Friday 14th January 11

A really good day!  Up bright and early as I had an interview at Archbishop Holgate's School at 9.15 with the Head Teacher.  As Gill was taking our youngest down to the Steiner School, she couldn't come to this meeting.  So, yesterday, our lovely friend Melody had agreed to come to the meeting and represent Gill, and take notes.  In meetings with teachers at her son's school, Melody routinely records the conversation on a dictaphone, so she brought one of those with her, and arrived sometime before 9am so she could walk up with me.

So, we walked up to the school and the Head and the head of Pastoral Care met us and invited us into the office.  However, they weren't happy to have the conversation recorded, saying it was 'confrontational'.  They offered a note-taker and promised to email the notes to me so Gill could read them.   I explained I wanted to set the scene and review what had actually happened to our son over the two years there, and to briefly outline what I felt the problems were within the school, with the only aim to help other pupils (and their families) avoid similar problems.  So, it was a good meeting as I'd started with this positive approach.  Both the teachers offered sincere apologies about what had happened.  They were shocked that the nice policeman who'd visited us about one incident had said that the school didn't want to admit there was a problem with bullying as they'd then have to deal with it.  But in general, it was a good meeting and it is possible that the school may make some changes to improve communication and to hopefully do more to prevent the bullies, and engender a culture of respect and love.  But maybe that's asking a bit much from today's society?

I walked back with Melody feeling happy.  Our boys are happy now they're not in that school.  Melody came home and had some lemon cake that Gill had made specially for her, as a thank you for going this morning.

I then went and did a lot of pruning, and just about finished the loganberries.  I'll need to tie in the canes which will fruit this year.  I did a bit of compost heap adding and a bit of logpile building.  Also visited Richard to get veggies and came home with a large stash of compostables.

In the evening I went down to Heslington with our eldest for his weekly Computer Graphics lesson, and came back via a logpile, cycling back again for 8pm and had a nice walk back.  Our youngest son has had a lovely week at the Steiner School, which is great!

So, a good day and hopefully now things with the children will settle down and our lives will become easier.  I look forward to not needing to mention them in this blog... it isn't about them, it's about how I live a low carbon lifestyle but recently my life has been almost completely overtaken by stuff to do with the difficulties at school.  I feel today has somewhat drawn a line under that.