Dotting and Crossing

I have spent the morning in an exam, don’t ask what on, I won’t tell you (sorry, it’s half a story, I know)

It’s the first time I have ever sat down at a proper, grown up exam, that starts at the top of the page and goes on and on, until, you either run out of time, things to compare and contrast, apply theory to, or just waffle about.

Readers who have been calling here for a while, will know, that I don’t like writing without the comfort blanket of Microsoft Office and the F7 button, I’ll stand up and talk to and for England; but ask me to put pen to paper, it brings up all sorts of demons. So you can imagine I wasn’t looking forward to the exam; now that my dyslexia has a piece of paper to prove it’s existence (and we could debate that topic ’till the cows come home, but please not now) I have an entitlement to some extra time in exams, to check my work. I must admit I was glad of it and used every second.

I wasn’t alone, another candidate was in the same situation and we placed ourselves at the front of the examination room as far away as possible from the door, so that when everyone else left, it would be less distracting for us. So when the time came and the invigilator said ‘ Everyone, put down your pens, except the two candidates with additional time.’ And everyone else filed quietly out of the room, before bursting into relieved and excited chatter as they dispersed down the corridor, I was transported back to being a child again, its a beautiful summers day, I am still inside the classroom redoing my work, my classmates are out in the sunshine, playing.

I hate my hand writing, its not good at the best of times, but under pressure, like this morning I like it even less, and whilst I’ve got used to writing essays, assignments and reports over the last few years, and goodness, I’ve even been known to enjoy it, but it’s only because I can ‘cut and paste’, edit and generally tidy things up; but no matter how hard I try, I remain convinced my messy writing and poor spelling, will have antagonized the examiner and the outcome will come back to not what I have written but how I’ve written it.

Rereading my work at the end of the exam, I discovered that my writing of the word ‘that’ looked like ‘t*at’ (for * insert ‘w’) and you can see this makes the word takes on an entirely different meaning (overseas readers, on a need to know basis, can read a definition of t*at here.) So it was not just the ‘I’s’ that needed dotting and the ‘T’s’ that need crossing, the ‘W’s needed a bit of remedial work too.

So back home, and not one, but two fried egg butties and two mugs of steaming hot tea later, I am both replete and exhausted, but I am still going out to play.

Reading Between the Lines

Noddy tagged me, it’s all about books; well the reason it’s taken me well over two weeks to write this post is that the prospect of writing it put me into therapy! I have a complex relationship with the printed word, I’ve touched on it before

But here is the brief

“Books are scarce in the world. They are illegal in some provinces. They are not easily replaced, if not impossible to replace if lost in many if not most circumstances. If you can replace a book or buy one, it is usually through the black market at astronomical costs that you cannot afford. Yet you have been able to maintain one of the best collections in the world. If your entire library was about to burn up and you could only have one* book to take with you other than the Bible, what would that be and why?”
Simple Rules:

Answer the question.
Offer one quote that resonates with you.
Tag five people whose response is of genuine interest to you and inform him or her that they have been tagged.

*and it cannot be an entire series of something, that’s cheating.

I feel a bit of a charlatan even doing this meme, I just don’t feel qualified I am not by any stretch of the imagination ‘well read’, my reading is eclectic to say the least, I can identify with Noddy’s comments,

Reading books is almost like going on a diet or stopping smoking. You know it’s good for you, but……

I didn’t grow up in bookish household (my mum will contest this by reminding me that I went to the library every Saturday morning, it’s true I did, on the way to junior youth club, but it doesn’t mean I ever read the books, and as likely as not they were of the Blue Peter ‘how to make’ genre.

When Tom was only a few month old I can recollect getting caught up in a conversation at a family celebration, with the ‘extremely well read’ division of my extended family the question went along the lines of ‘So  Heather, who are your favourite children’s authors?’ at the time my sleep deprived, addled mind, distracted by issues of breast feeding and nappy rash,  I could only manage a reference to enjoying ‘Winnie the Pooh’(and wishing my mums dear friend Laura, a sound, grounded ‘earth mother’ lady who read it to me would come to my rescue.) I’ve rarely felt more out of my depth.

I am envious of any one who can ‘get lost in a book’, my dyslexic brain just finds it a bit of a slog, maybe that’s why I like blogs, they come in bite size pieces.

Any way on with the story, there are three contenders,

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is an autobiographical family history by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1992, it is the story of her grandmother, her mother and herself, and in telling their stories gives a unique perspective on 20th century Chinese history.

Do you think the brief of this meme is a little far fetched? you won’t if you read this book.

Next up is

The curious Incident of the dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Writing his first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day.

It was written for a teenage audience (having got my copy down off the shelf to write this post, Tom pounced upon it and read it cover to cover) but I think anyone who read it would be richer and wiser for doing so

But if there could be a number one it is

‘Letter To Daniel, Dispatches from the Heart’ by Fergal Keane

 

it’s a collection of his reports, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 program ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, I heard a broadcast of Keane reading ‘Letter to Daniel’ when Tom was a few weeks old; it stopped me in my tracks, I can’t think that any parent would not be struck by the emotion and power of it, nor that of his other reports from some of the most desperate, desolate and war torn areas of the world. For me it is an added bonus that when I read it I can also ‘hear’ it in his honeyed Irish accent, if you want you can listen to it here I recommend you do.

Your coming has turned me upside down and inside out, so much that seemed essential to me has, in the past few days, taken on a different colour. Like many foreign correspondents I know, I have lived a life that, on occasion, has veered close to the edge: war zones, natural disasters, darkness in all its shapes and forms. In a world of insecurity and ambition and ego, it’s easy to be drawn in, to take chances with our lives, to believe that what we do and what people say about us is reason enough to gamble with death. Now, looking at your sleeping face, inches away from me, listening to your occasional sigh and gurgle, I wonder how I could have ever thought glory and prizes and praise were sweeter than life.

I suppose if there is a theme to this selection it is that they give a perspective on other lives and other worlds, that I would other wise find hard to imagine, a bit like blogs.

There has been a lot of tagging going on around the blogs on my feeds, so I think I shall just tag three.

Flighty, because books are more than just the tools of his trade.

Spencer, because he is being far to modest over at ‘Siren Voices’,hiding his light and his superb writing under a bushel, and

Andrea, because I am curious to know what books tempt someone with such diverse interests.

Mad House

I have spent some time today searching for my glasses, I could remember I brought them in from the car on Saturday, when I got back from shopping, but I couldn’t find them, not until I  was preparing some lunch and there they were; in the fridge, in the bag with a pound and a half of traditional sausages and a pound of home cured bacon. They have misted up now.

‘Thing one’ made a break for freedom this morning, and who could blame her, it’s a mad house;

she fluttered up into the cab of the delivery drivers van, he looked a little bemused, she looked some what thwarted when I retrieved her. I told Joe what she had done , ‘Oh no she didn’t do a poo, did she?’ no thank goodness,that would have cost us a dozen eggs , by way of an apology.

She isn’t the first of our pets to plan a great escape, Boo the old cat, had to be brought back home by the telephone engineer who had been working at the house, he  found her in the back of his van when he got back to the telephone exchange, at the other side of town.

That’s my boy

Please allow me a proud parent moment, two or three years ago Joe, when he was about seven, was having a pretty tough time learning to read and write and its fair to say his confidence took a bit a hammering

When he went to bed at night, he left a little notes across the landing, like this, which reads ‘I hate school’

And others that read ‘I am a dumb head’ They were heartbreaking.

Every single moment of your school day when you are that age seems to be judged against your ability to read and write, even if you are a whiz at maths or science, your not going to get very far if you can’t read the question. School was miserable, and so was Joe; but following an assessment, that identified his dyslexic strengths and weaknesses and which gave us and the school some guidance in what extra support he needed, he has blossomed; now he will disappear off for a couple of hours to read a book and when he had some points to raise at school, in his capacity as Road Safety Officer (its a role he takes very seriously ) he decided to put his concerns in writing to the head.

 

Dear Mr Gregory

Lately I have spotted a few problems I would like to improve since it is my job as road safety officer

Problems

I have spotted at about 5:00pm the lights in the car park are off and it is hazardous to some people

Also my mum noticed the bush had been trimmed when leaving the car park and joining the main road and has asked whether it could be cut back further so cyclist on the cycle lane know if they are going to be run over or not

From

Joe Uphilldowndale.

The lights are fixed and the bush has been cut back, that’s my boy.

Turning over a new leaf

Out with the old and in with the new.

 

The party is over, the guest have all gone and a good time was had by all.  Mr Uhdd is back at work and the boys, having become nocturnal, (staying up much later than they would in term time) are now being re-programmed, before they go back to school next week. It’s all rather dismal, just like the weather.

I rarely make it to the 12th night before  taking down the Christmas tree and decorations, this goes back to my retail days, by now I am just sick of the sight of the cards and glitter. At the shop we were always desperate to clear away the Christmas decorations and get a fresh, bright white, lime and lemon display in the window: before we were hit  at the end of January, with the orgy of red that is the lead into valentines day; it was a bit like craving a nice fresh salad after the excesses of Christmas feasting, a de-tox for the eyes.

I shall continue my ‘cleansing’ efforts with the house as well, I’ve made a start on our rapidly expanding book collection; I’ve had a bit of an issue with  books, in that I find it hard to get rid of the ones I have read and enjoyed, always thinking that I would like to read them again, but when? I ask myself; I all ready have a back log of books I ‘want’ to read and  text books I ‘have’ to read. I am not a fast reader, when I first had my dyslexia assessed in 2004 my reading speed came out in the ‘average range of a young adult’ 16yr and 6m, to be precise, oh that other ‘bits’ of me could still be assessed as being ‘young adult’! I also have problems remembering what I have read because of my short term memory weakness. I have ‘worked’ on my reading since then and I think if it were re-assessed now,the situation will have improved, because I have learnt a few strategies, and in addition by ‘turning up at the book’ and  just reading more, things are easier. But dense text of unfamiliar words is still an uphill thing.

So when every book is a bit of a conquest, it’s no wonder I got a bit possessive about them, but that was then and this is now, so surplus books will be moving on to new homes; because there is simply no more room at the inn,

 

Technorati Tags: Books, Dyslexia, Reading

I Must Remember, Not to Forget

Keeping track of appointments, dates and times, is not one of my strengths and this week there is so much going on it’s going to be a challenge, I just hope I don’t forget anything.

We are here, there and every where, this week. Christmas concerts, carol services, football practice,Christmas parties, the list goes on and on, I don’t think I am going to know if I am coming or going, I shall be chasing my tail.

Each Sunday night we try and draw up a list of commitments for the the week, including, who need what sports kit and musical instruments on which days, who is working where and when, who is on the school run, even who needs packed lunches, it takes an Excel spread sheet to keep us on track.

For me it all goes wrong, when I try and hold to much in my head, or if arrangements change; short term memory can be an issue, my dyslexic brain was once described as being like a book shelf, a short one; put too many books on the shelf and some will fall off the end (or maybe I simply have too many books) I loose information if I try and hold too much ‘in my head’ at once, its much better when the information has been ‘upgraded’ to my long term memory, but whilst things are swilling around in my short term memory, they are vulnerable.

I have been known to drag Mr Uhdd to the next county with me to an important meeting, only to find we were there on the wrong night (it was not a good marital moment, there was a bit of an atmosphere,in the car on the way back home) and the other night I forgot an important engagement, I was just drifting off to sleep when I remembered, I think Mr Uhdd thought the house was falling down when I let out a loud shriek and a string of expletives. It is just so embarrassing, to forget; I had to make a groveling apology to all concerned the next day.

I try and use the calendar in my phone to prompt me, but its not very sophisticated or easy to access; in the new year I shall be looking for a better way of managing things, how do other people manage their diaries? If I try the sticker on the sleeve method I mentioned here, I would end up so smothered in ‘Post-it’ notes I would end up looking like a Tibetan prayer flag, and think of the mess when I forget to remove them before putting the jumper in the wash.

I think a mobile phone that will allow me to access an online diary, is the way to go, any recommendations? In the mean time I shall just have to work hard at keeping track, tie an knot in my hankie and keep my fingers crossed

See you at the weekend, doubt there will be much blogging time to be had this week.

Technorati Tags: Short term memory dyslexia, Time management, Diaries, Appointments, Forgetfulness

Poetic Discovery

It doesn’t take long to suffocate a child interest in poetry, but it can take decade to restore.

Thursday is National Poetry day, and somewhat to my surprise, I have through the summer become ‘a born again’ enthusiast of reading poetry.

As a child I liked poetry; Robert Louis Stevenson book a Child’s Garden of Verse, was one of the few books I can recollect owning. I have a strong memory, and I am not sure if this is how it really was, or just how it seemed to me, not that it makes much difference for effect was just the same; that at primary school I desperately wanted to enter a poetry competition, the prize was a ‘Parker’ fountain pen and I like to think the prize winners pen was the colour of arterial blood, but who knows, this may be a figment of my imagination and as the pen was never going to be coming my way it’s irrelevant .

During the 1960’s being both dyslexic and left handed meant I was well and truly hobbled, I would trail my left hand through the wet ink (no Biro’s allowed) making a piece of work that was already full of miss-spelling and crossings out, and looking like a dogs dinner, into something more akin to a vomit splat. There was no way any teacher was going to mount my work on moss green sugar paper and display it on the classroom wall (how did they do that, before Blue Tack? there must have been a lot of drawing pin holes) let alone put it forward as shining example of the schools creativity.

I can remember feeling embarrassed, if not ashamed by my work; who knows if the poem was any good, the fact was never going to look like my friend Gillian’s work; she had beautiful hand writing it was smooth, flowing and perfectly formed, it had all the rhythm of a well tensioned piece of knitting and as was as even and rounded as the chain link fence that that surrounded our school playground.

When Gillian wrote the word ‘people’ it was a joy to behold; when I tried the word displayed all the signs and symptoms of a sufferer of a multiple personality disorder; I just couldn’t spell it; from my messy pen the word seeped out as pople, peepole or poelpe, but what ever form it took, it never sat neatly and obediently on the the raspberry pink line of my exercise book, not like Gillian’s did and not only that, my peapal were always smudged and bedraggled.

So that is where I left poetry,a humiliating episode, best forgotten, for over thirty years; until this spring when I was working with someone who was studying poetry, and I became interested in it again, almost by osmosis and I have spent the summer reading poetry by writers such as Carol Ann Duffy, Michael Rosen, Mark Haddon and Robin Robbinson and loved it.

Poetry is often used by therapist and counsellors as an aid to reaching peoples inner emotions, quickly and deeply; well two of the poems I have read this summer certainly caught my breath and knocked me off balance;the first is by Robin Robertson and if you have read my post entitled Strong Spirit you will perhaps understand why it resonated with me

Ghost Of A Garden

Sometimes I discover I have gone downstairs,

crossed the grass and found myself

in here:the tool shed.

caught in a lash of brambles, bindweed

and tall ivied trees like pipecleaners. It looks out,

vacantly on a garden run to seed:

the lost tennis court, over-grown benches,

a sunken barbecue snagged with blown roses.

The courtyard walls are full of holes the swallows

try to sew, in and out of them like open doors.

In the corner of the shed my father is weeping

and I cannot help him because he is dead.

Robin Robertson, from the book ‘Swithering’, published by Picador.

The second is by Michael Rosen, who in my ignorance, I was only aware of as a children’s author, the boys loved his book ‘Rover’ when they were younger, as much as we liked to read it to them, I particularly enjoyed his prose poetry; the poem is about his son, who died, in his late teens, from meningitis, it is a poem that would strike out at any parent as they watch and measure their children as they leap upwards towards adults, from the babies they were but briefly.

There were ways of figuring out how big he got.

Like where his eyes came to, face to face

The way his finger- tips edged beyond mine,

hand to hand. His wrists peering out of

the end of his shirt sleeves. The way the guys

couldn’t keep hold of his body bag as they

tried to slide it down the stairs.

Michael Rosen, Selected Poems, published by Penguin

Technorati Tags: Poetry, Dyslexia, Education, Parker pens, handwriting, children, school, meningitis, fathers, sons, 1960’s

Hobbled by Foot and Mouth

Technorati Tags: Foot and Mouth, dyslexia

The farming communities daily activities continue to hobbled by the foot and mouth outbreak.

Praise be that the disease is not leaching its way across the country, but never the less it is costing businesses money and angst, people are on stand by, waiting in case it all kicks off, and ‘precautions’ are in place, we called at the agricultural merchants the other day day for hen food, (avatars need feeding!) we drove in and out through a bath disinfected straw and one of our nearby farmers is struggling with a calf, born last weekend it is ‘failing to thrive’ not all cows are ‘good mothers’ and the mother of this calf refuses to let the calf suckle.

In normal circumstance he would get them out of the field, loaded into a trailer and get them back to the farm, (3 miles away) where he can put them in a pen, keep a watchful eye on them. He may need to bottle feed the calf if the cow doesn’t shape up. As it is at the moment, the calf’s condition is going down hill and there is very little other than worry that he can do about it. With them out in the field he has no hope of any intervention. He is not allowed to move them back to the farm because of the restrictions on the transportation of livestock that are still in place

I am puzzled why as a meat eating country girl I find the images of the cattle slaughtered because of the foot and mouth outbreak, being tipped into trucks, so disturbing. Maybe it is to do with the ‘waste.’ I am not squeamish about the slaughter of animals for food, if you want meat, then the dead needs to be done, but I don’t want it to close up and personal. When I had my business one of our best customers was a slaughter house, the office manager ‘minded’ her slaughter-men well, making sure of their domestic welfare by ordering bouquets flowers for their wives, partners and girlfriends on their behalf, for birthdays anniversaries and the odd domestic bust up (and deducting the cost from their pay!)

On one of my ‘get to know your customers better’ forays I called at the slaughter house with a complimentary bunch of flowers for the manager, (Lucy my manager said there was ‘no way’ she was going, because ‘I’m a vegetarian’) tapping at the ‘reception’ window in the yard, I was given directions and told to go up to her office, off I went through the flappy plastic double doors, down tiled corridors past suspended conveyors of hooks, take a left turn then a right then up the stairs, second door on the left. (let me tell you, slaughter houses have a very distinct smell, that of a ‘real butchers shop’ but in perfume form rather than ‘eau de toilet’)

I was terrified I wouldn’t remember the sequence of directions (its a dyslexic difficulty that I have) and that I would take a wrong turn and find my self face to face with a recently slaughtered cow. When I found the office the manager reassured me that ‘the action’ took place at the other end of the complex; the flowers were gratefully received, we had a cup of tea and a chat, as I got up to leave , she asked ‘Now you know the way out, don’t you?’ Carefully I retraced my steps.

Pick a Number Any Number

My mums new key safe is supposed to help those on the outside to get in,

but only if you have the the number selection skills of a lottery jackpot winner.

My mum, who doesn’t have the best of health has had a key safe fitted outside her house, this is the modern day solution to ‘we never locked our door when I was young’ through to hiding the key under the door matt. Both these methods would probably serve her well, but it is the sad fact that the more time she spends being housebound the more time she has to read the Daily Mail and worry about all the ghastly things that might happen, its about feeling vulnerable.

I suppose statistically the need for family, neighbours, warden service or paramedics getting in to the house easily are far greater than a thief, but that doesn’t allow either mum or the rest of the family to sleep easily.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a key safe let me explain, they are about the size of a packet of playing cards, fixed to the outside wall they have a keypad on front this allows you to access the keys that are stored inside. this means a lot less copies of mums house keys are floating around, being handed from person to person. (Friends of ours with four teenage children got so fed up with the kids getting locked out and losing the keys that they fitted one.)

Of course to do this you have to know the key code. Mum has selected her code, it is she informs me ‘It’s a dead easy number to remember,’ excellent, my dyslexia makes it very difficult for me to remember numbers so any help I can get is welcomed with open arms, ‘it’s your Dad’s army number.’ Well that might be easy for her to remember (I imagine she most have written it hundreds of times on the the letters she sent to him) but it is no help to me or my brother who is also dyslexic we need a number that’s easy for those on the outside to remember.

I have trouble with strings of numbers, I mix them up, this has resulted in many a cross word between Mr UHDD and I, as one of my common problems is to write a cheque for say, ? 85.73 but write on the checkbook stub ?85.37 now when I had my business and I was writing dozens of cheque’s a week it made balancing the books a nightmare (also bare in mind that at that time I didn’t know I was dyslexic, at least I now have an understanding as to why I can get into such a pickle.)

I like to say that being dyslexic is no bar to doing whatever you want to in life, you just have to learn things in a different way and make compensations for the things you find tricky, but my problem with numbers and short term memory does make me think that you wouldn’t want me sat at an air traffic control desk; ‘was that flight 379 I just told to land or was it flight 739? and where that pretty blue 737 gone, I am sure I told it wait over there!’

Back to my mums keypad, well that’s easy, you just store the number in your mobile phone and as for the cheques; well other than paying the paper bill and for school trips I barely use the things, isn’t modern technology wonderful.

Now once I’ve got the key in the lock, do I turn the handle to the right and the key to the left? or is it the other way round? I never can remember.