helping my daughter out with her homework earlier made me remenisce about learning to write. she jiggles and wriggles and sometimes gasps out loud as she concentrates; her handwriting is beautiful.
when i was 6 to 9 years old we lived in a restored farm building in rural nowhere. to go to school, we had to walk half a mile to get authority provided transport, which then took us yet more miles o'er hill and dale to our little primary. The school had two classrooms, two members of staff, outside toilets, a very dangerous pond and about 28 pupils all told. i am not 80 years old; neither was i wearing clogs.
this school was big on handwriting and silent reading, perhaps because it was something that we could be left alone to do at our desks while the headteacher sat at hers. we also spent an incredible amount of time drawing and painting, probably for similar reasons. we practised so much, in enforced silence, that the standard of literacy and artistic merit was stratospheric, it was like a small pocket of genius surrounded by bright yellow fields of oilseed rape. i was the kind of child from a very early age that always had her head in a book, so my parents weren't too concerned. and why would they be.
when i moved schools, it was found that i was way above my agegroup in reading, and i also became the artistic school mascot. i was completely shocked, because at my previous school i had only ever been mediocre. it was also found that i was a complete numerical ignoramus, and this has remained the case. my learning difficulties went undiagnosed, but my handwriting is often proclaimed remarkable.
to look at the above image is incredibly evocative, calming even. when we were practising in silence i was never scared. i might well frame it.
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