Between times

Snowy Coastline by Susie Mallett

Blocks and summer camps

I promised in my last posting of November that I would return to this theme and look at some of the problems that arise when such camps come to an end.

I am no fan of summer camps, unless they are an intensive block for children or adults who are regularly attending Conductive Education centres throughout the year. I use a block system for my adults, but the same group of people comes five times a year, with individual sessions between blocks, so we rarely experience the stepping-backwards problem.

Problems

All too often these blocks take place in centres that are closed for the summer holidays and during this time offer courses to families from miles around. The conductors are often imported from miles around too, sometimes even from different countries. With this kind of system home visits are virtually impossible and follow-up work isn’t easy either. Often the parents or carers do not work in these groups, so they may have little idea what their children are learning, how they are learning and what the conductors do in order to promote success and development.

Yes, of course the parents usually get an individual consultation towards the end of the block but, in my experience, often without the child present. Sometimes all the parents are invited to watch the group for a day or half-day, usually through a video link, very occasionally live.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with any of this but in my opinion ithis is not enough if it is the only input that the family gets in a whole year. The method can work if there are going to be continuous weekly sessions or home visits but, if not, I don’t think a parent or carer will feel confident enough to continue a conductive upbringing at home.

I am not surprised when I hear parents or carers wondering if they are “good enough”, or “doing enough” when they do not see the progress experienced in the summer camp continuing at home The children become disheartened so quickly, they are less motivated than before the camp if they find there are no longer able to do something successfully that they learnt at the camp. The reason that they are not succeeding might be very easy to remedy. For exanple, it could be that a chair is a centimetre higher or lower, or that handles on a cup are at a different angle. Maybe the knife is heavier than the one they learnt to cut with or the small touch necessary to keep balance is missing. Mum or carer may never find the answer to these problems alone but a home visit by the conductor who knows the child well could quickly resolve them, even a cyberspace question-and-answer session might be enough.

I understand when parents feel it is "three steps forwards and two backwards". Conductors also see this, all too often, if a child returns the next summer to a camp.

On the positive side, conductors also often find that children quickly recover the two steps made backwards, especially when some attempt at conductive upbringing has been made at home, and progress then continues with more steps being taken forwards.

There have to be solutions

There are things to do to prevent the backward steps from occuring in the first place. It must be possible to support those parents using cyberspace or offering home visits. More contact must be encouraged between carer/parent and conductor in between the blocks. Maybe something like a help line could be created and a communication network developed, not only between conductor and client but also between clients. Many a time parents have told me the relief they feel on discovering they are not alone, the knowledge that there are other people in the same boat gives them strength.

Cyberspace and the “conductive world” should be able to do a better job of connecting and supporting all these people. I am working in Norway at the moment but there is no reason why I cannot continue to offer support to clients at home during my absence.

I already offer a support service for parents over the internet, I have regular contact with all my clients, I make home visits and offer individual sessions between blocks When a summer camp takes place it is the responsibility of the service-provider, be this a conductor or a centre offering Conductive Education, to provide all the necessary information and support in order for parents or carers to continue conductive upbringing at home.

Notes

Previous reference on my blog to summer camps and block work.

http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/11/blogs-cyberspace-and-keeping-ball.html

I met another Nice Angel

The Cat’s Cradle, 6th December, 2008

Gluh Wein and porridge for Saturday lunch!

I have had a lovely Saturday, spent with a lovely Norwegian family. On Friday evening I met another of the Norwegian conductors, Ingvild, who also works for the Norsk Forum but in Stravenger on the west coast.

Ingveld was home in Hamar for the weekend, visiting her parents for the last time before Christmas, and she invited my Hungarian colleague and myself to a traditional advent lunch. We tucked into a delicious porridge with cinnamon, raisons and butter with just one whole almond in the whole pot. The person who finds the almond receives a marzipan pig as a present. This custom reminded me of the English tradition of putting silver thruppenny pieces in the Christmas pudding. In both cases a chance of breaking a tooth biting into the foreign body! The lucky marcipan pig I know from Germany and New Year celebrations.

We washed the delicious food down with warming Gluhwein, and afterwards enjoyed coffee and tasted Grandma’s Christmas biscuits.

I was thrilled to be at last experiencing real Norway. Up until now I could have been in any Conductive Education centre anywhere in the world, with the Hungarian and English languages dominating. Now I know I am in Norway and I just love it, the language fascinates me. I just love hearing it being spoken, or sung, and I try to guess what people are saying.

It was a treat to be invited into a family home and see how Norwegians live. It is very traditional and very much like Bavaria, Germany, where I live.

Morning

Another Saturday treat, apart from sleeping until nine o’clock, was daylight, about six hours of it. Although there was still no sun and very grey skies, I could still feel the light working on my skin and producing just a little bit of the much needed vitamin D for me! It had been dark again by the time we were driven home so I was still unable to really get my bearings. The snow was freezing over for the night, deep and crisp and even, minus ten was forecast. Despite such a small amount of daylight I was still able to gather a few memories of the landscape and the people, maybe just enough to paint a small watercolour to feature on a later blog.

The painting will probably feature the sledges which I saw in Hamar today. They are very practical, having a seat at the front for a child or the shopping and two skis projecting from the back to step on and scoot along. They are good for young mums and for older people too. I think that I probably need one too for the mornings when the snow has frozen over and the streets are like an ice rink.

Notes

Stravenger

http://images.google.no/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/norway.gif&imgrefurl=http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Norway/Science/Geography/&h=1246&w=1004&sz=276&tbnid=VrP31h3jP6aCIM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnorway%2Bmap%26um%3D1&start=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&cd=1

Christmas Pudding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pudding

Gluhwein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulled_wine

Susie and Lill in Hamar.

English Susie, Norwegian Lill and Stinky Stig - honouring Dr Hári and her spontaneity, 4th December 2008

Es ist der Hammer in Hamar with my Angel Lill!

I have heard so much about the PTØ Senteret in Hamar, Norway and now I am actually here, experiencing it for myself. The centre has two Norwegian conductors who trained at the National Institute for Conductive Education, Birmingham, UK, and two group assistants. Any other conductors needed for the two parallel groups are supplied by Moira in Hungary on a three-week rota.

This means that the Norwegian conductors work with a different colleague every three weeks. This makes the work incredibly difficult for them, especially as they are usually not leading the groups themselves which means they cannot plan in advance what they will be doing in the next block. These Norwegian conductors have learnt to be really flexible and incredibly good at what Dr Mária Hári always encouraged – spontaneity. We are doing her proud this week. Lill and I are encouraging spontaneity every day in each other, and we and the children are all loving it. The children are actually getting very good at it, better than us in fact.

Yesterday they actually stole Stinky Stig and we had to get the dinosaur police out searching for him. only to find on Stig’s return that he was missing all four of his legs. This meant that the dino Dr was summoned. He arrived in haste (spontaneous Lill in disguise) calling out for his surgical assistants to take blood tests and to operate and graft his legs on again. After much bandaging and injecting and TLC, Stinky Stig was put to bed for a week of bed rest.

In the dark

I had arrived at the centre in the dark, at eight o’clock on Monday morning very unsure of how this system could work. I cannot speak a word of Norwegian except for en, to, tre, fire, fem, which is essential for all conductors to know in as many languages as possible. Although I knew that the Norwegian conductors speak perfect English I had no idea how I was going to communicate in the group.

We all met in the office and were told which children would be in the group and who would be working with whom. I thought I would be working with Martha but I was actually with Lill Hege. I felt so sorry for her having to work with yet another new face. I thought that she was probably hoping that a conductor she knew would be coming, so she would not have to start from scratch again.

My angel

By the time that Friday came round, and Lill Hege arrived for work wearing a shiny hair band, very much like a halo, I was already calling her my angel. What would I do without her? Get by... just! With her it is such fun and the conductive soul is almost visible in all corners of the room!

As I have experienced before with conductors trained at NICE, Norwegian Lill, who only finished her degree in June this year, is a very capable conductor. She is confident, knowledgeable and lots of fun to work with. We don’t need to discuss much, everything just happens, and the children appear to love it.

We have fitted into a good pattern for the lying programme. I say the tasks in English , Lill Hege says them in Norwegian and we all count together. By the end of this week the children were working before Lill Hege got to speak. For the rest of the day I use my few Norwegian words, lots of games with hand movements, my English (which I have twice been told is very good) and of course I have my Angel Lill

Sometimes the children ask why I don’t speak to them in Norwegian but at the same time they are excited about how much English they understand. I am actually finding Norwegian quite easy to pick up because of the other three languages chasing around in my head and the children hoot with laughter when I say something in what I think could be Norwegian but is actually something I have made up from all three languages. They probably think I am talking Dinosaur language.

Pants

We have already created an amazing dino world on our fifth plinth, that we are going to need next week, so again we are going to have to be creative in order to find a new place for our art work. We have learnt really useful dino words, like scariest and knickers, underpants and cavemen, mystery and itchy, all from the book that I mentioned back in August: “Dinosaurs Love Underpants”.

On the first day of this block the parents probably thought “Who is this crazy lady who has flown into Oslo with a dinosaur stowaway in her suitcase and who is now standing here asking us to provide a pair of white underpants for their child to paint?”

One boy, and his Dad, really got into the swing of things when he turned up one morning superman-style, having donned white knickers over the top of his trousers.

The paper designs for these underpants are already hanging on the wall ready to go into production next week. Norwegian Lill and I are hoping that the children will put on a performance of the story next week for the parents and the members of the other group.

Why all the underpants? Because in our book we are told that the dinosaurs became extinct because they fought each other to their deaths tearing the best underpants from each others bodies, much to the delight of the cavemen who could then live a more peaceful life.As you can imagine the children love it.

The parents tell us that the children are actually running to the door in the mornings to see what Stinky Stig and the underpants dinosaurs have been up to during the night. I don’t actually run to work in the dark each morning, as it is extremely slippery and the past few days there have been 20 centimetres of snow to traipse through, but I would if I could… I am loving every spontaneous minute of each day, despite having to work well in to the evenings to prepare everything we need for another action-packed day.

Art

We were in full action right up to the last minute of Friday evening. We swapped our programme round a bit and did our finer crafty creations (St Nicholus for 6th of December) in the morning to give us more time in the afternoon to paint at our makeshift easels, the wall bars, during a standing programme in the afternoon. This was a wonderfully successful activity, which we do every second day, with some amazing creations of dinosaurs appearing after we had looked at the pop-up dino book featured in an earlier blog.

I will be at the centre for most of Sunday… preparing for the next big action creating a dinosaur from rubbish. Which all the staff, especially Ellen the cleaner and “Girl Friday”, have been collecting for us. One Mum has even been collecting egg shells for us so we can have baby dinos hatching out in our dino world.

The atmosphere is prehistoric! Everyone in the building is in dinosaur fever instead of Christmas fever, which makes a change as we come into the second Advent week.

All together

Which reminds me, I must ask Ellen to find us a table cloth and candles. This is a special request on Friday from our six extremely civilised, eight-year old boys, for our lunch table! Ellen is actually brilliant and I keep grabbing her and asking her to stay in the group to work with us. The children love her and we are a member of staff short, but she is too busy being Girl Friday to stay.

It will be an even busier week next week as we have one more child and still just the three of us, Norwegian Lill, Stinky Stig and I. We will fill the week with spontaneity and it will fly past as quickly as the last one did so we will not notice the lack of staff. Hopefully the three "Angels" in the group next door will continue with their unannounced visits which are so funny as the three adults scoot in on wheelie stools, each with a child sitting between her legs. We sing a bit, speak a bit of dinosaur talk together before they leave us to our "routine".

If any of you three are reading this more of the same next week please !


Notes

Es ist der Hammer in Hamar
It is cool in Hamar (down to minus 10 at night)

PTØ -Senteret, Hamar, Norway
http://www.pto-senteret.no/

National Institute for Conductive Education
http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/

Moira
http://www.moira-cec.hu/

TLC
Tender loving care.

Dinosaurs Love Underpants
Claire Freedman and Ben Cort, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 9778-1-84738-210-8

Stinky Stig
http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/11/stinky-stig-from-st-johannis-it-is.html

En to tre fire fem
"One two three four five"
egy kettö három negy öt; eins zwei drei vier funf, une deau trois quatre cinq.
Just as far as a conductor needs to count in as many languages as possible!

Pop up book
http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/11/en-to-tre-fire-fem-wild-about-dinos.html

St Nicholas – 6th December
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

Girl Friday – a reference to Robinson Crusoe’s Man Friday - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Friday

Stig and I in Norway

"Flying into Oslo" 30th November 2008 by Susie Mallett 30th November 2008

First impressions

As I flew into Oslo I was amazed by the view out of the window. It was even better than the memory that I have of a flight from over twenty years ago.

On that occasion I was flying over the red centre of Australia and, as I woke, I saw below me a thin layer of beautiful, pink, fluffy clouds reminding me of the pink pigeons that I read about in Gerald Durrell’s book. Over Australia I realised that it was not the clouds that were pink but the desert sands glowing red below them, giving me the illusion that I was seeing the world through rose-tinted spectacles.

Coming into Oslo in semi-darkness I at last began to feel excited about this trip and less nervous. The view from the window just tipped the scales. There was the most brilliant orange, scarlet and red stripe along the horizon, sandwiched between two layers of a very deep purple, mixed with Prussian blue. Below this were grey areas on the ground and patches of almost white.

Directly below me I could see the “brain”-like lines of the fiord coastline that appeared to be full of shovelled-up snow, all white and fluffy. This was however very low-lying cloud thatwas hugging the coastline and giving an amazing range of texture and tones to the landscape below me. The coastline of Norway did actually look like it does on the map in my school atlas, and just as it did all those years ago when I was studying “A” level geography. It reminded me of a map of the brain.

From that moment on I was hooked on the landscape and after three days I am hooked on the language too. It sounds like everyone is singing to me, a bit like they do at home in the Norfolk dialect, but at ten times the speed.

I haven’t actually seen anything else of the landscape since that landing, as I have been at work for every hour of daylight. I do not really know what the outside of the centre looks like or the house where I am living, except that both are wooden and both covered with a lot of snow. It has been snowing since I arrived at work at eight this morning, and I am beginning to wonder how the 10-minute walk home will be. Will I be found looking like a snowman in the morning or will I make it to my warm bed?

Second impressions

I had four hours at Oslo airport waiting for my Hungarian colleague. This gave me time to get my phone fixed up with a Norwegian chip, get some fruit for breakfast, and do some train and people watching. The trains are shiny like in America, all silver metal and sleek looking. In fact everything seems to be shiny, even the people. I don’t mean they have brilliant white teeth like in the Colgate adverts, I wouldn’t know about this as I haven’t looked that close, they just appear so friendly and shiningly helpful!

There was no brightly dyed hair on the over-fifty-year old women, as you see in Germany, just blond or grey and the natural colours in between. Natural colours extend to the clothes too, thick functional coats and lovely chunky pullovers.

At last I boarded the train to Hamar, alas not a shiny one.I it was a very old rattling one but still a train. With my nose pressed to the window and Hungarian flowing easily from my mouth, I enjoyed the journey despite the darkness and the dull paintwork. And what excitement as the train pulled into Hamar, a roundhouse, like something straight out of a Thomas the Tank Engine film, nothing like the scale of the one I recently saw at the open air museum in Budapest but a roundhouse none the less .

First, second and now third impressions, all getting better by the minute.

Now I just can’t wait for the Hamar railway museum visit, which has been highly recommended and is on the cards for next week.

Thick ice and snow packed the streets at the railway station and around the house where I will stay for the next few weeks. This fluffy white stuff which falls from the sky is still something special to me, despite many years of living in Hungary and Germany where it is a more common sight than on the English coast. The stillness that it creates when it lies on the ground, the wonderful blueness that it gives to the night time, and the amazing nois e thatit makes when walking home, when the surface is frozen.

These are enough to make this adventure worthwhile, although I would still like to see where I am!

I arrived in darkness and the following morning I went to work in darkness. This has been the routine now for four days. I am waiting for the weekend so that I can see the world that I am living in in daylight, and hope that I can get my bearings and see what Norway looks like from the ground!

Notes

Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell

Author: Gerald Durrell
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781840246353
Published: 4 February 2008
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Durrell

The pink Mauritian Pigeon -A relative of the extinct Dodo and the worlds rarest and most endangered pigeon. Nearly extinct with a wild population in 1976 estimated at around 30 ...

http://www.durrell.org/About-Durrell/Durrell-News/Mauritius-Pink-Pigeon-goes-Blue/

Thomas the Tank Engine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Tank_Engine

Colgate ring of confidence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgate_(toothpaste)

Blogs, cyberspace and keeping the ball rolling between blocks

"Northern waters" by Susie Mallett

Following on from Wednesday evening's comments on not enough time to read too many blogs, I am not complaining: life is getting really interesting on the blogosphere and I am meeting and communicating with lots of interesting people. Last weekend I spent some lovely “bits in between” times (between house work and paperwork) involved in an interesting discussion about mentoring on Andrew Sutton’s blog, the thread of which Norman Perrin also took up on his blog this week. Norman’s blog I always have time to read, usually late at night so I can be lulled into sleep mode by his lovely music.

Exactly at the moment when I was writing the bit in my blog

(http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/11/just-quiet-evening-for-conductor.html),

about hoping there isn’t anything interesting written so that I will have to stop to read it, I got waylaid by yet another interesting read that developed into a chat on Skype at one o’clock in the morning. That’s a time when all good conductors should actually be in bed and here were two conductors meeting only for the first time ever, and that in cyberspace. Of the two of us, though,I was the only one actually burning the midnight oil, due to the time differences. We are going to talk almost in reality through Skype video at the weekend!

This morning I did as Andrew Sutton suggested on his blog, that we write to Célia Diva Renck Hoefelmann for her full report on Conductive Education in Brazil. Mine arrived within hours of requesting it. I have had no time to read it yet it will be left for a quiet hour in Norway! Yet another new connection in the world of cyberspace, as is Norway but that will soon be reality.
I wonder who else will read the report and join in any discussion about it, apart from Andrew, Leticia and Becky. I doubt if anyone else in Germany has come across it yet.

Yet another development through blogging and cyberspace is “Doing a Dina", which you can see on the right-hand column of my blog. This came about in response to a letter on the Conductive Community Forum where I offered my services, long distance, and with home visits, to families wanting to bring their children up conductively.

This idea has actually taken off, not with the original family from the forum dialogue but here in Germany with a family with three-year-old twins. We have been phoning and emailing for a few months now and will meet for the second time in January.

I have been reading the blog of the Lieck family for a long time now but a recent posting caught my eye, also mentioned on Andrew Sutton’s blog “What to do between blocks”. The posting is called "Steps Forward" and Mum, Jacolyn, is questioning whether she is doing enough now for her daughter who came on in leaps and bounds during an intensive conductive block. Once back home Mum feels the that the steps forward became slower and there seemed to actually be steps back. I responded to this posting with a comment, I believe that I was the only conductor out of ten people to comment.

This subject has concerned me for a while now as there are many summer camps taking place each year where children and conductors are shipped in from miles away, and there is often no opportunity for house visits or support afterwards. The children with their families also come from miles around, making any kind of follow up difficult. Maybe this is a case where cyberspace and “Doing a Dina” could come in useful, distances do not seem so important any more.

I think that this will be a subject for a longer posting later but here are just a few of the questions which jump into my mind at this moment.

• What does any one else think about this?
• How do parents get support between blocks from conductors?
• Do other parents feel they need this?

Many parents see so much progress and often don't know what to do next.

• How can they know unless they are shown, guided, taught?
• Is the support network enough after such a block?
• What could be made better for families once they return home?
• How do we keep the ball rolling?

Notes

Andrew Sutton
Well, shall we discuss it? Evaluation from Brazil
http://andrew-sutton.blogspot.com/2008/11/well-shall-we-discuss-it.html

What to do between blocks
http://andrew-sutton.blogspot.com/2008/11/this-was-published-last-week-on-jacolyn.html

Norman Perrin
http://paces.typepad.com/paces/2008/11/mzee-mwalimu-mentor-conductors-and-conductive-education.html

Lieck Family

http://lieck3.blogspot.com/2008/11/3-steps-forward.html

Becky Featherstone- this is the conductor I was speaking to at one in the morning

http://beckyinbrazil.blogspot.com/

Stinky Stig from St Johannis it is.

First advent weekend in Nürnberg, November 29th 2008

His passport is printed and he is in the suitcase, all his insides have been removed and he is now stuffed with lots of warm socks and thermal vests. Minus 3-10 is forecast for Hamar next week but as it is minus one here today the thermal clothes are already in use. Once it gets below zero it is just very cold, and there is a limit to how much you can put on and still be able to move. Lots of layers needed, all stuffed inside Stinky Stig.

I will post reports on how Stinky Stig got on during his first trip abroad!

Notes

My camera all its cables are packed so please excuse me for not photographing Stig with all his legs sewn on, sitting in the suitcase!

Thanks to Gill and Andrew for the name-giving.

Name that Dino in one... two, three, four, five

Dino at work! 27th November 2008, Nürnberg

A dino with no name

This morning after franticly looking for safety pins, with which to attach the dino’s legs, and some tape to stick his eyes on with, I rushed off with him under one arm to catch the tram to work.

Everyone loved him even in his unfinished state and he was put into immediate use as motivation for the whole morning...

This "Dinosaur with no name" unfortunately ate Lars, a toy horse, long before anyone was at the plinth. When the children arrived the dino was burping away like mad and they asked him what he had eaten for his breakfast.

Dino, still without a name, told us he had been so hungry that he had eaten a horse and now his tummy was hurting. Its hooves could be seen pounding his tummy from inside (or so the children said).

One little boy went off to fetch a saw from the Spielecke (play corner) and with a bit of help from his friends opened up the dino’s tummy to reveal, just as suspected, a horse.

Dino was left to rest after this huge operation and Lars took over the motivation with his mate Bruno the bear.

Later the children had five minutes to play, while we conductors partook in our favourite activities of moving plinths and clearing away potties, and they immediately pounced on the sleeping dino. They operated on him further, removing all of his four legs and the rest of his stuffing! They even performed a complicated operation to remove his eyes.

I am just about to spend another hour putting him back together again, but this time all parts will be removable on a permanent basis. The children just loved operating on him so I will have to hunt around for press studs and Velcro in my arty-crafty boxes, so the fun and games of this morning can be repeated often.

I managed a few shots before he got dismantled, as you can see above.

Help needed!

One problem that I still have is that the children couldn’t decide on a name. One young lad actually said that it wasn't the job of children to name dinosaurs! So, as the dino remains "Dino with no name" any suggestions will be gratefully received, as soon as possible please because he will need a passport before travelling at the weekend! If the names come in soon enough, you can all take a vote and decide on the best one!

The only thing that I have come up with so far is Dinafour (DinA4), as opposed to Canine (K9)
Not in my opinion a suitable name for a dinosaur but he may get stuck with it if nothing better turns up...

Notes

The title refers to a TV show that I remember from somewhere in my past called Name that Tune

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_That_Tune

A horse with no name, a song by America released in 1972.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Horse_With_No_Name

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDL02th72u4

K9 – from Dr Who
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:K-9.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-9_(Doctor_Who)

Din A4 –paper size

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

Just a quiet evening for a conductor...

Working, visiting official offices, packing, blogging, phoning clients and drawing dinosaurs, all got a bit too much for me today, so I took the evening off. Well sort of, I just did something different. I got out the sewing machine and gave myself an hour to produce a dinosaur puppet (none to be found in town) and then I put on my high heels, lipstick and scent, brushed my hair, also a new necessity as it is longer than it used to be, and I took myself out to eat.

I walked 188 paces to the corner of the next street, to Café Fatal. This was my first visit, can you believe it? It is almost an extension of my living room and I had not been there once in the six months that I have lived in the city. I even have a gift token for a meal there given to me for the birthday that didn’t get celebrated last summer. Now was the time to spend it.

I nearly didn’t make it because the hour that I had given myself to produce a dinosaur turned into ninety minutes, as the machine played up. I bought this sewing machine in 1990 in Budapest, when the new Singer shop opened at the junction of the Korut and Ullöi ut. It is feeling old and weary and is a bit tempremental. It is allowed to play up sometimes but not this week, please!

So with the sewing machine fixed but the dino still unfinished, I flung on the high heels and thick winter coat and threw myself out of the house, braving the "minus zero" temperatures for this short walk. As I left the house I noticed this week’s Time magazine was poking out of my letterbox so that came along for food too.

While waiting for my food I sketched the café and the people in it. Then as I find it is difficult to sketch while holding a knife and fork while I eat, I read instead. I thought that I had gone out to get away from computers and blogging and work and there it all was again staring me in the face from Time Magazine. As I always read magazines and newspapers starting at the back (not for the sports news, it is a habit I picked up from my Mum) I read first the back page essay by Michael Kinsley entitled "Too much information: how many blogs does the world really need?”

Exactly what I was thinking yesterday.

The more blogs I find about Conductive Education the more difficult it is too keep up, and it is really important for me to decide where my priorities are, writing my own or reading other people’s.

Michael Kinsley says… "Now everyone has a blog. The opportunity for us all to express an opinion is wonderful. Having to read all those opinions is not.”

Well I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that but I am finding it necessary to be choosy about what I read, otherwise time flies and I don’t get to write my own blog postings or finish my dinosaurs!

Michael Kinsley’s closing sentence was that he feels many blog readers may be reaching the stage that he reached years ago with the Sunday New York Times Magazine – actively hoping that there isn’t anything interesting in there because then he would have to take time to read it.

Yes, this is getting to be the case with me and blogs this week, no time to read them, no time to write them, and at the same time go to work, go to dentist, pack cases, sew dinosaurs and eat!
Which is why I abandoned everything for two whole hours and sat, all dolled up, in the local Café Fatal, and still ended up with at least one new posting!

A picture of the dino puppet will be here tomorrow, when he will have two big eyes to look at the camera through, and legs to stand on!


Notes

Café Fatal
http://gastronomie.nordbayern.de/gastro_ausgabe.asp?gastro_id=1152

www.time.com
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1860888,00.html

Chocolate Box City

In contrast to Bondi Beach here is the snow in Nürnberg at the top of my street! November 22nd 2008

Nürnberg isn't actually a chocolate box city it is the city of the Lebkuchen, the cake like biscuit that the many factories around the city have been baking since the summer. The gorgeous spicey smells have been wafting through the nearby streets to wet our appetites for a long time now.

The Christkindlsmarkt is built, the stall holders are filling the shelves with everything which glitters, sparkles or smells of the spices on which Nürnberg built up its trade hundreds of years ago.

This Friday the Christkind will once again make her opening speech from the top of the Frauen Kirche (the Church of our Lady), the christmas market will be declared open and the crowds will celebrate the beginning of advent with Gluhwein, Fruchtebrot and of course "drei in Weggla" (that's frankonian for three Nürnberger sausages in a round roll).

I am determined to be packed and ready for off by Friday so I can enjoy two evenings at the Markt before I go to Norway. When I return I will be just in time to take up my post on the charity stall which sells stars made by kindergarten children from all over Bavaria. It is the highlight of advent for me.

Notes

Lebkuchen- gingerbread

http://www.lebkuchen.nuernberg.de/englische_version/index.html

Nürnberg Christkindlesmarkt - Christmas market

http://www.christkindlesmarkt.de/english/index.php?navi=1&rid=2

http://www.christkindlesmarkt.de/index.php?navi=1&rid=82&artid=329

http://www.br-online.de/studio-franken/frankenkult/weltberuehmt-DID121632502246688/christkindlesmarkt-sternstunden-stand-ID671216325009646169.xml

Markt-market

Weggla - Frankonian dialect for a bread roll

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bild:Drei_im_Weggla.jpg&filetimestamp=20070527223901

Fruchtebrot- fruit loaf

Gluhwein- mulled wine

Don’t be afraid to take the plunge

Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia by Susie Mallett, January 1988

I was going to write a poetry posting today in between watching the snow, doing household chores and drawing dinosaurs, but I got on a different track, one which is just as much fun as drawing dinosaurs and writing my own blog, I was posting comments on someone else’s blog. This time last year I would never have imagined I would be airing my views so publicly. Having a blog of my own does wonders for my self confidence.

Today I was commenting on Andrew Sutton’s posting about mentoring in Conductive Education. It is developing into an interesting discussion and if anyone out there reading doesn’t feel they have the time or the inclination to start their own blog they can also come in and test the water (http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/11/all-i-want-for-christmas-is.html), by writing comments on someone else’s.

I just had a look to see what other people say about mentoring and I came up with these two references

Mentor – a shrewd companion

and the following longer definition which I quite like the sound of –

“Mentoring is the guidance and support of one individual by another within a personal relationship developed over a period of time. Mentors act as friendly advisors who listen well, question skilfully and gently challenge assumptions. Successful mentoring relationships are built on mutual respect and trust, where the mentor encourages the mentee to accept responsibility for their own personal development. “

http://www.maps-uk.info/telemachus_mentoring_2.html

To read my comments on mentoring and those of others you need to change channels to -
http://andrew-sutton.blogspot.com/2008/11/mentoring-do-we-need-it-in-ce.html

It’s quite warm in the shallows

Placing comments really is a good alternative to setting up your own blog, it gives you a chance to have a paddle, even come in up to your knees, before taking the plunge and having your own fully fledged blogspot.