Tuesday

Ginger beer making (see previous post) ...followed by fencing lessons.

ooooh, that's gotta hurt!

Lashings and lashings of ginger beer

Our How To guide to making ginger beer
(adapted from Posh boy, Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall's recipe)

Initial preparation
First read the recipe and work out how you can busk it with the ingredients you actually have in your cupboard.

Per 2 litre screw-top fizzy drink bottle:

Ingredients:

1/4 tsp brewer's yeast ( ok, bread yeast it is then)

225 g caster suger (hmmm..no caster sugar...no white sugar at all...we use brown demerara sugar which has it's own issues as you will read later)

1 1/2 - 2 tbsp finely grated fresh root ginger (or 1 tbsp because we got bored, and the added ingredient of some finely grated skin and fingernails)

juice of 1 lemon (or one old slightly shrivelled lemon)

1 good tbsp honey (roughly measured with sticky fingers)

METHOD

1) Sterilize everything you're going to use, particularly the plastic bottle (we used campden tablets). Get pre-teen to use nail brush ON HIS NAILS for first time in life (it has of course been used previously for cleaning weird items found in garden).

2) add yeast to bottle

3) With a funnel, pour in the sugar (note, this is why the recipe recommends the use of caster sugar, NOT thick chunky stick brown sugar).

Twenty minutes later and using a chopstick to poke the sugar down the funnel.

Still not working so we come up with our own paper funnel solution...

4)Grate ginger and squeeze lemon juice.

5) Mix grated ginger with lemon juice and honey.

6) Take time out to annoy sibling

7) Pour the ginger mixture through the funnel (still clogged up with brown sugar) into the bottle.

8) Fill the bottle 3/4 full with water. Put cap on: the importance of this is demonstrated in the following 'I'm-about-to-drop-the-2litre-bottle-of-brown-syrup' photo.

9) Allow children to fight over who is going to shake bottle until all the sugar is dissolved.

10) Top up bottle with water, leaving a 2.5cm gap at the top to allow for gas production. Try to keep a straight face while children make several crude jokes about gas production.

11) Encourage the photogenic members of the family to pose besides almost-finished product.

12) Leave for about 48 hours in a warm place. Once bottle feels very hard (or in our case, hardish) and has no give in it, place in fridge for a few hours to stop yeast working.

13) Once beer is thoroughly chilled, filter it through a fine sieve (or in our case a jam bag over a funnel).

14) Scrape 48-hour-ol ginger syrup off all kitchen surfaces

15)Serve.

Strange happenings.

I've never thought of our road as particularly unusual or interesting. It's a fairly normal suburban road. Nothing much (as far as I've noticed) ever really happens there. But this week I am rethinking my perspective.


On Saturday I stepped out of my front garden onto the pavement with my cow-print shopping trolley and furry granny boots (very stylish) to go to the greengrocers.

I closed the gate and as I turned round a guy, 6ft plus, built like a brick outhouse, walked past me with a knife a foot long and at least 3 inches across. He seemed happy, cheery even, gripping the wooden handle and swinging the knife in its grey sheath to-and-fro as he strolled along.

Granny boots made a hasty retreat.


And then today a friend arrived at our house saying 'I've just seen a dalek at the end of your road' and then showed me the photo on her phone. True enough, as me and the kids got to the end of the street some students in their twenties were loading a life-sized dalek into a van.



All I can say is:
if you think home educators were weird, you should see our neighbours.

Mr Blue Sky

'Mr Blue Sky' by ELO was playing on the radio in the van.

Sun is shinin' in the sky
There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin' ev'rybody's in a play
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day hey,hey

Ok, so it was raining. Raining quite a lot. And cloudy and grey and cold. But we were out, heading towards the woods, the greenery, the fresh air. Such a positive feeling, I could almost have imagined a blue sky.

We arrive. Meet up with one other family. Perhaps I'm antisocial, but sometimes I like to meet up with just one family. There's time to talk. Proper talking. The group dynamics for the kids is easier, less wild. The different genders will play comfortably with each other without the option of gender division of the larger groups. With large groups the kids scatter and there is a tendency for the parents to opt out. With a small group we can all interact, take part, discuss, plan, create.

It's been so long we have to fight our way through the undergrowth. Retread the path into the woods. I can't remember when we were last here.

The children run free.


They work to patch up the 'den'. Most of the moss has gone, but the basic structure is there from our visits last year. Each visit they do this. One winter we came here every week, even through the snow and ice. I miss it.

Gloopy fungi. Shiny, gelatinous, wobbly. The best sort.

The den, finished (for now). 'If you see any holes those are our fire escapes' says ds1.

There's nothing like having a camp fire on a rainy day, especially when shared with friends.

Cooking onion bhajis

And toasting pancakes

Then just time for ds2 to make an assault course for the younger ones.

Of course, we're all the winner.

Here's to more gentle days in the woods, shared with friends. More Mr Blue Sky please.

Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

Hey there mister blue
We're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Ev'rybody smiles at you

And what will the new year bring?

Now is the time traditionally set aside for reflective thinking and planning (or mulling over the train wreck of the previous year if you're a 'glass half-empty' sort of person).

I am a compulsive planner.
An addictive thinker.
And not so much of a do-er.
This is my downfall: planning, thinking, weighing up pros and cons, making little lists and diagrams and charts, researching all the possibilities...and then...not doing.

But this year it WILL be different (I think). Yes I will plan it to be different. I will plan to DO more and think less. Hmm...already I'm heading for a headache.

First thing to tackle is our home education strategy. At the end of last year our home education was heading way off the rails. Somehow the 'autonomous' part had got lost among the 'I need to tick some boxes' part and the 'I need to tick some boxes' part gradually became the 'sit down there and do this or else you will make me feel like a crap mother and I'll cry and make you feel guilty' strategy. Not an approach to be recommended.

So this year? Well I'm still undecided. Truth is we are rarely completely autonomous, yet most of the time I am pretty relaxed about what the kids do. That is until little Jonny down the road can say his 9 times table backwards while riding a unicycle and playing grade 8 level flute and discussing Shakespearian tragedy. Then the anxiety sets in.

So a few days ago I asked the kids for some things they wanted to do/places they wanted to go.

Wow! I must have been such a scary mummy these past few months. How do I know? Because ds1 said
'I quite like doing maths'
and ds2 said 'my maths books were ok'.
Uh oh!
So I say, 'Ok, boys, you can be honest now, I wont mind.' They look at me as if this is a trick. 'No really. I want to know what you want to do.'

It took about half an hour and some prompting and reassurances and suggestions, but eventually they came up with a list that looks something like this:

ds1
Handwriting & punctuation practice (yes he actually wanted to do handwriting!)
Science: Biology/microscopy; Gases; Rocket science & big bangs
Learn to make pancakes & other cooking
Use metal detector at allotment
Build a raft/boat

ds2
Leonardo da Vinci project
WWII project and outings
Weekly science, e.g. Krampf
Find a park for using mountain board

dd
Knitting/sewing
Cooking
Basic science: growing/plant biology
Bike:Getting off stabilizers!

All
Cooking from the Posh Boy's Family cookbook
Get hold of the Horrible Histories Cds - Tudors? Georgians?
Make ginger beer, beer and wine
Build bird boxes
Meteorology/Weather - make barometer, hygrometer, clouds, weather vane, rainfall

So, all in all, not a bad list to start the new year. I just have to keep those anxieties at arm's length and focus on where we're heading.

Er...where are we heading? Anyone got a map?

ok, that was it...

...next stop, Easter.

I'm taking bets on how long til Cadbury cream eggs get in Tescos.

A week, perhaps? That should be long enough to clear the Christmas stock in the sales and get a shelf free.

The cynicism of the middle aged.