This is the The little people archive
August 4, 2004
they learn quickly
Walking up our road recently, we spoke about the paint of various colours that had been splashed around the pavement, the road and on one of the road signs. Apoa said:
I wish there was an election coming up. Then we’d have Barbara Roche and all sorts of people coming round offering to clean it up.
Barbara Roche is our MP and she and some councillors did come and talk to our neighbours about rubbish before our last council elections. They arranged to have rubbish cleared and when Andrew mentioned the grafitti on his wall, she had someone round the next day to clean it up.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
Apoa the designer
People in Crouch End have organised a campaign to save Hornsey Town Hall
It’s a beautiful building that the council have neglected. They say that heritage rules mean it’s been too complicated to look after it properly, but I heard an architect say that in fact they’ve failed in their legal duty to maintain it properly. Anyway, the campaigners had an open day with music and entertainment outside the town hall recently and Apoa just heard that she won the 10’s and over category of the ‘design the Town Hall Piazza’ competition. The judges ‘particularly liked the key on the back which helped to identify all your ideas’
The prize is a 10 pound voucher for Woolies.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:52 AM | Comments (0)
June 4, 2004
teaching forum
teachingforum.net looks like a useful thing, depending of course on whether teachers really use it. My prediction is that school teachers will use it quite a lot to swap ideas, materials, etc. but university teachers already have their own subject-specific fora (I think that’s the ‘correct’ plural).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)
March 2, 2004
schools
Well, this blog looks like it might be in trouble. I’m afraid too many other things are competing at the top of the priority list just now. Which means, of course, that there have been lots of bloggable things but no time to blog them. Oh well.
Seeing as I posted messages about Apoa’s school things, I think I really have to say something about it now that the letters are arriving. Apoa got into both the schools she sat exams for, although only one of the letters arrived on Saturday. The other one still hasn’t come but we found out by phoning the school. They said it should come soon but suggested we ask our primary school who are told about all the decisions and they passed on the news.
Now we have to decide which one to go for, the main issue being that the school Apoa originally preferred is not the one all her friends will be going to. This meant that she changed her mind in a tenth of a nanosecond but now we’re trying to encourage her to spend a bit of time thinking about it before coming to a final decision and also reminding her that it’s a decision for the family as a whole and not just her. I’m sure that we’ll end up by agreeing with her so it feels (to her) like we’re torturing her pointlessly. Kiloh is quite interested as she realises that in a couple of years she’ll be at this stage and she really wants to go to the same school as her sister. Neither of these schools have a significant sibling policy so they could well end up heading off in different directions every morning in a couple of years. There’s a real temptation to go back to the original plan which was to go to the borough school over the hill where siblings are guaranteed a place.Still, it’s good to know that this will all have been decided by the end of the week.
It’s a serious rites of passage week for Apoa who had her ears pierced on Saturday and will be having her 11th birthday disco on Saturday.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2004
Apoa in the snow
Apoa went to her very last secondary transfer assessment yesterday, which was a music audition. We came out of the school around 5pm to find heavy snow, thunder and lightning waiting for us. We enjoyed the traditional winter pursuit of standing at the bus stop while no bus comes, followed by the bus that crawls slowly past without stopping. Two and a half hours and a combination of bussing and walking and stopping off at nando’s later, we were home, where we were greeted by a snowman (or what was left of one after the cheeky boys next door had been round). It’s all melting around me as I write so I hope the kids are making the most of it while they can.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2004
like Kiloh in the movies
Yesterday I had a chat with a neighbour as she cleaned up after someone broke her car window and tried to steal her prescription glasses(!). If this was a movie, we’d have known that was going to be significant at some point. This morning, Kiloh fell on her way to school and got a bit of the glass in her knee. It was easily removeable, luckily (and lucky Kiloh spotted it as I didn’t notice at first) and she was very grateful after it was cleaned up.
Posted by Billy at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
January 9, 2004
one final push....
Apoa made it to the second exam stage for the last school she’s trying for. At least one of her friends didn’t, which is a right bloody bore.
Last night the kids pretended they’d heard that she’d got through, which is the kind of fate-tempting thing a grown-up would never do, so I’m glad she did make it. When she phoned to tell me, I got to pretend that I didn’t believe her and thought she was just pulling my leg again. So now she’s got one more exam, one music audition and one ‘assessment’, which is an exam for a school that’s not selective but tries to take kids from all the ability ranges. Can’t wait till she’s done it all. But then I guess Kiloh’s turn will come round before we know it.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:19 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2003
too much
Yesterday morning Kiloh said ‘this is the best birthday I’ve ever had’ and also said that we’d given her too much so could we give her a bit less next year?
We went for pizza in the evening and she went in first and explained to the waiter that she had a reservation in the name of Kiloh. Then we went to see Lord of the Rings 3 at Muswell Hill Odeon where, sadly, the sound isn’t great and we were miles from the screen. It was fun, but after 9 hours or whatever it was, I’ve now decided that this just isn’t my kind of film. It’s amazingly impressive film-making but I spent hours sitting watching yet another fight and not really knowing or caring much who exactly was fighting who or why, and wishing we could get back to a bit of interaction and maybe a joke or two. I also felt the jokes were sprinkled in rather than organic. I think I’d prefer something a bit more like Metropolitan where maybe the four hobbits sit around for an hour or two drinking from their flagons and chewing the fat.
We all showed remarkable endurance, finally leaving the cinema around 11.30 with only one or two naps being snatched during the film. Tonight we’ve got the real party to look forward to in the wonderful world of Quasar.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2003
exam fever
After their stage two exam Apoa and two of her pals bounced through the front door full of beans. The normally placid Apoa had her volume button up to 11 and they were all speaking simultaneously at great speed. (The other context where Apoa gets like this is during a card game.) The main thing that amused them about the exam was the formula question where everyone else had said the answer was:
3x + 1
but Apoa had put:
x + 2 + (x - 1 + x)
which, you’ll realise, is a rather complicated way of saying 3x + 1. Hope the examiners realise that.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
December 1, 2003
'Apoa? Is that a NAME?'
That’s what Ray Harryhausen said when I finally managed to get him to sign my book yesterday. We went back to the NFT for a workshop where we got to meet him, see a real model skeleton and dinosaur from his movies, hear how he made them move, and then the kids got to make their own skeletons from pipe cleaners and make a little animated movie of their own. It was great fun, especially for the older audience who seemed more impressed and excited to meet him than the kids were.
After he got over the shock of ‘Apoa’ I hit him with ‘and Kiloh’. Just when he thought it was over, along came Oisin with his ‘don’t forget the foda’ Irish name just to put the icing on the cake. I liked his reaction to Apoa’s name. It reminded me of the times when people used to ask us the perfectly balanced question, ‘Apoa, what kind of name is that?’ Kiloh’s womb-name was Spenglu which also got some interesting reactions.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2003
another test
Apoa’s off to another first round test today. She’s gone to school with a packed lunch and a see-through plastic bag containing: a letter with her candidate number, several sharpened pencils (the one she’ll actually use is 2 centimetres long), a rubber and a pound to buy a drink and a biscuit. Alice will be collecting her and a few other kids from school this morning and taking them to the test. She won’t be allowed to park, just to drop off and collect later.
It feels weird not helping her get there and back, and we’ll be going straight out after work tonight, so we won’t see her until tomorrow. She’s said she’ll phone when she gets home, though.
Last night, Apoa prepared for the exam by going straight from school to practice in a local orchestra and then rushing home to gulp a couple of bites of food before going off to play guitar in a concert and then heading home for a late bath and a chapter of Peter Pan. Maybe not the best preparation but she seems cool about it.
Meanwhile, we’re all dealing with the fact that some kids didn’t get through the first stage at the other school, which is definitely not nice.
Posted by Billy at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2003
growing up
Just arranged to see Tanja next month. She pointed out that it’s around 16 years since we saw each other. I’m now old enough to have that kind of a time gap and to find that when I look back over the 16 years I was already a grownup back then (well, up to a point).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 3:40 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2003
schools
Well, we have finally sent off all the forms for the various schools Apoa is applying for. Now we just need to torture her with homework and music practice until the end of January and then wait to see what happens. She’s bearing up pretty well so far. She came back from a peace walk around Central London last night with a white poppy on her chest and another on her specs. I asked her about the walk and she told me about the difficulties of finding a chip shop that was open and how they settled for chocolate and crisps. When I asked her about the ‘peace’ part she explained that she, Jessie, Anna and Rachel were fairly peaceful at times.
I had to miss the walk because I was swimming with 18 elfins (6-9 year old woodcraft folk). Being male was definitely the short straw when we noticed the grownup to child ratios in the two changing rooms. The good bit, though, was having a session in the pool where there were professionals on hand to keep the kids safe and under control.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2003
A Levels and Degrees
On Friday, I went to an event where people from schools and universities and related organisations discussed A Levels in English Language and BA Degrees which aim to build on the A Levels. It was a lively and interesting day. I enjoyed the comment from the English teacher who said that when he decided to turn to linguists in the universities for help he was surprised to find that the different linguistics organisations were so similar to the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front etc.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)
back to school
Well, we’ve made it through half term, which included:
- an exam for Apoa
- a physiotherapy session for Kiloh
- a first football match for both of them
- a new bike for Ohna
- several visits to and from friends
- trick or treating (most successful - Kiloh counted one hundred and two sweets)
- a visit from Jed and Ruth who took the kids to see Finding Nemo and Saved and Clemmie
- a nice family dinner with a card game afterwards
- Ohna going off to Milan for work
- Billy going to see the Flaming Lips in Brighton with Robbie (standing in for Ohna)
I could tell you more about all of these but life won’t wait for me
B-)
Posted by Billy at 2:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2003
here comes halloween
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)