OFFCOLOUR

I can't work out why this blog doesn't have headings when the heading appears in the layout... but anyway... prepare for a rant.

This page gives the appearance of being a page about a "new" philosophy of colours related to birthdays. The name is ugly and clumsy, Colorstrology, but it purports to be something that links people with their spiritual colour.

If you look at it closely, it is sponsored by Pantone... what it doesn't make clear until you dig, is that the whole thing seems to be a Pantone marketing ploy.

I think Pantone, and any company who does this sort of deceptive marketing on the internet, is misjudging the public rather badly. Those who believe in astrology, who might be drawn into a new aspect of it, will feel very angry with Pantone if they discover that it is simply marketing crap.

I don't know whether they believe the astrology colour stuff... but if they do then this is a cynical marketing ploy which exploits something they think is real, and if they don't, then this is cynically manipulating those susceptible to such things for financial gain. Either way, which company wants to be associated with *either* of those things?

Those who look with disdain upon astrology and all things related to astrology, are not likely to view it in a positive light at all. Those with experience of the internet, who mostly hate sites which blare loud music at you while they tell you what they're about, will hate it for that reason.

I presume they put money into it on the hope that it would provide positive exposure, but that isn't what I think they will get. They'd do better to find something honest about their product and promote that instead.

I was moved to write to the BBC over their news coverage yesterday. I listened to the six thirty news headlines on Radio 4, which included two novelty items: one story about the European cup having been played for by two teams of policemen a couple of decades ago, when it was lost and handed into the police at Sheffield; and one on the Indian police force having arrested a "spy pigeon" which they suspected was working for Pakistan.

It's often the case that on slow news days, the last heading is a novelty or good-news item, but on this particular day, the president of Guatemala had declared a state of calamity, following an eruption of the volcano Pacaya which overshadows the capital, Guatemala City.

I only happened to know about this because I am subscribed to a couple of sites which seem to report on every natural disaster, in case this should be a portent of global warming gone mad, or the beginning of the end. It's an efficient way to be notified of all the significant weather, tectonic and volcanic events in the world.

Once upon a time, I turned to the BBC for what I considered was a balanced and intelligent view of the world, but more and more they have turned from their previous position as the broadsheet of broadcast news to a position which is now teetering on the brink of becoming the red-top tabloid of broadcast news.

They are covering more and more entertainment, celebrity and pop science stories, and less and less in-depth news stories. Where once you could have kept pretty much up to date and aware by following the BBC news site, I don't think that's the case any longer. They do have the story on their website now.

While they pay lipservice to the ideas of citizen journalism, having facilities to enable you to send in your best photograph, or your view if you are involved in the stories of the day, actually theirs is a pretty unresponsive site, which picks and chooses which stories they want a response on, and moderates hard on the replies to those they have chosen to cover.

As for standards of journalism, I think those for the online news site are pretty low, and sinking every day. I find myself migrating more and more to the Guardian News site. I make occasional forays to the Times, but their nnouncement that they plan to charge for access later in the year has put me off it. It will be interesting to see what effect that has later in the year.

Oh Lord. I just realised I have posted a whole blog complaining bout standards in the BBC. I must be getting old.

Wonderful round up of the current review of home education on Jem's blog here.

The point is: they had already made their minds up... and are having a bloody time trying to prove that they have the evidence they say they have. But the way this government behaves, will that matter?

Looking forwards to the past

I must admit that before I studied the stone age with my children, I had a very Hollywood or cartoon vision of the people. I studied the stone, bronze and iron age at school, but had the impression that the people were brutish and barbarian, and not at all the intelligent people that we like to think we are.

I knew that the monuments and circles like Stonehenge were designed to line up with the movements of the sun, without ever questioning how on earth primitive man, with no compasses, clock or calendars could possibly have found this information.

A night under the stars, watching for meteor showers and talking with my children about the life of the stone age people who lived in our garden, taught me more than months of lessons in school. I realised that I would be an ignorant townie and probably starve if dropped into the stone age world of flint knapping and hunting deer. Or die of poisoning, eating the wrong berries or plants. Or die of exposure, unable to build a house without a ready supply of bricks and mortar from a local Wickes (which is itself built over a bronze age habitation).

I realised that the people of that time were not much different from us in appearance or intelligence, but they had to be educated to be able to do most things for themselves... a man would have to be able to make his own weapons and tools, build his own house, make his own clothes, catch his own food. Their intelligence wasn't less than our is, but it was all directed towards survival skills and being able to do all the necessary things oneself. Goodness what happened if you got sick or hurt. Well... you died, if you didn't have close family to look after you.

In today's world you can go through life quite incapable of catching or killing your meals, unable to identify plants and herbs, unable to build houses, make your own clothes, or even cook our own food.

In their world, there was a magical economy...you didn't waste anything, and used whatever was the appropriate tool for the job. In our world, we have become careless of the raw materials we have at our disposal, and unthinking about throwing away anything which doesn't serve our needs at the moment.

This is a change which happened only recently: my grandmother never threw away a useable jar, piece of string or elastic band. She remembered a world without packaging, where you took your own jug to the inn for beer or bag to the grocers for eggs, and the world of the second world war, with rationing and shortages of sugar and meat.

Our modern world became blase with plastic and oil and we have frittered away the resources which in years to come we may be held to account for. Our morass of plastic which washes up in the stomachs of albatross chicks inadvertently fed poison by their parents. Plastic tags, trashy plastic toys, plastic bottles, plastic bags and packaging and useless little tokens of our throwaway society. For years, because we haven't had to think about where our food is coming from, where our next piece of plastic is coming from, we haven't thought at all... I recently heard a talk on radio about how our grandchildren may regard our profligate use of the worlds resources on stupid bits of unnecessary plastic... you used it...for what!? to hold new pairs of socks together? To attach price tags?

My feeling is that while we think our lives are full of worry and economic angst, we are probably living now in the richest and least worried state of all time and will look back with envy at a time when - in the west - we don't have to struggle to survive. I don't believe the doomsday predictions about 2012, but that's not to say that I don't think the Maya knew what they were talking about: it is the end of one age, and the beginning of another, and it is possible that there are changes ahead whether due to climate change caused by us or climate change caused by natural cycles or climate change caused by the end of an astronomical phase ending in pole shifts and disasters... but which ever way, we will begin to see changes caused by the climate shifting.

We need to change back, to go back to being people who conserve the things they have, who know about the natural world and what burns/doesn't burn, what can be eaten/can't be eaten and how to use old tech to do the things we want, in case new tech lets us down.

I found this website, Primitive Ways, which has lots of information about making your own baskets or tanning your own hides, and also a fascinating article about the belt which the iceman Otzi carried with him on his last journey cross the pass in the mountains. It reminded me how wrong I was to regard early man as ignorant or unintelligent, for what intelligence there was in the things that he carried and the things that he'd made.

That's not to wish us all back to the stone age in the years to come, but to hope that we learn to apply some of the economy and intelligent use of resources that were a necessary feature of those times.

Unfortunately I fear that the tragedy of the commons indicates that we may postpone taking action until it is far too late - and by taking action I am not just talking about recycling and using low energy light bulbs, but planning for rising sea levels, changing food production methods and a world where maybe nothing will happen at the touch of a button, and we may need to learn to be responsible for ourselves.

Einstein is quoted as having said: I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I think he would have imagined a fight between two worldly powers, and not a fight against environmental changes, but if we get it wrong, he's right anyway. It's back to the stone age.

My version of a Unicorn chaser...

WHYohWHYohWHYohWHY
Ok, it takes me quite a long time to get up a head of steam on anything... I am a relaxed live-and-let live sort of person usually. But this has to be the giddy limit as my grandmother would have said: Watford Council are banning parents from supervising their children in playgrounds.

I think there is a danger to our children from people - mostly men - who prey upon them sexually. Yes, yes, I know women do too, as a notorious case which recently went to court shows very clearly... but in 20 years of working in a legal department, my sister has never come across a single case, where she has seen thousands involving men. The number of women involved is tiny.

If you look at the proportion of people in gaol for any reason, and how many of those are men and how many are women, the truth is that there are 20 times as many men, even though you are more likely to be sent to gaol as a women if you are taken to court, and for lesser offences.

The point is... even though more men offend than women do, you are still twenty times more likely not to be an offender, and children are more at risk from accidents and poor supervision than from sex offenders. Even then, I would say a child who cannot be supervised by their parent will be more at risk from an offender than they would be if other parents were in the park.

I think this decision by Watford Council sends out all the wrong messages: parents can't be trusted, children are better off with stranger professionals than their parents, and all people must be regarded as offenders until proven otherwise.

I hate HATE it. I didn't consider myself to be the sort of person to say this, but this country is going to the dogs. The RSPCA-organised, bolt-gun executed dogs.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when the date of September 11 goes back to being an ordinary day? I don't think so, not in my lifetime. It was the day which seemed to be the end of the world, when everywhere seemed vulnerable. Thousands of miles away from New York, it seemed to me that if New York and the Pentagon weren't safe, there weren't many places that were....

I asked my daughter what memories she had of the day, but she was six then, and barely understood what was happening. I remember them asking me if what was happening was close to us, and I told them no, it was in America a long way away, and their interest in it dwindled. Only I was transfixed to the screen, fighting the impulse to phone my family and tell them what I had seen. I wanted so much to make contact with them, but I realised immediately this was a world-changing event, as soon as the second plane hit. I realised the the invulnerable place America had occupied was gone.

It seemed dangerous to be anywhere near a city, because we couldn't see how big this thing was, initially. Would it be a continual series of plane hijacks and crashes all over the world, against western targets? Would London be next, or Paris, or Rome? Initially I just assumed that they had chartered an aircraft and crashed it - I didn't realise the horror of the event for some days. Then I had a dream some nights later, of being in one of the planes, and I felt the letting go, the calm, realising there was nothing I could do, nothing that could stop the plane crashing, and feeling it wheel under me and crashing.

It felt like there was nowhere safe for a long time, and for months I looked up if I heard the sound of an aircraft. Being in London, near tall buildings seemed dangerous for a long time. It's hard to explain how it seemed on that day... hard even for me to remember how those events made me feel unsafe, even though I was a long way away from the bright autumn morning, the smoke and the dust.

I wanted information, wanted more and more and more, maybe a morbid curiosity, I don't know, I needed to feel that "they" were telling us what was happening... that I would know if planes were going to suddenly drop out of the sky in Europe too. Maybe that should be a selfish curiosity, but in fact I felt immense and overwhelming empathy for the people caught up in the real life events in New York and the Pentagon and elsewhere that day.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that there were good people facing terrible choices when they started to jump, and that there were brave and wonderful people caught up in the towers when they collapsed. It was obvious that the people left in the building must have been the rescuers, the firefighters and the paramedics, those who were trapped and those who chose to stay behind to help them. It was easy to empathise, seeing everything firsthand through the medium of television and the internet... knowing that what I saw was as real to me as someone living thirty or forty miles away from the twin towers.

That feeling that we were under threat diminished in the weeks and months, until the bombings in London revived the feelings again, but even then I didn't feel that same end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it feeling I'd been overwhelmed with on September 11. With each passing year, it fades for me, but of course I know that isn't likely to be true for the people who witnessed or experienced it first hand, or lost someone beloved. I know they will be changed forever, with no going back.

This is an experiment to see if embedding works on Blogger. Yay! it does. The video is of my son, Ali, covering the world spins madly on. I think he has a great voice... but I suppose I might be biassed.

Stumbled over one thing which led me to another which led me to another and I landed on this page. It's wonderful, and well worth the time to watch the videos. The picture came from another blog called Tiny House Design, which has lots of interesting stuff in it, including an article about Phoenix Commotion, which built the house above.

Dan Phillips takes materials which no one wants and turns them into fantastic houses for single parents and artists.

I've long had a dream of running my own scrap store... we have to trek over to Watford to get to our local scrap store, and I think it could be a fantastic thing. Many scrap stores only take fabric and small items for art recycling - my idea would be to have a proper scrap store which is self-sustaining, and recycled everything from furniture and building materials to jewellery and beads... all donated items, all given away for free.

I'd like a big site, and to be able to run home ed classes, demonstrations, a cafe and training post as wel as the scrap store. The troube is I have learned from the virtual world that to be succesful you need to specialise. My trouble is I am a jack of all trades by nature. I want to do everything at once.

I also love housing which has an organic aspect - the rolling curving roof of the fairytale house above appeals to me, and I would love to design something similar... I think I might try it out in Second Life.

I note that Dan Phillips is using bottles and recycled glass in the walls of his houses, which is something which my hero Hundertwasser did some decades ago. You can find a lot of images of his existing work on the Flickr group 100wasser.

Following another story in the revelations about Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped 18 years ago, the BBC links to a nasty, cowardly article on double X by someone called Torie Bosch. It seems to insinuate that Jaycee Lee Dugard will be criticised for not having escaped from the clutches of her kidnapper.

Despite putting a reference to Stockholm syndrome in her title, this autor doesn't seem to understand the implications of a captive's relationship with her captor, or why it might have ben necessary for Jaycee to sacrifice her autonomy in order to keep living. She doesn't, in short, seem to understand the reference in her title.

Whether the wider public or anyone else will see fit to criticise her, it should be remember that she was 11 years old when kidnapped, and that it seems likely that she was repeatedly raped by someone who shows every sign of insanity.

I think that it would be better to simply celebrate her release, and the release of her two children, and to hope that she will be able to put this experience behind her and her children and enjoy the rest of her life.

This terrible picture is a visual aid showing the bruises and injuries on a child who died after terrible abuse by her mother and stepfather, as reported in the Daily Mail today.

I have three children I love very much. I cannot imagine how damaged you have to be in your relationship to the world to feel that you have to take out your frustration and hate on a defenceless child in this way. I don't like to think about it, or about the life this child must have had in the weeks before her death with every limb in her body broken.

As the story reports, her aunt mentioned her concerns about the child at the looked after child service, but they didn't see her as their responsibility and advised her to take action herself.

This story comes just a couple of weeks after another story where a mother spent months on the run from Social Services after they took her son into care because they believed that the mother and the child's alcoholic stepfather might have shouted at each other in front of the child, who was otherwise well looked after. They did, in fact, take him into temporarily into care for this reason, but the mother managed to get the child back, and went on the run - not because she was damaging her child, but because she couldn't bear to be separated from him again.

These two stories are at either extreme of the social services system, but they indicate that something is going very wrong with the system. When the system should be intervening it does not; when it should not be intervening it does.

And what life lies ahead of a child who has been taken into care, assuming that a right decision has been taken and a child is in need of care from society, away from their family? A life of trailing from placement to placement, cared for by people who fear to hug them in case they claim sexual abuse. A child who is taken into care has dire prospects and a life which is more likely to lead them to prison, mental health problems, drugs, alcohol and a failure to achieve their academic potential.

Instead of wringing our hands and investigating case after case where the children have been failed in one desperate case after another, we need to look around the world for systems which work and protect not only children at risk of serious harm, but families at risk from social workers. And make a better system, because this one we have seems broken beyond repair.

My father is due to go into hospital this morning - in fact if my sister and aunt have done their jobs properly, he should be there already.

It was my aunt's birthday yesterday and so we went out for lunch together to celebrate, and for father's day. We went to the Royal Oak in Bovingdon Green, which was lovely. We had a wonderful meal.

My sister told us about her friend, who went to Portugal last year. She has a daughter about the same age as my Thomas, and they happened to be in Portugal when she celebrated her sixteenth birthday. They decided to go out for a meal to celebrate and chose a nice restaurant near to their holiday home.

While ordering their meal, they explained that the meal was to celebrate their daughter's birthday, and the waiter declaimed loudly, out of the blue. "Oh sir, it's so nice that your daughter is a virgin!"

The daughter in question flushed scarlet, and the whole family embarrassedly buried themselves in their menus and pretended not to have heard what the waiter said.

He took their orders, and made his way through the crowded restaurant to the kitchen, only to catapult out two minutes later and shout across the restaurant. "Oh sir, no, your daughter is NOT a virgin!"

Then reaching the table a few seconds later, in a MUCH lower voice. "Virgo, your daughter is a ...virgo."

They weren't sure whether it was more embarrassing to have their daughter declared a virgin or not a virgin, and were tempted to stand up and explain. But being English, they didn't.

Cross posting to all my blogs. I am trying to organise an alternative report to the Badman review. I am co-ordinating that effort through the new ning account for UK free unschoolers.

Report on Home Education

I can't comment yet, still feel too angry, but there are things filtering through in response to the Badman report.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/5508165/Parents-should-educate-children-as-they-wish.html

http://threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2009/06/you-werent-there.html

I will post later... still can't formulate my thoughts into a coherent reply.

Working on an art deco build, I search for free Deco fonts and find this web page, which includes a biography for the creator. Think... why can't I gather everything together on one page?

What would I put... and who would be interested? I was born in Watford, Hertfordshire 50 years ago (can't see why anyone lies about their age... it is what it is, and fudging it doesn't make it a year more or less).

I don't feel 50. I spend a lot of my time in Second Life in an avatar that looks around 25, and people just treat me the way I feel there... it comes as a surprise when my children object to me saying "sucks" or "cool" or someone treats me like an ollllld laydeeeeeeee.

Where was I? Hmm... how do you extract the relevant detail from your life? I have five siblings, most of whom hate me because I spent a large number of weekends and holidays as a child as the favourite grandchild of my grandparents. Well, they may hate me for other reasons too, not sure. I get on much better with my brothers than I do my sisters. I married in 1985, have three children. I play the piano, research family history, build in Second Life, compose music, write, home educate my children, have difficulty in specialising in anything in particular. I am really awfu at housework. Things have to be perfect or I don't care, and my not caring is evident in piles of books, drifts of dog hair and general mayhem.

Went to Quakers in 1995, joined Quakers in 1996. Go erratically to meeting but feel very committed to Quakers....

Harvey Gillman once wrote about how, at dinner parties, mentioning that you are a Quaker is a conversation killer, because people want to know what a Quaker is, how you become one, what it is all about - and it isn't easy to explain. I always think I am FAR worse off, because I have Quakers, home education and Second Life to explain, any of which can have someone cross questioning you aggressively until the small hours.

I worked for Lloyd's Register of shipping for ten years before I had children. I have done a variety of voluntary and part-time jobs, mostly involving writing or editing. I love Second Life, and have a lot of friends there, incuding an SL partner.

I enjoy thinking, I love the sea, I like decorative crafts, pottering about in the garden erratically, but not actually gardening. I like helping people in R and SL. Maybe I crave approval, no idea, but I enjoy solving problems. Hate people leaving soluable problems unsolved.

I want to leave things better than I found them... I try to leave things better than I found them. I love conversation, sharing things I like with people. Argh mt stop, can witter on for ages... will think on this some more.

“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: / Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”

In these words from Matthew 7:1 are encapsulated the message of nearly everything that I believe...what you do to others you are doing to yourself... when you judge people you will be judged in that same way.

It's hard to breakout of the idea that we are separate and that we can act towards others and not be affected by it. Learning to acknowledge the oneness of all is tough, especially in the modern world in which people may appear to self-serving and grasping - and different from us. It's an illusion. We are all part of the same thing.

How is it people can't tell the difference between rubbish remakes and good ones?

I've seen quite a lot of criticism of the new Reggie Perrin remake with Martin Clunes. With the notable exception of a horrible laughter track, I think it's pretty good. I like the ways they have updated the series, and particularly the scenes in the train... I used to think Reggie was overreacting to his railway woes in the original series, but the concerns and worries of the new Reggie rang much truer to me.

I loved the old series and Leonard Rossiter, but unless it all goes wrong, I think I am going to like this one even more.

Worst best sex toys list in the world

I was seduced onto the Independent's website by their much better description of Heston Blumenthal's Victorian Feast, which aired on Channel Four last night, and which I missed. As I find that 4OD drains the life out of my laptop, I avoid watching stuff on it, and so will have to wait until the thing is repeated, complete with vibrators served with absinthe jelly.

Maybe because my mind had been taken down a certain line of thought, I clicked on a link on the same website to see the "Ten Best Sex Toys". There is no information about how the ten best is established, and so I must assume it is the ten items associated with sex which the person made to write the post (the celibate tea boy, one must assume) could dredge up out of the freebie box.

Ladies and gentleman, let me share with you:
Number one: an untitled contribution which appears to consist of satin ribbon for tying the wrists of your beloved. Great if you both like bondage, not so great if you don't. 5/10

Number two: a fancy honeymoon spanker prettied up with hearts. For those who want to try spanking, but only want to try it out as a joke. This is dangerous territory here. This is obviously BDSM for beginners who aren't sure that they'll like it. It's going to be tricky if both partners decide they want to be the Domme. Or maybe if one really, really, likes it and the other does not. Still, in principle it IS a sex toy, if a namby pamby ersatz imitation one. 3/10

Number three: the seven pearls Massage Ring - a whopping £433 knuckleduster which apparently doubles up as an intimate massager. No real instructions were appended and so one is left to imagine what one actually does with it. It may be unfair of me to judge without having tried the thing for myself, but it looks uncomfortable and it doesn't appear to have any endorsements to back up its claim to be one of the ten best sex toys. Ten most expensive...yeah probably. 4/10 for weirdness.

Number four: an afterglow massage candle. It was at this point that I realised we were in "desperately filling editorial pages" territory and not any serious attempt to sort out the actual ten best sex toys. A candle, and not even a usefully phallic one either. This one "releases an aromatic massage oil with hydrates and softens the skin on impact". Really. 1/10.

Number five: the hot and cold ceramic dildo. This is not a joke. With dozens of vibrating, wiggling, buzzing, lifelike, day-glo, bunny-eared vibrators to choose from, they chose a ceramic one. I got a chill looking at it. Ceramicists may make things that you can display to the general public on a stand with a chintzy bravado, but they do not make good sex toys. Believe me, I know without trying it that this in no way competes with the Omax vibrator "could get an orgasm out of a stone". This is as cold as a stone.... 1/10.

Number six: Colore Moi body paint. Edible body paint. What can I say? So much less enjoyable than chocolate sauce/honey/squirty cream. And sooo 90s. 3/10.

Number seven: Lust by Marc Lagrange. Wha? A book of posed pictures... by the cover, not even women who look like they breathe either. Oh yeah. That's sexy. NOT. 1/10. And how is that a toy? I mean... even partly.

Number eight: Bow diamante and silk lace pasties. Did they choose someone who was too afraid to visit the sex toy websites? The work experience minor who couldn't get in? They HAVE to be joking. This is dress up, not a sex toy. Not even close. 1/10

Number nine: Oh please. Wildly expensive and uncomfortable G strings. Unless you have a figure like a stick insect, forget it - you'll never see those pearls again. More dress-up. not toys. And tacky, horrible, unflattering unless you are skinny. 2/10

Number ten: The liberator. Described as a tarted up stack of cushions, there is no explanation why someone might want to pay £109.99 for these rather than use...cushions. Less a sex toy and more of a sex facilitator. 2/10.

Really the Independent needs a good spanking with a whopping great leather whip for misrepresenting this as a ten best sex toys list, rather than ten random things we can link to sex. I can do better.

Worth doing badly
Years ago, a Friend at my meeting ministered on the subject of a job worth doing. Unlike my grandmother who repeated "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well" just about a thousand times in the course of my childhood, the ending was different. Trevor said: "if a job's worth doing it is worth doing badly".

Thinking about it was very liberating for me. I am by no means a perfectionist of the sort that can't bear to do a job sloppily, but I would often avoid doing a job at all if I knew I wasn't able to make a good job of it. Failing by not doing it at all seemed better than failing by doing the job badly.

His ministry allowed me to look at what he had said and know the truth in it: jobs that are worth doing, that need doing, are better done badly than not at all. It's true on all sorts of levels.

I was reminded of Trevor's ministry because today I had a bit of a shock. I was building in Second Life while listening to the incomparable Anton Lesser in the Falco mystery the Silvery Pigs. I would listen to Anton Lesser reading nonsense, I adore his voice, and I love his portrayal of Falco particularly. The episode I listened to was the final episode. As usual I loved the sound of Anton Lesser, but I realised that I liked the woman's voice too. In the drama she is a bit of an individual, a strong character who falls in love with Anton Lesser's character, and I thought she was very well cast, and had a lovely voice, but I had never bothered to find out her name.


Seen above, her name was Fritha Goodey, and this being the age of the internet I was able to look her up immediately, found a wikipedia entry and learned to my immense shock that she had stabbed herself to death in 2004. People always say nice things about someone after they have died, particularly when they die in tragic circumstances, but it seems that people were saying nice things about this actress when she was alive. She had a loving and supportive family, friends and colleagues who liked and respected her. It seems she was beautiful, kind, talented.

And yet she killed herself. Something about her life was so unbearable that killing herself seemed preferable. People said in the news reports about her death that she had been anorexic, and was such a perfectionist that she put herself through agonies wondering if she would let productions down... and even success and bigger and better parts hadn't made that go away. Often it seems it isn't the student destined to get none of their GCSEs who kill themselves through fear of failure - they don't expect to pass and it comes to no one as a surprise when they don't. It is the ones who are predicted to do very well that often can't cope with the pressure to perform, the pressure to live up to this perfect view that the world has of them.

I fear that I am a one tune guitar, but I think schools and our system of education can take the blame for much of that attitude, where exams are emphasised as though lives will be ruined on the stroke of a pen. It doesn't work like that in the real world... people fail exams, they move on and retake, or do something else entirely.

Everyone is different, everyone responds to pressure to perform differently. That's why I believe a one-size-fits-all education system that doesn't respond to the needs of the indiviual children with it is wrong wrong WRONG. And why I am going to be telling my grandchildren, that a job worth doing is worth doing badly.