Apparently, 97% of families claim Child Benefit even when they have massive incomes and have no need of the extra money whatsoever.  This money is often considered to be pin money for the mother or is put straight into savings accounts which then go towards making those families even more privileged.

Ideally, families on high incomes should refrain from claiming this money because it is an immoral act.  In times of recession it is outrageous to give free money to people who can easily support their children without help from the government when that money should be channelled into organisations to help children from deprived or abusive situations.

Child Benefit should always have been means tested and this nonsense about a universal benefit is just woolly, liberal, vote-toadying wastefulness.

And now we come on to the Special Needs register.  I am delighted that we now live in an environment where children with learning and behavioural difficulties are flagged-up and helped accordingly.  The recognition and assistance for people with dyslexia, for example, has changed the lives and careers of many people, young and older.

But for a long time I have suspected that a small but growing proportion of children have been labelled as ‘special needs’ because they are not very good at something or are badly behaved.  It’s a win-win situation; the school gets paid and the parents can abdicate responsibility.

At Boy the Elder’s first school, his class had 50% of the children statemented as Special Needs. 50%.  In a middle class, affluent and relatively trouble-free area.  I have witnessed at first hand parents who have had  their children statemented and labelled simply because they are unable to cope with their behaviour and personalities.  Other families have had to walk across hot coals just to get a bit of reading or maths help for their child because they are falling behind but have no official diagnosis.

Boy the Younger has shocking handwriting and can be a right little bastard.  He has neither ADHD nor dysgraphia, both of which have been suggested to me as possible explanations for this.  He is left-handed, eccentric and both his father and I have shocking (if characterful) handwriting and, more importantly, I don’t give him enough help with it at home.  He attends a handwriting club at school which is really helping, but he does not have a ‘condition’.

My, and our doctor’s, explanation for BTY’s bad behaviour has more to do with four house moves in five years, the separation of his parents and a love-hate relationship with his older brother.  He is a deep thinker and has the intellectual but not emotional maturity to work out his feelings. I am a great believer in appropriate counselling and I think this will be of far more benefit and influence than an educational statement or regular gob-fulls of Ritalin.

I have said this before and I will continue to say it until someone stuffs my mouth with socks.  As a society we have become too reliant on the idea that someone else must always sort out our problems and take up the slack for our difficulties and failures.  We are regressing in our personal responsibility, our capacity to assess risk and our determination to stand on our own feet, stop moaning and get on with it.

If everyone gets help with their children when they don’t need it, it distracts our attention away from the ones who really need society’s help, either financially, emotionally or educationally.  So, much as it kind of hurts to say it, I fully support the government on these two measures and support their determination to bring us through this recession, with our help, so that we can build a sustainable foundation for the future.

However, the table manners of some of the guests, mainly the twenty-somethings, were genuinely shocking.  They appeared to have no idea how approach the table settings, how to hold their cutlery or when to wait or proceed with their food and drink.

The most important thing to know, before you even start talking about table manners, is that the host honours his guests by putting their needs above his own and the guest must show himself to be worthy of that courtesy.  Manners are there to accommodate and reassure, not to confound.

So in this first article in the series we shall talk about cutlery:

Forks on the left, knives and spoons on the right and the guest should work from the outside inwards, course by course.

If a fork is used without a knife, it is held in the right hand with the tines (prongs) pointing up.  Always hold it as near to the end of the handle as you can.  The fork should rest on the middle finger which is supported by the outer two fingers.

If a knife and fork are being used together, the fork should be held like a knife with the tines pointing downward.  It is acceptable nowadays to turn the fork over momentarily in order to scoop up food that has been pushed onto it by the knife.  In that case the food should be pushed onto the inner side of the fork, otherwise you might poke your companion on the left with your elbow.  Eating persistently with the tines of the fork turned upward is not acceptable.  The knife should be held as in the illustration and never held like a pen.

If you are eating with a spoon alone, it should be held in the right hand, just like a solo fork.

If a fork and spoon are used together, the fork should be used in the left hand with the tines pointing downward.  The spoon is the receptacle in this case and the fork as the guide.

Pausing and finishing eating:  It is correct to lay your cutlery down after each mouthful while you chew and swallow.  To indicate with your cutlery that you are merely pausing, the knife and fork (or fork and spoon) should be laid neatly in the twenty past eight position of the clock with the tines of the fork pointing down.  When you have finished, lay the knife and fork (or fork and spoon) neatly side by side, in the six-thirty or twenty-five past five position, with the tines of the fork pointing upward.  This indicates to both guests and waiting staff that you have finished.

With grateful thanks to Debrett’s 1992 edition of ‘Etiquette and Modern Manners’ ed. Elsie Burch Donald for their illustrations.

A Lincolnshire Tale – by John Betjeman (1906-1984)

Kirkby with Muckby-cum-Sparrowby-cum-Spinx
Is down a long lane in the county of Lincs,
And often on Wednesdays, well-harnessed and spruce,
I would drive into Wiss over Winderby Sluice.

A whacking great sunset bathed level and drain
From Kirkby with Muckby to Beckby-on-Bain,
And I saw, as I journeyed, my marketing done
Old Caistorby tower take the last of the sun.

The night air grew nippy.  An autumn mist roll’d
(In a scent of dead cabbages) down from the wold,
In the ocean of silence that flooded me round
The crunch of the wheels was a comforting sound.

The lane lengthened narrowly into the night
With the Bain on its left bank, the drain on its right,
And feebly the carriage-lamps glimmered ahead
When all of a sudden the pony fell dead.

The remoteness was awful, the stillness intense,
Of invisible fenland, around and immense;
And out of the dark, with a roar and a swell,
Swung, hollowly thundering, Speckleby bell.

Though myself the Archdeacon for many a year,
I had not summoned courage for visiting here;
Our incumbents were mostly eccentric or sad
But – the Speckleby Rector was said to be mad.

Oh cold was the ev’ning and tall was the tower
And strangely compelling the tenor bell’s power!
As loud on the reed beds and strong through the dark
It toll’d from the church in the tenantless park.

The mansion was ruined, the empty demesne
Was slowly reverting to marshland again -
Marsh where the village was, grass in the Hall,
And the church and the Rectory waiting to fall.

And even in springtime with kingcups about
And stumps of old-oak trees attempting to sprout,
’Twas a sinister place, neither fenland nor wold,
And doubly forbidding in darkness and cold.

As down swung the tenor, a beacon of sound,
Over listening acres of waterlogged ground
I stood by the tombs to see pass and repass
The gleam of a taper, through clear leaded glass,

And such lighting of lights in the thunderous roar
That heart summoned courage to hand at the door;
I grated it open on scents I knew well,
The dry smell of damp rot, the hassock smell.

What a forest of woodwork in ochres and grains
Unevenly doubled in diamonded panes,
And over the plaster, so textured with time,
Sweet discolouration of umber and lime.

The candles ensconced on each high panelled pew
Brought the caverns of brass-studded baize into view,
But the roof and its rafters were lost to the sight
As they soared to the dark of the Lincolnshire night:

And high from the chancel arch paused to look down
A sign-painter’s beasts in their fight for the Crown,
While massive, impressive, and still as the grave
A three-decker pulpit frowned over the nave.

Shall I ever forget what a stillness was there
When the bell ceased its tolling and thinned on the air?
then an opening door showed a long pair of hands
And the Rector himself in his gown and his bands.

* * * * *

Such a fell Visitation I shall not forget,
Such a rush through the dark, that I rush through it yet,
And I pray, as the bells ring o’er fenland and hill,
That the Speckleby acres be tenantless still.

This will now become an occasional series which will be particularly useful at weekends, half terms and holidays.

FEED THE BRUTE!

What you will need:
1 x cardboard tube eg from a loo roll about 5” x 2“ (13cm x 5cm)
Scissors – sharp and pointy
Crayons, paints or marker pens
PVA glue
Bits of coloured card, paper, wool, goggly eyes etc
1 x shoebox lid
A bit of elastic – about 8” long and ¼” wide (20cm x 0.5cm)

How to make it:
Take your cardboard tube and cut a large circular hole in the side as shown in the illustration
Draw a face around the hole, using the hole as a big mouth
Now decorate the tube to look like a person.  The illustration shows a paper moustache and a mortarboard hat, but you could add woolly hair, goggly eyes, a hat, jumper etc
Now get the shoe box lid and cut out 2 1/2 ” (7cm)  square out of the upstanding edge of the shorter side.
Make a little hole on either side of the opening
Thread the piece of elastic through each hole and secure it with a knot
Stand the cardboard figure at the end of the lid and use the elastic like a catapult to fire small marbles or paper pellets into its mouth
Score a point for every marble or pellet you get in but lose a point if you knock him over!

If your grass is desperate for a good mowing but is very wet, walk up and down the lawn with a rake and bash the grass with it.  This knocks all the water off the grass onto the soil and allows you to mow with ease.

The Thought-Fox – by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest :
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star :
Something more near
Though deeper within the darkness
Is entering the loneliness :

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf ;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still ; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

This poem can be found in ‘Verses of the Poets Laureate: From Dryden to Andrew Motion’

DIY ECT

I collect Ladybird Books, gollies, books generally and old-fashioned cut glass (particularly perfume bottles).  But, given the money, I could very easily be persuaded to collect powder compacts, trains and train pictures, WW2 stuff in a significantly more serious way than I do now, paintings, beautiful furniture, odd musical instruments and recordings of them being played, and Indian artefacts.

However, I do have a secret thrill which I am rarely in a position to indulge.  Medical Stuff.  I have a craving to collect old medical books, medical instruments and associated items.  I once saw, on the Antiques Roadshow, an apparatus for giving tiny electric shocks by cranking a handle which conducted electrical impulses through little paddles which were held against the body to stimulate circulation and muscle tone in invalids.  It was in a beautiful wooden case and was a thing of beauty.  “I wants it precious, I wants it”, I mumbled to myself.  It was several hundred pounds and out of my reach but if I ever get the chance, a similar apparatus will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

DIY bronchial dilation

I do own several very old medical textbooks including Diseases of the Skin (1937), The Encyclopaedia of Sex Practice (1938), a turn of the century anatomy textbook, Applied Surgery (1894), A large, layered anatomy model from the late 1890s and, my pride and joy, Alimentary Sphincters and their Purposes (1910).

I have very little actual equipment; a Wrights Coal Tar Vaporizer, an old bedpan, a leather doctor’s bag, assorted bottles and some baby stuff.  Then, just as I was leaving the market a couple of Sundays ago, the couple on the next stand showed me this:

It is an old DIY enema kit.  The wall-mounted enamel jug would be filled with the cleansing fluid of your choice and the tube would then be inserted up your bottom while you lay on the floor on a pile of towels, and after a period of time, one would repair to the lavatory and …er … release.  I bought it on the spot and it now resides on the bathroom wall, between the basin and the loo, with the rubber tubing hanging down in a disconcerting and slightly menacing way.

It will never be used, well not by me anyway, mainly because I have a pathological distaste for anything to do with back bottoms.  However, a coffee enema is an extremely efficacious treatment for acute pain and migraine.  Not a skinny, double-shot cappuccino with sugar you understand, but strong black filter coffee.  No really.  I know people.

The Market Hall - saved to make it better than ever

I reported in this article in February that the Market Hall in Market Harborough was under threat of closure.  The council needed to raise money to refurbish the Council Offices and reduce costs and wanted to put a big retailer onto the site of the existing market, thereby banishing the market traders to an unsuitable, outdoor location in a car park.

I am delighted to report that at the council meeting held on Monday 30^th April, the councillors overwhelmingly voted to keep the market hall (no opposition, 2 abstainers – or ‘chickens’ as I loudly called them) and to move forward co-operatively with the traders to refurbish and revitalise this marvellous facility.

Councillor Rook stated that the people of Market Harborough District had made their wishes clear and that it was a sign of a working democratic process that the council had listened to them.  Oh really. And I suppose it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the council hadn’t performed effective or accurate economic modelling of the situation and were unable to attract the major retailer they had hoped for.  But pointing it out would be churlish of me – it is the outcome that matters.

The people of Market Harborough did make their wishes clear.  Numerous letters were written to councillors, radio stations, newspapers and MPs, a well-supported public march and demonstration were held and over 18,000 signatures were collected for a petition which was presented at the meeting.

Gentle Readers; this is indeed democracy in action.  When faced with a situation where councils and planners are riding roughshod over the needs and wants of a community, you have the power to stand up to them.  Backwatersman has recently been writing about apathy in politics and there is a rather good television campaign running at the moment which points out that everything is politics from your heating bills to the sausage on your plate.

Remember also the successful campaign run by GASP in Buckinghamshire who prevented a sports stadium being built on Green Belt land?  They succeeded because they stood up to the planners and they stood up to the council and they worried at them like terriers worrying a nest of rats.

I would like to extend my personal thanks to the market traders who put so much effort into this campaign and worked tirelessly on behalf of the weekday and Sunday traders in order that their livelihoods have been saved.  I would also like to thank the public and other organisations who gave such heartfelt and vigorous support

There will be changes and I welcome them.  The market must become more dynamic, exciting and professional and we must be prepared to conceive a plan which will make the facility more flexible and versatile.  Bring it on.

Ps.  The Wartime Housewife has a stall there every Sunday.  Do drop by and have a chat.

Written 1914 by a housemaster at Eton College, this humorous song became popular with the Scout Movement in the 1920s.  I insist that you sing this to yourself out loud and then sing it to all your friends.

THE WOAD ODE – by William Hope Jones
(Sing to the tune of ‘Men of Harlech’)

What’s the use of wearing braces ?
Vests and pants and boots with laces ?
Spats and hats you buy in places
Down the Brompton Road ?

What’s the use of shirts of cotton ?
Studs that always get forgotten ?
These affairs are simply rotten,
Better far is woad.

Woad’s the stuff to show men.
Woad to scare your foemen.
Boil it to a brilliant hue
And rub it on your back and your abdomen.
Ancient Briton ne’er did hit on
Anything as good as woad to fit on
Neck or knees or where you sit on.
Tailors you be blowed !!

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel
Half a pint of woad per man’ll
Dress us more than these.

Saxons you can waste your stitches
Building beds for bugs in britches
We have woad to clothe us which is
Not a nest for fleas

Romans keep your armours.
Saxons your pyjamas.
Hairy coats were made for goats,
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas.
Tramp up Snowdon with your woad on,
Never mind if you get rained or blowed on.
Never want a button sewed on.
If you stick with woad!