It's been an interesting few months. There was a lot of uncertainty over my job, and it looked as if I would have to look elsewhere, and then the threat went away. But there's nothing like such a prospect looming to make you evaluate what you want out of life. And I realised that i really do love my job - I really love the company of children, especially teenagers, and I think I get quite as much from them as I am able to give them. I wasted many years of my life trying to shove my round psyche into a square career and it wasn't until my 30s that I realised that what I would be really good at, and what would therefore really fulfil me, was teaching. Like my mother and at one point my father. And like my grandmother. You can run but you can't hide.
It wasn't long before that that I also discovered that I love to write. I wrote stories as soon as I could write, and continued for practically all of my life but regarded it as something I did for fun, without working too hard at it. I am unfocussed about my writing, and I wasted too much time trying to write for the screen before finally giving in and admitting to myself that I am not good at forcing myself to write to someone else's rules. 22 steps and 3 acts and inciting incidents and avoiding the present continuous and all that - with the greatest respect, it's bollocks and akin to voluntarily going around in a straitjacket. So I'm indulging myself with prose at the moment and it feels very liberating and good. But now I really, really want to be published. And I think I'm good enough. This despite the fact that all I have to show for my endeavour so far aare a couple of letters saying 'nearly but not quite', a short story published in an anthology and a script in pre-pre-production.
Son has discovered, at ten, that he loves the stage. He's been going to a Saturday drama school for about two years but hasn't taken it very seriously. But last month he took part in three shows, one a school production of Bugsy Malone, one a drama school production of Oliver and one, after the first audition of his life, a professional Bill Kenwright production of Evita. And now it all makes sense! In Evita he didn't have that much to do, but he did it with aplomb and has now seriously got the bug. He loved everything about it from going in at the stage door to the quick costume changes to sitting in the dressing room with the other kids playing Nintendo games between scenes. He can't wait for the next auditions to come up. How fantastic to discover something you love at his age! It probably won't last but he should enjoy it. And now that we've spent two wet weeks in a cottage in Wales, he's also discovered that he is a book worm. In the last year he has read all the Alex Ryder books, all the Harry Potter books and sundry other series, but in the last fortnight he has read all seven of the Narnia books. That's the proper CS Lewis, and none of your abridged rubbish. I wasn't sure if he was old enough, but he devoured them at the rate of one a day. And as a result of all his reading he has started to write beautiful, complex stories.
Daughter has been named as a language scholar at her academy after taking some aptitude tests. (She's never knowingly learned languages, although whenever we've been abroad anywhere I insist that the kids learn to say at least 'Hello', 'How are you?', 'Please', 'Thank you' and 'Goodbye', and use them for our stay. Apart from anything, making an effort means that people are more willing to help you. There's nothing more depressing than seeing a Brit at the front of a queue with that fearful look in their eye saying, rather too loudly 'Do you speak English?'. Get a damn phrasebook.) I'm really pleased that someone has divined this talent in her, given that I'm a languages teacher. I sometimes feel that everything I have is going to die with me. I've also been told that she has a talent for mathematics and is a natural mathematician who should achieve an A* at GCSE. I was told this when she was eight. No pressure there, then. Curiously now that she's starting secondary school, she's discovering that the things she had a real talent for are not the things which other people think she's good at. She thinks of herself as a sportswoman, but while she's okay at sport and learns quickly it looks unlikely that she will ever excel in it. She learns violin, and I've now been told that she has a real talent for that, and if she works at it she could be quite special. But she wants to give it up. So what I intend to do is have word with her teacher and try to make violin playing more like sport - make her do grades quite quickly. Nothing motivates her like a challenge and then a piece of paper telling her she's done well!
Also while we were on holiday in Wales, the kids rigged up a ramp on the road and then launched themselves down a hill on their fronts on a skateboard, seeing how far and how fast they could travel. The one who wasn't skating ran alongside making sure that the other didn't get run over. Son decided to have a go while daughter was inside nursing a wound, and nearly did get run over, but threw himself off in an act of self-preservation. Both of them are covered in cuts and bruises but very happy. I looked on and wondered if that was how someone would discover that they had a talent for, say, the luge?
Anyone who's read me much will know that one of the thing I'm frustrated by is the amount of talent in our people which must go undiscovered. How many people are wandering around towns and countryside of our nation, slaving away at dull jobs, unaware that they might be a champion synchronised swimmer, or a world-class percussionist, or a peculiarly sensitive dog-trainer... or anything else? We can't test people for aptitude in everything. Middle-class families with a bit of spare money can introduce their children to a huge range of activities and therefore their children have much better chance of finding things which they love to do and which they are great at doing, but how tragic that for the majority of families this is simply not possible. What a waste of potential, and we don't even know how much potential.
