World Book Day, Ben Fogle and Maths tests by Annie Hayes

The Against All Odds Girl is excited, well let’s be real, ecstatic is closer to her state of mind, about World Book Day. There are some benefits to lockdown and homeschooling and I had hoped that skipping the dressing up day would be one of them, but like many of the blows of the past 12 months this is one of them. She wants to go to the ‘skool, skool’ (dressed as a farm girl) with the keyworker gang which is a bit like the ‘Breakfast club’ bar the teen bit but plus the detainment in a classroom with a mish mash of kids you didn’t know before, but now you do, including the finer details of why they have a mole on their face to their thoughts on ‘butter or no butter’ in their sandwiches.

She is Fern from Charlotte’s Web which involves taking last year’s Annie costume of a red dress and white collar and tucking it into some hand-me down dungarees while stripping a shower gel and body lotion set of a gingham ribbon and transplanting it onto her pony tail. We arrive at the ‘Breakfast club’ to see the PE teacher walking the other way. I am assuming he is The Boy In The Dress because he has a blonde wig on and a short skirt, either that or he has wrongly assumed it’s Saturday night and his wife is out.

The Against All Odds Girl has made a web out of cocktail sticks, packing tape and some discoloured string. She greets the music teacher who dispenses hand gel as well as playing in a symphony orchestra and, pulls out the DIY web, he misfires while congratulating her on her creation and, the sticky stuff seeps into the cocktail sticks. She is unsure whether to laugh or cry but I shove her forward because I don’t want to deal with the fallout of a costume gone wrong and anyway I am trying to get another glimpse of the PE teacher who was last seen walking towards the playing field in a pair of stilettoes.

While I deal with my parental decisions, I look at a social media post by Ben Fogle who is sitting by an outdoor fire looking cold. He’s plugging his Return to the Wild series. I love it because it helps me to feel normal, (who wouldn’t when they watch the Yorkshire shepherdess remember all the names of her nine free-ranging children). I am aglow with my own comparisons, knowing the first and middle names of the Against All Odds Girl and today of her book character too, I am therefore a good parent.

Meanwhile, Ben who has cold toes is asking us ‘not to judge a book by its cover’ but this is difficult when you are making up wild stories in your head about the PE teacher and his desire to dress as a cheerleader.

The Middle Child is learning about the ‘one child’ policy in China. He is asked to read from a passage in which he finds out about the pressures on only children. ‘I got 76% in a maths test and my parents took my pocket money away from me for a week’ (this is the Chinese child and not the Middle Child, I mean come on – if he got 76% we would be having a party not withdrawing polymer notes). It goes onto say how they must study before, at and after school (the Chinese children not the ones sat in my homestead).

The Middle Child looks shocked, it’s the same face he gives me when he is in the ‘penis’ lesson which is kinda interlinked because his next question to me is how do they ensure they only have one child? I try to re-frame the learning points so that he appreciates that he could work harder if he was born in China in the late 1970s and that it is good to study because otherwise you might be cashless, but he wants to concentrate on the ability to produce the 1 and not the 1x3 that we have. I don’t think I can face this conversation, particularly as while he is in his geography lesson and learning about Chinese population, I am making a sausage casserole, so I don’t want to go there right now.

The Teenager is oblivious of World Book Day because he is in a maths test with a teacher that is dressed as themselves.

Question 9:

The radius of a circular flower bed is 30.5cm.

Work out the circumference of the flower bed.

Give your answer in terms of pi in its simplest form.

I’m wondering if the Yorkshire shepherdess deals with this 1x9 or if she just tells them to go and breathe fresh air so she can make a stew instead. I think the latter. The Teenager is looking at me for help and I stare back with a look that says, ‘Well you should have revised your 3.14 calculation instead of watching Ben Fogle (again, but this time in Chernobyl … he gets around) until 10.30pm. He looks back while yawning and moving onto the next question which is about using the equation to work out the volume of a jar but he doesn’t know much about that either, although he can tell us about one of the worst nuclear disasters of our time and he can also provide details on when Fogle is going to be on TV tomorrow and the day after that. I think this is potentially more useful so I bring him a hot chocolate as an affirmation to not caring about pi or garden measurements.

I’m slightly distracted while trying to remember the names of my children by a WhatsApp from my pals who share some commentary from the Family Lockdown Tips & Ideas Facebook group (which I left some months ago on account of the number of rainbows their children drew).

A mum writes:

I know for most families, there is great relief and thankfulness for the return of school and that routine …

But …

Are there any of you who have now had a chance to try home Education and it has actually helped you decide that you WANT to do it full-time?

Just wondering:

There are 1.2k comments but the one that stands out is:

I’d rather cover myself in honey and staple my t*ts to a beehive

And to that I say, fair play my friend, fair play.