A visit from B

B is the local EOTAS and Home Tuition Support Services lady assigned to us.
The first thing she did after sitting down and reminding us that we have no obligation to have her in our home and sort of apologize for being here, was to point us in the direction of the Freedom for Children to Grow Home Education Campaign website. She had only just heard about this whole issue from another home-educating family within the last week and her main view was that it would be impossible to get her department to monitor home ed in a more restrictive way, in terms of staff and budget. Also she said words to the effect that as soon as the word 'autonomy' comes into the picture, how can you standardize education? She may be being naive about what will be attempted there.
She has a rather vague way of expressing herself and flitting from subject to subject - she seems to see it very much as her role to just answer any questions we might have and tell us about what other home educating families are doing in the area and how lovely it all is, especially the ones that go abroad for long trips.
I had produced a very detailed report, which I thrust at her and she said she wasn't expecting. In super-efficient mode when extrapolating all my information, I hadn't thought to put page numbers on it and the printer chucked it out enthusiastically all over the floor, so we have e-mailed it to her instead. She seems all in favour of autonomy and children learning through living. F showed her a chapter of her huge Barbie story, which she read aloud back to F. She looked at a few of F's paintings too, with F.

So that was her. Other than that, F has been hopping and crawling around, poor girl - and now has a cough/cold on top of the injury! Yesterday was the first day that she managed to go all day without putting weight on it by accident and screaming. I am relieved to see that the range of movement is there now, she can wiggle toes and move it around without pain, it's only weight on it that hurts. Phew! I always worry that the years of physio will be undone by a single injury, but of course they aren't.

We did manage a house-hunting trip to Polegate on Saturday, F stayed in grandma Ju's car with grandma, having various 'parties' which involved chocolate and pink magazines. Will stick that over on the house blog.
We are all tired, F not sleeping well with the foot and the lack of activity during the day.
Got gorgeous flowers on Mother's day. Been working quite a bit but all fiddly little jobs, don't think they amount to much so far.
And am so fucked off to be missing NicCamps holiday, which starts today. Not going to think about it, but nevertheless hope everyone has a great time. Will be with you in spirit when I have a drink in the evenings.