Timing, time and Begeisterung

Dr Franz Schaffhauser, Dr Zita Makói, Dr Andrew Sutton,

Novmember 2008, Budapest, Moira conference

Begeisterung

A very young athetoid girl was thrilled this week when we discovered together that she needed hardly any help getting from her place at the dinner table to her walking frame in which she can then go under her own steam to the bathroom. With just a few words of direction she did it and she thought it was magic.

The ladies working in the integrated Kindergarten were “begeistert”(enthralled), astonished and delighted as they watched this. It really was like magic and all our faces were alive with wonder and joy. It sounds soppy but it really was like this.

The following day this girl and I were disappointed and far from delighted when one of the very same enthralled and astonished ladies picked her up from her chair and plonked her in her walker. I could have cried but I didn’t, but I was surprised that the girl didn’t put her parts on, shout and scream “I can do that on my own and you know it”. Then again even if she had done so, this busy lady probably wouldn’t have had time to notice because this girl has a quiet and unclear voice.

Instead of crying in dismay I remained clam and quietly reminded the lady of what she had seen to inspire her wonder the day before. I had hope that on other days it would now be different.

I have been guilty. I know I have done similar things, but I would like to think that when I have then I have done them with more thought and consideration. I hope that I always include my clients, my children, in decisions of how we get from A to B, I hope that I can judge whether children are tired and then use an alternative method. I hope that I will look at the situation and offer them means for success that suit the situation. If I offer walking then it is because we have time for walking and because they have the energy to walk the distance required. I hope all of this is true but I am sure that I too am guilty of offending!.

There is always time, however, to stand up from the table or sit down at the table, we all have time to do this. And here was the ideal situation for the lady from the kindergarten to try out the “new” method, time for us all to have joyful faces again. The moment was lost in the rush, in the notion that there was no time.

It was at this point that I realised why the magic sometimes works, why the tricks come to fruition and why some “clowns” perform magic and why others do not.

Take all the time that you need…

It is to do with having and making time but it is also to do with timing. It is a complicated combination of all sorts of aspects to do with time. It has to do with taking time to observe, time to make changes and time to change ourselves. It is about taking the time to notice that a hand can grasp a walking frame placed a centimetre further away and that it is then not necessary to touch the hand doing the grasping, and about making the time to do this each day.

It all takes time, but the time taken now saves time later, a time when we don’t need to be there at all, when not even a verbal instruction is needed to go to the toilet. There comes a time when it all happens spontaneously, when it works like magic.
First and foremost I believe the most important factor is time. Time to feel the magic working, for it is only then that the motivation is created in the soul of a child or the carer for things to be done independently.

It comes down not only to getting the timing right, the positioning right, but taking time, giving time, timing the moves and the words, and keeping time, keeping a rhythm.

It is about always having time for the people we are working with, having time for ourselves to look at what we are doing, having time for the tasks we set, having time to do everything well.
There is one sentence that is the essence of whether there is magic or not. It was there to be heard again this week when we were asking the children what they still need to learn so they can dress themselves independently. This sentence is:

“It takes too long, Mummy doesn’t have the time!”

But where’s the time coming from?

We live in a world where no one seems to have time for other people, where everyone is rushing around. How sad it is not to have time for one’s own children but, as I witnessed in the Kindergarten, it isn’t only the Mummy with no time.

Yes there is often a shortage of staff but I think it is always better to achieve less in a day with success than to do more in a slapdash, rushed, unconsidered way, with no success.
When we asked the children about dressing and undressing they knew what they were capable of:
“I can do everything alone except put on my shoes” said one.
Another replied “I can undress but not dress myself alone”
Then another “I can get myself ready for bed”

Then came back the million dollar question from my colleague:
“How long does it take you in the mornings to do this?”

Nine times out of ten the answer is “ I don’t know, because I don’t do it, I would take too long”.
Too long for what? I asked myself. Out loud my colleague did dare ask:
“Wouldn’t it be better to get up half an hour earlier?”

These children cannot of course decide this. We need to discuss it with their families. At the moment all children in the group attended conductive mother-and-child groups and kindergarten groups for at least four years. This is why they are so active and can do so much of the dressing and undressing themselves. They all have families who know about and are involved in Conductive Education, but on hearing the children’s answers somehow I doubt that their families are really interested in a “conductive upbringing” in my sense of the word. For most of them their lives just don’t have time for such a thing.

No time for magic moments.

Call in the clowns

While I have been writing these postings on “magic” in Conductive Education, and reading with interest all that Andrew Sutton has recently added to the discussion, I have been constantly reminded of Hunter Campbell “Patch” Adams, the man whose life was depicted in the film Patch Adams, starring Robin Williams.

Dr Adams believes in the necessity of developing compassionate relationships with patients and that this kind of care relies on humour and play, which are essential to physical as well as emotional health. His vision is to open a hospital offering free ”holistic” care.

While doing a spot of Google research I found a website advertising courses in magic for occupational therapists, with the idea of using magic tricks to improve hand and finger movement. I am, however, more interested in the other kind of magic that I saw in the film Patch Adams.

I live near a hospital in Nürnberg and have often seen a “Clowns for Hospitals” van driving past my house. Perhaps I have this magic taking place right on my door step.
Back on Google I have not found anything specific about Nürnberg and clowning in its hospitals but I discovered a lot more about the Red Nose Clownsdoctors Foundation set up in Austria in 1994.

Several European countries are members of the International Clowndoctors Foundation including both Germany (Rote Nasen Clowndoctors) and Hungary (Piros Orr).

Clown doctors are specially trained artistes who visit patients in hospital with the aim of bringing humour and laughter into their lives and through this to bring them seelische Untertutzung, (uplifting the soul). The patients are visited regularly by the clowns and cared for with both medicine and humour with the hope that they improve not just for the moment but permanently.

The “magic” that I am talking about is more to do with the magic of "Clown doctors" than it is with learning of magic tricks to develop hand movement as the advertisement for occupational therapists advocates. Although of course it is possible that one can influence the other even if the initial aims are different.

What is the magic in Conductive Education?

Is it the "tricks" used to achieve something that I describe as magic?

Or is the magic really that feeling of success that reaches the soul when the tricks bring results?

I believe it is both, but certainly the one which " does the trick" is the magic that reaches the soul.

While I was searching the net for more information I found Dr Zita Makói, a Hungarian pediatrition who brought the clown doctors to Hungary. She was coincidently also Director of the Petö Institute for a short time before the present Director, Dr Franz Schaffhauser, took over the post in October 2007.

In an article “A portrait of a clown” Zita Makói gives an insight into the work of Piros Orr, which she describes in this way:

“The clowns know about a level in children that not even parents and pediatricians know. They step over limits because they don't follow a nurse, doctor, or parent model. It's outside of the real world, like magic. “

She goes on to say:

" But there's a long list of requirements to be truly successful: an artistic background, sensitivity, tolerance, capacity for team work, ability to communicate, not just with words, and not just with children but with parents, doctors and nurses too. “The clowns are not performing so much as building relationships—one-to-one. They must be in tune with the parents' wavelength, and cope with the specific atmosphere of the hospital, of the nurses, and of the doctors. It is often very tense, and always changing,”

This description of the qualities that a clown doctor needs is so reminiscent of what Dr Hári told us, as students are the requirements needed to be a successful conductor. The final words referring to constant change are particularly important in my work as a conductor.

Most importantly, though, whether you are a clown doctor or a conductor we need to find time, use time, make time and teach our clients and their carers to do the same. If we can achieve that then we may have time to look for the magic.


Notes

Magic Moments by Perry Como and Burt Bacharach –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvPfjd0eTpI&feature=related

Andrew Sutton -

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/04/conductive-education-its-magic.html

Hunter Cambell “Patch” Adams –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams

RehabEdge magic course –
http://www.rehabedge.com/search/detail.asp?id=1358#classes

Red Nose Clowndoctors , Austria -
http://www.rotenasen.at/int/at/ueberuns/geschichte/

Red Nose Clowndoctors International-
http://www.rotenaseninternational.com/rotenaseninternational.php?case=history.php&banner=bannerrni.jpg&adresse=http://www.rednoses.eu

Red Nose Clowndoctors in Hungary – Piros Orr –
http://www.pirosorr.hu/English/index.html

A portrait of a clown, featuring Zita Makói and János Greifenstein (Greifi) –http://www.artsiter.com/museum/aci/newsletter/feature3.html

More bits-in-between for two conductors

"Paderborn"

" Railway buildings"

" The Cathedral"

"My breakfast"

At the weekend I found myself just half-an-hour away from the city where my lovely friend and colleague lives with her family. Just a fifty-minute bus-trip away and ninety-minutes by train.

My lovely friend happens to find herself in hospital so I just had to go to visit her. It was time anyway for some conductor’s bits-in-between and here were two of us who could do with a fix of conductors' fun!

Although I was a bit out in the sticks, with public transport not running very frequently, I had a choice of train or bus. The train would have been first choice as I love the movement of the train and the smell of the engine, and the atmosphere and architecture of the railway stations. But this time I choose the bus, even though their throbbing engines and awful smell often make me sick, not really my idea of a jolly journey but the railway station is a bit awkward to reach without a car.

With the bus journey only fifty minutes no harm was done to my health when travelling in either direction.

Paderborn

I have been to the town of Paderborn several times but never alone and had therefore never got to grips with the layout of the place.

There was always a Fest of some kind taking place meaning streets full of stalls and people instead of cars.

On this visit I was alone so I could really get to know it. I love the white and grey buildings that predominate in this part of North Germany. A lot of slate is used, not only for the roof of the buildings but also to decorate the walls. This makes a change from the flat, plastered walls of the houses down South where I live.

I window-shopped, breakfasted at the cathedral café and watched the activity on the bustling market-place over coffee, before making my way up the lime-tree avenue to an afternoon of delightful entertainment with my friend and her family at the hospital.

Thank you so much for saving up all that energy, so we could put the conductive world to rights, play with your son, laugh a lot and relax.

PS

In the lift at the hospital there was a wonderful poster advertising the Klinik-clowns who apparently visit every Wednesday morning.

http://www.susie-mallett.org/search/label/Clowns

Begeistert to be at work while the rest of the world was sleeping

"Clown" by KK, 29th December 2009

That is what it seemed like anyway

It was so quiet in the streets and on the trams, both in the morning and evening, and it wasn’t because of snow, there isn’t any!

My work for Monday was cancelled at the last minute so I got a third day off, not counting the weekend. I made good use of it and played with my toys under the Christmas tree.

I really did get toys, or rather “things to do”. Things to cut out and stick!

I busied myself making a warehouse with a lift-shaft and a loading bay, to add to my N-gauge model-railway layout. It isn’t actually a proper layout yet but it is laying-about on the coffee table. I quite like it that way especially since it has its new warehouse, soon to be joined by more Christmas “things to do”, additions of a dairy, a fire station and a mill. This will mean that, as well as the addition of several buildings, there will also be two more very tall brick chimneys, a passion of mine!

And today it was back to work so the fire station and its chimney will just have to wait till the weekend, and another bank holiday.

It is Tuesday

That’s the long, three-shift, two-hat day. My favourite day of the week at work.

Through illness, the sudden death of a parent and Christmas, it also turned out to be an unusual three-individual-sessions day. This made it special for everyone, while I enjoyed my clients and had a less hectic Tuesday, the clients got more attention and enjoyed the time to talk.

I am pleased that my clients wish to work with me between Christmas and New Year. They and their carers and parents are very pleased that somewhere is still open. Many physiotherapists, occupational therapists, riding therapists, speech therapist, workshops etc. are closed for the whole of the school holiday. The children are quite possibly away on holiday but what about the adults? It is the same old question every year at this time.

The school holidays go on until after the final bank holiday, Epiphany, the day when the Three Wise Men come knocking on the door collecting money for charities in foreign lands.

After school starts again on January 7th I plan to take a short break!

It is amazing the difference that not going to school or work makes for some clients, what a difference the celebrations of Christmas and parties makes for others, and what a long sleepy weekend does for a conductor.

I really enjoyed my work today

For the first time in ages I didn’t cough and I didn’t feel tired. I even felt quite bouncy.

I also felt appreciated.

It wasn’t all easy, although the first session was exceptionally good.

I began the day with an individual session with a twenty-one-year-old young man who had had a few days holiday from his work. He usually comes to me late on a Friday afternoon. It made all the difference in the world to start early this morning and, with already five days' holiday behind him, lots of progress was made. He suddenly did things that we have been practising for weeks, as if he has done them all his life!

After this session I had a break which gave me time to tidy up the arty-crafty left-overs from the Christmas festivities, to take down the advent deco and also to write a posting for my blog.

Then came the difficult bit

In some ways as well as difficult it was the best bit, as it was also a great success.

My conductor's hat was swapped for the art-therapist's overalls. Or could it be the case that I keep the hat on and just add the overalls?

What ever it is that I do with my hats doesn't matter. Today's art-therapy session was hard work and also a lot of fun. The creative result can be seen in the photograph at top of the posting.

My client always knows what it is that he wants to paint, I don’t have to worry about preparing anything for him any longer, I just have to think on my feet how to assist him in his creativity!

He arrives each week with a stuffed toy, or a pottery gnome, or some such oddity tucked under his arm. More often tha not this creature is accompanying him because it has been decided that this is to be the subject of the day’s work of art.

A while back my client arrived with a huge stuffed, fluffy cactus under his arm! We painted a huge two dimensional cactus about four feet high. His family still hope that one day this painting will take the place of the even bigger 3D object in their home.

Today tucked under the arm were two wooden clowns, in sizes medium and extra large! They have actually been to visit me before and a small painting of one of them was hung at the exhibition in September. This time we planned a life-size clown painting to hang on the bedroom door.

Who knows, perhaps the wooden clowns, old and chipped and dilapidated, will be confined to the cellar alongside the fluffy cactus for a few months.

A change of routine

Christmas with all its coming and goings can be difficult for many of us who are used to a routine in their lives. This afternoon’s client, like me, is one of them.

I spent three days at home and the same three evenings with friends. I enjoyed the company but the last evening, as well as being enjoyable, was noisy with its games and laughter. I was quite exhausted after it and very much enjoyed the fourth and fifth days on my own!

I think my afternoon client was tired out by Christmas and at the same time very excited by it. He needed lots of rests but also lots of attention. He needed changes in activities in the in-between times and a few breaths of fresh air that kept him going enough to finish the huge project he had taken on. As he was determined to take the work of art home with him today, we had to get on with it. We only had two hours.

The work got completed and with a little help from the hairdryer we were able to get it rolled up sothat it would fit on the back seat of the car. With the rolled-up clown under his arm and the wooden ones staying with me for the week, he went home calm and happy.

Phew, and then not even time for a change of hat. I just took off my overalls!

Shift three

This always has been the highlight of my week, my adults' cerebral palsy, after-work group. It is in this group that I learn so much about life.

I have been working with the one lady, the only one who made it this evening, for about twelve years. She went to the Petö Institute several times when she was in her early twenties, always accompanied by her mother. They were both thrilled with Budapest and Conductive Education but it became increasingly difficult for them to leave the rest of their family at home. It was then that they discovered me.

This evening group has grown up around us both but today it was just the two of us again and we really made the most of it.

It was rather sad at the same time as one group member wasn’t there because his father had died quite suddenly over Christmas. We all knew this lovely man well, he was always so kind to us all. We talked about him this evening and also about how we hope that the group will be able to help our valued group member during his time of mourning.

We listened as we worked to some of my favourite English Christmas carols and I was pleasantly surprised when my client began singing along with me. This cheered our way to the end of the session when we played memory before dressing to face the elements.

The snow of this afternoon had turned to freezing rain and a bitter wind as I made my way to the bus and tram. I may have enjoyed the walk more if the path had been white but I was warm and smiling inside anyway.

My many hats had made for a very satisfying day’s work while the rest of the world seemed to sleep.

No longer lamenting the loss of lametta.

"Out of stock"

As a child I loved the days before Christmas. The Christmas tree was always bought by my mother and put in a pot by my father, then taken up the stairs to the sitting-room by them both, where my Mum, my sister and I would spend several evenings, after homework was done, decorating it. I especially remember lovingly unpacking the tissue paper that wrapped our treasures, the very same treasures that I shall unwrap this year and hang on my tree here in Nürnberg. Treasures that were given to my sister and me over the years, dolls and clowns and chocolate animals, umbrellas and gnomes and all sorts of old-fashioned glittery decorations.

When the tree was full, with not a branch to be found for even one more knitted toy, Mum would get out a very old Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolate box. I loved this bit. It was the bit that Mum insisted on doing herself and I used to delight in watching her. As a child he had been given a box of lead Lametta This is what was in the chocolate box: silver Lametta.

It hung so beautifully as she put it one precious thread after the other on the tree, making sure that it hung just where the lights with their nursery rhyme shades would catch it, and transform our tree into a Fairyland all of its own.

OnceI had left home I never put Lametta on my own tree. It was not the same, as all that I could buy was made of plastic, and it looked like it. It did not sparkle like Fairyland. That was until I moved to Germany and I again found real Lametta made from tin, just like the Lametta my Mum had in her chocolate box.

I used to buy it over the years in a small corner shop, tilll one year there was no more silver Lametta. The factory did not make it any more. I bought gold Lamettathat left over from the last year but I did not use it, it wasn#t the right colour. I carried on doing what my Mum always did, saving the silver Lametta in a chocolate box from one year to the next.

Last week I was out searching for stars and snowflakes for making crafty things with the children. Guess what I found. Three, yes three packets of silver Lametta. Of course I bought them all, at 99 cents a packet who wouldn’t have? If Mum had still been alive I would have sent her one, but instead I will think of her in a couple of weeks' time as I gently hang it one strand at a time on my Christmas tree, and watch it transform my tree into Fairyland once again.

Notes

Stanniol Lametta, out of stock –

http://www.blumchen.com/christmas_shop_lt0012g.html

http://www.kaufhalle-des-ostens.de/detail/HEL0007_stanniol_lametta_silber

This week’s facilitation

many hands making light work

Body paint

At carnival time in Germany the shops are filled with the brightest of colours, the bakery with brightly decorated doughnuts, the butcher's and grocer's shop with balloons and streamers around the displays of food, most other shops windows incorporating in some way masks and streamers amongst the products for sale.

The shelves of the department stores and the supermarkets are always filled with the most amazing kitsch and the loveliest, glittery, gaudy objects that one could wish for to use at work, and best of all most of it costs next to nothing.

At the store I wandered through rows and rows of carnival costumes with wigs in every colour of the rainbow, there were fairy wings and magic wands, and pirate’s cutlasses and eye patches. There are always streamers and confetti, hooters and balloons to be found to refill my “tool” box, but my best find and best buy this year were body paints in a new form. They are absolutely perfect for the small, hot, tight grasping fists of the young children who I am working with these days.

The waxy, soft face-paint sticks usually available are so small and thin that they crumble and melt when the children so much as look at them! It is rarely possible for them to paint themselves or each other all by themselves. They usually need lots of help to transform the whole group into animals, clowns, pirates or whatever takes their fancy. There are also body paints available in a palette, like water colours, to use with a paint brush but this process is also a little tricky for many of the children.

I was delighted with this year’s find. Thick chunky body-paint sticks covered with a plastic holder that works a bit like a glue stick. Turning the bottom of the holder forces more colour upwards.

Many hands make light work

Over the last few days I have had wonderful creations painted on my hands by the children and they have had lots of fun painting themselves and each other. These gorgeous, brightly coloured pens were actually not that cheap but I didn’t have to think twice about buying them. I visualised what we would be using them for, how they woud be facilitating my work, before I had even paid for them. I knew we would be having lots of fun, “bits-in-between times”, with them!

They have been the best facilitation as well as motivation that I could have wished for this week. In many of our activities we have painted our hands, so sometimes birds would fly gently down with food to feed their babies,and sometimes great, mighty dinosaurs would grasp anything and everything with their mouths, and learn to hold things very, very tightly. At other times we have invited animal friends to come to help tie shoe laces, to grasp the knife to cut our food, or to hold the spoon at the correct angle in order to eat soup.

One little boy who always tells me that he doesn't enjoy painting very much couldn’t wait to get his hands on these body paints and get started on new hand and finger designs.

I am beginning to ask myself “What did I do before I had these paint pens?”. They have made work so much easier this week.

That’s what I call great facilitation!

Magic camp

My young client in northern Germany, the one I usually refer to as Laddo, tells me, more than most do, that it seems like magic to him when he discovers a new trick to help him gain greater control of his out-of-control athetoid limbs.

Many other children and adults have said that is seems like magic when we discover a way of doing something that gives them success. I always try to convince them that it is their hard work and not magic that does the trick but, just like all of us, they generally like to believe that a little bit of magic is involved.

Whatever they choose to believe that it is, it always makes them smile. As they use their new-found “magic” trick more and more in their lives, they smile more and more. They are really happy with the new-found freedom of movement that they have discovered. This is the hard work that "magically" transforms their lives.

A copy of the London Evening Standard fell into my hands yesterday. There is a lot more to read in it than in many of the British national papers so my perusal took quite some time. Eventually I reached page twenty eight, where a headline caught my eye:

“Magic therapy for youngsters”

Followed by:

“Card tricks help patients with motor disorders”

Whenever I make a presentation about my work, I always begin by explaining that the most important thing for me is to discover, for a conductive upbringing to be successful, is what motivates my clients. When I can motivate my clients, when I can find out what it is that sparks off their lust for life, they become active and their souls become healthy, they begin to be able to motivate themselves. As we all know, with healthy souls all activity becomes easier. The will to live active lives becomes the motivation to be active.

There goes that conductive spiral again!

There before my eyes in the London Evening Standard was a lovely story about children with motor disorders attending a “Magic Camp” at Guy’s Hospital in London. It sounded just the right kind of exciting stuff for motivating little boys and girls and developing healthy souls! This article reminded me very much of my recent stories about "Papier Maché Camp" and "Dinos and Aliens love Underpants Camp".

Magic, dino, painting or papier maché camp, call it what you will. Whatever the name it all comes down to the same thing in the end, finding out what motivates clients.

The article begins:

“A boy of eight whose hand was paralysed by a brain condition has been helped “by magic” after undergoing pioneering therapy.”

I thought the wording a bit misleading in this first paragraph, it suggested to me that the child was “undergoing” something passive, something was being done to him, but I have been reassured that this is language used these days in England when talking about "therapy". I suppose that I really would have rather liked the headline to read “Conductive magic camp at Guy’s hospital”. Maybe one day!

The young boy attended a ten-day camp during which he learned “tricks developed for children with motor disorders by Magic Circle magicians”. Presumably the same tricks that children without a disability would perform, but adapted how and when required.

We are told that this child left the camp able to throw a tennis ball and to eat using a knife and fork. He could also complete complex actions, such as opening a packet of crisps or undoing a sweet wrapper.

I am still thinking that the title would have been better if it had said “Conductive magic camp”!

At the camp children were taught card games and circus skills and magic to make them use the affected limbs.

The Magic Camp followed on from a pilot project when Magic Circle magicians worked alongside the occupational therapists from Evelin Children’s Hospital to develop exercises.

I think I may be putting my Paper Maché Camps on the market soon, as we thought that they were quite magical too.

PS

I have written about magic before:

www.susie-mallett.org/search?q=clowns

www.susie-mallett.org/2009/02/this-weeks-facilitation.html

Notes

London Evening Standard
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/

Magic Camps at Guy’s Children’s Hospital
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/4777?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+SE1newstwitter+(SE1+news+for+Twitter)

Guy’s Children’s Hospital
http://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/home.aspx

Slow food for thought

Paris, June 2006

At lunch time today I was taking small steps on my knees behind a very young boy who was taking even smaller steps with his even smaller feet. Both of us were pushing a huge ladder-back chair. It was this little boy’s first "Petö" block and he was doing extremely well. He only began attending the integrated Montessori-Petö Kindergarten four weeks ago and he is already very well settled in.

He is a delight to work with.

We were making our slow-but-sure and very peaceful progress over to the neighbouring room to have lunch with all the other children. My boy had actually hoped that he was returning to kindergarten for a sleep, but food came first!

Always at the time when we return with the "Petö children" for lunch the kindergarten is a hive of activity, with children rushing past us as they return from the garden, go to the bathroom to wash their hands, and make their way to the table. To us who live in the slower lane with our ladder-back chairs, it appears that their clockwork has been over-wound!

If they are "unlucky" some of these high speed children get stuck behind a crocodile of ladder- back chairs and four-point sticks as we pass through the door. Which is precisely what happened today.

One very active, unable-to-sit-still-for-a-minute boy had stopped absolutely still to let us pass. He watched every move that we made, with me on my knees and my "little man" taking tiny steps while pushing his huge chair.

The waiting child remarked to me:

"You are always so slow. Why do you always take so much time?"

Timeless

This made me smile and also made me think of my recent posting on magic and clowns.

I suggested to the child that he might like to put his hands on my shoulders and walk along at the same speed as us, maybe he could even help us to go a little bit faster. I suggested that by moving slowly he might possibly see a little bit more of the world he always rushes through.

No go, that would not be the world for him!

He decided to stand still and as quiet as a mouse and watch the ladder-back crocodile go by, awaiting the moment when the doorway would be empty and the way clear for his dash to the dinner table.

I had just asked this boy to walk with us slowly and quietly to his place at the table, but no, that would just take too much time, something that today’s six year olds do not seem to have much of.

In September many of the Kindergarten children will begin school and then I expect that they will discover what it is really like to have no time. With lots of homework, music, sport and various other activities to fit in between school and bedtime, they will have a hard time to find the time to play with old friends, or even to sit and do nothing.

What a difficult, timeless time our "Petö children" are living in.

A trip down memory lane

"Trafik" kiosk opposite the Vasor Csarnok Budapest, 2006 Susie Mallett

Taking a break from everything to do with work, I got to thinking about my rather lovely collection of tin toys, much of which is packed up in boxes in Norwich. I was rather sad that on this last trip to Budapest I had found nothing to add to it. I had not had enough time to go searching and it was always a matter of searching, peering in every shop window and using experience to tell me if it was worth venturing in and exploring further. It got to be that I could almost smell a tin toy yards from the shop door!

I gathered the bulk of my collection during the four years that I spent in Budapest. There are a few exceptions including my lovely Titanic which I found in Birmingham! In Budapest I became quite an expert at spotting a holdauto or a holdrakétta hidden at the back of a Trafik kiosk that sold everything and anything as well as tobacco.

There were three people who I knew of from the Birmingham Institute gang who were avid collectors and crazy about these wonderful toys, I suspect all three of us are probably still dreaming of our Hornby train set that got sold when we no longer played with it. I was the only one on the spot, another there for 6 months of the year, so we swapped information, orders got placed and if one of us spotted something spectacular then it was usually bought in triplicate. This could easily be done in those days as none of these toys cost more than a pound or two and sometimes only pennies.

Our collections grew fast until 1992, when stock started to disappear from the Trafik kiosks and from the supermarkets that had also been a good place to search. A bountiful supply of clowns riding scooters and torpeautos (mini cars) were always to be found in the huge supermarket in Bathányi Tér. There was also a Czechoslovakian shop near Deák Tér where more modern- looking tractors and a delightful ladybird could be found.

My favourite and most productive kiosk was opposite the Budapest Hotel on Szilágyi Erzsébet fásor just minutes walk from the Petö Institute and it was here that I found not only one but two holdautos, one of the best finds of the four years, and it was in this kiosk that I first noticed that the lemezjártékek (tin toys) where being slowly replaced by Barbies, Kens and plastic tanks and guns.

I thought about my recent trip and the lack of searching time and wondered if perhaps I could find a place if I googled, so that I could then make a beeline straight to it on my next visit to Budapest. And low and behold this is what I found, http://www.kelle.hu/1234toys/index.html,
a toy shop on Teréz körút.

I hope my Hungarian is good enough and I am translating correctly. The website tells me as follows.

Tin toys were manufactured in Hungary only since the 1950s, beginning with copies of the Czech and German wind-up cars and trucks, but the push-along models soon followed and in 1954 the first battery-operated toys came on the market.

The jumping chick, similar to my jumping hen in the video, first came into production in 1960. By 1963 there were already 77 different toys being made and soon after, in 1965, came the wonderful mini-cars, the holdrakétta and the one toy I still long for, which I will search for on my next visit, the toláto mozdony( the shunting engine), which can be seen bottom right on this page http://www.kelle.hu/1234toys/elzett/elzett.html

When we think of tin toys we think first of those produced in Germany and maybe England and America come to mind, but the leaders in this field were the Spanish, with the company Rafael Paya Pico building them from 1905. In the 1930s they had a work-force of over 500 and they were building many collectors items.

Here's another webpage. You will find a delightful tram and my favourite piece, the ship with its lovely metal flags, which apart from its bulky propeller at the back looks as elegant as the Erzsébet Híd in Budapest:

http://www.kelle.hu/1234toys/paya/paya.html

Majercsik Krisztina and Kelle Antal began restoring toys 30 years ago, and produced a book called Móra in 1985. In 1995 they opened the shop in Teréz körút, Játékszerek Anno.

On the pages of this website I found many of my old favourites from my collection, and one or two more that I would like to have. There were even some toys that we had at home in my childhood, including the horseracing game found on this page that I think my great uncle, a Mountie in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force, had brought for us on one of his visits home.

Notes

Trafik - http://www.continentaltobacco.com/ttr_eng.html

Hotel Budapest http://www.hotelclub.net/Hotel.Reservations/Budapest_Hotel_Budapest.htm

Holdauto - space car. This has a battery and while moving a light-weight ball floats in the air ona stream of air, quite amazing to watch. Unfortunately mine is in England, so the photo will have to wait.

Holdrakétta – This another spectacular machine, a space rocket on wheels that stops in its tracks and rights itself, then the door opens, like something out of Thunderbirds (one expects Lady Penelope to appear in the steps!)
http://www.kelle.hu/1234toys/elzett/elzett.html

Czechoslovakian toys - http://www.kelle.hu/1234toys/kovap/kovap.html

Játékszerek Anno - Budapest V1, Teréz körút 54.
Kelle Familia Kft.2040 Budaörs, Ipáros u. 1/1 kelle@axelero.hu

Tiny feet

“Big Ben”, by Susie Mallett , London 2006

At lunch time last Thursday I was taking small steps on my knees behind a very young boy who was taking even smaller steps with his even smaller feet.

Both of us were pushing a huge ladder back chair. It is this little boy’s first “Petö” block and he is doing extremely well. He only began attending the integrated Montessori–Conductive Kindergarten four weeks ago and he is already well settled in.

Is it a bear or is it tea?

He is a delight to work with and can be really funny, that is when I can understand his German. He is not difficult to understand because of his accent but because of a speech defect he has. He has very few teeth, which is one of the many symptoms of the syndrome he has, making pronounciation of certain letters unclear. All the Ss are replaced by Gs or Ys. Hence my new name, now used by all the children and staff, “Yogi”!

One child in the group comments that this is not actually a name, it is in fact a type of tea!

I am still trying to decide if it is an improvement on the old name, “Ushi”, given to me a couple of years ago by another child who had difficulties getting her tongue around my real name.

Living in the slow lane

On Thursday we were making our slow but sure and very peaceful progress over to the neighbouring room to have lunch with all the other children. My boy had actually hoped he was returning to Kindergarten for a sleep, but food came first!

Always at the time when we return with the “Petö” children for lunch the Kindergarten is a hive of activity, with children rushing past us as they return from the garden, to go to the bathroom, wash hands and make their way to the table.

To us who live in the slower lane while driving our ladder-back chairs, it appears that their clockwork has been over wound!

If they are “unlucky” some of these high-speed children get stuck behind a crocodile of ladder- back chairs and four-point sticks as we pass through the door to the Kindergarten. This is precisely what happened that day.

One very active, unable-to-sit-still-for-a-minute boy had stopped absolutely still to let us pass. He stood as stiff as a toy soldier watching every move that we made. We must have looked pretty odd, with me on my knees and my “little man” taking tiny steps while pushing what for him must seem to be a chair made for a giant.

The waiting child remarked to me “You lot are always so slow. Why do you always take so much time?”

STOP!

Step out of the fast lane and join us

This boy’s question made me smile and made me think of my recent posting on magic and clowns, time and timing.

I suggested to the still-as-a-statue child that he might like to put his hands on my shoulders and walk along at the same speed as us, maybe he could even help us to go a bit faster. I said to him that by moving slowly he may see a little bit more of the world that he is always rushing through.

No go!

Instead he decided to stand as still and as quietly as a mouse and watch the ladder-backcrocodile go by, awaiting the moment when the doorway would be empty and the path clear for his dash to the bathroom and thence to the dinner table.

I had just asked this boy to walk with us slowly and quietly to his place at the table, but no, that would just take too much of the time that, for some “unknown reason, today’s six-year-olds do not seem to have much of. .

Could it have something to do with their life at home?

All go, go, go

In September many of the Kindergarten children will begin school. Then they will discover what it is like to have to sit still. They will really discover what it is to have no time, when they return home with lots of homework. Then, when that’s out of the way, they will have to rush off for music, sport and various other activities that they will try to fit in between school and bedtime.

What a difficult timeless, time our “Petö” children are living in.

Notes

“Big Ben” – actually the name of the bell and not the clock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ben

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cleaning_Big_Ben.jpg

My tree of life

"A walk around my Tree of Life", December 2009

My Christmas tree of life

A tree brought to life with my memories of people, places and times.

I usually buy my tree the week before Christmas and leave it out on the balcony until I have time to start decorating it. This year it was bought and brought straight indoors and I spent several evenings during the last week of Advent hanging up the decorations that have been stored away all year.

I savour this time as each and every treasure that I bring out of the box has a special meaning for me, either because of the place where I bought it or because of the person who gave it to me.

The actual activity of doing the decorating holds the biggest memories of all. I always did this with my Mum. In my childhood with my sister too, but later for many years, when Sis had a home of her own, it was just me and Mum.

Mum and I decorated the tree together most years until I was no longer living in England. When I went to live in Hungary in 1989 I was thirty two years old, that’s a lot of years of hanging shared memories on a tree!

It is only through writing this that I realise just why my Christmas tree decorating and its treasures are so important to me and why, even though I am living alone, I continue with the tradition.

It was my Mum who made it so special

As we “worked” on the tree she told me stories about her own childhood Christmases and we talked about the people who had given us the toys that we were hanging on the green branches. We enjoyed the smell of fresh cut tree, we enjoyed the time together.

Until I lived “abroad”, each Christmas as soon as I got home from wherever I was living Mum and I would go up into the box-room together and hunt out the ancient cracker boxes that we used for storage. Opening the boxes one by one we would re-discover the same old childhood decorations and packed up with them, the memories.

It would always take us ages to hang them because, as I have said, we would talk about where each one came from and I would have hundreds of questions about the places or the people.

All these memories, plus many more newer ones of my own, are now hanging on the tree beside me. I was so happy when, a couple of years before she died, my Mum gave me the ancient cracker boxes with their contents, memories and all.

Now as I decorate my tree on my own, I really do savour every single minute. There are so many of my friends and friends of my Mum “hanging out” with me each Christmas. When they are all hanging, sparkling underneath the twinkling lametta, I enjoy many evenings sitting and reading, or blogging or painting beside it, now and then fiddling with the odd clown or creature who just refuses to look in the right direction.

This year I bought myself a new treasure. I found it in the bookshop in Johannis, the area of the city where I live. It was the day on the last weekend before Christmas when the streets were covered in snow that was glistening brilliant blue in minus fourteen Centigrade.

I bought a glass snowman with a carrot nose and a Besen under his arm. It has found its place on my tree and each year as I take it out of the ancient boxes it will remind me of the lovely place where I now live, of the sudden coldness that arrived on that day and of the peaceful hours that I spent in the bookshop choosing presents.

I have brought things home over the years from most of the countries that I have visited and from the English, Welsh, German and Hungarian cities that I have lived in too. There are decorations from Mexico and Guatamala, from North America and Canada, from Australia, New Zealand and of course from England. There are decorations sent from friends all over the world.

There are dolls on the tree, old and new, there are birds and stars and angels. There are Santas, made out of wood, out of metal and out of cloth, Santas playing music, riding sledges and even a rubber one standing on his head. There are even the red “Conductive Education” Pedro boots hanging on my tree!

I don’t usually do lists but I am going to do one now. Working from the frog angel at the top down to the reindeer on a peg at the bottom I am going to list some of my special memories. I will try to match them to the photos at the top.

· The Frog Angel – a present from my Sis, who watched me since a tiny girl observe in wonder each frog that I ever met!

· The Skinny Santa that Mum bought us when we were young and what we decided was the best decoration that we had. He immediately replaced the old tatty fairy at the top. He takes second place these days to the frog angel.

· There at the same height are the German frog-fairy and the New Zealand pixie, both arrived in the post three years ago from two very special friends.

· Four clowns who are ancient (one has a foot missing) have been hanging around the middle of the tree for some fifty years now, as have the two plastic dollies, one red (belonging to Sis) and one green (mine). I have no idea who gave them to us but most probably they came from a lady-friend of my Grandma’s, who gave us many of the toys on the tree.

· Of the same vintage are the colourful chocolate umbrellas complete with chocolate. The silver and gold umbrellas were a more recent present, from Mum. She sent them when I first had a tree in Germany, in 1993. They are also still complete with chocolate. My Sis and I were experts at not eating our chocolate figures and insisting that at Easter and Christmas they got packed away for next year.

· There are two knitted dollies, the pink one belongs to Sis and the blue one to me. We always only hung up only our own toys and this year I phoned as always to tell her I would do it for her if that was OK!

· There is only one knitted golly, made for me when I was a two year old by my Mum. My sister of course has kept hers too. It is different from mine only in that her golly is wearing trousers and not dungarees which I think is probably a reflection of the clothes that we each wore at the time!

· Then there are the three Christmas bells, used to call the family when the Christkind has been to deliver the presents. These were not used for this purpose as in our family Santa climbs down the chimney in the middle of the night. These bells were presents from special people, one from Budapest and one from Pecs, each in different traditional ceramic styles. The third I was given in 1987 by the family I spent Christmas with in Adelaide. Seven years ago that lovely Australian cousin died so it holds extra special happy/sad memories for me.

· Happy/sad memories are also woven into the white snowflake that hangs behind the tinsel, given to me by a younger colleague the Christmas before she died.

. There is the fortieth-birthday tiny- teddy and the fiftieth-birthday wooden angel.

. The delicate stable scene in a walnut shell, with figures made from date stones and grains of wheat, has survived eighteen years unscathed since it was given to me on my third Christmas in Budapest.

· The more robust but still very small Christmas scene reminds me of the Christmas of 1988 that I spent in Mexico and, as my gaze falls on to the handmade heart beside it, I recall the summer before, spent with friends in the Bahamas.

· And of course there is a train, a brass one that reminds me always of my Dad, even though I bought it myself. Dad was a steam, and diesel and electric train-driver! there is a peg with a reindeer to remind me of mum (she used pegs for everything but as far as I remember never on the tree).

There are too many things there to list them all, many of the rest come from a few special friends who send me something each year.
The rest of the treasures I have bought for myself on holiday, at markets and on special days in special places.

I remember a story behind them all, each time they come out of their boxes. Santas from Hungary, a glass Santa from Prague, a glass cat from Atlanta, Georgia, glass angels that adorned a present one year, stars from the market in Nürnberg, a teddy made by my Auntie, another given as a special thank you by my Sis. There is even penny-farthing made by a friend from a scrap of wire that he found as we sat around a table on my thirty-fifth birthday, in a garden in Szentendre, Hungary!

It is no wonder that it takes me so long to decorate my tree with so many people and places to think about.
I am so lucky to have so many special friends and memories joining me each year from all over the world.

And because my tree lives it also grows.