Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Oh it has been soooo cold and everyone has been so sick. After saying that we had avoided the dreaded flu, of course everyone fell ill. It was one of those things right, when all of last year i had a great time and then as my mother put it, the last bit of the dragon, saying goodbye...the sting in the tail, where everything which may have been nightmarish all of last year took place together at the same time. I haven't written because i've been so ill and fed up really. But it has only really been the last two days when i've gone, well you know what, i'm not holed up in a Syrian refugee camp. I look around me and i have absolutely EVERYTHING i could ever ever need. My sons and my ability to look after them, fulfilling work, wonderful supportive family, amazing friends, my own health and the entire world to live in life in. And of course life is going to be sadder and emptier for a bit, but really, that bit will pass and then ... there is this lovely song we sing every...

Awake at 4.30 as usual,looked at the lesson plan and looked at my emails, etc. It has been a very good clear three days of not stepping outside the house. Sometimes illness can make you sit and think about the important things in life. To stop and prioritise what is what, to say this is important, that is important but for now it must be left behind. We can see to it later. Ghin has almost recovered and i feel awful but i need to stay home another day to make sure he does not relapse. Many many people have been really ill - it has not been an easy winter. I have managed to for the first time escpe the raging coughs which usually plague me. It is probably because i no longer work in a very damp building. But also working in the school is extremely fulfilling. I am utterly inspired but also drained at the end of the day with the work there. Still it is completely nourishing. Of course the narrative is all. I am at the present moment wrestling with a tricky narative which isn'...

I spent the last two days caring for one very sick and one semi sick boy. Ghin's coughing has become much less. Last night he practically did not cough. What can one put this down to? Lots of good food, warmth, mummy's TLC and some herbology. Honey is the main ingredient for making coughs better. Slippery elm is good for sore throats and for people who have o appetites. It has been heck. However, i have managed to do some thinking. And i have thought...well first, i read a bit from Steiner's Foundations of Human Experience. It is very interesting. It was a course Steiner did for teachers in the first Waldorf school. It looks at how we are made up and what we as teachers do - what we need to do. Chapter Ten i read almost a year ago in Dundonald Hospital while waiting for Ghin to have his head seen to. It talks about our bodies as being part of the cosmos. The head being a little bit in it, but our bodies and limbs being a lot in it. We can't see most of our presen...

...and still have not managed to hold a party. Mama and Kong Kong treat us to Chinese for lunch just before circus school Looking a bit Bjork Brotherly lerve Banana flambe...I told Ghin ths banana wld be on fire... a bit disappointed, but it tasted great Little Wing, round four Candles ready Dont know what he's trying to do here Oisin and i actually did our weekly shop before we got to little wing that nite!!! Hard to believe that Ghin is six! Of course being Ghin we managed to celebrate his birthday four times, but because he was sick we did not celebrate with a friends type party. I have said to him maybe we'll celebrate it with St Brigid's Ghin. He nodded his head sweetly. At this time of the year it seems like we have been celebrating forever. First my birthday, then Christmas, then the New Year, then Ghin's birthday, then our anniversary, or what used to be or St Brigid's then Chinese New Year, then...it finally sort of ends....

Well, it is not evil, just the grip it has on me is sometimes slightly worrying. especially since i can at about two hundred paces and within three seconds tell you EXCATLY what is wrong with it. But somehow i am comeplet rendered immobile by its ridiculous flowery patterns, possibly even hypnotised and i am comepltely unable to control myself when i go into the store in Belfast. I suppose we all need to have our Achilles heel. It is very embarrassing. I realised i had a problem when i looked at its latest email it sent me about its new collections and went, i would really like the in cabin luggae thingy that you can wheel onboard. Will it NEVER STOP????!!!!!! And then i looked at the sales items and thought, ah yes i need some buttons. Of course need is not really the accurate word to be using here. I cannot tell you how many Cath kidston items i already have to my name. In Singapore three years ago i went slightly insane and at a Cath Kidston rip off centre in Toa Payoh Hu...

The difference? So far the ability to concentrate. Or what makes them concentrate. Boys just seem to have very little attention spans if you try and engage them in the regular way. as in let us sit in our chairs and we will read. because ssshiiiny...is their motto. HOWEVER what needs to happen is you need to somehow engage them in some kind of activity. So recorder playing for a while was touch and go, until i said, right the fairytale jorinda and Jorindel...what happens? The witch captures Jorinda and turns her into a nightingale. So we are going to rescue jorinda and we must pretend to be cuckoos. And also we cannot blow the recorder out of turn because then the witch will know we are not birds. then we must go through the Woods of Darkness and up the Slippery Stairs `and then we must blow together and blow alone.. you get the picture. You need to involve them in something because boys will never do anything for the sake of doing it - oh they might, but its much better to h...

I woke up feeling better, not so grumpy, but a sense of melancholy had descended over me. I can for certain now say i do not know why i am feeling sad, but sometimes i do not know why i'm feeling so happy either. So it balances itself out. Part of my sadness may have to do with January. And the fact that we get now snow. We get lots of rain. And lots of wind. If you live in Belfast there are also riots which you could go to see these days. Perhaps that's why i feel so sad. I'm about to start work for the day. I woke at 3.30 and did things like the laundry and had some breakfast. I wrote to a friend, then i wrote in my journal. I tidied up. And now i'm about to start work. Except of course i am blogging. And i don't really think of it as work. It's the thing that i do for the kids, that's what i think of it as. I was also thinking that what you are asked of as a Steiner teacher is that you must do your absolute best for the kids. That you MUST TRY YOUR ...

I HATE being miserable. It is one sure fire way i can tell i am on the cusp of being ill. I am teetering. My body is in a state of indecision. I am pissed off. Everything pisses me off. Including things which should otherwise either not bother me or things that even make me happy. Nothing has changed from yesterday to today and yet for some reason today the thing that was the same yesterday just isn't good enough. I being to project into the future. Ah the future...i begin to think...what will happen in the future? I begin to think about things which i can't even control. I begin to think, ridiculous things. And then i feel even worse. the only solution of course is to start thinking about now. Thinking about all the wonderful things that i have here. My lovely children, the family, my friends, my special friends, my wonderful work, the incredible kids, the fact i learnt to German knit today. It is very stupid really. Actually writing that list was good. I feel better a...

Turner's Fighting Temeraire As each successive month passes and the blood tide rises i do feel like older and older. For about a day i feel, oh my god, this is feckin awful. This is me, at 42, feeling like i want to just run and hide. Ghin is now also sick. He has a low fever. Not high enough to render him in capacitated, but low enough to go, he can't go to school. That would be pushing it. However, since i'm off work today as well, since it is the day after the course, i'm at home looking after him. The weekend was full on, as usual, as all these weekends are. We spent the entire weekend discussing Steiner and drawing and painting and thinking about the curriculum. The thing about the teaching practise is that you really do need to be in front of a class to do proper teaching. The temptation is too great try to explain the lesson rather than actually teach it. We did clouds. Two things i have to say about clouds. When i did it at A levels i detested it. My te...

At this time of the year my bed develops magical properties. It would appear that some kind of magnet has been installed in it and i can't extricate myself from it. With the Christmas break it seemed to get worse. I do wake at 4.30 everyday to prep for school, and usually i just outta it. At this time of the year it seems impossible as i am somehow invisibly but surgically attached to it. I was thinking about the Will. Steiner talks about how the will does not like being disturbed. In fact if it could it would sleep all day and we would just end up either doing things without knowing why we do them or just lying in bed all day. The whole point of Steiner education is to cultivate a healthy will and the only way to do this is through the Feeling. If we feel things strongly, we will want to do things. It seems only logical. however in education people don't talk about Feeling. They talk about Thinking. Thinking is good says Steiner but it really gets us nowhere. We end up just be...

Some old photos i found from last year... The largest fishing port in Ireland Some birds  Sunsets Gulls on the pier Where there are fish there are gulls...lots of them Slieve League The highest sea cliffs in Europe

Aurelia in the basi convent uniform Talk about cuteness personified!!! My neice started school this week. In Singapore we follow the calendar year as we do not have this thing call summer to contend with. There are things in one's life that are triggers by events which other people experience - seeing Aurelia in a school uniform brought back my first day of school too. Six is not very many years, but when you see a child turn six and have watched that child grow from a helpless baby to a individual who can now fend for herself, up to a point, it does strike you as such a very very long time - so much can happen then. That uniform. I may feel fond of it now but i cannot remember s ingle day when i thought i love thus uniform. It was uncomfortable, too hot, either too long or too short, there was the dilemma of wearing shorts (which i never did as it was too hot) or to wear undies and risk being humiliated...such as the time when i forgot to bring my PE kit and was told i ...

The Three Kings...good for teaching vowels with Yesterday i began looking at putting things together for school. We will be getting into the vowel, or the angel letters and i'm going to use the journey of the three kings to do this. The thing i love about the curriculum is that you can bring things back later and you can put things in which will reinforce and echo things which have been taught. The curriculum itself is sooo tight that a single object - or animal - can be used over and over again in different ways. So, for instance, i will be using Eagle to teach the vowel sound 'E'. The Magi (which will be used to teach the vowel sounds 'I' and 'A', because they are Kings, will have an Eagle (like a hunting bird) to bring news of the birth of Jesus in a stable. The Eagle is always a good bird to use - it is universal, and so steeped in mankind's history and culture. So, for instance, when we do the King of Ireland's son in Class Three, the Ea...

Exhibit A - Choleric Archytype? Slightly Willam Blake Ghin will be six this coming Monday. Because he has an older brother Ghin seems a LOT older than six - or rather a lot older than when i think of Oisin at his age. He is sarccy, has a wicked sense of humour and also will buy and sell you at a drop of a hat. He is such a smartass that i am on the verge of thinking that should be not become a barrister, he would have missed his calling. People who know what i think abt barristers will know what an act of generosity that is - on either side. I try and restrain these tendencies namely because i think that people, children, should not be smararses. They should be immersed in the wonder of the world. If they are smartarses at the age of 6 at 16 they will be exhausted. The world will appear dull and uninspiring to them. I maybe wrong. Anyway, Ghin decided that they should all do a play and went into Oisin's cupboard to dig this out. The mask is one i got from Venice th...

Yesterday, i made a Spanish omelette for lunch. I had some chlli sprinkled on mine and Oisin asked, is it hot? I said, yeah, its ok. And then of course he proceed to put some in his mouth. Yeah, it's not hot. Well, if you put more it will be. Now the difference between boys and girls is that girls will say, yes, this is true mummy. You are right. It is logical, this makes sense. Boys however go, really? Let me see - i'll bet its not that hot, can you see how hot it will get? Will i see. Let me see...and then...proceed to put several teaspoonfuls into their gobs before going ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!! They will do this despite the fact the last time they did this the exact thing happened and the last time i looked the chemical make up and effect chilli has on the human hyodious was the same. This is why programmes like Jackass and Mythbusters exist. Solely to record and eddify the otherwise enormous stupidity of men. Anyway, here are the pictures from our mini episode. The before ...

My new hold all Pretty sticky notes...banish those hedious day glo ones Belfast busride Yesterday i went buck mad at the sales in that street with Avoca, Cath K and Paperchase in it. A friend once observed very sweetly, is this like your favourite street in Belfast? I have to admit that should the collective efforts of our paramilitaries spare only one street and one street alone and it be that street in Belfast, then i will think more kindly of them. Said somewhat facetiously, if one can be facetious about such things. Probably not. Cath K was quite worrying though. When i went in, i knew exactly what i wanted. I had seen it on the website which i had been checking out since midnight on Christmas Day. I do quite a lot of travelling and i wanted a bag which could fit in all my luggage for a day trip. A large carry all. It had been cut from £35 to £17, but i just wanted to make sure it was the right size. So i dragged the boys to town on a bus. The bus bit was...