Yes, please…..

Thanks so much for lunch the other day A….amazing what three friends can achieve sitting round a table drinking coffee shot, after coffee shot, after coffee shot! Please could you put up the recipe for your noodle soup ( gorgeous), I want to make it for my mum who isn’t very well, I can put it in a large plastic container and she can use it as she wishes. 

In the last few days I have been doing a lot of the sort of breathing they teach you to do while giving birth but have finally calmed down a tad.  As you know Country School is not my favourite place but due to circumstances out of my control we are stuck with it for now. One of the biggest gripes I have about the school is that the teachers think nothing of calling the children names; prat, pillock and crap are adjectives I am told are being repeatedly used by teaching staff at Country School. I remember when we first arrived two years ago how shocked the children and I were at the way the pupils were spoken to by their teachers and visa versa (for the record, husband said “so what, no biggie?”). The pupils seemed to me, in the main, non-plussed and uninspired by their teachers, little respect was shown on either side and the general feeling was that nobody really liked anyone at all. Things have changed a little in the last year and along with a new Head there is a steady outbound stream of teachers (presumably sacked), as far as I am aware this is part of an on-going programme to bring the school back up to the mark and shake off it’s current appalling reputation, but it seems that no matter how many teachers leave, when new ones arrive a high proportion of them become as rude and disinterested as the last lot within weeks. I suppose that’s why they say it takes at least 3-4 years for a “flushing” plan such as this to bear fruit, large “plops” in the loo sometimes need more flushing than others! Regardless of what’s going on at Country School my question is “Should teachers,  into whose hands (by law) we must entrust our children for at least 6 months of every year, be allowed to use below base language when addressing their charges?”

Yes, I know, there may well be kids out there whose parents call them pillocks and prats all day long and to these children it’s just a bit of banter, but certainly not in my house, no, no, no! So, when someone calls my son a prat the boy is understandably shocked, a little hurt and most importantly he has been belittled by a runt of a teacher who he will naturally begin to dislike and in turn not enjoy the lessons……teacher’s a pillock! When the time comes that school rules dictate pupils may respond to name calling by name calling back then of course I will have no complaint but currently this is not the case and it never will be. Name calling is a one sided, slag-off battle that only the teacher can win, how frustrating and confusing that must be for a nine year old!………….THESE TEACHERS ARE CRAPPY, PRATTY PILLOCKS, THE LOT OF THEM!!!  

So from pretty pratty to very natty, let me tell you about the newly launched fashion outlet from spanish clothing and homewares company Zara. I have been browsing their website this week and found that Uterque.com is LOADED with unique, wearable, affordable clothes, yes it’s a little more expensive than sister shop Zara but at the same time a little more sofisticated; put it this way if I was given a trolley and free rein in the shop (my dream prize) one trolley wouldn’t be enough!

In order to pay for all these new clothes (!!) I bought a scratch card today for the first time because a friend has just won a huge amount of money on one….sad aren’t I, I’ll scratch it in the loo, don’t want the kids getting ideas and you never know I might be £100,000 richer in ten minutes time!

Ellie x

P.S I’ve Just heard that the boys at my best friend’s school have been calling her daughter a “Lesbo” and Mum heard them say it………….yes, school life can be so cruel and I’m fast coming round to the idea of home schooling.