Education of extremes

Get this term: “multiple exceptionalities”.  Try  to remember it long enough to research it on the internet, and you will find it refers to people who are gifted and disabled at the same time.  In the context of underachieving children, the expression describes intellectual gifts that are masked by specific disabilities, or difficulties which a child uses his or her extra abilities to overcome.

Either way, neither the disability nor the gift is correctly targeted by the school.  This mean that a bright child, assessed as average or below average, can become extremely frustrated.

Perhaps I should count myself lucky that in our case this frustration has spilled over into challenging behaviour, so that we have all been forced to ask ourselves why an obviously clever child is consistently underperforming.  Hard as they have been to live with, the moodiness, lack of co-operation and propensity to needle others might be interpreted as a healthy cry for help.

Papers on the subject of multiple (or dual) exceptionalities describe cases where a physical disability, like poor sight or hearing, is masked by a child’s superior ability to cope.  They also say the situation can be far more subtle than that: high ability coupled with behavioural problems, or with poor motor skills that make it hard to write.  Children displaying these often get no help because even when they are spotted, they are impossible to pigeonhole.  In today’s UK educational parlance, they belong to the “gifted and talented” and to the “special needs”.

Look more closely at the exceptionalities literature and you might even find yourself described somewhere.  People may argue that the term applies to “too small a population to merit concern”.  But the more I read, the more I think it describes vast numbers of us who experienced problems at school.

Our compulsory western school system, of which we should be so proud, has failed us by becoming a universal machine that cannot accomodate the extremes.  In its on-size-fits-all environment, the task of addressing some children’s problems while encouraging their extra skills can be lost in the scramble for league-table ratings.  Officially sanctioned efforts to remedy this, in the form of specialist help, have to be fought for instead of being available as of right.

But children just do not come neatly trussed and packaged, waiting only for a school to anoint them with the balm of standard education in order to grow and flourish.  They develop in fits and starts and even those with no serious problems at home may display extremes of ability and behaviour.  There is no better argument than this for treating them as what they are: individuals.

Church Tower Abseil

I hadn’t intended to take part.  It’s a mad way to raise funds and I hate heights anyway, so I planned to take pictures of those who were brave enough to attempt it.  But then I had reckoned without the atmosphere on the day.

The weather was perfect.  The 100ft-high medieval tower of All Saints Biddenden, Kent, was bathed in late summer sun.  There was not a breath of wind and all of nature, still green, seemed to cry out for celebration.  Among the onlookers, the tone was quietly jocular as the first batch of abseilers received their instructions.  Children played among the slanting grave stones, grown-ups rested their cameras on stone tablets where the dead were forgotten amid this profusion of colour and life.

As the morning wore on and triumphant abseilers, many of them novices, either stepped or sagged off the end of ropes, joining them became a matter of community spirit.  It looked easy too, I thought, as I watched the harnessed candidates crawl backwards down the wall like spiders: people of all shapes and sizes had succeeded.  If I didn’t try now I knew I would regret it.

At least that’s what I told myself as, duly trained, I stepped out onto the flat top of the tower.  The wind was no stronger up here but the sounds of people were much further; the tower exuded its own special tension.  Our mouths went dry and I began to wish there were a toilet nearby.  Jane, ahead of me, joked through gritted teeth about witches as she ascended the scaffold that would launch her into the void, tethered at the front but with nothing behind but a bit of harness.

My turn.  I am hooked up, twice, for extra safety.  My instructor is calm and reassuring.  As soon as I push against the ropes I am hovering over the edge, and then I can no longer see him.  Keep my right hand on the rope behind, my left in the loop in front, concentrate on loosening the right a bit at a time.  I am told to straighten my legs when all I want to do is curl up in a ball.

But I stand up straight and then the world goes quiet.  They are all watching me, the scattered matchstick-sized people I know are waiting below, but I won’t look at them.  There’s just a wall, a set of ropes, a lot of sunlight, and me.

Going down is harder than I thought.  I pass the landmarks made familiar by watching earlier abseilers: the windows, a couple of ledges, a bee’s nest in the rust-stained stone.  My weight is still supported by my gloved hand but I can’t reach the wall with my feet; instead of making a fluent descent I am swinging into nothingness, the ropes threaten to tip me on my head or spin me round altogether.

I reached the ground shaking but exhilarated, sound rushed back into my ears and time began to move forward again.  I felt I had earned my round of applause.

Moleskine mania

I wrote the following on 2nd September 2008, at 12.40 precisely:

“I have just bought my first Moleskine notebook and I can already feel the romanticism oozing from it. I’m sheltering in an arcade from the rain that has kept up all morning. Canterbury (Kent, UK) is a dirty grey and groups of bedraggled pensioners are forced to pause before launching themsleves on the weather, umbrella to the fore. I’m sitting on a borrowed café chair to eat my lunch and write, and I’m trying hard to keep the famous acid-free pages dry.”

After trawling the internet on the the subject of Moleskines, I have struggled to find something new to write about the little “cahiers” whose cost (£9.99 in WH Smith) is out of all proportion to their size, 9×14cm. Neither the sturdy cover, the closing elastic nor the back pocket would seem to justify the expense. It was even surprisingly tough to find, tucked away on a special carousel dedicated to travel notebooks and even that, said the sales staff, was an experiment. So why have I pursued this object throught the pages of Bruce Chatwin’s writings and several journalist blogs that have sung its praises?

The Italian manufacturers, Modo&Modo, declare to anyone who will listen that their product is the inheritor of Chatwin’s favourite notebook, despite a 12-year gap in production after the writer himself was last able to locate one, and the fact that the originals were made in France. They would even have us believe that the very same was employed by Van Gogh, Hemingway and Picasso for random jottings that became major works of art. These claims are dismissed by detractors as so much humbug.

It is a fact of modern life that marketing a product to a niche customer base is likely to involve the internet, preferably via an interactive website for users to exchange ideas. After endowing the Moleskine with a romantic pedigree no one is seriously in a postion to argue with, Modo&Modo must feel their attempts to do just that have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. On their own website moleskine.com as well as others such as ‘SkineArt and even Flickr and YouTube, the artistic contents of the Moleskine, that epitome of private journaling whose symbol should be a writer hunched over in private concentration, are laid bare. The challenge seems to ring out: what can you do with this?

So what do I think about it? Expensive it is, but classy and highly portable. It opens well and has a pleasant feel in the hand while writing. Now I’ve got it, I’m already using it for brief notes written on the move, to develop later. Whether I’ll buy another one when this is filled is a different question.

At least Chatwin’s belief that “the Moleskine is no more” is no longer true. The Moleskine, or a version of it that may or may not be recognised by him, is here to stay.

Ice boy

I met a boy at the ice rink once. I liked to go to the rink after school and circle with the best of them. I tasted the ice with my feet, scraping to keep my impetus as I swivelled and shifted direction. I could propel myself just by forcing my blades inwards, outwards, inwards, outwards, angled just right, then perform a quick turn and be off.

There were a few of us who went for the company as much as for our fascination with this cold, unforgiving surface. We could never really speed because of the crowd heaving round, with its jokers and its wobbling beginners clinging to each other. The sounds were magnified by the expanse of white now scored a million times – the shrieks of children, the latest pop on the sound system, The Police. Don’t stand so close to me.

He and I would be forced together each time we left the ice to make way for the real dancers. They revolved in pairs, the ladies sporting thick thighs under short skirts, cold sneers under bright lipstick. We would watch as they rode the waltzes and the foxtrots, showing us how skating ought to be done.

And so we didn’t resist the pull as we gravitated around each other. A girl who chatted to us soon sighed: “Don’t let me get in the way of you two lovebirds.” There, it was said for us and we left the ice rink together.

He was tall and thin and dark haired and could hold me easily on one knee. His upper lip wore a hint of down and his kisses tasted of tea. When he said: “You’re good company to me,” he meant: “I love you.”

He came from a council flat with ten younger brothers and sisters and his housebound Ma. I met her once but she barely seemed to register I was there, or perhaps it was me who didn’t register her. Two of his sisters came with him to the flat I shared with my mother. The lobby must have looked to them like a smart hotel, with its porter and its carpeted hall and lift. On our ninth floor they silently marvelled at the French furniture and the space.

He had left home, though, and shared a flat with an older mate we called Geordie. There we could relax together and shuck the expectations, and be ourselves. Geordie fed our burgeoning love with biscuits with raisins and scalloped edges, washed down with sweet tea.

I knew it couldn’t last, long before he did. My mother had been careful not to carp. I don’t remember how I let him down but I hope it was softly, more softly than he would have hit the ice after a false move. He was capable of love and at that time I wasn’t. I can picture him so clearly. And yet I can’t remember his name.

The holiday conundrum

I’m trying to understand why I resent discussing my holiday plans with people I barely know. After all holidays aren’t private information, are they?

It was at the church fête where I shared responsibility for the children’s tombola stall with an elderly congregation member to whom I had rarely spoken until then. We had hardly sat down before she wanted to know what our holiday plans were for this year. As I tried to evade the question, we embarked on a useful digression over the differential holiday timings of my daughter’s secondary school compared with the rest of the county. But later the lady returned to the attack. She hadn’t got her answer, and she simply had to know where we were going on holiday.

Am I the only person on earth who is reluctant to be drawn into this? Deep down I think it’s the dullest conversation topic among strangers, on a par with reminiscing about the children’s TV programming of our childhood – a last resort for people who have nothing to say. At the fete with the old lady, it seemed rather early to proclaim our social failure, since we had only just sat down. Or did she need the information to pick over with other grey heads later in the week?

It might be a kind of snobbery but I don’t generally find other people’s holidays make stimulating listening, or reading. When Christmas comes round and we have to endure an endless stream of generalised letters, usually two single-spaced A4 sides of self-absorbed prose, it’s the holidays that bore me most. Beyond the experiences of close friends and family, I really don’t want to know. So why should anyone want to know about mine?

Where my old lady is concerned, it might just boil down to the vicar’s family phenomenon. In a small village you’re a kind of local celebrity and everyone wants a piece of you. This might account for people asking where I met my husband after knowing me for five minutes. From strangers, this intimate question is prurient, voyeuristic and not always well-intentioned.

And so I bring down the shutters and respond to these questioners the same way I treat those who think they have a right to park in our drive on a Sunday: with the defensiveness their intrusive behaviour deserves. I might appear rude when I ask why a person wants to know such things, but sometimes that’s a risk I have to take.

When I turned the question on my old lady, she told me she had already been on holiday. And in case you’re itching to know, I’m sorry, I failed to ask where she went. It was a good fête by the way.

Haunted by a memory that isn’t mine

A girl called Susan has been a part of my life for the past year. In recent weeks, as I have been immersed in her history, I almost felt I really knew her.

Susan died more than thirty years ago, aged 22, of a rare degenerative brain disease called cerebral lipidosis. This is an umbrella term for a group of diseases, the better understood of which are named after the person who first described it like Tay-Sachs or Batten disease, though Susan’s was never definitively categorised.

Just over a year ago I was asked to help Susan’s father Les, now in his eighties, write her life story. The research was slow, mostly interspersed with other jobs, and there were false starts to negotiate and red herrings to dispose of. Les was convinced Susan died from complications of mumps and not from an inherited condition, as cerebral lipidosis is, and one that requires a defective gene from each parent at that.

Slowly I have built up a medical picture with the help of a few doctors and an awful lot of medical records. Now I’m working on the human story, based on memories from Les and others who were Susan’s friends and on the canon or writings left behind by her mother Norah.

It was not unreasonable to blame the mumps until this explanation was ruled out by medical evidence. Susan’s path downhill, from a happy, bright and high-spirited ten-year-old, appeared to have its root in a bout of mumps. As she recovered from the infection her parents saw her movements become jerky, her speech slur and her academic performance plummet. As the years went by she got worse, dropping out of school after school as she became more disabled.

She was only correctly diagnosed at the age of 18. Cerebral lipidosis is a death sentence – no one recovers even today. And even today, a diagnosis can take several years to obtain. The only option left to parents of such children is to prepare themselves for the worst possible outcome. Les and Norah’s experience illustrates starkly how this disease operates: it teases the sufferer as a cat plays with a mouse. Susan’s condition permitted her a stretch of normal existence and then cheated her, snatching her hard-earned gains, reversing her development and finally robbing her of life.

Norah’s diaries bring to life a short period covering the few months after the diagnosis. Everyday occurrences are meticulouly recorded in a small, neat hand: the timings of Susan’s waking, eating and sleeping, the friends who visited or rang and the family’s efforts to overcome the restrictions imposed by life with a housebound daughter.

And yet until she was nine or ten she could have been any child. I find it hard not to be haunted by her small face grinning out at me from drawings and photographs, eyes sparkling, mischief just out of sight. She might have been one of the school children performing songs in church yesterday alongside my son, himself ten. I thought I glimpsed her thin shoulders jostling in the childish throng, her arms shoving her friends as they swayed playfully in time with the music, her high voice taking a lead in jokes and pranks. She would have been watched fondly by parents in the congregation.

And by now she would have been a mother herself, like me. Except she wasn’t.

Feathery panic

A chick emergency starts like this. It’s early evening and you’re about to go out. The children are taken care of, one on a school trip and the other staying with a friend. You’re got barely an hour to prepare for that long-awaited meal out, much looked forward to and carefully planned at a countryside pub. So you choose a basket with which to carry five chicks who have spent the day in a pen in the garden indoors for the night. But when you reach the pen, a cat is prowling and three chicks are missing.

This happened yesterday and we’re still reeling. The two remaining chicks were black, one of them being Motley whose Egyptian eyes are less distinct these days. With heavy hearts we carried them both into the house. Alex was certain we would never find the others while I remained sceptical, having noticed that the cat, a pretty tortoiseshell we’d never seen before, had scampered away empty-mouthed. We listened for alarm calls as we hunted in the long grass but we heard only birds in the trees and cars on the road. To think we had reared five healthy chicks, four of them probably girls and therefore valuable, and then lost three of them. We felt horribly responsible.

Suddenly a faint cheeping started up. It was difficult to distinguish from the background sounds and even harder to place, seeming to come from several areas. All at once, I stumbled upon the remaining black chick, unharmed and hiding among the grasses. Then I spotted a yellow one by the fence which Alex caught. And while I took the black one indoors Alex used the yellow to call to its comrade, which he found cowering in the tall buttercups and completely still.

All five of them are fine now, if a little subdued as chickens usually are after an attack. But the story could easily have been quite different, a sad tale to relate to our children when they came home. Indeed, though we know through which hole the three chicks escaped (and have blocked it), we will probably never understand what really happened, why those particular three fled and what role the cat played.

The chicks are now quite big and becoming harder to catch each time we take them out. They have reached that indeterminage stage where they are neither cute, fluffy chicks nor the sleek, nearly-grown chickens of Lucky’s generation. But their combs already hint at their gender, and anyway it’s hard not to get attached to chicks you’ve watched hatch from the egg.

The meal out was great, by the way. The Mundy Bois pub is deep in the Kentish Weald, with views of a flat countryside of trees, hedges and fields. The food was good and the atmosphere excellent, enjoyed all the more since we knew all was well at home. We hadn’t been so relaxed in ages.

Flight of fancy

They’re three weeks old. The fluffy chicks that hatched in our kitchen and stumbled uncertainly across a box of straw (see below) have become gangly, noisy bundles with a will of their own. This morning they asserted their independence by striking out across the dining room floor in single file.

It’s been increasingly a job of containment, persuading five active chicks to adopt as their home a large but low box in our house. They still need the warmth of the lamp, but they also love to flex their wings and it’s been a challenge to keep them happy. They’ve been gently introduced to the “great outdoors” in the form of a pen in the garden, which they have occupied a little longer each day.

Transport to and from the garden has been by means of a straw-filled basket covered with a cloth, once each kicking, squealing chick has been caught and lobbed in. The basket is then conveyed with its fluttering cargo, fluffy heads swaying with the movement and an extra person on hand in case of escape.

This growing feathered family had to stay indoors when we went on holiday last week. We were near enough to come and feed them once a day, but since we couldn’t take them outside our only option was to close the dining room doors, cover the sofa with a sheet and hope.

The result, on our return, was a smelly room full of tiny poos in various states of dryness. Our first hour at home was spent scrubbing the wooden floor after we had banished the little darlings to the garden. Even with the windows open and a good clean sweep, it was some time before the dining room felt fit to host a human meal.

Now, thank goodness, the chicks spend most of the day outside in an enlarged run with a covered area in case of rain – it poured today. And here’s the best innovation of all: an infra-red lamp that generates only heat, rigged up in the conservatory to which their box has now been dismissed. Civilisation has returned to the dining room at last.

New life in the house

In a large box in a corner of our dining room lie five small, fluffy shapes. They are quite still apart from the gentle rise and fall of their tiny bodies. Two are yellow and two black, and the fifth chick, for that is what they are, looks as if it can’t decide. The tamest of the group, it has swirly markings reminiscent of Egyptian eye makeup.

It is a month since the birth of Lucky (see below) who now roams the garden as a thriving adolescent. We’ve become old hands at the incubator business, so when another sitting hen gave up in mid-term we just whisked her eggs into the warmth as easily as you please. A week later we watched them hatch.

And now we have a challenge that is entirely new to us: to rear chicks without a mother hen. We’re quite used to the sight of fond mums leading their brood across the lawn, stopping periodically to gather them up close. She teaches them everything: what to peck, where to scratch, how do drink. How would we manage all this ourselves?

First things first: keep the babes warm. The incubator was too hot for the hatchlings, hence the hastily assembled box fill with straw. A pair of spotlights was rigged overhead, and there the chicks, still a bit wet from hatching when we first installed them, gently recovered, ate and drank, stood up and fell over, stood up again and flexed their wings. A week on their are running about, scratching heartily, pecking noisily, cheeping constantly and filling the room with life. The children love them – who can resist the sight of five furry heads turning towards us whenever we enter the room?

Without a protective hen we can at last observe chicks at close quarters and one of the surprises is how much they sleep. We thought the frequent cuddle time with mum was just for warmth, but in fact, chicks are just like little children – they rush around till they are exhausted and then they grind to a halt. You can see it happening: their little eyes close, their knees buckle and they nod forwards until they are lying entirely prone, beaks down in the straw. And there they stay, all tumbled over each other.

In their waking times they are typical chickens, only smaller and funnier. They shove their food off its plate and then forage for it, scratching large chunks of straw aside. One invariably stands in the way while food is being dole out and gets covered, so the others peck it clean. Another will run around the box with a juicy morsel, chased by the others who are ignoring a perfectly good meal on the plate. They would rather jump into my water jug than wait patiently for me to fill their cup.

But there are still plenty of unknowns about keeping chicks in the house. They are just trying their luck at escaping from the box, though they don’t like the freedom and they squawk to be put back in. How will we integrate them with the rest of the flock outside? We still have to find out.

They are awake now, cheeping gently and pecking at the new, shove-proof container in which we have started serving their meals. Yet I just watched one fight the urge to sleep. It stood still and faltered, eyes drooping, and though its legs crumpled it would not give way. Up it sprang, beady eyes bright, ready to go on with the business of life. It’s hard work being a chick.

Lucky chick beats odds to survive

Eggs must be one of the most alluring shapes in nature. Perfectly smooth and almost round, their promise seems unlimited – complete meals, potential life, Easter symbolism and faith in the future wellbeing of our troubled planet. The novelist Philippe Claudel makes one of his characters refer to them as “little worlds”, hinting at the universe of concentric marvels contained inside an egg.

A hen decides for herself when to sit on eggs, her broodiness dictated by her own private timetable. Our own Buttercup took the plunge four weeks ago when she found herself irresistibly attracted to those wonderfully smooth, expectant shapes. We chose five lovely specimens and her own coop for her to incubate them, and she rewarded us by sitting faithfully. She left the nest promptly once a day, always emitting the sharp, metallic clucks peculiar to a broody hen away from her eggs.

Buttercup is a particularly fierce and protective hen when sitting. But as her eggs reached full term she became paranoid of any movement close to her, greeting our visits with angry chirrups and hisses. One day she fluffed herself out even more than usual and held herself carefully above the nest, appearing to tread, yes, on eggshells. The next day two bright and fluffy chicks appeared, one yellow and the other a mottled black.

That was then. Buttercup had been the guardian of five eggs but only two had hatched. A hen has about 24 hours to save the rest of the clutch, after which she must lead her young family out to forage. Knowing that any unhatched eggs would be left to go cold, we had armed ourselves with a borrowed incubator to care for the remaining three. Or so we thought.

This is when Lucky entered our lives. We had given Buttercup five eggs but when we came to candle them for chicks halfway through the sitting, there was a sixth. The interloper had no laying date and was one of a number of very small eggs we had specifically planned to exclude. And yet at candling there it was, apparently laid by another hen while Buttercup’s back was turned, and containing a rather advanced chick.

It was to this egg that all eyes turned as it lay with its three larger companions in the incubator. My husband heard cheeping and we all crowded round. Then I saw it: the smallest egg was rocking; it rolled back and forth in a barely perceptible dance. Soon it developed an unmistakable crack in the shell.

The family’s excitement reached fever pitch from then on. The egg was watched over in relays and our daughter Nathalie clucked, talked and sang to the chick as it struggled to free itself of the protective home that had become its prison. We did lift away a bit of shell and then the “tooth” appeared, cutting in circles and enlarging the hole. But progress was slow, and it was while three of us we out that Nathalie witnessed the greatest miracle of all. The tiny creature threw off its calcareous shackles and greeted the world.

Well, you never saw anything so ungainly. Chicks hatched by any self-respecting mother hen are produced in public dry, fluffy and pert. Not this one. It was flat on its stomach at our first meeting, eyes closed, breathing hard and covered in sparse, slimy black fluff. We watched through the incubator’s perspex cover as the creature tried to stand, fell on its side, rolled on its back with little legs flailing, failed to turn over and generally made a fool of itself.

Slowly it gained strength, and with a helping finger here and there it learned which was the right way up. We had to call it Lucky: it should never have been laid, or sat on, or hatched. And yet there it was (or rather he, given the prominent comb); he made us realise how much goes on under the hen that we never see. These blind, wet, helpless newborns are coddled in the shadowy recesses of her belly until they can survive the cold outside.

Lucky really needed a mother. He cheeped in alarm whenever we left him alone, and an incubator, when all’s said and done, is really quite a hard place. We introduced him to Buttercup, and to our delight she welcomed him as her long-lost babe, though he took longer to accept her. She leaned over to draw him close and when we next looked, he had disappeared completely beneath her.

The photo at the top, in which Lucky appears to be smiling, was taken the following day.