The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1398 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Fish and chips over, and the washing up in the machine, I chatted with the girls as they did their homework, helping them as I could–usually not. Billie continues to struggle with her English–they make them write stuff longhand to avoid use of spell checkers. Her writing is quite juvenile given she’s three years older than Trish and Livvie, her writing looks very similar, large and rounded. Mind you, I’ve had twenty odd year old students who wrote the same way and while legible it often unfortunately carried an immaturity of thinking as well.

My own scrawl was upright but small, with none of those affected 'I's dotted with hearts or feathery tails to my 'g's and 'y's, nor does it lean backwards, and only occasionally forwards, when I write quickly.

I looked over Billie’s essay for her and spotted three mistakes in the first sentence. I corrected them and explained where she’d gone wrong–including that awful one, I could of done something rather than, I could have...

We worked for an hour and the finished product was passable, at least the spelling was now correct and the use of punctuation more correct as well. She hardly used any save two full stops and one comma in a piece of about five hundred words.

At first she thought I was just picking on her, but we went into my study and I explained the basics of punctuation in giving sense to a sentence or emphasising a point. Eventually she realised I was trying to help her and she asked if I could help her do her English homework again. We hugged and I promised I would.

I then got her to show me her other stuff. It was equally difficult to read and the teachers had written snotty comments about punctuation. We looked at History and Geography. Her ideas were fine but were lost in translation to the written word. I told her I was going to get a tutor for her during the holidays. The response was a long face.

I told her that Danny was going to do some as well, he didn’t know it yet, but I would have someone coach both of them in English. Two reasons why: they’re probably better at it than I, and strangers often have more power than familiar figures.

I’d seen a name mentioned in the local paper when I’d read my reviews of the play, so had phoned the woman and she sent me her details–a genuine English teacher, with ten years of experience in coaching and classroom teaching. Her rates were quite reasonable too. I hired her to commence when the holidays started.

Billie after a little sulk was okay, she accepted her fate because she could see how it would help her in the long run and even to some extent in the short term too. Danny was an entirely different kettle of fish.

“Coaching in English–no way, Mum. I do enough during the year, I’m not doing it in the holidays too.”

“I’m afraid you do as I want, and in this case, it’s coaching in English.”

“But I don’t need no coaching.”

“That means you do.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“It’s a double negative, so it means you will do the opposite to what you thought you would.”

“No it don’t.”

“No it doesn’t, is the correct phrase yours was incorrect.”

“Football coaching, okay; English–what a waste of time and effort.”

“Show me your English exercise book,” I insisted, he pretended he’d left it in school but we found it when we looked through his pile of schoolbooks for the second time–he’d looked the first time by himself.

His writing was slightly better than Billie’s but his spelling and sentence construction was woeful. I wondered at one point if he split one more infinitive, he could boldly go to the Star ship Enterprise and I’d pay for the rocket.

We sat down and I asked him what he was going to do as a career–assuming he wasn’t good enough to turn professional as a soccer player, notwithstanding–he wanted to be a game’s teacher.

“Does your games teacher teach anything else besides sport and PE?”

“Don’t think so.”

“They usually do, even if it’s only sport theory.”

“Nah, he does sport science an’ geography.”

“Geography?”

“Yeah–you know, capital of America is New York, that sort of thing.”

“Would you care to reflect on what you just said?”

“No, why?”

“Well Washington was the capital of the United States when I was in school and I suspect geography is a bit more complex than simply not knowing your state capitals.”

“I was only jokin’, I just wanted to see if you was awake.”

“Were awake, and I was. What’s the capital of Australia?”

“Um–Sydney?” he blushed when I looked aghast at him.

“That’s the capital of New South Wales, Canberra is the federal capital.”

“Ask me another one, I knew that really.”

“Okay, let’s look a bit closer to home, what’s the county town of Wiltshire?”

“Wiltshire?”

“Um–Salisbury?”

“Try Trowbridge,” I suggested, “What about Dorset, that’s an easy one?”

“I don’t know, bloody Bournemouth, I suppose.”

“It’s Dorchester: and Hampshire is?”

By now he was getting very cross. “I don’t give a shit what it is.”

“You might if you lived in Winchester.”

“I don’t do I, so there.” He stamped off upstairs and I was left feeling very frustrated and worried for his future. He was good at football but possibly not that good and one bad tackle could end his career in an instant.

I let him go, he had to recognise his own failings before he would do anything to change them. His end of term exams would show some areas of concern, assuming I actually got to see his report. This being a parent is hard work.

I put the girls to bed and read to them, Billie was a little quiet compared to the others and was last out from the bathroom, waiting until the others had finished before she started to wash and clean her teeth.

I had to read them from Horrible Histories which would have terrified me as a child, especially one of Mima’s age, but they all seemed to love it. So much for my judgement.

I spoke with Simon about my concerns for Billie and Danny. His response was that he was rubbish at Geography at school, but he survived. If he needed to go anywhere he’d look it up in an atlas–he’d even found Hell when told to go there–it’s in Iceland.

“There’s Hel in Poland.”

“Well that’s next to Iceland.”

“Since when?” I challenged.

“Told you I was rubbish at geography.”

“So it would seem.”

“Okay, miss clever dick, I know clitoris isn’t a Greek island,” he smirked running his hand over my thigh.

“Ooh,” I jumped taken by surprise of his change of subject.

“An’ my sense of spacial awareness is excellent too, because I know this fits somewhere as well,” he placed my hand on his swelling groin.

As if on cue, as he touched my nipple Catherine woke up crying and he nearly wept himself when I went to sort her. Oh well, his anatomy is better than his geography but he’s still finding it difficult to get where he wants when he wants it. That kept me sniggering while I fed Catherine and changed her–by then he was asleep and I gently removed the book from his lap and slipped into bed.

I know general knowledge is something which changes from time to time, but I did wonder about the so called dumbing-down effect which some writers in quality newspapers mention, and which comes up as a topic on Radio 4 regularly, where it seems half the twelve year olds in England and Wales haven’t heard of Mozart, Dickens or Nelson–what chance my collection of Vaughan Williams CDs?