What not to wear

Yesterday morning Thomas and I have made some chocolate chip cookies using the Blessed Delia's recipe in her How to Cook book. Lady and Duncan ate 4 each before I hid the rest! Lady described them as 'Over delicious' which I think is good.

I sat down to have my cookie with a cup of tea and a browse. Several BBC headlines struck me immediately. Most horrible is, Patients 'suffer extensive abuse'. This describes the unsurprising yet disgusting exposure of systematic abuse, physical, emotional and financial, in care facilities for people with learning disabilities. I will do everything in my power to ensure that no child of mine ever spends time in one of these places. If Duncan needs more help as an adult than people usually do to get by, I will help empower him to choose where he is based and how that help is provided.

I then had a look at the Education headlines, which always help convince me of the case for home-education, especially things like; Classes 'may get knife searches'.

"Teachers could be allowed to carry out knife searches of entire classes - rather than just individual pupils - under government proposals."

There was also Campaign to tackle gay bullying. I'm glad efforts are being made to help prevent this abuse of children, but it's disgusting that more hasn't been done to stop it already.

Lastly I read about School uniform trade investigated. I used to think school uniforms were a good idea but now I think it's ridiculous, especially the daft concept of dressing little kids like bankers in grey suits complete with ties and (for posh schools anyway) blazers. I found that when I had children in school, I was forced to buy overpriced tops from a selected source, just because of a school logo. Then it was such a hassle trying to make sure they were clean every morning. These days it's perfectly acceptable for Duncan to run around in whatever odd combination of dressing up clothes he wants. Yesterday he was wearing his red top-red pants combo, with artfully placed strips of white paper crossing on his chest and the whole look finished off with his Dad's black woolly hat pulled up high on his head. He was doing his impression of 'Soldier Sam' (aka the 'Henchman') from The Magic Roundabout.

Just to give me an excuse to post this, Duncan loves wearing his Captain Hook costume too. Much better than a navy jumper and grey trousers, don't you think!