Hey Blog! This week is a subject for those who have a little time on their hands – and in their head – and it’s all about phylos sophia or Lovers of Knowledge: Philosophy!

I study philosophy with an excellent tutor called Jake. His business is known as Humanatees (the mascot is a manatee), and it teaches humanities. Last autumn, he started the first KS3 Philosophy course, this one on the Meaning of Life (the biggest subject EVER!). I joined in, so for six weeks we learnt about wacky, weird, and wonderful philosophers who had ideas ranging from “live like a dog” to “ask yourself whether you should kill yourself or have a cup of coffee”. This week, I started a new course, all about female philosophers, but it is my response to the last course that I am writing in for you today. Here it is:

What is the meaning of life?

Universally, I understand that the Meaning of Life must be subjective; all of the philosophers we’ve looked at have had different ideas; but my philosophy is not subjective – well, not necessarily.

1. Be focused on something you care about, something that has the inspiration to encourage you to protect, remake and love it. This could be a project, your friends/family, but not your job. The only point of a job is to make money; if you love it then it’s an occupation.
2. Don’t be too focused though. Find some relaxing “me” time. Be idle. Do creative thinking, as this kind of thinking can lead to a new focus, of philosophy. Without stepping back you will become the focus, and not be able to climb out of it.
3. Be passionate. Love something, enjoy it, kind of similar to point 1, but this is when you’ve finished it. Hold it to your heart. Revel in the joy it gives you, and keep it safe.
4. However, be sensible in what you give your love to, as some things break, or disappear, or don’t return your love. Be cautious before choosing, but once chosen, don’t waver. Think before you act.
5. Do big talk. Concentrate on big maters like Life and Death, climate change, and the Meaning of Life; think about these things so that you know what the world is like. It’s important you understand your place in the universe.
6. Sometimes, though, big things are too much. Relax into the small things; what your friends are doing, where you’re going at the weekend. Be calm, don’t hurry. More hurry, the less time to the end. Do small talk.
7. You can see now, we have pairs: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6. They balance each other out. To conclude, my Meaning of Life is…

Be Balanced.

How do you like it? I think it’s quite good. But please don’t blame me if it goes wrong while you’re following it – you chose to do it in the first place!

Hey Blog! It’s the first post of 2023 – I hope you’ve had a great year so far and that the future will hold just as wonderful surprises. It’s Twelfth Night tonight, the last of the twelve days of Christmas and (in the past) the climax of the Christmas celebrations. This is a very important date in the calendar of one particular book that I got for Christmas: by Susan Cooper, it’s The Dark is Rising.

The Dark is Rising is the second book in a five-book sequence, which takes its name from this book, and covers the first quest of the then-11-year-old ‘Old One’ Will Stanton. It starts on Midwinter’s Eve, the eve of Will’s 11^th birthday, when everything seems to be behaving a bit funny towards him. The radio, the birds, the family pets… Then, the farmer down the lane gives Will a circle of iron, quartered by a cross, and tells him to guard it. Next morning, when he wakes up, his world shifts, and he appears a few centuries back in his past. Going to a smithy standing near where the farm would stand in his own time, he encounters two mysterious figures – a black horse and black rider, who is very suspect; and a shabby old terrified man called the Walker. He is also introduced to a white horse, who is shoed with strangely shaped horseshoes – the quartered circle. This sign seems to be everywhere…

Eventually, he finds a pair of doors, which seem to materialise in front of him. These take him into a room with a fire and a candle stand, the latter of which has just one candle missing from the circle. The two people sitting near it, Merriman Lyon and an enigmatic woman known as The Lady, then reveal to him he is not an ordinary human boy – he is the last of the Old Ones, a group of immortal magicians, who can flow across and through time and are duty-bound to defend the Light. Will, as the last of them, completes the circle, and inherits the position of Sign-Seeker. This charges him to find the six Signs, Iron (he’s already got it), Bronze, Wood, Stone, Fire, and Water. Then, he has to keep them safe from the Dark (hence the name of the book) until they can be joined, at which point the circle of the Old Ones will be complete and the second of the four Things of Power will be safe and found.

Does he complete the quest? You’ll have to read the book (I say this every time…) but I can say that it has a very good ending on Twelfth Night “That which was once Christmas Day and once, long ago before that, was the high winter festival of our old year” when the Wild Hunt rides, and as Merriman says, “Nothing may outface the Wild Hunt”. All through the story run themes of ancient magic, love, desperation, and over all, a desire for goodness and freedom: exactly what the Light represents. I think that the structure of the story follows a similar pattern to The Box of Delights, and the magic in it seems to be a collaboration between Doctor Who and A Wizard of Earthsea. Underpinning it all is the fabric of ancient British mythology.

The setting is constantly changing as a result of the changing time that the Old Ones experience, but there’s a love for the land and a LOT of snow. As for originality it has got to be one of the best: all books reference to others, but to make something original you weave them together in a totally new way and add threads of your own: that’s originality. It’s definitely in the top set of books I’ve read for quite a while, bringing together time, folklore, and a touch of ancient magic!

Hey Blog! It’s the last post of 2022, and my, it has been a year! Everything seems to have been confuzeled after the pandemic, and with a war, a climate crisis, economic turmoil and political hell, we have some big problems. However, there have also been sparks of joy, providing a relief from the darkness.

Last New Year’s Day I found a wooden box sitting by the side of the road. I had been wanting a large wooden box to put what mum calls junk (reference to About Me and My Shed) into, and this did the trick! I decided I would refurbish it over the course of the year. This involved sanding it down and varnishing it. I started off hand-sanding, and I believe the term for this is “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” – it is long, boring, and tiring. So eventually I borrowed Dad’s power-sander and used that. This only happened in November, and then, earlier this month, I decided the time had come for the varnishing. This was only a few days before Sophie came, so I had to tidy it up as I was doing the varnishing in our playroom. However, twice I have varnished it in my shed since then, and am now finished. So the year’s work is completed – in exactly one year!

One of my friend’s Mums suggested I write a story about the box. Therefore, I wrote a short set of stories detailing its supposed history. I am going to serialise this, and here is the first part:

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The story of the box

By Kit Bailey

The Sultan’s jewel box

There was, in the Middle East, a certain Sultan who was rich in a great many ways. He had, in plenty, gemstones of many grades and sizes, and he had all the carpenters of the region come before him to show their work so that he might pick out one to do some woodwork. One, he noticed, had a very particular style, and being also a fine carpenter with a good eye, the Sultan chose him to make chests for to store his wealth. This carpenter accordingly made fourteen caskets, all with different sizes, woods and patterns, and at this the Sultan was so delighted that he made the said carpenter Chief Carpenter for all his palace. The chests the new Chief Carpenter had made were used by the Sultan’s treasurer to store his jewels in, and many a year passed with the precious stones safely inside the box.

In time, the Sultan’s son succeeded him, and then his grandson. For fifty years the gems inside the box had not seen the light of day, until some strange circumstances made the original sultan’s grandson open the box.

For all his wealth, there was one thing the new young Sultan did not have, and that was a wife. So when a Caliph of a neighbouring kingdom came for a visit, and brought his beautiful daughter, the Sultan was enraptured, and offered three boxfuls of jewels in return for the daughter’s hand in marriage. The Caliph duly agreed, and on the wedding day the bride and the jewels were exchanged, and the Sultan and Caliph’s daughter were married, and lived happily. However this was only the start of the box’s adventures, one of the lucky, chosen three chests that left the palace for a new life.

–

Look out in the coming weeks for the next instalments, but till then…

Happy New Year!

Hey Blog! It’s CHRISTMAS! 2022, and my second year of Home Ed in a Shed. You’ve been privy to most of my goings on for more than a year, but that doesn’t mean the fun ever lessens. This week I’m going through three things – the Great British Bake Off, making Dad’s Christmas present, and Christmas itself!

Last spring, in The Great Bailey Sewing Bee, I talked about watching the Great British Sewing Bee, and being inspired to make a bag (you may be pleased to know I have now finished all the badges to sew on it). The aforementioned program was designed as a spin-off of the Great British Bake Off, which we have now discovered too. The two programs are similar, but instead of making stuff with fabric which you can wear, Bake Off is about making stuff with food which you can eat. We have decided the Sewing Bee is slightly better, but still…

This program has also been an inspiration. Dad always says he doesn’t want “stuff”, just edible presents. This year I decided to make Pretzels for him, using the BBC recipe (https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pretzels_71296) by Paul Hollywood, one of the judges on Bake Off! My big sister Sophie is here for Christmas this year, and so when Mum and Dad went out on one of their mysterious Christmas errands, me and Soph made the pretzels. They looked just like the real thing! When Dad came back, we whipped off the cloth and revealed them. They were DELICIOUS! We had them (and the copious amount of cheese we got in for Christmas) for lunch, and then …

… then I left my laptop on and disappeared to read a book, so Mum decided to upload my blog just as it was. Happy Christmas!

I DIDN’T WRITE THAT!

Then I decided to say that I can’t think of much more to write so please tune in next week.

Merry Christmas!

Hey Blog! This week is all about two extremes: icy weather and trying to light fires!

You may remember last year I bought a sledge; subsequent snowy weather meant the week after we acquired it, it had its first use. Well, so far this year has failed us for sledging dreams, but we did have what Dad calls a “sugar frosting”: thin snowfall like the icing on a cake. It’s not enough to ride down a hill on, but enough to make it significantly cold! (well, not if you’ve lived at -40C° in Mongolia like Mum did…) As a result, there has been a cold period; we reckon colder than it has been while we have lived here! Luckily, we have the money to be able to heat the house, so we do have a nice warm house to come back to. Apparently, this winter the economy is going to crash, and combine that with a sharp drop in temperatures could prove disastrous for people, especially as the NHS has gone nuts and the strikes are proving that people are at the end of their tether…

All snowflakes have six sides. The reason behind this is that basically it’s the most efficient way to pack the water molecules – each with one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms – into a space. It’s also due to how they form (I could keep on all night at this) but let’s stop there. Snow itself is water that has been heated to take it up from the surface of the ocean in vaporous form – AKA evaporation; and then cooled so much in the sky it has turned to ice – firstly condensation then freezing/solidification; then, when heated again, melting. However, these changes run Liquid → Gas, Gas → Liquid, Liquid → Solid, Solid → Liquid; but there are another two changes – Gas → Solid, and Solid → Gas. They are deposition, and sublimation, respectively. We even witnessed the latter of these at Watch Group on Sunday last week, where we had a campfire.

This was the last watch group of the year, but surprisingly only one family other than the two who lead it (mine and another, Mum took the dad in this family on as a co-leader earlier this year) showed up. However, the small group size meant it was easier to run the fire. After the session two of us tried melting snow – and got a lot of water in the pan, but a small amount as there wasn’t much snow, and the density of ice is less than the density of water for the same volume (that means there are more atoms in a pan of water than atoms in snow in the same pan). However, putting snow directly on the fire showed ice transforming directly into water vapour – the sublimation from the last paragraph!

I hope you will join me this Christmas, to see what other antics I get up to!

Hey Blog! Fittingly for December, I’m going Christmassy!

The Christmas tree is one of the most iconic symbols of the season, but this was not always so. In last year’s Christmas Special edition, I wrote (albeit very briefly) about the revived mediaeval tradition of hanging up branches of Holly (and the Ivy, when they are both full grown, etc…) which we have decided to use instead of the tree. The tree is a German tradition, and only came over in the Victorian Era. Since then, it has spread across the world – a result of the British Empire, which was at its hight at that point in history.  Most households now have a tree every Christmas, but few are live ones. Have you ever stopped and thought of the cost that must have, both on the nature that surrounds the plantation and the climate cost that comes with releasing the carbon by chopping it down? Now imagine that, multiplied by the thousands of people who buy a tree like that, every year – not to mention that it completely kills the tree! Conifers are softwoods, a type of wood that is fast-growing and therefore has wide rings, meaning it’s easy to cut through with a saw. The other type are hardwoods, which generally grow more slowly, have thinner rings, and are harder to cut through. Though hardwoods can grow back if they are relatively young when cut, a process called coppicing, softwoods cannot.

Mum, who runs the Belper Home-Ed Eco Group, found out about the Cromford Mills Christmas Tree Exhibition, and applied for the group to enter a tree. We got a place, and some of the families who take part made decorations for the tree. This year’s theme is Sustainability, so all the decorations had to be made with sustainable materials. Most of the decorations were made in advance, but we did have a meeting in the morning on Decoration Day, (why does it sound like I’ve gone all poetical on you?) to get everything people had made together, and create the finishing touches. Included in the pile were pompoms; knitted/crocheted/paperclip-and-bell chains; cinnamon sticks; dried orange slices; angels made of pinecones, acorns, and silver wire; wooden discs with words and pictures on them in pyrography; sheep made of curtain rings and white wool; and lots more besides! As is usual at any group meeting in our community, we chat all the time – mostly about random totally unrelated stuff. However, by the end of the session we had a large mound of things fit for a tree.

We went to the mills in early afternoon (I took my Santa hat) and met with the two families who had volunteered to help decorate. We then piled the tree and looked around the others. There were quite a few, mostly indoors. Ours is outdoors, farthest down the row (please vote for ours!). Finally, after we had finished, we went and had hot chocolate in the café across the courtyard.

Hey Blog! Last Saturday I went on a walking weekend with Scouts so that’s what I’ll be talking about in today’s post!

In Home Ed on a Camp (September) I wrote about a typical camp – that is, one at the Derbyshire Scout centre Drum Hill, above Little Eaton. Though that particular camp was a full district camp, we did the more usual camp activities – not a two-day walk with a one night stop halfway between the places at start and end!  However, in the one last weekend, we did just that; walking from Bakewell to Curbar on Saturday and Curbar to Chatsworth on Sunday.

Preparation was more difficult. I’ve never talked about how I prepare for these events – it’s more boring than the events themselves – but I suppose you’d better know. Scouts sends out a list, we read it, and then everything needed (mostly clothes) gets laid out on the sofa with my rucksack next to it. Then Mum sorts out the things I’m unlikely to need and puts them at the bottom, then possibly need and puts them in next, then things I’m likely to need and puts them in at the top………… You get the idea. In the smaller bag goes little things, like torch, food, drink, compass, and glasses case. Then whatever I’m wearing goes on, I’m dropped off, and my parents vanish back to our hideout to do whatever machinations they are up to (occasionally painting the house – good; buying me presents – even better; or planning how to make me do the jobs – terrible!). This time, after I had been left in care of the Scout leaders at Belper bus station, we all took the bus up to Bakewell, home of the Bakewell Tart.

This famous pudding was created when a chef mixed a pie with the eggy stuff in with the floury stuff at the wrong time, creating one of the most characteristic tarts of all time. Unfortunately, we had to make a move on fast or we could not get to our destination before dark, so we had no time to test how good they are, though we did pass the Bakewell pudding shop on our way to the garderobes toilets. Continuing through Bakewell over the 700-year-old bridge, we turned up a hill and went on our way. At about noon the morning map-readers passed on to the afternoon map-readers, and we had lunch. Then we made our way on past Eyam, the village where its inhabitants isolated themselves to protect others from the plague, or Black Death, in 1666. From Eyam it was almost all downhill (literally, not metaphorically) to our destination of Curbar. It was at this point that two girls from another patrol started doing an improvisation of themselves. To note, the basic unit of Scouts is the troop, which has its own name, like mine – 1^st Belper; within the troop are Patrols, usually 3-4, made up of a small number of Scouts which you do most of your activities with – my patrol is Wolves.  This improvisation saw them as an old Scottish couple, one with some slightly… odd topics of conversation – all of which got everyone laughing their heads off!

The Curbar Scout hut is one I have been to before, but only in passing when Mum had a Derbyshire Scout Archaeology meeting at the hut. However, this time we stayed in it for quite a long time – long enough to have dinner (Spag Bol) and supper (Cheese & Crackers) and play a mad version of ping-pong. This took up most of the evening, and then we all went to bed. Unusually for a Scout camp, we got to bed in good time – 10 o’clock.

In the morning, we did not stay long at the hut, but set off early. We went up to the Edges, and walked along Baslow Edge, going past the Wellington and Nelson monuments and thence to a Trig Point. Just before this, we swapped maps again, and I took a turn. After carefully navigating around the hills, we came to the back of Chatsworth Park, and through it down to the carpark where our parents were picking us up. Though it might not have been the longest camp I have ever been on, it was the most distance covered in one, and I would like to do the walk again in the future.

Hey Blog! This post is about things you find in a small book on the top shelf, probably very dusty, and with a rather boring front cover (at least that’s the stereotypical view) but what’s inside are little gems: It’s poetry week!

I love poetry. It’s a way of putting feelings, moments, and anything else that interests you in a little bundle of words with some interesting devices. You may be of the view that a poem has to rhyme, like my Dad, or you could be of the view that anything in verses can be classed as a poem, like Mum. However, though I generally feel there is something missing from the non-rhymed ones, I feel that if there is no rhythm at all, the thing doesn’t really work as a proper poem. As may be supposed from this, I write my own poems mostly with rhyme, and always with rhythm.

All the news lately seems horrible and sad and all about things that will kill people or have already done so, and I thought a few weeks ago that I could write a poem which was funny and serious about everything that’s going on in the world right now, as a record of autumn 2022 and a little thing I could do to tell people about what’s happening. This is the most recent poem I have done and was finished this evening, especially for this blog, and is as follows:

The News

By Kit Bailey

–

We’ve got a political future to fear,

This has been a three prime minister year,

Boggis, Liz, and Sunak too –

What is Westminster coming to!

–

Brexit didn’t work (Cough cough),

The gov’nment tried to fob us off,

The agreements STILL aren’t signed –

Do they think that we are blind!

–

Inflation’s put all prices up,

Count your pennies in a cup,

The cost of living’s sky-high now,

Another botch we won’t allow!

–

Climate change is more and more,

Greenhouse gasses heav’n to floor,

All activists are in a fit;

Soon world leaders will COP it!

–

Ukrainian army fights the Russians,

Around the world has repercussions,

Grain unsold, gas unbought,

Another source of energy sought.

–

What will happen in next year?

What will we so shortly fear?

Whate’re happens, don’t cry about it,

Find something to do about it!

Hey Blog! This time I’m talking about a meet I did quite a while ago which encompassed two things I care about the most – Archaeology and Scouts!

The Derbyshire Scout Archaeology Badge is new. It was set up a couple of years ago by Morgause Lomas, a former Scout with a passion for archaeology and a realization no badge existed for it. For archaeology bods enthusiasts like me, this is amazing, as I had previously suggested to my own Scout troop the idea of doing a session on it and they had thought it would be a bit difficult to do in the evenings! Finally there is an opportunity where you can learn about archaeology and be doing Scouts at the same time. But the badge would be no use without Scouts rating and suggesting activities and content for it; so the team set up the Youth Committee, to have just that extra bit of information to give just that extra bit of success. As my mum is Resource Coordinator, I have a sneaky inside view to how things are going, and therefore knew that they were setting up this. I signed up, and surprisingly not many other people did, so I got onto the panel. If you do live in Derbyshire, are in Scouting, and interested in archaeology, then you would be welcome to sign up; ask your scout leader for more information and the link to the application.

There were four of us at the first meeting, which took place at Cresswell Crags, on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border. This is, or was, an important site in Ice Age Europe, as it was the Stone Age version of a motorway services when the ice was retreating back north. Hunters could stop off and rest in relative safety from the cold in the gorge, and the caves provided an amazing shelter too. The one trouble was these humans weren’t the only ones wanting a place in the caves – the Hyenas had got there first. And having a pack of large dog/wolf/cat/big bone-crunchers just a short passageway down behind you was not a good plan. This meant the caves were more frequently inhabited later, when most of the big carnivores had gone. This is the place with the oldest art in the UK; a magnificent collection of finds, enough to make any museum proud; and some apotropaic marks, informally known as “witch marks”; it’s a superb site with lots more than you would give it credit for!

Our first activity was to go into the caves to get to know them, and learn more about what was happening in the past. I have previously been to the one with the art, on the “dark side” of the gorge, as it’s known to employees from Derbyshire (the dark side, which is shadier, is the Nottinghamshire side), but this time we went to a light side cave, one where some Hyenas lived, as their bones have been found there. This cave, along with most of the others, was modified in the 19^th Century (thanks, Victorians…) which gave a passage down into an inner cavern – basically they blasted it out with gunpowder. They did this to a couple of other caves too, once to store their boats in a pre-existent cave. In this one, we learnt about the tools and lifestyles from the past. Then, we went back to the visitor centre and picked up a box of skins, real and fake, and some poles. The point was to construct a shelter.

I know how to do square lashings, so it didn’t take long to construct several right-angled arches. Then we had the genius idea of putting two of the tied poles on top of two other tied poles, at a right angle, and forming a four poled tipi. We copied this, and next I realised that the two small tipis could be connected by the final pole across them as a roof beam, before covering everything. It was just long enough! We draped the whole thing in the leather and made a beautiful shelter, but possibly not waterproof…

There are said to be 16 caves around the gorge, but we could only find 15 caves on our walk round. Maybe that’s because we counted only the ones with grills on, and one and a half for caves that joined up inside, or maybe we just didn’t find the last. Either way, it was a brilliant session, and I hope to continue to participate in more youth committee meetings in the future!

Hey Blog! This is a first for Home Ed in a Shed – I’m doing a film review!

It’s got a book review to go along with it too. Let’s start with that.

E. Nesbit, author of Five children and It and The Railway Children was one of the great children’s authors of the last century. The latter of these two books is the one I’m focusing on today. It is one of the best stories that I have read. I don’t have a numerical rating for stories, instead I rate them OK, Good, Very Good, etc, until VGBOTHO, or Very Good Book of the Highest Order; I have no one favourite book, just for your information. The Railway Children, however, is also an emotional book, as it’s far more than a story about some children. Like all the best books, it has hope, despair, love, and an evil problem to conquer with good. Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis have come away from London to Yorkshire after their father vanished suddenly, and have to “play at being poor for a bit”, while there are big issues going on in the family they do not understand. The three discover the amazing local railway, and make friends with the staff at the station, having adventures around it and once saving a train. The canal also features in the story. Then Bobbie discovers from a newspaper that their father has gone to prison, falsely accused, and so begins a hunt to get him back.

The film The Railway Children Return is set more than 30 years later, when Bobbie has grown up and had both children and grandchildren. I feel the timescale is conflicting, as in the book, when Bobbie is 12, it implies that the Tzar is gone, but she is a grandmother by WWII, which does not leave much time. However, a war mentioned ties the date of the book to 1905, so I really don’t know. However, by 1945, when siblings Lilly, Pattie and Ted are evacuated to the country, they arrive to a completely different world. Green fields, sheep; things that seem ordinary are completely new to them. Once again, the railway is the focal point of their adventures, but this time the mission is to save underage black American soldier Abe from his own white officers for racial abuse, none of which the children understand, and none of which is normal in the village; indeed the local pub refuses to accept the idea of discrimination. Does it work out? Well, you’ll have to watch the movie!

Both stories are excellent, and similar themes run through each – a missing father, writing on sheets with paint to alert the trains, help for an innocent, and both heroes and heroines. Who knows what could be next in the collection – The Railway Children Return Returns?!