Home education

Well, a lot of water has gone under various interesting bridges. My LSW has been made redundant and has started contracting. This means, for the next eight weeks or so that she's doing a weekly commute of over 200 miles and I'm home alone with the boys. I'm also home educating the elder two boys (now aged 6 and 9) as they can't get in to their local school.

Anyway as part of my long campaign to try to get them in, I emailed BBC News on Friday and today a journalist with a camera came around and interviewed me for the local news station. I've been feeling a bit weird ever since and I realised that very literally someone came in from the outside to see how I live my life.

And that made me realise that a lot of what I take for granted is actually quite different. She only saw the home education side of things but in the background the home made wine was bubbling away nicely. And I run a compost heap and am strangely proud that with a family of five, including one in nappies, we can cope with rubbish collections every other week because of the amount we recycle.

Every day I see how other people live and realise that I am quietly forging my own path, from keeping slightly older, cheaper cars going to really wanting to walk my children to school.

Anyway, creative stuff I have done recently. I've had another go at some glass painting and am happier with the results. It's now autumn so I've been out foraging all sorts of berries to make into jam and wine and a new delicacy called Elder Rob. This is a home made cold remedy that tastes divine! And I've been slowly harvesting the garden into the freezer and planning next year's crops. And I even dusted off the chisels to give stone carving another go. I love doing this but hardly get the chance at the moment and it will eventually lead to some metal casting fun!

Anyway I've got to go back to being a full time house-husband-stay-at-home-Dad.

Graham