Friday 22 July 2011

Seriously uncooperative cats

You know I saw a cat being attacked once.

It was a horrible sight. A person attacked the beast and the poor animal turned, arched its small back and spat. Then it used claws to draw blood. The man wasn't pleased. He wanted to cow the creature. He wanted that creature to obey him, to do what he wanted done. That's how it should have behaved because he wanted it to behave that way.

The cat, being full of vim and vigour, retaliated in a cat-like way. With teeth and claws and scratching...

The cat did not cooperate with the man.

The cat was uncooperative.

Hostile, you might say.

People, too, can be uncooperative and hostile.

Why? Well, they might not want to do whatever it is you want them to do. They might object to being treated like naughty two year olds. They might resist doing whatever you want them to do because, after all, they are sovereign beings and they don't need telling, do they?

Do you tell your neighbour how to park his car, where to hang his laundry, which bits of trees he should pollard? No? Thought not.

Why?

You don't direct your neighbour because your neighbour is a sovereign being. He can decide many things for himself. Of course if he parks his car in such a way to block yours, then you might have a gentle word. If he sticks his laundry in front of your window when he has a perfectly good drying spot inside his property line then you would be sensible to question him a bit. And, if he lops off branches from your side of the fence, he's in for a little talking to, isn't he?

You'd think he was a tiny way along the mad boardwalk if he transgressed these norms, wouldn't you? A bit nuts. Losing it.

And so we come to Gill's blog about Lincolnshire and all the other places who think that Lincolnshire rocks. This is a link to Gill's blog. Our amazingly radiant and brilliant writing Gill who upholds the truth, the honour and the right.

http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/

""Threatening behaviour can consist of the deliberate use of silence.""

That sentence is from this document:

http://lincolnshirescb.proceduresonline.com/chapters/g_work_uncoop_fams.html

Its title is 'Working with hostile and uncooperative families'. It reeks of maladminstration already, doesn't it? Hostility to any family just billows from its very appearance.

Why on earth you possibly should want to write such an incendiary piece of bollocks I don't know. Are you trying to be deliberately provocative, Lincolnshire, and all the other places who have similar poison flowing in their veins? Don't you like people? Do you think you are superior to people? Do you think you are the saviours of the world? Or just Lincolnshire or wherever the others come from? Who are you aiming to please here? What is your purpose for foisting on the innocent internet such venomous twaddle?

If you are trying to induce hostility in folks going about their own business in peace and harmony then you are doing sterling work, my friends. There's nothing at all like putting people's backs up in the first second of attempting to 'help and support' them, is there? Your basic pre-Psychology Psychology course would have taught you that, wouldn't it?

'Softly softly catchee monkey' quite clearly isn't a proverb you've ever been exposed to, have you, my dears?

There are other things you have quite caught on to. Thinking. Allowing. Being. Seeing the best in people. Understanding that your understanding is really limited. That you are failing in being service providers and instead are dictators. You are setting people you encounter up to fail whether or not they are guilty of doing whatever it is you are determined they must be doing.

What bothers me is how do they get away with this tosh?

Who authorises such complete idiocy? Such arrant nonsense fit only for burning.

Who spends the money to require another human being to so degrade, jeer at, throw aspersions at and justify assumptions that should never even be countenanced at all?

Oh, bloomers. We do. We spend the money. It's our money being used against us to hurt all us hostile uncooperative sovereign beings who don't need help, don't want help and won't take help. Of course help, in this case, is a pejorative term (debasing and negative). Anyone who can spew bellicose bile like that is anything but helpful. Anyone who can nod at the pages and smile is guilty of monumental hubris and incredible ignorance of the respect and decency required of a civilised man or woman towards his or her fellow human beings.

You should be ashamed of yourselves, Lincolnshire, and all you others. Hide your sorry heads in shame. Take the nasty piece of vitriol away and start Psychology classes, and don't skim-read your textbooks.

There will be an exam later, and you shall be judged.

Saturday 9 July 2011

Research, music, pride and fun

Yesterday I reaffirmed what I've thought for a long time.

We like to home educate because it's - well - just plain good fun.

E was speaking to one of her friends about World War II. The friend mentioned what her grandparents did during the war which led E to come along to ask me what my parents did. Some of what they did she already knows and I've even written my mother's story which was published in Ancestors magazine, and there's a side panel about my mother's time in the Women's Timber Corps in my 'Toiling on the Soil' article mainly about the Women's Land Army in Family History Monthly, July 2011.

E was interested in her dad's father's experiences so we started to dig, with our limited knowledge, and found some very interesting things. An afternoon went by. Our knowledge has increased and been enhanced. We know more about my girls' grandfather (sadly not with us now) than we did.

Now I'm listening to music from Lord of the Rings as played by E. So haunting and beautiful. It's a piece I just thought I'd always hear on CD. But now my daughter can play it on her piano. Wonderful.

How talented they are, my once little girls. How much my heart thuds with pride these days. How I have to hide it with a brisk 'That was lovely, dear.' How I love my beautiful young people.

How pleased I am that we home educate, and they have the freedom to be themselves in this world of encouraged conformity.