De-clutter your life, UK schools (1)

1) Feng Shui my life

There are only 17 weeks to go. This seems ages, but it is like Christmas; it creeps up on you at the last minute. I started off thinking I was quite well prepared - as during the last year, I have made what I now realise were sub conscious efforts to prepare for leaving, by tidying my cupboards and chucking some stuff out. I have also organised a rummage sale for my two sisters, though as Sandy points out the word "sale" is being used loosely as neither one of them will bring their purse; as the eldest, I am the Great Provider.

There is an art to all this de-cluttering, I have learned, and it is not easy. There are a lot of articles that give you advice to do things like take Polaroids of all your shoes and put them on shoe boxes. This is strange as a) nobody has Polaroid cameras any more, except me - I have one which I am not sure I can work any more, and which I may have to Feng Shui, ie, throw out, in the move and b) who has got time to go and take photos of all their shoes? It is just like selling things on eBay, a nice idea which people keep recommending, but too time-consuming. Everything now seems to involve taking photos of your stuff, which is not that simple: they will keep falling over or not stand out against the background.

It is all very well the Bible saying it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to Heaven, but getting rid of your stuff is not easy either.

What is interesting is that it is quite addictive throwing things away; it makes you feel pure and virtuous, even if you are not sure Oxfam really want an incomplete Hornby train set or on-sale Jean-Paul Gauthier silk shirt with inbuilt corset. I can quite see how it could become obsessive, and how you could become one of those people in America - they are called Cheeseparers or something like that - who make a way of life out of re-using tea bags. It is a 21st century religion, like composting or recycling, even if they do not work, and all the worms escape all the time, and the stuff stinks to high heaven, like my Wriggly Wrigglers compost bin which I have now had to Feng Shui.

My father kept many tins with half an inch of old glue or paint, small pieces of string, and odd metal bits in boxes, in the garage, for about fifty years, on the basis that they might come in useful. They never did, in general, and if he had needed glue, he could have gone and got some, but I suppose perhaps whereas now we are quite happy to get in the car and go and buy new, he was not, and people weren’t then. He was, of course, also a refugee and had gone without, so it was understandable, but Sandy is just as bad, keeping dirty old T shirts from university or old parts of cameras, for no apparent reason. Now is the big chance to get rid of all the things I have not already surreptitiously binned. I am already up to about 24 boxes and that is only the stuff we don’t use.



2) School's out

One of the main reasons I give people for going to Spain is so that my children can learn proper Spanish. This doesn't seem possible in Kent, where it is still French or German. Why is this? French? I mean, is it because it is close? Or so that they can hold parties for the French ambassador, offering Ferrero Rochers about in a faultless accent? With all due respect to it, only a few people in places like the Congo where you are unlikely to have to go for work, speak it. As for Germans, they all speak good English.

My first disagreement with Alexander's school was on this subject. Could he do Spanish, maybe? No, only the top French students could opt for Spanish. Why? They said they didnt have enough Spanish teachers. Out of the world population of Spanish people? Maybe it is only when the old French and German ones die off they will start looking around for them.

Anyway, this is not the only problem. As I prepare to take the children out of school have made me realise I probably never should have put them in there in the first place.

Ever since Alexander started school, it has been a tale of woe. It is true he can behave a bit like Squirrel Nutkin at times: does not come when called (even after 6 times shouting at the top of my voice up the stairs), takes a long time to get dressed (one sock on while pausing to construct a Lego artefact), and acts the fool (making up stupid songs about chickens),I am assured by friends this is quite normal.

However, ever since he started at our local “nice” (ie expensive) school, we have had a stream of notes and letters. “Alex must try harder.” “Alex forgot his homework.” “Alex distracted another child.” “Alex daydreams and does not come when called.” And so on and on, including visits to the school where I have sat on an uncomfortable sofa while teachers have stared at me accusingly as if I had personally put him up to it using a remote control. The fact is if I had had a remote for Alexander I would have put it to good effect long ago, sending him on useful errands for me, making him tidy his room, etc, so this is all a bit beside the point.

At first, I accepted all this in good part. This is partly because I was at school myself once and am inclined to behave when called to the headmistress’ study , and partly because the dreadful fear of my child being expelled and having to wander the streets of Sevenoaks (on drugs) before ending up in some local sink used to pass before my eyes. The school seems, in retrospect, to have deliberately cultivated this feeling that your child was lucky to have a place and they might take it away if you didn’t behave.

More recently, I have looked askance at all this. Who is the customer here, I have asked myself. Me, surely! I am the one paying over a massive monthly direct debit, am I not? I should be the one threatening to take my business away, shouldn’t I? In what other business does the supplier threaten the customer, albeit in a veiled way, with refusing to supply the service?

Having said all this, almost everyone round here firmly believes that school in the UK is tip-top, as it was in the days of the Raj, and that if you are abroad you would send your children back home to a boarding school. Conversations have gone like this:

School Parent: "Oh, you're going to Spain!" (said as if it were Borneo, Ulan Batur, etc)
Me: Yes
SP: Oh... how exciting (said as if knell of death)... But what about schools?
Me: Well, they have them in Spain.
SP: Yes... is it an international school, then?
Me; No, it's Spanish. (Thinks: that is the point of going to Spain, fathead)
SP: Oh.. are they good?
Me: What do you mean by good?
SP: (Thinks: expensive, with right kind of children, leading to job at Goldman Sachs). Well, er.. you know.... do they get good results?
Me: (airily) Don't know.. they don't have exams, you know.
SP: (looking horrified). Oh! Well, you can always come back...

If I had a Euro for every time I've heard those words, I could offset a nice lump sum against all the fees I've paid out for the school to nag me and give my children detentions for asking too many questions, or forgetting their cookery trays.

I hope my children will be very happy in their local school in Spain. I hope school will be fun, and about learning interesting things, not about tests and passing exams and getting results. I hope they never go to a "good" UK university, or work at Goldman Sachs, but do something wild and interesting, whatever it may be. I hope it opens the door to a whole continent to them, and that they travel to Guatemala, and Chile and Argentina. If nothing else, they will have two cultures, and two languages, and so, I believe they will be two people. And two heads, of course, are better than one.