3 Things that Never Quite Happened
I am full of ideas, but with limited time and resources, quite a staggering number of them don’t make it across the finish line. This post is the cutting room floor, where I present you with some of my brilliant projects that never saw the light of day.
1.
Rewriting the Bible
I started with such dedication. I really felt I had something valuable to add. First of all, people kept painting God as a man with a beard, but I imagined him more like a friendly smiling moon. So I fixed that. Then I thought Adam and Eve needed more dialogue, so I fixed that too.
“This apple is delicious, Eve! In fact, it is better than your pear soup!”
Finally, I had a cool ruler with a little footstep template so I did the parable of the Prodigal Son but with lots of footsteps around the edge. It was totally set to be an inspirational postcard. Sadly, I lost concentration after that because I had a great and completely original idea for a book about a girl who goes on an adventure in a giant nectarine so my revolutionary new Bible did not make it onto the shelves of SPCK.
I mean, I was 5 years old so let’s cut me some slack.
2.
Reinventing School
I was Playing School from my earliest days. I guess I was fated to become a teacher, given how much I enjoy telling other people that they are wrong. If I were a man, I’d be the worst mansplainer of them all. Here are some of my school games over the years (although if you had suggested to me that I was ‘playing’ at the time, I would have sulked under the table. All of these were real educational ventures, of course.)
Roller-skating School: all pupils were strictly imaginary but I did type up a course book for them on my parents’ typewriter
Acrobatics School: the venue was the attic at my parents’ house and the two pupils were my long suffering best friends.
Detective school: Somehow, I persuaded my entire class in Year 5 to stay in during break on Thursdays to complete my home-made Detective School workbooks, which I marked with red pen. (This was before I learned in teacher training that actually green pen is more encouraging, of course.) Soon, my classmates started getting restless though and messing about and I had to put them in time out in the corridor and it all unravelled from there. Apparently, it was Not Fun anymore. Pfff.
However, the feeling that education could be improved never let me go, and for a short time I seriously considered starting my own school. One where children learned in something more like family groups, rather than by year of manufacture, and where they had an incredible amount of autonomy. Learning through play, but not just in the early years - all the way through. I started writing a blog about it. I got very excited about it, especially when the government suggested that they would fund Free Schools.
Then I realised a) I had just reinvented Montessori education and b) setting up and running a real life actual school was going to be a Job of Work, so I didn’t.
3.
A Podcast
Last summer, I decided I was going to start a podcast. This seemed like an excellent idea. My plans were very specific (and by that I mean sketchy and vague). It was going to have something to do with poetry - but not boring - but more funny and entertaining - and there would be random stuff too and it would be 80% hilarity and 20% knife to the heart. A talented friend who has three podcasts gave me an extensive and brilliant tutorial, I had all the kit and then- I chickened out. Ultimately, I was unsure if I could commit to doing a whole series and I didn’t know if my idea was clear or solid enough to see this through. Also, it was already the second podcast I wasn’t going to do, the first being a series called Unhelpful Therapy - that one I have turned into a poetry collection instead so as Johan Cruyff famously said: “every downside has its upside”.
4.
This blog post
Let’s face it. It’s a mess. It’s late, it has no pictures and the numbering makes far too much sense. I was sick yesterday, that’s my excuse, but obviously I could have started writing earlier in the week. I didn’t, I’m sorry. Honestly I blame Belbin and his stupid team roles. He tells me I am a “Plant” and Plants start things but don’t finish them - that is someone else’s job. But don’t worry, I will have more ideas and more ideas, and enough of them will become a reality to keep you entertained, I hope. And perhaps I have just managed to squeeze this one across the line.