Just pleasantly floundering around.....

My father was prone to angry outbursts! By that I mean that whether he was feeling humiliated, vulnerable, fearful, powerless, disappointed, anxious, hurt, misunderstood or many other emotions, he was quick to express only anger – loudly, suddenly and aggressively, and always towards others.  On first consideration I might conclude this was because my father received standard conditioning that gave the message that anger was one of the few emotions acceptable for males to express. After all, it feels powerful, in control, shouts, ‘pay attention to my issues now!’ and it can railroad situations that might more appropriately require time-consuming, empathetic and delicate attention – possibly attributes more commonly expected of the female arena! (Sorry about the generalisations! Of course I know there are always exceptions!)  But it’s also worth considering: it probably does feel easier to experience and express anger outwardly than many other emotions. For example, many years...

A draft post I wrote ten years ago that I thought i would publish... I have never been to the Outer Hebrides but somehow have still managed to feel a (very) mild affiliation to them on account of the following.   When I was about eleven our dad returned from work one day with the weighty speculation that we might move to Benbecular so that my dad could run the airport there. Apparently the airport traffic amounted to about one aeroplane a day. The move was carefully and seriously considered over the following few weeks. I remember feeling extremely unsettled by this idea and the more I learned about the Outer Hebrides, the more resistance I felt. Aside from being told most island children go to boarding schools on mainland Scotland for their education and that its young residents usually do very well academically because there's nothing to do but study (this really scared me) my main fear was centred around the fact that devout religion on the islands meant people were not al...

  For so many reasons: Who exactly gets to decide which ideas are allowed one the table? If people don't get the discuss their views, how will they be able to take in new information? Censorship increases polarisation. Polarisation seems to make people less able to discuss ideas outside of their own. 'Toleration' of views other than your own, can help develop understanding.

Once upon a time humans lived in tribes: of 150 people at most. Everyone would have known and felt some responsibility for everyone in that tribe. There would have been a balance of evolved traits so some people were more adventurous than others (which was good for hunting and finding new foods) and some more neurotic than others (which was good for the tribe because someone was always on high alert for any danger that might arrive). Emotions evolved for us to live like this: to optimise chances of survival and as part of that survival, to make us socially palatable to others so that we were not kicked out of the tribe. The tribe lived to serve each other and of all was well, would survive to reproduce. Then we learnt how to farm. This changed things and introduced the capacity for inequality as some people could accumulate more than others, and they did. Thousands of years later, for example, a miller had accrued enough wealth to build a mill. This meant he could work less by chargi...

This is a very special event that I have been to four times. Three of those times I told stories, but the last time I was in the audience. It's hard to explain just how special this event is. It's like people watching plus! And because the audience is - quite rightly - primed to be kind and compassionate towards the speakers, you get a sense that the room fills up with love as more speakers add their stories. Some people's stories are funny, some haunting, some astonishing and others heart-breaking. You certain feel like you've been on an emotional journey by the time it finishes. Here you can find the last story I told: I am not a pyromaniac . You can judge for yourself. And here is the song that goes with the story: Closet Pyromaniac Ooo the incongruence shows already!

  I just read an article about how rape prosecutions were in decline. So, the article went on to explain, there was a (long overdue) government review and fundamentally the outcome was that some targets were set for more prosecutions. No more funding, no more preventative or proactive measures put in place such as education, training or raising awareness, no more resourcing within the police to support rape victims. At best, this will bring the lack of rape prosecutions into focus for a while. It reminded me of a time when Accident and Emergency Departments were given the target of seeing anyone who walked in their door within the first ten minutes. I heard anecdotally that this resulted in someone being given the job of holding a clipboard and ‘booking in’ new arrivals within said ten minutes and then the patient had to wait the same amount as time as before. Totally ineffective, and what’s more, the ‘clipboard person’ was actually a resource removed from elsewhere. With no furt...

For many years now I have been reading absolutely everything I can get my hands on about emotional literacy/intelligence and resilience. It's not just because I write books for children about the stuff, it's also because for personal development as emotional literacy is pretty key to self-awareness, self regulation,  and generally finding life more manageable! I didn't have great role models in my childhood for emotional literacy and I suspect this triggered my perpetual search for answers. So recently, I decided to compose some videos aimed at - not the age I write for - but the age I have always taught: Key Stage 2 aged children (7-11) although I think some of the videos could be used with older children. My aim is to support parents, carers and teachers with helping their children develop emotional literacy. All of the videos can be found, described and added to each week here.  If it helps one person - I am happy!

I have been reading a book called ‘Overcoming low self-esteem’ by Melanie Fennell and some of the messages in it certainly resonate with me. I will attempt to summarise: Low self esteem gives us beliefs about ourselves that the book calls our ‘bottom line.’ These will be slightly different for different people but they are the narrative we picked up about ourselves from others, probably mostly from our childhood but also from other places in our lives. These can include narratives like: I am worthless, everyone else is better than I am, I am unlovable, I am unacceptable, I am stupid etc. Our bottom line is like a prejudice against ourselves because even in the face of proof that it is not true, we still believe it to be true.  To cope with our bottom line beliefs, we create our own 'safety net', rules for life. These again will be different for different people (even those with similar bottom lines can have developed different protective rules for life). These rules can be thin...

It seems as though you offer a shortcut So I meander through your maze of graves But what I might save in distance of travel Is paid back with journeys of thought   I have to ask…..   So, tell me of all of you, who was most mourned? What were the people at your graveside thinking As you were lowered into your last resting place? And is there anyone still doing the remembering?   Which of you were serious, who laughed the most? Whose life was hardest and whose privileged? Which of you would I have enjoyed spending time with? And from which of you would I have fled?   Now that you’re dead, does a fancy grave matter? Would you have chosen that spot? Would you get on with your underground neighbour? Or turning away in your grave, really not?   And if you could see your grave this day? Would its lichen or lean distress thee? Would you need your grave to still shout out your name? Or be content about its dense cloak of i...

Anxiety seems to be very much on the up. I don’t think this is overly surprising. The world seems to be getting a lot less emotionally gentle. It seems more individualistic, faster-paced, more competitive, less community orientated, less reflective and there seems to be a lack of patience and empathy (which equates to taking time to understand). People don't have much time to steady themselves or apply wisdom! We also have distilled global news full of shocking, inhumane injustices, accessible using fingertips and we have a sense of not really being able to do very much about any of it. We have the negative impact of social media: the agitation of incessant dopamine hits, the sense everyone else is having a better time and the occasional hostile, futile and polarising debates that leave people reeling. Additionally, in many workplaces, it’s easy to feel like an insignificant number in a data crunching, paperwork obsessed, over-monitored world that is barking totally up the wrong tr...

Some of you will remember the sinking of the Belgrano in 1982. Several of you might remember the Sun’s newspaper headline. It said, ‘Gotcha’. And a further number of you might remember something similar to my memory of the next day. I went to school and the Belgrano report was the hot topic. A number of us were outraged by the headline, others jeered with pleasure at the sentiment and several had no opinion. A discussion unfolded. It got a bit heated in places but stayed on topic. People listened to each others’ views. Those who initially held no view, joined in. People put their opinions forward, people made reference to facts they knew about the situation, people listened and we fine-tuned our thoughts on the matter. Some views remained unchanged but understanding had developed about why others held the views they did. Several people remained undecided or shy to put their opinion forward. We discussed it a little further over the following days. It was a while before the next hot...

I work in a pupil referral unit (PRU): a school for children who have been excluded from mainstream education. Nearly all of the children who attend have  quite extreme emotional and behavioural difficulties . The children are fragile, violent and full of fear. As staff we have to be endlessly caring, positive and make these children feel contained and loved. We have to uphold firm, fair, boundaries despite them often being a trigger for extreme behaviours as ‘kicking off’ usually gets them out of things they don't want to do in other places in their lives. We can never ‘lose our cool’ as that will undo any trust we might have built up and chances are we will be proving to the children what they hold as a deep-rooted belief about most adults: they cannot be trusted. We have to have a minute by minute awareness of what is going on in the room as the mood can change in seconds and a chair can suddenly be hurled through the air if we don’t get in quickly to prevent it. We cannot...

I was not-quite--yet-spring cleaning my old computer files and came across this... I think I still agree with most of it! Bloody Molly Potter says....... ...on certainty Always be questioning of your own certainty. Never to assume that you know everything. Understand that it is human nature to tend to see only the evidence that supports your point of view.  ...on problem solving When you have an emotional problem – you are best placed to solve it as only you know all the details of the problem and whether a solution will be palatable for you or not. So finding someone to listen can simply help you work out your own solution. ...on empathy Practise empathy. There is always something to be learnt from embracing another’s’ perspective. ..on judgement of others Negative subjective judgement of any individual never really helps.. ..on criticising Make suggestions rather than criticising. Criticising can induce defensiveness, suggestions can open people up. ...on what you ...

In my twenties, as a newly qualified teacher, I worked in a classroom that had a kitchen in it. It was as odd as it sounds: about a third of the classroom had been partitioned off by a half-wall so that cookery lessons could happen there. As you can imagine the noises and the smells were a bit distracting when I was trying to teach but in reality it was only for about a quarter of an hour a day (as most of the lesson happened in the lunch hour). The one advantage of this set-up was that the wonderful woman who led the sessions: Sheila used to sneak me little freshly-out of the-oven treats. I was in that room for three years. Towards the end of that time Sheila, who was generally a private person, started to open up and chat more and more. I got to the point where I felt I could ask her why, when she was German, her name was Sheila. 'Oh it's not really Sheila, it's Gisella. I felt a need to change it when I first arrived here in England.' And then she told me her rema...

Story Number 1: True: The Riots of 1272 Some of the monks were put to death by the rioters. Every year in this period of history, a fair was held in Tombland on Trinity Sunday at which the prior had a given right to impose tolls on any sales. On 12th June 1272 a squabble broke out (almost definitely over these resented tolls) and at least one citizen was killed. This lead to an inquest which resulted in the city's coroner issuing warrants for some of the prior's men, 'wherever they be found.' The significance of this was that it implied they could be arrested within the grounds of the priory. This was an affront to the prior's jurisdiction and his inflated response was to excommunicated the citizens, shut the gates to the Close and send for mercenaries from Yarmouth with the intention that they would help defend the walls of the Close. Over the next few weeks men from the priory increased tensions by carrying out a raid on a local tavern and a house and firing f...

Norwich's Thatches In Tudor times a ban on thatched roofing was brought in because of the extra fire risk a thatch brings. The legacy of this is that there are very few thatched buildings in Norwich - despite there being so many old buildings. I originally read that there were only five thatched buildings, however, I found a sixth! A) Britons Arms - the only building on Elm Hill to survive the fire of 1507 has had many uses: a house of surgeons, place of weaving and saddle making. It was also - more unusually - a Beguinages which was a female community that was dedicated to religious worship without taking formal vows. These were common in the Netherlands but this was the only one known of in England. B) Pykerell's House - House of Thomas Pykerell who died in 1545 and was mayor of Norwich three times. This house has a great hall. C) Hampshire Hog Yard - behind the Arts' Centre. It was a pub for many years. D) Barking Dicky - . It was once a pub called the Light H...