Glimpsesofcolour

I am still keeping all the charts imposed on me by the Terribly Tenacious Therapist, although last week I did tear one up because of cat attack. It’s a long story, but basically I was clearing out a file, which is one of my therapy tasks, and doing it on the floor which is the only sensible way. However the cat, who is paper-obsessed and who has already killed my printer, took this as an invitation to a fight, with the result that I burst into tears and swore I would make the next therapy appointment the last one. I also had to explain to the psych this week that I really wasn’t self-harming, those long scratches on my arm really were of feline origin.

Anyway I calmed down and started a new chart the next day and didn’t tell the therapist I was leaving. I think she is actually highlighting some useful things, I just wish it wasn’t all such hard work. I can do the ‘expose all the past trauma again’ thing standing on my head – been there, done that so many times – but I have to say I feel like drawing a line at so much homework (most of which does in fact involve drawing lines on paper).

This is too good not to blog it! Seen on Freecycle: OFFERED: bag of nappy inserts for real nappies, plus a few bags of p. Honestly, the line ends just there. I really don’t think anyone will want the bags of p.

And another PS to the parable of the wing mirror trim – sadly, I found on going back to the car that the ‘lost and found’ trim has fallen off and is now I know not where. Which kind of debases its spiritual value…

…the wing mirror trim. (Meant to blog this last week but forgot.) And behold, the driver came to her car one day and the nearside wing mirror was rotated by 180 degrees {sorry, can’t find the degrees symbol in keycaps] and the plastic trim that covered the bottom bit* was missing, giving the car an even tattier aspect than usual. Sighing, the driver clicked the mirror back into place and it still worked, though aesthetically less pleasing.

And lo, a couple of days later the driver was walking down her road and on the pavement outside her neighbour’s house was a familiar looking piece of black plastic. And when she picked it up, it had FIAT and a serial number impressed in it. So she took it to her car, fiddled with its little lugs which were a bit bent, and well whaddya know, it fitted perfectly on the bottom bit* of the wing mirror. And all I am prepared to say in explanation is that we all have the Maker’s name impressed on us, and only the Driver can fit us in exactly the right place. Or something like that.

*(technical term)

PS Did you know Jesus came to earth by Mary’s Fiat?

On skimming through my emails tonight I spotted in one of the Freecycle mails the following: ‘Offer: trolley’. My immediate thought was: ‘Is she?’

You may conclude from the quality of jokes that life has been a little too demanding lately. I survived chairing the Inclusion Group meeting (10 people came and seem very enthusiastic about taking action), but have been pretty overwhelmed since, with the sheer number of things I have to do this week, and the frustration of knowing that no matter how many letters we write, the Demon Headmaster will go his own sweet way. However we are now considering engaging in a group legal action, which would certainly make him sit up.

Woke up feeling awful today, but with the judicious application of an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo, followed by a comforting church service, I feel almost put back together. Though still knackered.

As one of the tasks allocated by the CBT therapist, I have to note down what I do for each hour of the day and rate it on a scale of 1-10 for sense of achievement, and pleasure. This is by no means easy. First of all, it took me three attempts to draw up a reasonably usable chart, and this scored 0 on the pleasure scale as it took me back to having to do charts at school, a task I hated (show me a ruler and a pen and I will show you a series of wobbly, slanted lines with several blots). Secondly, my activities at the moment don’t really fit into neat slots; I might be doing four totally different activities in the course of an hour. Thirdly, how on earth do I rate the achievement and pleasure scores for taking my son to the dentist or spending five minutes playing Scrabble on Facebook? I am reduced to putting down totally random numbers. And I have run out of space to add ‘writing my blog’ between 1700 and 1800 hours, because the space is full of all the other things I did in that hour. Sigh…

I have just realized that today is exactly 70 years since my parents got married in Prospect Road, Swiss Cottage, and were given a pint of milk a day for a year as one of their wedding presents (and they needed it). My Dad died twelve years ago so they only made 58 years, which is still pretty impressive. This year has also been 70 years since they arrived in the UK as refugees from Austria (and of course, we recently had the 70th anniversary of the start of war).

I wonder how my mother has marked this day, if at all. She is 94 now but still living alone, doing her own shopping and cooking, and frequently having nine people round for tea. Which is pretty amazing.

Strange bangs and vibrations are coming into our house from the flat above. I hope it is just the tenants’ washing machine throwing a wobbly. And I hope it stops, otherwise we will have to buy them a new washing machine.

Meanwhile the saga of the school special needs policy grinds on. I saw the SENCO (special needs coordinator) this morning, and since my earlier emails, Genius Brat’s teaching assistant support has magically rematerialized. However she has also confirmed that there are only 8.6 TAs (what does 0.6 of a TA look like?) to fulfil the support hours on around 54 statements. This is clearly woefully inadequate, and I feel justified in organizing the parents’ meeting I have organized for Saturday (though woefully unqualified to lead it). It looks as though a feasible number of parents will be coming to it too. And we have a grant promised from the NUT to cover expenses (eg room hire, refreshments).

As well as running this (admittedly with a competent co-organizer who knows more than I do), I have four tasks given to me by the CBT therapist. I am beginning to think this therapy is going to give me another breakdown. Of course, I could always say that this is too much, and decide which of the four I am prepared to try. Since I am not good enough at saying No, I could surely practise by saying No to the therapist?

Finally in this blog of bits, the Over Keen Girlfriend crisis and the German Coursework Crisis seem to have been temporarily resolved. Though I expect they will both crop up again. I wouldn’t go back to being a teenager for anything – not even for a wrinkle free body (have you ever noticed how those extra powerful hand drying machines blow the loose skin on the back of your hand into little waves if you are over 50?)

What is it about medical personnel and the words ’slip’ and ‘pop’? I have a recurring fantasy of a pair of doctors called Dr Slip and Dr Pop, so often have I been invited to ’slip your things off and pop onto the couch’. I’d rather not pop anywhere, thank you.

Even the dentist is at it. This morning after examining my mouth to discover why I couldn’t bite any more, he offered, ‘Shall I just pop the tooth out now?’. Now it is nearly forty years since I last had a tooth out, but my memories are vivid, and ‘pop’ is certainly not the word I would use to describe a tooth extraction. ‘Heave’, ‘yank’ and ‘lever’ are more like it. There was a horrendous grinding noise as he performed the operation, and being numbed I was unable to tell whether he was taking half my jaw with it.

Do they all get taught a special language at medical or dental school, which includes magic phrases like ‘you’ll just feel a little prick’ (I certainly did feel a prick with my mouth wedged open).

Which reminds me, before and after the extraction I was having fun with my regular column, making up words I feel ought to exist. One of them, no doubt inspired by my recent experience, was the verb ‘to aesthetize’. This, as you might guess, defines the process of becoming sensitized to thoughts or feelings that you were impervious to before. I think a bit of aesthetizing would do no end of good in the world. So long as it didn’t make us all too pervious.

My only excuse (but it’s a good one) for not blogging since last Monday, is that The Demon Headmaster has struck again and I have been much preoccupied with doing stuff about it. To elucidate, I have discovered that my son is currently getting 0% of the 32 1/2 hours of teaching assistant support that his statement entitles him to. This is even more invidious when you consider that we live in Borough A, which issues his statement, but the school is in Borough B. This means Borough A is giving the school around £20,000 specifically for my child and the school is spending it on something else. In any other context this would be called fraud. And he is by no means the only child not getting their support, indeed one child’s parents are taking the school to the High Court over the lack of implementation of their child’s statement.

Not only that but it seems the school has revived a policy they tried to implement a couple of years ago, to put statemented kids in a ’special’ class, which may result in all the learning support resources being directed to this group, and no support for those left in the mainstream classes. Which can hardly be called inclusion.

Fired by righteous indignation I have been working with one other parent to revive the defunct Inclusion Group, and we have got a meeting going for next weekend. We also sent details to both the boroughs involved. I just hope parents turn up in decent numbers so we can present a united front to the school. What this head has done to special needs kids is truly appalling. The sad thing is, I was in a café last week with some parents from the school with ‘normal’ kids, and they all think he’s wonderful.

Went to a reunion party last night for some friends from church who now live in America, but were passing through. Since various people turned up who used to know them when they were at our church, it turned out to be a reunion with them too. Including a guy I haven’t seen since some years ago when I stepped backwards on his foot at Oxford Services, then turned round to apologize and realized it was him!

So lovely to meet up again with people who have meant so much to us. And the cakes were good too… And our trip to America to ‘Mennonite our way’ next summer is beginning to take some shape, so hopefully in less than a year we will be reuniting again, not only with the couple from last night but with several others who have passed through our lives and then departed across the Atlantic.