A White Blank Page

I returned to school for the Trinity term to find an email waiting in my inbox wanting to know if I am ‘linked with anyone at present,’ in order to finalise invitations for the staff garden party at the end of the year. Although the email was profusely apologetic for the intrusion into my private life, I found myself strongly tempted to reply, ‘In this job? You must be joking!’ After all when would I meet other, likeminded, twenty-somethings? Between 9am-12pm on a Monday morning when I enjoy some time off whilst the rest of the normal world works? I also wondered how the school files such information: hopefully under S for Single, rather than N for No-Hopers? And, I pondered, how does one inform them of a change in ‘personal circumstances’? Or is the garden party really a big rouse, providing an annual cover under which it becomes acceptable for the school to update their current information on the staff’s private lives?

It turned out that my employers are not the only ones trying to marry me off like a Russian bride. On the children’s return, it wasn’t long before one of them enquired as to whether I had ‘managed to get married over the Easter Holidays yet?’ When I responded in the negative, a look of sympathy flashed across her eight-year-old face as she quietly filed me under L for Lost Cause. A great start to the term.

Interestingly, I’ve come to believe that the way each child greets me at the beginning of every term presents a microcosm of my overall relationship with each individual. In those first few fleeting moments I catch a glimpse of the way they really see me. Take, for example, the ten-year-old boy whose tennis ball I confiscated on the last day of the previous term, who responds to my cheery hello with a gruff, ‘Oh you’re still here’.

Tennis ball clearly not forgotten. Or there’s the incredibly bright little girl, suspected of being slightly further along the Aspergic spectrum than most, who exclaimed, ‘Oh, Matron, how marvellous to see you. Did you know they’ve found philosophical proof for the existence of God?’

Oh marvellous indeed. The absolute chart topper was Milly (of tortoise fame) who flung herself into my arms shrieking ‘My Matron!!’

As I hugged her close and told her how nice it was to have ‘my Milly’ back again, I suddenly realised that she isn’t, in fact, my Milly at all. At the end of the year, along with all the others that I’ve come to love, I’ll have to hand her back into both the far more capable hands of her parents as well as those of the next matron who replaces me. I tried, churlishly, to comfort myself with the thought that I also get to hand over those whom I perhaps haven’t developed quite such a natural depth of feeling for, but I felt that only put a negative spin on things.

As I came to contemplate leaving and all the things I would miss as I moved on to pastures new, I was assaulted by another email wanting to know what I was moving on to and where I would be living, so as to include the information in the trustees report. As I am still awaiting a decision on my Masters application I am unable to answer the former, whilst the staggered house-move currently being attempted by my parents leaves me, as the French would say, sans domicile fixé once I move out of my school accommodation. As a friend and I mulled over the hard facts of the case – that, as of July, I am unemployed, potentially homeless and without a life partner – she helpfully pointed out that I was in possession of all three of these things when I started work at the school. Once again, I found myself having to resist the temptation to reply with an email pointing out this fact so they can put that in their trustee report and smoke it, yet I feel that a negative spin is not the answer in this case either. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see this set of circumstances as a blessing rather than something to bemoan. When I finish my job here, I give back what was never mine to keep and am handed a clean slate, a tabula raza if you will. With nothing to tie me to a certain place or profession the opportunities are endless. What’s more, the fact that I have no specific thing to prepare for or ‘look forward to’ means there is nothing to distract me from making the absolute most of my remaining time here, enjoying these last few precious weeks of being ‘their Matron’ and having them as ‘my children’.

You may, however, need to gently remind me that I filed all these thoughts under P for Positive in the week before half-term when the tennis ball has been re-confiscated and my philosophical facts pertaining to the existence of God quota has been filled to overflowing. My mental filing system often gets a bit muddled at that stage of term…

Spills and Thrills.

Some things are never going to happen. One such thing is the completion of a whole mealtime without a child in my care spilling their drink. Honestly, it’s impossible. I remember being their age, when the knocking over of my beaker of orange juice was a rare but traumatic event. My parents would leap up from the dining table like scalded cats, trying to stem the flow with napkins, calling out in exasperated voices for someone to bring them a cloth. I would stand there uselessly, whilst they flapped about, waiting to see if their exasperation would develop into anger, or if, like the juice, it would ebb away as quickly as it had appeared. I now understand my parents’ frustration.

Some mealtimes the children don’t even make it out of the starting blocks as the obstacle course of the cafeteria serving area proves too much for them. The juice hits the floor before we’ve even sat down. Other times it’s the placing of the tray on the table that opens the floodgates and the liquid goes flying. Sometimes a mere cup of spilt milk doesn’t quite make the desired statement and so they’ll go the whole hog and spill the entire jug. My heart sinks every time I hear one of the children asking another to pass the milk for their cereal, or worse, observe them leaning precariously over another person in order to reach it for themselves. You know it’s not going to end well. On the odd occasion, I’ll make it through to the end of breakfast or supper with no juice-slicks in sight. Although calm and composed on the outside, inside I’m performing joyful cartwheels. At least, I am until the inevitable happens and someone trips and sends the dregs of their drink flying through the air on their way to the tray clearing point. The worst bit of it all is the way that the culprit will sit and stare blankly at the rapidly spreading patch of orange as if, by sheer force of will, they can stop it running over the table’s edge and dripping down to the bench below. Not for a moment does it cross their mind to do something about it. Oh no, that’s Matron’s job.

It’s got to the stage where I no longer naively hope for a spill-free breakfast. I’ve come to accept the ignominy of my daily trip to the paper towel dispenser as other staff share knowing smiles with me which, whilst expressing their sympathy, don’t quite serve to cover up their relief that they don’t look after the junior boarding house. Little do they know that I’m now running a scoring system: one point for a tray-spill as the damage is contained within the plastic edges of the tray. This increases to three points if the child manages to incorporate a plate-spill as well, thereby ruining their meal. Five points are awarded for an across-table-spill with an extra two points to be gained if it actually flows off the other side. There are ten points for an own-lap-spill and a generous fifteen for a neighbour’s-lap-bull’s-eye. The real Brucie-bonus comes with a whole-jug-spillage as this can often affect several other diners at once. I’m quite tempted to suggest it as an Olympic sport for Rio 2016. I already have the perfect team in mind to lead Britain to medal success.

The realisation is slowly dawning on me that another thing that is never going to happen is perfection. Up until recently, I laboured under the illusion that if I worked hard enough, prayed hard enough, loved hard enough, I could lead my boarding house into a brave new world where bickering ceased, bumped heads were a thing of the past and peace and harmony reigned uninterrupted. In my head, if I was there all the time for the children, nothing could go wrong. This, of course, proved rather tricky as omnipresence was never a strong point of mine. It also proved to be rather destructive as you simply can’t be all things to all people in all places. Attempting to do so doesn’t lead to peace and harmony but exhaustion and guilt. It also prevents the children learning for themselves. In the same way that giving them a sipper cup to prevent spillages - as I am sorely tempted to do on many an occasion – would really only prevent the children from learning how to drink normally, trying to be there to defuse arguments, intercept rogue footballs, and ensure fair play actually serves to impede the children’s ability to live and learn for themselves. Perfection isn’t available in this lifetime, but redemption is and so I’m learning, slowly (as ever!) to live more with a relaxed yet realistic reactive stance than in a perpetual state of neurotic pre-emptive perfectionism.

Brene Brown, a ‘researcher-story teller’, talks about the power of vulnerability. Her research prompted her to change her world-view from ‘Life’s messy, clean it up, organise it and put it into a tupperware box’ to one which accepts and even loves the glorious messiness of life. For me, letting go of my attempts at perfection makes me feel quite vulnerable and, worse, can cause me to fear that I’m leaving the children vulnerable and unprotected too. However, her words on the danger of attempting to perfect children ring challengingly true:

“When you hold those perfect little babies in your hands, our job is not to say, ‘Look at her, she’s perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect, make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh grade.’ That’s not our job. Our job is to look and say, ‘You know what, you’re imperfect and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.’ Show me a generation of kids raised like that and we’ll end a lot of the problems we see today.”

Last week, I came back into the boarding house after a couple of hours off to find Milly, one of our littlest girls, crawling around on her hands and knees with a large slab of cardboard box strapped to her back which she had fashioned into a tortoise shell. She desperately wanted to paint the cardboard so that it would look like a proper shell. I was reluctant. In my mind’s eye, I could see the whole project getting out of hand. Others would come into the room, see Milly painting and want to get involved. Their artistic vision for the tortoise shell might not match Milly’s and arguments would break out, never mind the increased possibility of spillage which several open pots of poster-paint and a jar of water for brush cleaning would bring about! I couldn’t stop her though and soon the aprons were on, the paints were out and the brushes were being wielded. I held my breath, waiting for trouble to descend. But it didn’t. Each child chose a section of the shell and covered it in their own design. The result was far from perfect, but it was beautiful. Milly was delighted with her amazing technicolour dream-shell and all ended far better than I could ever have imagined…

Lose Some, Win Some

There are some situations in life which are, by their very nature, lose-lose. One that springs to mind is that of playing hangman with 7-10 year olds. A game where having the correct letters in the correct order is fairly fundamental can only present a minefield when attempted by those who grasp of the English language lies somewhere between the levels of beginner and intermediate. Some games never quite make it off the ground:

‘Do you want to go first, Sweetie?’

‘Yes, please! You can guess. The topic is films.’

‘Fab. Here’s the pen, off you go.’

Pause.

‘How do you spell Ratatouille, Matron?’

Others make it further, yet require some creative guesswork on the part of the player to determine which particular film is being referred to. The Dark Knigt Rises was one particular little-known gem or, on another occasion, GR _N/UPS turned out to be Adam Sandler’s Gron Ups. This was confusing on two levels as not only was there only one space left for two letters, but my opponent had repeatedly reassured me that there were definitely no vowels(!) in the first word. A change of category doesn’t necessarily help matters. I found myself faced with a word from the animal category which, after several guesses, I’d managed to narrow down to _ I _ _ . It wasn’t ‘pigs’ as the letter P has already brought me one step closer to the hangman’s noose. With my life hanging in the balance I decided to try a little subtle questioning. ‘So it’s an animal? Definitely an animal?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘A real living one? Not an imaginary or extinct one?’

‘No, Matron. A real one.’

‘Hmm, a real, living animal with the letter ‘I’ in the middle. Can you give me a clue?’

‘It has wings and can fly.’

‘Ah I see, is the “animal” by any chance a bird…?’*

Amongst all these words and letters which have been flying around, the children found themselves in the middle of World Book Day. The aim of this venerable institution is to promote reading and the written word, all the more pertinent in the past decade since the advent of all these gadget-y, beep-y, flashy forms of entertainment that we struggle to drag them away from. The children were warned that they should have a book on their person at all times or risk incurring the wrath of the ‘Book Police’. The Head of English, flanked by a couple of other teachers dressed in police uniforms, performed spot-checks on the playground to ensure that all children were in possession of a book, could give a rough outline of its contents and were enjoying it. I took the two five year-old boys from the Pre-Prep School who I look after in the mornings over to meet the Book Police. Little Ben, once he’d got over his sheer terror at being in the presence of a real policeman (which was surprising considering his utter lack of respect for my authority – perhaps it’s time to invest in a helmet and truncheon?), threw himself wholeheartedly into the proceedings, asking me what would happen if the Book Police arrested you. I explained, very solemnly, that you would probably have to go to book prison. His eyes lit up. ‘Maybe my sister could go there? That would be amazing! And my parents too…then I could play on the Wii all the time!’
I can only be thankful that the Head of English wasn’t in earshot, given the enormous amount of effort and imagination he’d put in to giving books back their appeal. Further proof, if more was needed, that some situations are simply non-winnable.

When people ask me why I’m not staying on for a second year in a job I’m enjoying so much, I explain that I love the children I look after, and am so grateful for the wonderful people I work for and with, but try as I might, I just can’t love the lifestyle. Even the very word ‘lifestyle’ seems a bit of a misnomer, as style went out of the window around the same time that the Matron’s uniform entered my wardrobe, and any form of ‘life’ as commonly recognised by those in the 20-25 year-old bracket swiftly followed. In my darker moments, I’ve found myself muttering to myself that I’m looking forward to ‘getting my life back’ next year as if it were something I had lost or misplaced. This all seemed quite reasonable to me until I remembered that somebody somewhere had once said something about losing your life in order to find it.  Suddenly being stuck in those lose-lose situations didn’t seem quite so terrible after all…


*Since publishing this, a helpful person has informed me that birds are, in fact, a type of animal. This lie that I have clearly been living under is merely another reason why I always lose at hangman. 

In and Out?

There are some principles in life that can generally be relied upon. They may not be hard and fast laws, but as a rule of thumb one can generally trust that what goes up must come down, what goes forth will come back and what goes in must come out. My belief in the latter, however, has been sorely tested this year.

One particular incident springs to mind when considering the reliability of this principle. It all started during breakfast when one of the little girls got up from her seat and started prancing around as if possessed of the proverbial ants in her pants, a pained look etched across her face. ‘Matron, Matron, I really have to go to the loo.’

I gave the required permission and she scuttled off. Ten minutes later the whole scenario repeated itself, at which I raised an eyebrow. When the curtain rose on the same drama a third time, I began to get suspicious.

Being equipped with a mere Art History degree I sought advice from someone further up the medical food chain, before quickly escorting the little girl over to the doctors. Having been instructed by the nurses that she would need to have drunk plenty beforehand in order to provide a urine sample, I took a water bottle with me. The nurses sent her off to the bathroom to provide her contribution. No joy. ‘Matron, I can't do a wee-wee in the cup.'

'Yes, you can, Sweetie. Just hold it underneath you as you go.'

‘Oh, oh, oh, but what if I miss it?’

‘You won’t, just give it another try.’

A minute later she reappeared, still unable to produce her pot of gold. By this stage I was unsure whether it was the suspected bladder infection itself, the pressure of having to aim at a target - a feat that does not come naturally to us girls (nor some boys for that matter…!) - or the sheer fact she'd already been to the loo three times during breakfast. Whichever the cause, it was time for me to provide a solution. And that, dear reader, is how I found myself crouched beside the loo, with a water bottle in one hand being directly administered to her mouth, and a plastic cup in the other hand, at the other end, hoping to catch the first fruits of the endeavour. Working on the afore stated principle that what goes in must eventually find its way out, I decided that the simplest plan of action was to treat the child as if she was a giant version of a Baby Wee-Wee doll. I don’t know if your childhood was blessed with one of these toys, but back in the good old days you simply squeezed the dinky toy bottle into the doll’s mouth, the water trickled down a concealed internal tube and then made its presence known at the other end. I am reliably informed by Google that, as with all our simple childhood pleasures, the Baby Wee-Wee has evolved and not only yelps at you when it needs to go, but is also now designed with much more “vividly” realised nether regions. In fact, I was horrified to find out that with one mutation of the Baby Wee-Wee, the Paul Drink&Wet, you are required to squeeze the tummy of the doll in order to produce the piddle. Do spare a thought for the poor real children of girls who were given that little number to play with when it comes to potty training time!

In my humble opinion the simplest toys are always the best, and in this instance I was proved right. Both you and the Child Protection authorities will be relieved to hear that no tummy pressing was required as the water squirted in at the top end did eventually make its way out of the bottom end and into the cup. However, I still can’t quite see the principle as infallible. Many will tell you that the extent to which you give or put in to an endeavour dictates how much you receive in dividends. Indeed, one of my mother’s favourite and oft-quoted maxims is that you reap what you sow, yet I’m learning that this doesn’t always naturally follow in quite the way I’d like it to. If I’m being truthful, I’ve found myself really quite disheartened on occasions where I’ve put a lot of time and effort into fun activities with the children only for none of them to appreciate it. There’s nothing that quite kills your inner warm and fuzzy feeling like a good whinging round of, ‘Why won’t you let us do it for longer?’, ‘How come he got a bigger slice?’, ‘Why do you never read us more than a chapter?’ I often think to myself that a simple “thank you” would suffice and my sense of well-being would be easily appeased, but a simple “thank you” is not always offered.

A friend recently recounted to me how he had helped a girl he knew only slightly move house. It ended up taking him far more time than he had anticipated and he admitted to me that, despite her effusive gratitude, he didn’t feel that the level of benefits received was anywhere near the amount of effort put in. This got me thinking that it must take more than registered thankfulness on the part of the beneficiary to make what we do in life feel worthwhile. In fact, it probably has nothing to do with the reaction of the beneficiary and everything to do with our own attitude to giving. If we take the Karma-esque view that we will receive in direct and obvious proportion to what we give, as soon as the benefits fail to materialise we will give up on the giving of ourselves. However, if we choose to find our cosy sense of inner satisfaction in the knowledge that what we did needed doing if the world is to be a better place, then perhaps we won’t be so disheartened when the world itself doesn’t recognise this.

Hold on, Hope.

Children are tenacious little critters.

Exhibit A:

7.38 a.m.

“Matron, I accidently got the wrong cereal and I really don’t like it so can I go and get some toast instead?”

“Why don’t you try and have a few bites of the cereal first for me? Just so it isn’t wasted. Then you can have some toast.”

“Oh but Matron, it’s really giving me a tummy ache.”

“Hmm, really? It’s just normal cereal, Poppet, I think you’ll survive a couple of mouthfuls.”

“But the sugar on it really makes my teeth hurt.” (Side note: Never have I ever heard of a child complaining that their cereal had too much sugar before.)

“Right, I see. Is there any part of your body that it’s not affecting?!”

“Well, actually, now you mention it, I do have a bit of a headache too…”

Needless to say, she got her toast eventually.

Exhibit B:

10.28 p.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I can’t sleep.”

“Oh dear, Sweetie. Why don’t you snuggle back down into bed and think about which Disney princess you’d like to be? Sometimes when you try too hard to fall asleep it can make it worse so it’s good to have something else to think about. Hope you get back to sleep soon. Night, night.”

11.36 p.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I still can’t sleep and I miss my Mummy.”

“I know you do, Lovely, but you’ll feel much better in the morning if you get a good night’s sleep. If you’ve thought all you can about Disney Princesses, why don’t you think about your top ten favourite animals. That should help take your mind off it, and you can tell me which ones you chose over breakfast. Sleep well, night, night.

12.25 a.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I still can’t sleep ‘cos I’ve got a song stuck in my head and it keeps going ‘round and ‘round…”

As you can imagine, I’ve had special training in getting songs out of children’s heads, so it was a good job she woke me up to tell me this.

My favourite incident of this childish ability to hold out against the odds happened at supper one evening. There’s a little boy in my boarding house who is in the fortunate position of being unbearably cute. He has a round little face, impeccable manners and a tiny Manchester United onesie to sleep in, the sight of which would melt the hardest heart of even the staunchest Manchester City supporter. This propensity for rotund cuteness has earned Jack the nickname of ‘The Bundle’ amongst us staff. He’s usually relatively quiet and doesn’t often volunteer conversation with adults. However, this supper time was different. Just beforehand I’d been tasked with the daunting prospect of rehearsing the National Anthem with the children ready for Remembrance Sunday. As I’m about as musical as a cow and the children can be unenthusiastic about House Prayers, I realised that, like the Americans in the Vietnam war, I was going to have to focus on winning hearts and minds, before I dropped the bomb on them. I sat down at supper in between Jack and Graham with a great big smile plastered across my face and said, with no small measure of forced eagerness, “Boys, you should be very excited as I have something super-fun planned for House Prayers this evening!”

            The Bundle dropped his fork in glee, “Great! Are we getting a dog?”

            “Er, no. Not quite.”

            “Fireworks?”

            “No, not that either.”

            “A dog and fireworks?”

            His hope simply refused to die. How could I tell him that it was just going to be a few strained verses of God Save the Queen?

People often talk about ‘holding on to hope’ when life goes pear-shaped. Everything from self-help books to inspirational fridge magnets implore us to hold to hope, Mumford & Sons amongst others have sung about it, and I have even heard the word ‘hope’ used as an acronym, standing for ‘Hold On, Pain Ends’. This is all very well, but what do you do when hope slips from your grasp? When the cords of the lifeline you were holding onto fray and split, what keeps you from drowning?

In seeking to answer these questions, it has become apparent that I, along with many others, have misunderstood the tenacity of hope. Although I have, thus far, lived a relatively charmed existence, occassionally I've found that neither cheesy mnemonics nor my own attempts to be positive really cut the mustard. It seems that it is only when things go utterly tits up and holding on to hope is no longer a possibility that we learn how tightly Hope is holding onto us. Just as a child may think it is holding on for dear life to its mother, you can be certain that the mother is holding on much more securely to the child. The child may be distracted and let go, or grow tired and loosen its grip, but the mother’s hold is sure and strong. So it is with hope. 

And so, when the big mean Matron in the boarding school of life has nothing to say but ‘no’ to your hopeful suggestions, don't exhaust yourself further by trying to hold on to the impossible. Trust that hope, like sand, will slip through your fingers if you try to grab it, but place your feet firmly upon it and you'll find that it can more than hold your weight.

A Valentine's Confession.

I'm going to let you into a secret. I love St Valentine's day. I know this isn't the customary position for one who is as single as I am, but I find something rather lovely in the sight of men strolling down the street clutching large bouquets of roses to present to the lady in their life. Feminists everywhere would be horrified, but being quite a traditionalist when it comes to courtship, I side with Helena from a Midsummer Night's Dream, 'We cannot fight for love as men may do, we should be woo'd and were not made to woo.' As such, men in possession of posies speaks to me of everything being right in the world, the natural order of romance being observed, and delighted wives and girlfriends being treated as they should be.

I do sometimes wonder, though, is this the only day of the year which these men bring flowers and appreciation to their women? Once the wooing is complete, do they continue to pursue the heart of their lady, or are the flowers that are brandished on February 14th the one perfunctory display of affection for the year? Considered in this light, Valentine's perhaps becomes the enemy of couples rather than singletons. If one romantic day a year is successfully observed then can one get off scot-free for the other 364, without so much as a whiff of a rose?

I spent some of Valentine's day this year with a good friend. We discussed the idea of love a lot: our friends who are in love with each other, past loves of our own, the reason why neither of us is in love with anyone at present. We came to the conclusion that he should tell the male race to stop being badly behaved, whilst I would inform my fair sex to be less complicated.

This, however, is a terrible conclusion. One which must be halted in its tracks before it spreads its poison further abroad. It allows both sexes to demonise the other and expect the worst from them, regardless of whether that is warranted or not. It is precisely this type of thinking which ruins my quiet joy on Valentines day, and causes me to cynically question whether these men have bought their bouquets in order to express to their girlfriends that they really love them, or as a disguised apology for being such a terrible boyfriend the rest of the time.

Working with children has taught me that if ever there was a false dichotomy between human nature and human behaviour, it is that of categorising other people. Human nature is such that no person is bad in their entirety, yet instinctively we box and label people as being either a 'goody' or a 'baddy' and treat them as such. Recently, the Year 4 girls have been at constant sixes and sevens with each other. Only the other week, an argument took place outside the door to my room, in which one impassioned little girl could be heard shouting, 'You'd rather be friends with HER, the NAUGHTIEST GIRL IN THE SCHOOL, than ME?'
I didn't even have to look outside to see who she was referring to, as I have the very same child labelled as the naughtiest girl in the school too. Since then I've had to stop and check myself to ensure that, despite her bad behaviour, I don't see this girl as being without good in her. Often I'm at risk of missing her redeeming qualities that, at times, shine far brighter than the label I've given her.

I'm no proponent of Eastern Mysticism but I think there's something to be said for the philosophy that in everything bad there must also be something of good. Perhaps it's time we stop categorising people, whether they're members of the opposite sex or badly behaved children, and instead make it our mission to seek out the good in everyone, however well disguised it may be. If we cease to label people and spend the time getting to know them instead, we may find a far richer and better world out there than we could have ever dared hope for.

Treading Softly.

I sat down at school supper last night, feeling refreshed after a couple of hours off which I had spent in the gym with a friend, followed by a nice hot shower (not spent with the friend), only to be greeted by ‘Wow! Matron! You look ILL!’ from the child sat opposite me.

This is just one small example of the way in which childhood observations are differentiated from adult observations by the noticeable lack of tact. The small cranial filter that sits somewhere in between the place where the thought first occurs and the place where it is verbalised simply hasn’t developed yet. The result is brutal honesty. Having been working with children for five months now, I’ve begun to learn how to grow a thicker skin and let these comments role off my back, rather than racing to the nearest mirror to see if I need to invest in a facelift, or at least better makeup. Nevertheless it remains somewhat galling when children tell you how tired you look, considering it was often them who forced that state upon you in the first place. On one particular occasion, a very sweet little boy asked me how I’d slept the night before to which I cheerily replied, ‘Oh very well thank you, Fraser, it’s just never long enough though, is it?’

He looked at me, thoughtfully, for a moment before declaring,‘Yes, I can see that on your face’.

            Often I have to remind myself that the children are just as blunt with each other as they are with me. I have two girls in the house who are constantly falling out. Lizzie, who is a prodigiously intellectual child, is in possession of the brains of Einstein and – bless her – the social skills of a gnat. Kara is the opposite end of the spectrum, being much less intelligent, but still endowed with a remarkable talent for rubbing the other girls up the wrong way. I was in the habit of laying the blame at Kara’s door for their spats, until I had the proverbial ‘little chat’ with them both. I explained that life is so much easier if you seek to be nice to each other and encourage one another, rather than bickering and irritating each other. The cockles of my heart were warmed later that evening when I observed Kara trying to broach friendly conversationwith Lizzie. ‘My favourite kind of fish is a starfish, Lizzie. What’s your favourite kind of fish?’

The cockles of my heart were rapidly cooled to absolute zero as Lizzie, without raisng her head from thebook she was reading, replied, ‘Actually, Kara, a starfish isn’t, in fact, a fish. It’s an invertebrate.’

Correction, when it comes as bluntly as that, can be hard to take, but the manner in which it is delivered doesn’t necessarily negate the veracity of what’s being said. One of the constant battles of my life is not to take things – whether they be comments or actions – personally. Being told you’re wrong is a hard pill to swallow, even when it’s administered with the recommended spoonful of sugar, but it is all the more unpalatable when the sweetener is denied you. However, the choice remains you own. Will you allow the lack of sweetness to turn you sour, or will you take the rough with the smooth and enable yourself to learn something? Perhaps one of the most important lessons that can be learnt is how to be tactful yourself when found in a similar position. It is a wonderful gift to be able to correct and encourage people in the right direction without them even realising it has happened. 

Lizzie, whose imagination sometimes runs away with her, went through a brief stage of speaking to me,somewhat sarcastically, as if I was the Queen. I asked her to tidy her area, to which she replied, ‘Yes, oh great Matron’. On requesting that she make her bed, I was treated to a curtsy before she responded, ‘Of course, oh mighty Matron of all dorms.’ She once even addressed me as ‘Matron whose name will rumble down the ages’. As I once overheard another child asking my boss if Matron was one of her servants, this made quite a pleasant change from the way the children usually see me. Perhaps I let it go to my head. Maybe I began to see myself in a Cinderella role, my royal gentility unrecognisable under my Matron’s clothing? However, with the extreme lack of tact only a child could muster, Charlie soon brought me back down to earth with a bump by informing me, ‘You’re not a Princess, you’re just a Matron’. And that was the end of that.

True it may have been, but, to quote W.B. Yeats, I would advise you to tread softly young Charlie, for you tread upon my dreams…