I was having one of those strange online conversations with Allie about place names: York’s “Bootham” is named after the shanty houses that used to be there, but it is now home to million pound houses and two of England’s most expensive public schools (note for Americans: an English public school is not the same as an American public school. Americans got all confused and called their public schools “private schools” and the state provision “public schools.” English “private” schools are what some Americans refer to as “parochial schools.” Which reminds me of the chap who moved to Texas for a couple of years. “You aren’t from these parts,” said a neighbour in greeting. “No, I’m from Great Britain,” he replied. “Well, you learned English real good,” said the Texan.)

See how those conversations ramble? This one died the death when I mentioned Grape Lane, which is derived from the name given to the back alley in the 14th Century when it was the place that the prostitutes plied their trade: “Gropecuntelane.” Kind of appropriate now, given the number of bars there are down there.

Then the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Little Nutter, who had found a kilogramme jar of chocolate fudge sandwich spread in the cupboard and was wearing it. Once Little Madam and Tiny Flirt saw that Little Nutter had some chocolate spread, the house was filled with howls of jealous pleading. I was trying to clean Little Nutter up before he spread the stuff all over the dog with Tiny Flirt shouting “I want chocolate toast please!” and Little Madam protesting “How come he gets some and we are only allowed fruit?”

One kilogramme of chocolate fudge spread will easily provide one inch of coverage on a large five-year-old boy’s arms to the elbows, face and neck. There is almost half the jar left. It also takes one packet of 80 baby wipes to clean it off. I wouldn’t recommend the shower or bath. First, if the water was hot enough to melt the chocolate and prevent it from blocking the plug it would also poach your child. Second, Little Nutter’s aversion to bathing is expressed in his vigourous struggling when you try to get him in the bathroom. Not a good idea when he is coated with sticky brown goo.

So who is good enough for your only daughter?

The question only came up because of a very new experience for me. My daughter has made a new friend; a very eligible, pleasant young man from an exceedingly good family. He is older, wiser and more thoughtful than she is. Maturity and wisdom, I think. Good qualities in a ten-year-old. He is an energetic and fun loving young man, but not wild and indisciplined.

Of course, if this were serious, the boy in question would run a mile. Girlfriends just aren’t suitable things to consider when you’re 10. I mean - they’re girls! Get a life!

Meanwhile, Little Madam is aware that S is a boy but she doesn’t entertain prejudice of any kind. She regards it as a disability that S has learned to live with, and it would be inappropriate for her to make an issue of it. And if daddy knows what is good for him, he won’t make an issue of it either.

But Little Madam and S had a fantastic time together at a meeting for families of children with Autism and Asperger’s. Looking at the photos, and seeing their delightful faces, something obviously clicked.

As a dad, there is an exquisite joy, an unbearable agony, in seeing your daughter find a life that you will never be a part of.

Go, girl.

I’m so tempted to write to the Education Secretary about the new White Paper, and have a good old-fashioned rant about it.

I treat the computer on my new car as a personal challenge, and when the “Average MPG” display drops below 40 I get all upset.

I can’t sleep if my undersheet hasn’t been washed in the last four days.

I will actually pour alcohol down the sink if it’s at the wrong temperature.

I won’t read a newspaper if someone else has read it first.

I keep turning the television off.

I love being the first one up in the morning, and like to drink coffee whilst everyone else is asleep.

I have this strange delusion than the worse insult I can make is to say that someone “lacks integrity.”

I daren’t say that I’m turning into my dad. Daring Wifey has permission to kill me if that ever happens.

I grew up in an old house. The curtains billowed around the windows on windy days - but not on really cold nights. Then they would be stuck to the frost on the glass.

Technically we had “central heating.” Solid fuel central heating. There was a back boiler behind the fireplace which heated the water and, according to O Level physics, would circulate heat around the radiators in the house by convection. Actually, maintaining a roaring fire for 24 hours would make all the radiators in the house nice and warm to the touch. Not enough to dry your jeans in anything less than a week, but certainly enough to make your towel nice and warm after your tepid bath.

Worse still, the fireplace didn’t have one of those new-fangled tray style ash collectors. No. It had a bucket in a pit beneath the fire. Every day we had to let the fire burn out and cool down enough to allow us to lift the bucket out and empty it, and then re-light it.

So trust me when I say that I can light a fire. I can light a fire with four sheets of newspaper and half a bucket of low grade coal. When the coal has been standing in an English rainstorm for a week. And with a tabloid newspaper. That has been used to line the cat’s litter tray. I don’t even need a match.

Darling Wifey asked me to buy some logs last weekend. After the summer had outstayed its welcome well into October, the weather finally turned last week and we turned the central heating on. But nothing is nicer, when the rain is lashing against your double glazing, than the occasional log fire.

So with dry newspapers, carefully prepared kindling and a bag of logs, I set about lighting the fire on Saturday night. And failed dismally. In front of visitors.

Now, I am a post-feminist man. I don’t get all uptight about not looking macho. I am in touch with my sensitive side, and am perfectly comfortable acknowledging a failure in front of witnesses - but this hurt.

CAVEMAN MAKE FIRE KEEP WOMAN WARM KEEP BABIES SAFE FROM WOLVES! My arse.

Three times in three days the fire has refused to light. I don’t know whether to cry, die or kill.

…that horse becoming Pope, for one.

I applied for three jobs in two schools, and both schools raved about my “wealth of experience” and my “very impressive CV.” And gave the jobs to others.

Meanwhile the school at which I am working on supply, and which “absolutely doesn’t have any vacancies whatsoever, oh no, none at all, we can’t possible find anything for you” has offered me a job.

It’s not full-time - but that’s OK. I’ve found work for the rest of the week teaching English at another school. And getting into the staffroom is the hard part anyway.

Then there is Harry, the beloved Mini Cooper that Darling Wifey doesn’t really like me driving, messing up or even looking at with a funny expression on my face. She loves that car more than she loves me.

And now she wants to get rid of it. Her dad wants to sell his MR2, and she wants it.

Talk about fickle!

Little Nutter has been fantastic for the past few weeks: loads of eye-contact; singing songs; spontaneous speaking; greeting people and saying goodbye. This afternoon, it all ended.

First, he came with me to collect Tiny Flirt from nursery. He loves the nursery (which he used to attend) as they have loads of toys for him to play with when I pop in. But tonight he saw what they have done, and was not impressed. A huge room has been divided into two with a new partition wall.

Then he was dragged into Little Madam’s school, which never happens. But it was her parents’ evening, and he had to sit and wait for twenty minutes. “Not impressed” was upgraded to “a bit tetchy.”

Then, finally, we got home too late to watch “Little Bear” and he missed it.

Breakdown.

Yesterday we took the tribe into Tiny Flirt’s nursery for photographs.

Unlike the usual school photo routine, the nursery arranges the photographer for a Saturday and invites siblings along too, and we thought that it might be a good opportunity to make another attempt at a group shot of the three of ‘em together.

So we bought everyone new clothes - which upset Little Nutter, who is terrified by all “new” things (except for toy trains.) Little Madam had her hair done in rollers (but is far too sensitive for anyone to make jokes about her spending the morning looking like Hilda Ogden.) And Tiny Flirt just flirted at everyone.

We dressed everyone up at the last possible moment, to avoid messes. Total elapsed time between dressing and posing was just ten minutes, and most of that time was spent strapped into a car that had first been searched for anything that could possibly cause a stain.

Little Madam giggled delightedly for the photographer; Tiny Flirt flirted with her; Little Nutter wore his favourite “What on earth do you think you are doing?” expression. We think this may be a good picture.

We were so pleased with them we took them to the playbarn afterwards (and my opinion on playbarns is on the record here.) Thankfully, York has some small playbarns which Little Nutter is happy to wander round. And we arrived just in time for the face painting, too!

“What would you like to be?” asked the face painting lady.
“Bounce! Bounce! Tigger!” shouted Tiny Flirt in a voice that made the windows rattle.
Orange paint was smeared all over Tiny Flirt’s face. Black stripes and whiskers were painted on.
“Oh no!” said Little Nutter. He rubbed his forehead and looked very worried.

He spent the whole play session hiding from the lady with the face paints.

After two months of very little development on the job front (being told to “F*** off” by the teenagers in a West Leeds school was the high point) I have been invited to an interview on Monday.

I wrote a short letter the other morning, accepting the invitation. Then, at my current school, I apologised for being unable to go in on Monday. Thankfully, the agency had someone spare who could step in and provide supply cover for the supply teacher. (Images of Russian dolls come to mind.)

That evening, I got home to find an invitation to interview at another school on the same day. Hasty ‘phone calls found headteachers clearing their desks ready to go home, but both were willing to accommodate the other. At lunchtime I have to dash from one school to another…

When my current school found out about this, I was asked for a quiet word. If I am not successful on Monday, would I mind if the headteacher and chair of governors observed me teach on Tuesday? There is something they would like to discuss…

Today I taught a French lesson to a class of seven non-verbal Autistic teenagers.

Don’t ask why. That’s a stupid question. The answer, as Tony Bliar put it, is “Education, education, education.” Soundbites and statistics, Gentle Reader.

What do you vote for?

Anyway, the only way to deal with this was the high-tech way: with an Interactive Whiteboard and some standard linguistics software. Click on “Options” to choose your language; “New” for a template and then enter photos of the class and pictoral symbols for the phrases. (Remember - these are children who cannot talk or read unless it is in picture writing, the miracle software behind PECS.)

Then we gathered the class up to the IW and gave them turns to touch their photos and the symbols for “Hello! My name is…..” and a tiny, tinny little speaker said, “Bonjour! Je m’appelle….”

Two hours later, when the PE teacher popped in to collect the class for tennis and one of the more severely disabled lads cried out “Très bien! Très bien! Très bien!” at the top of his voice, I remembered why I was a teacher.

What puzzles the rest of the staff at this particular special school, though, is why I have jumped ship to leave mainstream education and teach their kids. The best answer is to talk about “The Display!” (You really need to have dramatic music and lighting as you read those words.)

In an “outstanding school” (according to OFSTED) there was once a display put together by Health and Social Care students in their own time. It was a collection of newspaper reports on food scares: salmonella, e coli, that sort of thing. Twenty of them, laminated and arranged artistically with brief synopses by the students and summaries of the risks and best tactics for avoiding them. It was, as far as I am concerned, the very stuff of education - it was informative; it engaged the juices by being shocking and interesting; and it was useful.

And it was removed on the orders of senior management on the grounds that not one nugget of information on it was relevant to the exam syllabus.

We’ve just got back from an overnight trip to Cambridge to visit some old university friends of mine. Little Nutter was staying overnight at his respite centre, so we chucked the Chatterboxes into the back of the car and chugged down the A1.

Tiny Flirt insisted on wearing a dog costume that a Kiwi friend had made for Little Nutter, and spent most of the time shouting “Bark!” at everyone. Little Madam had been sleepless for a week beforehand, because our friends have a daughter two years older than Little Madam. As far as 8-year-olds are concerned, 10-year-olds are witty, sophisticated and glamourous - when she grows up, she wants to be 10!

But the best part of the weekend happened at the respite centre, when Little Nutter had finished his fish & chip supper. He wanted more ketchup.

“No,” said his care worker. “You can’t have ketchup on its own.”

Little Nutter got up and wandered off to the kitchen. He found a bowl of leftover peas.

“I want peas!” he said, pointing at the bowl.

“But you don’t like peas,” was the reply.

“I want peas!” he screamed. Apparently he was jumping up and down and hitting himself in the face. So they gave him some peas.

Then, with the biggest smile they have seen, he poured a dollop of ketchup onto his plate - carefully avoiding the peas. Apparently he beamed at everyone and hummed happily as he ate his ketchup. Then, finally, when he had finished his ketchup…

“No peas! No peas! Bye-bye peas!“