Listen to Melissa, guest on Radio Four’s Saturday Live, this morning, Saturday May 9th. ( Happy birthday Joshua!) Continue reading…
Writings
Blog Off
My friend – let’s call him O- writes to tell me that he has been ‘exploring’ my blog and is not impressed. This follows a conversation the previous week in which, like several of my friends, he expresses a slightly aggressive surprise at my taking up the practice/habit, whatever we call it? ‘What’s the motive… Continue reading…
A win win solution
It was not the stuff of banner headlines. Potentially dodgy economic dossiers took that particular crown. But Alistair Darling’s Budget day announcement of 50,000 new traineeships in social care for unemployed young people — part of a package aimed at creating a quarter of a million jobs — was a substantive footnote to the economic… Continue reading…
Thoughts of an amateur cellist (1)
After a break of several years, I have just picked up my cello once more; a few minutes ago, I finished my first lesson and quite frankly I am feeling exhilarated at the prospect of returning to playing, albeit in a wholly amateur way. We started this week with Bach’s cello suites which I was… Continue reading…
And the winners are…………
…………….the parents of Queens Park Community School for our brilliant writers’ project, honoured today, at a special ceremony at the House of Commons, as an outstanding achievement in terms of ‘changing the life of a school.’ Given the incredibly high standard of all the entries for these annual gold star awards, we feel particularly pleased.… Continue reading…
Meeting Mr Balls.
I am very much hoping that today, at around one thirty pm at the House of Commons, I will get to shake the hand of schools secretary Ed Balls and even receive a generous cheque from him. How and why? Well, the parent body of our local school, Queens Park Community School (which my two… Continue reading…
Chair today………….
Listen to furniture designer Tom Dixon on the Today programme talk about chairs, past present and future. He was on at 7.49 am. Fascinating stuff. Continue reading…
How sad am I?
I am a sucker for information served neat as spirits, particularly of the historical/geographical/political kind. So the new Guardian World FactFiles series, providing digestible A4 length sets of facts on every single country in the world ( and I mean that excited emphasis most sincerely) including rates of literacy, mortality, GDP, indices on press freedom… Continue reading…
Faith schools: the latest news………..
Faith schools fail to improve standards and create “social sorting” of children along lines of class, ability and religion, researchers said yesterday. Academics at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Education, both part of the University of London, found no proof that providing parents with the choice of a religious secondary school… Continue reading…
On an unexpected meeting with a batch of football fans………..
Today, I travelled to Bristol for a memorial service for the much loved mother of an old friend. Towards the end of his very moving oration, her son happened to mention that his mother nearly acquired four different passports, that is citizenships, throughout her life. Born in India, she became a citizen of the newly… Continue reading…
