. 

As for the blue velvet? My eldest son has offered to make it into a coat for me - a perfect, a congruent resolution.