The teaching unions justify long school holidays on the grounds that teaching is stressful.
I agree with the teachers’ unions. Everyone who is in a stressful job needs 3 months holiday a year.
That’s all of us. Especially mothers.
What a silly justification.
Oh, by the way, are school holidays for the children or the teachers?
The long summer holiday – in which a child forgets what it’s been taught – was originally because children were needed to help get the harvest in. Since the invention of the combine harvester, that’s no longer been case.
The Tablets are Coming
In China, instead of schoolbooks, all secondary school children will soon have tablets that look a bit like an iPad, a bit like a nineteenth century school slate. They are cheaper, simpler but less advanced than what is available in the West.
In America, the Government aims for a similar transition for its public schools, within the next five years. Apple, Samsung, and other tech industry leaders recently met leading textbook publishers to plan a joint effort, working with the US Department of Education, “to create a fully digital, interactive learning environment.”
In Britain, Bryanston and Wellington College are two public schools that are switching totally to iPad, instead of textbooks, for all pupils. A few state schools are also doing this.
The Daily Mail rages that parents can’t afford iPads, but I’m told you can buy a second-hand iPad from £160, and some fancy kids trainers are not much less expensive – but aren’t going to make your children any smarter. And iPads will get cheaper.
Move over Gutenberg
The printed book, invented in 1455 in Gutenberg, Germany, now faces serious competition. The internet led to globalization of everything from banks to burgers and, also revolutionized book publication: academic, scientific and medical publishing switched to online publishing long ago, while ebooks now account for 20% of the British language book market.
In Britain, more books are produced now by non-publishing houses than by traditional publishers. Whether the subject is a family history, a cookbook, or saucy sexual adventures, self-publishing is booming and thousands of books are now listed on self-publishing websites.
Great Grand-dad is in front row, middle figure.
Want to write your own?
Apple recently launched a free self-publishing app called iBooks Author. It provides a format for publishing an on-line textbook, which can also be printed on an ordinary, domestic printer.
If you’re a wannabe author and family historian, a good software programme is Family History (Learn how to research your family history).
Costs £24.99 from Pearson’s Love to Learn site. Download it at: (link)
Suck-eggs links for old-fashioned bookworms
Amazon for cut-price books, including those just published. (link)
Kindle for ebooks and free, out-of-copyright books, such as “Black Beauty” or The Bible. Kindle batteries seem to last forever. (link)
Apple’s iBookstore for ebooks and free books, available when you download the free iBooks 2 app from the App Store. iBooks Author is available as a free download from the Mac App Store. iPad batteries last 10 hours. I charge my iPad overnight when I clean my teeth. (link)
Lazy Cook
Nerve Juice
In the office, when we’re too busy to fix and eat a full meal, we drink Nerve Juice. Supposedly also good as a pick-me-up for hangovers, although I can’t vouch for this as I’m allergic to alcohol.
Nerve Juice (Makes half a pint, just under half a litre. Warning: contains raw egg)
Ingredients
- Juice of 1 orange
- 1 raw egg
- 1 large teaspoon runny honey
Method
- Put all ingredients in a blender or use hand beater. Mix well until frothy.
- Pour over ice cubes.
When we’re too busy to make Nerve Juice, we eat a politically-correct, banana, mango and brazil nut chewy cereal bar. I also keep one in my tote bag for rush-around days.
A box of 5 costs £2.88. Available in supermarkets or direct from Doves Farm at link
Window Cleaner
Q: The man most likely to succeed with me?
A: A man who does windows.
Diamond Sparke
This week, the most expensive items in my supermarket trolley were the cleaning products. So here are a few of my grandmother’s homemade cleaners.
Save on a window cleaner. When independently tested (by the British Glass Economics Division), this recipe was considered as good as any on the market.
Recipe
In a jug, mix 1 cup water, 1 cup methylated spirits and 1 cup paraffin. Pour into empty bottle and shake well. Remember to label the bottle……… POISONOUS WINDOW CLEANER.
Use a cloth to rub this mixture on glass tiles and mirror, then use another cloth to polish off when dry. What’s best is to rub with newspaper then polish with a chamois leather.
Chamois leather £3.98 from Wilkinson Plus at link
Paraffin 4 litres £6.98 from B&Q at link
Here’s another window cleaner with ingredients more likely to be in your kitchen.
Recipe
In a jug, mix 2 cups water, 1 cup cheapest vinegar, juice of ½ lemon. Before cutting the lemon, roll it around hard on a flat surface – such as your worktop – because you’ll get more juice out of it.
Save on a washing up liquid that’s also a hair shampoo.
Gran kept a tin mug in the kitchen for leftover bits of soap. When the mug was full, she chopped up the soap, put it in a pudding basin and topped with boiling water. This results in a soft soap jelly for washing up and washing hair. To get silky glossy hair, Gran added a dessertspoon of vinegar to the rinsing water.
Save on toothpaste
You don’t need an inch on your toothbrush, you only need a smear. Try it.
Conversion Idea
Builders report that the most popular conversion project is to enlarge the kitchen. In my wall of kitchen storage cupboards, I included a laundry area with sliding doors. It also acts as a hurl-it-in area when tidying up for visitors. The drip drier is adjustable, but I wish I’d chosen a simpler, fixed chromium rod for drip-drying shirts.
Backing Down Memory Lane…
Over black coffee and Bittermints in my kitchen, illustrator Christopher Brown reported that at the launch party for his new book, An Alphabet of London (number 4 on the non-fiction best-seller list) he had signed 200 copies. I told him I’d never signed that many at one sitting.
Many moons ago, when I toured British bookshops with former Prime Minister Edward Heath, he had just knocked me into 2nd place on the best-seller list with his first book on sailing. At every bookshop, blue-rinsed matrons and decent chaps in cricket blazers queued round the block to purchase Ted’s book. He had to organize a production line: one clean-cut chap would take the money, a second one would thrust the opened book in front of Ted, who barely had the time to scribble his signature before a third young man snatched it away, to make room for the next one.
Meanwhile at the next table, to try and avoid humiliation, I signed books for my little group as slowly as possible, with personal dedications and long messages (“Tell me more about your aunt.”)
Together, Ted and I also attended glittery events, such as the Yorkshire Literary Luncheon. After my first speech, Ted looked a bit worried and coached me. My next speech described Ted coaching me, with a little mimicry. We remained friends until he died, 30 years later. This man, who could seem huffy, had the rare gift of friendship, and at his big parties, as he approached, faces softened into smiles and eyes shone with love. Whenever I asked his advice, Ted’s reply was always good advice, from financial affairs to the correct action when waiters don’t take any notice of you.
“An Alphabet of London” is a reminiscence of Christopher Brown’s London childhood. Lavishly illustrated, it has rare charm: all London life is here, from Dickens, Dr. Johnson and Tower Bridge to HM the Queen, pigeons and jellied eels. Having spent a happy evening with it, I purchased four copies for my gift cupboard. Costs £12.50 published by MERRELL or on Amazon (only £8.41) at link
I admit to a personal interest. The introduction is by my son,
Jasper Conran.
To Work or Not to Work?
Isn’t it odd that the government is so financially concerned about – and spending so much money on – people who don’t want to work, but don’t seem to be similarly concerned with helping people who do want to work?
WORKING FAMILIES is the charity that helps working parents and carers achieve work-life balance. It stops people breaking up and breaking down.
Incidentally, a parent with difficulties is not necessarily a woman; it might be a man who is caring for his aged parent or a one-parent father with childcare problems – perhaps for a disabled child.
This charity receives 174,000 distress calls for help every year.
WORKING FAMILIES GETS NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING to run their day-to-day operation; I worked alongside Working Parents for six years and I saw the CE stretch every penny. This charity depends on voluntary contributions. Can you help?
Working Families: link
Travelling?
Slim and scarlet
I buy one fashion item every season. This spring it’s a well-made, classic scarlet leather handbag, strangely reminiscent of the Hermes bag that cost thousands. It comes with a detachable shoulder strap and costs £245. Measures 32cm wide X 27cm high X 12cm at base.
My handbag test
- It needs to expand from slim elegance to wide practicality.
- It needs to be light.
- It needs to be reasonably small, not so large and lumpy that it looks as if you’re going to outer Mongolia after lunch.
- It needs to stand upright, not flop over, so that, from my desk, I can throw stuff into it.
- It needs to take A4 size papers.
Only obtainable from a Russell & Bromley store, because they aren’t yet online (Wake up, R & B!).
Pack it in
What do you give a neighbour who looked after your cat for several months when you were ill and is now about to travel to San Francisco? I chose a dark red moc croc tote-bag (aircraft cabin size) with a section below for shoes. It’s bigger than handbag size, it’s weekend tote size. It costs £89 from a limited edition.
It’s from a luggage range for Tripp, part of which won a Condé Nast Traveller Magazine Innovation and Design Award. Now only available in delicious deep purple or black.
Details: link
The Tripp website also shows a good packing check list for vital stuff.
Go to link
Again, I admit to an interest. It’s designed by my son, Jasper Conran.
Reality Check
Watching my daughter-in-law, Gertrude, glide down a restaurant staircase, I said admiringly to my son, “She looks like an Amazon.”
He said, “Those women were in the army; they had hairy legs and stank of sweat. If they had droopy breasts which made it difficult to pull back a bowstring, they hacked off their right tit. My wife doesn’t look like that.”
Walk the Line: How to Avoid Exercise
Veteran exerciser Jane Fonda’s daily routine includes walking barefoot in a straight line for 5 minutes, without wobbling. This is only possible if you push your pelvis forward on the right, when you stride with the right leg, and ditto for the left leg.
I do this catwalk slouch up and down my long hall. It keeps me as supple as I’m ever likely to be. This is the only exercise I’ll never dump – because you can do it anywhere, short of a prison cell, any time of day and fully dressed. Just kick off your shoes.
From You to Me
1. Janey G. from Hampstead, London writes, “It has been medically proven that women wear high heels because the angle of the pelvis is thrust forward, so every step causes erotic stimulation of the clitoris.”
Doesn’t do it for me, alas.
I suspect Janey G. is a man.
2. Lucy writes from Dundee and asks how to reply to a twitter. Start the tweet by typing the @ symbol followed by the twitter name of the person, then the message, which must be limited to 140 characters.
Example: @ShirleyConran Where can I get tiara polish?
3. Anne writes from Ottawa, Canada, “Is ‘Savages’ available in ebook and if yes, where can I get it.”
Sorry, my book ‘Savages’ is out of print and not yet available as an ebook. I’ll send you a free signed original (ie old) hardback if that will do? Please let me know where to send it.
Savages is an adventure story but also a complete tropical survival guide. When I was writing it, no tropical survival guide existed, so just for fun and because I had researched it, I wound this course around the story.
When I was in Ottawa – for the original launch – I phoned a nearby bookshop to check there were copies for me to sign (sometimes an author travels miles for a signing to find the books haven’t arrived). Yes, they had fifty copies of ‘Savages’. Half-an-hour later, when I arrived, there was not one.
I glared at the manager, “Don’t tell me you sold fifty copies in half-an-hour?”
“Yes. To one customer.”
“Why would one person buy fifty copies?”
Eventually, he told me they were for the Canadian Secret Service. What a compliment.
Goodbye!
I’m off to…erm…research something. I’ll practise my catwalk steps on the way.
How to reach me
I’d like to hear from you. Please send any questions or comments to reply@shirleyconran.com
If you would like to read my future blogs, touch SUBSCRIBE