The Joy of Home Schooling

As I have travelled through the rich tapestry that we call life, I have discovered that there are some jobs that I simply could not bring myself to do.

After leaving University, I spent 8 years working in a walled town for Miserable Finance Limited. Although my colleagues all had the most outstanding drinking skills and senses of humour, the daily grind was about as electrifying as counting grains of rice whilst wearing a blindfold and ski gloves. I think the only thing that actually stopped me from committing suicide during those long 8 years was the social gatherings that took place whenever someone clever passed an exam, or someone saw the light and had a leaving do. These social gatherings took place in the pub across the road from our offices at a very prompt 5.30pm. On some occasions you only knew that you had definitely attended, when you woke up the following morning in a strange house, still wearing your suit and your wallet was empty.

Good times.

I have to admit that I did enjoy composing the company’s unofficial quarterly newsletter and found that I had a genuine flair for producing nicknames for the senior management. I’m not sure the partners in the firm ever saw my well-written handiwork and so they may be unaware that the partner who suffered from the most calamitous outbursts was nicknamed Captain Caveman and the one with slightly frizzy hair was known as Pube-Head. I thought these nicknames were only known to a select few in the firm until the day I walked into the Typing Pool to find the typists trying to decide if the name “Wanky Pants” should be hyphenated.

Anyway; I digress.

During those days, I despised the smug VAT Inspectors and once I even had the misfortune of accidently helping one to get a coffee from the machine in our office. I was completely taken in by his nice smile and slightly crumpled suit and it was only later in the day when I saw him in the Board Room with a set of client’s records scattered across the enormous table that I realised I had served a coffee to the VAT man.

I was livid with myself.

Towards the end of my career with the financial miseries, I was based in the IT department which came as a bit of shock after spending the previous 5 years in Accounts and Audit. The IT lads talked in a language that I didn’t understand and got very stressed when any of the servers chose to fall over for no apparent reason.

The IT lads also loved the internet surfing control software that the company used. My neighbour, The Aigle Welly Wearer once asked me to research a sausage making machine so she could buy one as a surprise for her husband. During my lunch break (obviously) I typed “sausage making” into Google and 3 seconds later the head Techie poked his head around my office door and with a wry grin asked if I was “looking for something for the weekend”.

The IT department revolved around cans of energy drinks and food. The Techies brought bacon and egg McMuffins in for their breakfast, ordered pizza for their lunch and if we had to have an early meeting in the department, the IT Manager would appear with a huge bag of hot sausages from the Co-Op’s hot counter for us all to share. This is perhaps why I was a stone overweight when I finally left for a new job in the summer of 2005.

Along with a diet that would rival that of a Shot Putter, the whole of the IT department seemed to have a small issue with timekeeping and so to remedy this problem, we took to parking our cars on the street, right at the office door. This saved a good 5 minutes in the morning although we then had to run the gauntlet with the bastarding Traffic Warden. I had honestly never seen the laid back IT lads move quickly until the day when one of the partners (The Plate Spinner) came into the IT suite and said he had just seen the Traffic Warden at the bottom of the street.

So there you have it, the 2 jobs I could not do under any circumstances are VAT Inspector and bastarding Traffic Warden.

Until just over a week ago.

I collected Britney (not her real name) from school a week past Friday and was suddenly faced with the reality of home schooling.

Not a problem, I thought. I have friends who have home schooled their children and although these friends are much cleverer than me, surely I am more than capable of home schooling Britney.

Well it turns out that no, I am not capable of home schooling my own child.

The first day went quite well, possibly because Britney was excited about the whole working from home thing, until she realised that she was actually expected to do some work.

We went to our desk clutching our travel mugs (rhubarb and custard fruit tea for me, raspberry and elderflower juice for her) and set to work. During our grammar lesson I had to sneakily Google what a frontal adverbial was and even after I had read about where and how it should appear in a sentence; I still didn’t understand it. Basically the grammar that Britney is doing in year 6 is what I was doing at A Level, so after Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation we moved on to Maths. I faired slightly better at this until Britney suggested that I have a go on Times Table Rock Stars, where you have to complete as many multiplication calculations as you can in 60 secs.

This is possibly the most traumatic thing I have ever had to do in my life.

A last-minute submission of a VAT return at 40 seconds to midnight is positively relaxing compared to this. Britney was most disappointed that her response time had dropped from 2.9 seconds to 2.16 seconds. I was disappointed that I couldn’t remember what 7 x 8 was.

From this high-octane Mathematics, we moved swiftly on to art which involved decorating one of our new bee houses. PE consisted of a game of football in the garden and a walk around the field that borders our garden and Personal and Social Education involved a cuddle and reassurance that we would absolutely go to Newcastle and have pizza for lunch once this was all over.

Day 2 didn’t start quite as well, possibly because Boris had ordered us all into Lockdown the previous evening which meant that Other Half was also at home making it feel a bit weekendish.

Once we discovered that Google Classroom was currently lying in a darkened room, Britney played more of the hellish Times Table Rock Stars while I silently practiced my 8 times table. She then read some of her new Goosebumps book about Horrorland and wrote a synopsis of the story so far. We learnt about light refraction in science and ratios in Maths. We even ratioed (in its simplest form) the number of empty crisp packets to Kit Kat wrappers in the log basket. Result.

I read an article on the Daily Mail online (so it must be true) about the pressure of home schooling on parents. One Dad and this was on day 2 of home schooling; commented that his children were so much better behaved being home schooled that he was not going to send them back to school when it re-opened.

Oh my god, laugh? I thought my pants were never going to dry. I want to speak with this man in a month’s time. In fact if I wait 3 months, I could perhaps snatch a quick word with him as they wheel him out of his house in his straight jacket to the waiting square-wheeled ambulance.

So just to clarify, I don’t hate Teachers like I loathe and despise VAT inspectors and Traffic Wardens.

I don’t hate them at all. I even have friends and family who are teachers and frankly, I am surprised that they don’t receive a carrier bag of Tramadol and Diazepam every month from the Government free of charge. Is it a job I would ever want to do?

Not in a million years.

For JP.