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APRIL 2025
04 April 2025
11 April 2025
17 April 2025
25 April 2025

Friday 4 April 2025.
Molly writes

I absolutely love this time of the year. It is a joy to see the changes every day that spring brings. Here in Essex, we have been so lucky to have been given such an abundance of sunlight at this time of the year. After all those cold, grey days, the blossom that blooms, the leaves that bud, are sweet little reminders of hope after the dark, and of course, of how the seasonal wheel continues to turn. I wish I was able to write closer to the spring time festivals but I've been rather busy arranging a Blessing Ceremony for my nearly 6 month old daughter.

On February 1st, St Brigid's Day was celebrated in Ireland. A festival that has pagan and Celtic roots honouring the goddess Brigid. It's known that her fire warms the ground for the flowers and plants to grow. A fertility goddess of life, light and new beginnings; a protector of the hearth and home. A little later on around the 20th March, is the festival known as Ostara, which celebrates the spring equinox and comes from Germanic origins and known to the Anglo-Saxons as Eostre, also a fertility goddess like Brigid. This leads to what we now know as Easter.

The story goes that Ostara had helped a bird stuck in the frost by turning it into a hare but the hare could still lay eggs and every spring thereafter the hare would leave Ostara colourful eggs to thank her for life's return. No wonder we associate eggs and bunnies with our modern day Easter celebrations. I did wonder how that fitted in with the resurrection of Jesus!

For some time now, our celebrations for this time of the year (and other times too) have become Christianized. Ever since Christianity gained prominence back when the Romans came to England around the 3rd and 4th century, the churches faced the challenge of converting and integrating a huge population that was deeply rooted in pagan traditions and so they decided to associate these traditions with Christian saints and events. By the time the Vikings, who had many pagan beliefs, invaded, all the pagans in Britain had turned to God and the Christian ways, they viewed the Vikings as heathens! The irony!

I like how the pagans worship the earth, as it is our home which we depend on for food, water and air that we cannot live without. Our relationship with our planet has drifted more and more as industries and societies have grown, the impact of technology, the convenience of not having to rely on growing our own food on our own land any more, many barely having any land, living in flats and in built up areas working all the hours under the sun to keep afloat. No time or land to even tend to a garden for most. It scares me the thought of how much has been and is being built upon on our little island. By the time my daughter grows up, how much land is there going to be left? How many habitats will be destroyed, species threatened and so much pollution in our land, air and sea? I am so passionate about inspiring others to love being outside, love the earth, the animals big and small, learn about our home, connect to it, respect it, realise we can't live without it and it truly is so marvellously beautiful.

Anyway, the 20th March last month brought us the spring equinox. During this time we can see new life springing forth, filling us with renewed energy to bring about the best version of ourselves, to create the ideal world that we'd like to see, and to write our own destinies. It's a time to check- in and make sure that we are taking steps to nurture ourselves, providing our spirits and bodies with healthy nutrients and cutting out anything that may be interfering with our growth. So go outside, feel the warm sun on your skin, smell the fragrance of spring in the air, notice the new growth of plants, leaves on the trees, flowers, blossom and the bees and butterflies flying around. Count your blessings and think about how wonderful it is to be alive.

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Friday 11 April 2025.
Richard writes

One of the problems with our education system is that it is, and has to be, one size fits all. Children all enter a school at the same time of the year, they all sit in the same classroom, they all have the same teacher, they all attend the same lessons, they all take the same exams and, the aim, is that they will all have the same high qualifications.

Did you spot the word which occurred all the time in that very true statement? Same here. The brilliant fact is that we are not all the same, but in our formal education as children we are mostly treated the same and expected to turn out the same.

I've been doing a fair amount of thinking these last 24 hours, initiated by some writing. You see if you stifle a skill or a talent or even a desire that a child has, it is very difficult to build it back in later life; not impossible but difficult. However, if a child or young person has a particular skill and it maybe runs a little riot in their youth, it is very easy, as they get older, in fact they may do it themselves, to channel and develop that skill. I don't believe that school is able to take this fact into account.

Another problem with the school system is that, in most cases, the teacher only has a year with a child. You can't learn everything about someone in a year however much you may think you can and the more you learn of someone, the more the relationship between you will grow. In my years of teaching there was only one group of young people that I had for more than a year. That relationship between us was by far the best as we grew to know each other so well. I was able to mentor them rather than instruct them. I grew to know their skills, their talents but also their personalities.

Our children, our learners, need to have some freedom to develop or release their creativity. It's a wonderful thing to see someone with a talent, to see how that talent was, know where it is now and being able to watch, and help, it develop. There is no limit on where a person can go and there is nothing better if you can go with them and give them the one thing you know you possess; experience of life, living, people, the world. I can only imagine how different my life might have been if, at thirty, I had been through what I have been through since and to know what I now know. Sometimes you don't realise the beauty that is around you, the wonder that is within your sphere or the opportunity that could develop.

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Thuesday 17 April 2025.
Richard writes

A day early this week as we have decided to take take the whole long weekend off. Not much to say either but expect a lot to be happening over the next four or five weeks.

So on this sunny, where I am, Maundy Thursday (King Charles has missed me out in the coin giving – I think I know why) it only remains for Owlbut and Colin, Lola and Molly and me to wish that you too have a good break over this holiday period and we'll be back on Tuesday 22 April with a new story from a slightly older Molly. Well we'll all be slightly older but she will be in a numerically yearly way.

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Friday 25 April 2025.
Richard writes I will admit, before you read any further, that I have no idea where this blog will go. I know the starting point but after that, who knows. We might as well start then with that starting point.

For society to function at its best, those that have, need to give to those that don't. This has been my philosophy and the reason for the work I do in education. Many would say that I had a privileged education and, to a degree (which I didn't want or get), I would concur but what do we mean by privileged. The dictionary definition of the word is having special rights, advantages, or immunities. Despite my own efforts to avoid school for a year which I'm sure you've read about, I was not immune from having to attend school. I did not have any special rights over any one else my age. My advantage, in my eyes, was that I had a very good education not just academically, in fact my final results were no more than average, but in to life. I had teachers who could guide and mentor me and parents who supported me during my early life.

Part of that support was that they sacrificed an awful lot to send me to a school they felt would be good for me. In today's money, my parents paid out over £300,000 on the 13 years I was at school. If indeed that made me a privileged individual, I felt it was almost my duty to give something back to others. My sole focus while working with young people has been to support, guide and mentor them, channelling their natural youthfulness with my experience.

When I met the 16-17 year old “failures” on that first Youth Opportunities Scheme back in 1982, I saw my role as blanking out the failure tag and replacing it with a route to success but that success should where possible be in an area they wanted, that would satisfy them. I wanted them to understand a far simpler hierarchy of needs than that proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943. In any case the world has changed incredibly since then.

We all need the basic necessities to live; food, water, a safe home of some sort and enough money to enjoy life. It is a failure of society if some don't have those needs met but a bigger failure of our society if some have more than those needs. I'm not the saying the ultra rich should give part of their wealth so others can sit around and do nothing. Both ends of this need to be retrained.

Leaving aside those very basic needs it is, in my view, vital to understand why you, singular, are on this planet. Are you here to stay here as long as possible, in which case take no risks, go nowhere, keep fit and wrap your self in cotton wool. But you'll have missed so much. Are you here to take as much as you can either in terms of money, and this includes in benefits as well as bonuses and dividends, land or possessions. But you'll still have missed so much.

Or are you here to achieve something, to gain satisfaction and to make a worthwhile contribution to the society of which you are apart. One of my heroes, the late Bruce McLaren, racing driver and founder of the team that bears his name, once said that he believed that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone, to which I would add and not the amount of land, money or possessions you have.

You see that education my parents paid out a small fortune for didn't give me amazing qualification, an even bigger fortune but it did give me, in my eyes, happiness and success. I hope that along the way I have shown, by words or example, some of the children I guided that success in life is only judged by you. Whatever any one else thinks doesn't matter.

Bruce McLaren, who patted me on the head one day at Crystal Palace in 1958, also said that for success the first essential is enthusiasm, not just mild, but burning enthusiasm. He added that to succeed in motor racing or any other sport it must be the most important thing in your life. I think this applies to attempt to succeed. A business partner of his once said that Bruce had an enormous amount of confidence, although the confidence was not always well-founded, but it was unshakeable, and this was very useful during some of the difficult times they faced.

With confidence to get you through the tough times and enthusiasm to keep you going I believe we can all achieve what we want within society but if those aims are of longevity and wealth, you've got it wrong. If you have sufficient of something, share the excess, give it to others. That education, which I consider was superb, was given to me by my parents, and the school, and I now want to share it with the young of today. Don't get me wrong. I'm not giving so someone can take. I'm giving so others can succeed and also give.

I do this project for no salary because I have no need of a salary at this point in my life. If I were younger, as young as Molly, I would need a salary and I will fight to get her that. But I would still measure my life in terms of what I have given and what I have achieved, how much my enthusiasm has pushed me on and how happy I am, not how happy others think I should be. Giving back is not necessarily tangible, financial. It can be in so many other ways.

We need to help our children learn how to live, how to cope, how to be happy and how to succeed. Spending thirteen years pushing to pass an exam will never do this. See, I told you I had no idea where this would go.

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