I am greatly in awe of the homeschooling mummies who regularly blog. Its a trick which, you may have noticed, I have not fully grasped. I have been getting to grips with other issues which were demanding my attention however, so now, I'm back in the saddle and raring to "giddy up"!
On Saturday, I met up with a fellow Brit blogger ( a Yank actually, but living here so I'm claiming her for our gang since you lot have more than enough mates to be getting on with, and we're a tad thin on the ground) We had arranged to meet up at a home education fair in Notting Hill ( I 've seen pics of US homeschool conventions and let me tell you, over here it is a very different affair. You have something that looks like an aircraft hangar, we have a rather quaint church hall. Picture a local bring and buy sale at a community hall ) It took all of about 10 minutes to peruse the stalls, and then we scuttled off to the local Starbucks to do what girls do best ( other than shopping, no doubt that was taken care of later down Portobello road tee hee!)
It was a bit like a blind date. She has dark curly hair and wears glasses and would be wearing a pink top. I have dark curly hair too. " I thought you had blonde straight hair?" " Nah, that pic on my blog was taken when I was going to a murder mysery party" I was going through a blonde moment, and I'd blow dried my hair straight in order to be in character. It was a 1930's party, I had a cloche hat and a fur stole and a fabulous vintage flapper dress. My husband had to make do with a dinner jacket and a pencil moustache artfully drawn with eye liner pencil by moi. My outfit was much more fun, thanks to my theatrical neighbour who loaned me the gear ( incidentally he was the chief hair guy on the Titanic and Sliding doors, and has a loft full of interesting wigs, a great man to know if you're going to a murder mystery party)
But I digress, thanks to mobile phone technology, we did'nt need to resort to wearing a carnation in our jackets for ID purposes and even though I was an hour later than planned ( Central line down, thanks London Underground) we passed a very pleasant afternoon getting to know eachother. Even if the Home ed fair wasn't anything to write home about, the weather was lovely, and the Portobello Road was fairly jumping with good 'ol London market vibe
So, Mr. DeedeeUK, you have a most delightful wife, and no doubt you were very pleased to get her home again .
Comments
Sep. 26, 2006 - good to see you in the saddle again
Posted by kphillips5
Cue th ecowboy music, Clare's back! Good to see you and I know what you mean about the whole blogging thing. Caroline asked me the other day,"Mommy are you ever going to write anything on your blog again?" Have a wonderful day
Karen
Sep. 27, 2006 - Untitled Comment
Posted by jayfromcleveland
Hi Claire, wow, you really let Anonymous have it! Remind me to never tangle with you!
FYI -- a lot of US homeschool meetups are also in quaint church basements rather than airplane hangars. There are only a couple of the big, big, BIG conventions, and these are usually in the more populous homeschool states like Florida and Texas. Remember, the USA is a huge place. The distance from Washington DC to Boston alone is greater than the distance from the Channel to Hadrian's Wall. I know everyone abroad thinks the USA is very homogeneous, but we're spread out and diverse, and for most of "Po-Dunk USA" like Ohio, things are on a lot smaller scale than on the coasts, where all our American TV shows are based. Besides, UK homeschooling is on the grow, and someday you'll have big conventions of your own. Then you can be the gray lady who remembers "the good old days" when things were small!
Nice to see you posting again, take care, jay