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things I want to tell my children but might forget – on the train.

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Oh, look the train is moving!  It is funny because what often happens is that it looks as if the platform is moving while the train stays still.  But this is an optical illusion.  If we have already got a seat (hopefully together), we can relax and enjoy the train experience.

There are many aspects of train journeys which are interesting.  The first thing is that it takes a while to settle into the new space.  Sometimes I change seats several times, or find I need things from my suitcase which I have to get down from the luggage rack.  Sometimes I find the people around me are too noisy, or eating stinky food, or sometimes (if they are about two years old) screeching.  If we are together, we will need to avoid these things so that we don’t upset other people.  It can be hard to play quietly for a whole journey, but we will try.  Once we have settled into our seats, we might play a game, like ‘I spy’ or we might eat our picnic.  What would you like for your picnic?  I would like ham and cheese baguette with a few ready salted crisps and a raspberry jelly.  Then I would like an oatmeal and raisin cookie (a bit later on) and a piece of chocolate with a cup of tea.  Yum!  Picnics are the best.

Now probably you will want to watch a little video.  In the days when I was a little girl, you could not watch a video on a train.  You could read a book or do a crossword puzzle or look out of the window.  When I was small like you, I only went on a train two or three times.  When I went on a train, I just used to look at everything because it was so different to normal.  I don’t know yet whether we will go on trains a lot or a little, but I hope we will go on them quite often.  Did you know that your great great grandfather used to work on the railways, and when your grandmother went to visit, she used to play in their garden where trains went right past the garden gate?  In those days trains were propelled by steam, so they were very dirty and noisy.  The trains that we will travel on are much cleaner and quieter.

Sometimes on a train people don’t talk very much.  Maybe they are doing their work or reading their book.  But sometimes people get involved in conversations.  This is more common if the train is travelling between two small places in the countryside than if it is going between bigger places and London.  It is often fun to talk to people on trains because you can discover new things.  But it is also important to work out when a person no longer wants to talk to you.  The signs of this are that they look at their book or work more, or they look out of the window, or at their watch, or they leave long pauses in the conversation.  If this happens, just let the conversation fade and turn to another activity that you have brought with you.

Maybe then it is time for a trip to the buffet car!  This is like a tiny café on the train.  Sometimes there is even a chef preparing food.  The people behind the buffet have to make everything in a very small space.  Sometimes they are cheerful and sometimes they are grumpy.  It is a great thing to have a buffet car so you should always be nice and friendly to the person, even if they are a bit grumpy to you.

Every part of a train journey is special.  The start is fun because you can feel the feeling of embarking on an adventure.  But in a way the middle is even more fun because you are in a special space – miles from home but not yet near your destination – where it feels like anything could happen.  Then nearing the destination is also fun because it you get the feeling of something ending and beginning at the same time, which is a funny mixture of feelings inside.

When you arrive at the destination, it is very important to check that you have got all your belongings with you.  It is very easy to forget something so it is worth checking twice.  Pay particular attention to umbrellas, hats and scarves which are the easiest things to lose.

I hope you will love train journeys as much as I do.

This train terminates here. (That’s what they say on trains).

things I want to tell my children but might forget – at the station

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At the station

While walking in the street is fun, sometimes we will want to go on a longer journey.  We might go to visit London, or cousins, or go to see something interesting in a place nearby.

A train journey is one of my favourite things.  To take a train, you have to go to a station.  A station is an almost magical place.  In a station, trains come and go, all bound for different destinations.  Some are going to small places nearby, some are going to big places far away.  But the fact that so many trains are coming and going makes a station full of opportunity and potential and mystery.  You could take a train to a place you have planned to go, or you could just turn up to the station one day and take a train anywhere you like.  Trains are arriving and departing all the time, so an adventure is always just around the corner.

Not only this, but at stations lots of important things are happening.  People are saying goodbye to people they love, or welcoming back people who have been away for a long time, or they are waiting for visitors to come, or they are going to important work meetings or holidays or interviews.  Sometimes people are not there for a specific reason, but just to travel about and see the world.  This is called exploring and it is one of the best reasons of all.

In a station, you can also find things like things to read, things to eat and things to use if you happened to have forgotten something important.  There are people there whose jobs are to help people to find the right train, and the right ticket.

In fact, when you get to a station, the first thing you need to do is to check you have your tickets.  Sometimes you book these in advance, sometimes you go to the ticket counter.  If you decide to queue for a ticket, make sure you go in the queue saying ‘tickets for today’; otherwise you might have to queue twice.  You need to make a decision whether you want to return on a particular train, or whether you want to be at liberty to return any time you like.  These decisions will determine the price of your ticket.

Once you have your ticket, you might need to buy some things.  I sometimes buy something to read, and often tissues and maybe water.  Some people buy things to eat on the train, but when we are traveling together, I will always make us a picnic.  Having a picnic on the train is one of the most fun things to do in the world.

To get to the train you need to put your ticket into the machine at the ticket barrier, and find the right platform.  If you pick the wrong platform, the chances are you will take the wrong train accidentally.  This has actually happened to me and I can report that it is quite time-consuming to take the wrong train.  It is also important to concentrate on the time so that you don’t miss your train.  This is easier by yourself than with others.  Once you are on the right train to the right place at the right time, it is the moment to concentrate on finding a place to sit.  At a table is best for picnics, but this is not always possible.  Right now I also like to pick a quiet carriage but when we travel together, we will probably picnic an ordinary carriage, where you can laugh and joke and don’t have to be extra quiet.

Once the train departs, the next adventure begins.

things I want to tell my children but might forget – winter walking

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Walking in streets

Wherever we decide to go, we will be likely to be walking down streets to get there.  Hopefully it will be a sunny day, either crisp and cold, if it’s winter, or a fresh feeling in the air if it’s spring, or a hazy sunshine if it’s summer, or a bit blustery if it’s autumn.  If it’s raining, we will all have umbrellas.

As I am writing it is winter, so we will think about winter walking in streets.  There are two main kinds of winter walking.  The first kind is on a bright sunny day with blue sky.  On bright sunny days, it is normally colder, so you get some startling sensations.  One is the sensation of the bright light dazzling your eyes.  It is true that there might be a brighter light in summer, but in winter your eyes may not have seen such brightness for a while, so it feels more intense.  Also, if there is a frost or snow, the bleached colours reflect the sun more, adding to its intensity.  Another sensation is the breathing in cold air through your mouth.  Winter time often means spending lots of time indoors, with only indoors air to breathe.  This makes the sensation of breathing in outside air startlingly distinctive.  It is like breathing in freshness and adventure and mystery and delight.  As well as the feeling of the cold air in your lungs, there is the sharp tingling of the cold air being breathed through your nose.  However warm the rest of you is, your nose is poking out and gets the full freezingness of the atmosphere.  Even if this is a little bit painful, it makes you feel alive.  And this distinction between warm and cold is something you can only feel in winter.  In the summer, your body is warm, the air is warm, your breathing is warm.  But in the winter, while you may be warm as toast, the air around you is cold as ice.  These changes in sensation are one of the most exciting things about winter walking.

The second kind of winter walking is on a day when the sky is filled with a blanket of cloud (this is called being ‘overcast’).  Unlike the crisp clear blue sky winter walking, overcast winter walking feels mysterious.  The cloud dampens all sounds and makes even your steps sound covert.  Overcast winter walking calls for quiet voices and holds a sense of waiting – will it snow?  You are huddled together with everyone under a winter duvet, but everyone is in their individual world wondering what will happen next.  Even if the temperature is the the same as crisp clear blue sky winter walking, the sensations of seeing, sniffing and breathing are all a little bit attenuated (this means being held back a little bit, or reduced).  This makes it just a little bit easier to go quickly going about your business, as if under the radar, always ready to make a run for home.

things I want to tell my children but might forget – dressing

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Dressing

Out of the bath, it’s time to get dressed.  I bet you love dressing up.  Whether you are a child or an adult, dressing is a great activity.  Let me tell you some more about dressing.

Well first, let’s be clear that there is a continuum of dressing fun (a continuum is a wide range on an imaginary line).  On one end, there’s clothes just for being covered and keeping warm.  We are lucky that we have enough clothes to always wear a top and bottoms and shoes, and to keep warm.  Then along the continuum we have all sorts of extra things that we can do with clothes.  We can have clothes for different activities, for gardening, swimming, gymnastics, dancing, climbing mountains, even going to the moon.  Then as we go further along the continuum right towards the other end we have clothes that say something.  What can clothes say? I hear you ask.  Well, this is something very interesting.  Imagine you had two outfits, one was a plain top and jeans, and one was a top with a sunshine on and jeans.  The outfit you might pick on a particular day might depend on a few things.  Let’s have a think about what these clothes might say.

So, why might you pick sunshine top?  Well, you might be feeling particularly happy, and want to celebrate it by wearing a sunshine.  Or you might be feeling a bit sad, but then think that wearing a sunshine all day would help you to feel happier.  Or you might be about to see a friend that day who’s nickname is ‘sunshine’, in which case wearing your top might be like a joke or a wink.  Or you might be about to see some friends who need perking up, in which case a sunshine top might do the trick.  Can you see that in each case your top is trying say something?  ‘I am happy’, ‘I am hopeful of being happy’, ‘ha! I was thinking of you when I got dressed’, or ‘there is something to be happy about’.

Now this is only a very simple example.  In fact there are infinite things that clothes can say (infinite means more than can ever be counted).  For example, say you wanted to wear your Batman outfit.  Perhaps this can say ‘I want to be like Batman, to be brave and rescue people who are in danger.’  Or you might want to wear a vet outfit.  Perhaps this can say “I love animals and like practising for being a grown-up’.

One particular outfit that you will have to wear one day is what is called a school uniform.  When people go to school, they often have to wear special clothes so that they look the same as each other.  Now that we’ve thought of some of the things clothes can say, it might be a bit funny to think of everyone wearing the same.  But there are some very clever reasons for a school uniform.  The first one is to build what is called ‘esprit de corps’.  This is a French phrase which means literally ‘the spirit of the body’, but sometimes it is called ‘team spirit.’  What this means is that instead of everyone all being their own individual selves, doing and wearing whatever they like, they choose to act together (like a body!).  This means that they will be kind to each other, and to work towards goals that they share.  You can see that in a school, this could be useful.  Everyone has a common goal (learning) and wearing the uniform helps everyone to recognise that.  In a way a school uniform is saying its own thing, ‘we are here to learn’.  There are some other useful reasons for a school uniform.  It makes it simple to get ready for school because you don’t spend time wondering what to wear.  It also means that when some people have more money and some people have less money, their clothes won’t be able to say this, and so people won’t treat each other differently.  You might not have thought about this, but imagine you know two friends and one has a large bag of sweets and one has a small bag of sweets.  I’m guessing that you might be tempted to be nicer to the large-bag-of-sweets friend.  Over time, we try to train ourselves to be kind to everyone whatever they might be able to offer us, but this takes practice.

When I think about getting dressed I like to choose something that fits how I feel, what I want to say, and what I need to do that day.  I take into account whether I will be doing all the same thing, or lots of different things.  If lots of different things, then I will need to choose an outfit that is more versatile.

One of my favourite things, which I am sure you will love too, is getting really dressed up for a party, in beautiful clothes.  When people all decide to get dressed up in their special clothes, it is as if some magic has come along.  All the girls and ladies look more beautiful, and all the boys and men look more handsome.  When everyone dresses like this, it is like everyone is saying ‘the world is a beautiful place.  Even if sometimes sad things happen, there is still beauty enough to cover over the sad things and help us be hopeful.  Each of us has a special part to play in making the world full of joy and delight.’

So what are you going to wear today?  I want to wear my new blue velvet coat, so we better plan a trip somewhere!

things I want to tell my children but might forget – bathing

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But before we go to France let’s talk about a few more things to do with getting up.  After breakfast, I like to have a bath (I would like to have written ‘take a bath’ because this is how people in olden times might say it and it is like a wink to the past to do this, but really I would normally say have a bath).

Quite a lot of people think that there is no time to have a bath in the morning.  Maybe it is because you haven’t arrived in your life yet, but I love to have a bath and because I am in charge of my own time and not (yet) sharing it, I can.  When you arrive in my life you will probably start by being bathed in the evening before bed.  This is nice too because you can go to bed all clean.  I am not sure, we will all have to see what works for us all.

But back to bathing.  Whether in the morning or at night, a bath is a special event for several reasons.  Firstly, it is a real privilege because in the time and place we live, we have warm running water.  Secondly it is like swimming and your whole body can enjoy the pleasure of being in a comforting environment.  If you are grown up like me, bathing also connects you to lots of happy memories of childhood, and for all of us bathing connects us to people who have lived since the beginning of the world, because bathing is common to many cultures (a culture is build up of actions and thoughts in a particular place or group over time); people have always needed to get clean.  In the bath you are your most ordinary self.  No one is expecting anything of you and it’s clear that you are skin and bones and toes and legs and arms.  It is easy to forget this at other times.  It’s also somewhere where you can smell beautiful smells that sometimes you don’t have time to take in.  I love rose and peony but I also love seaside smells and richer scents like verbena and fir and lemon.

When you are in a bath there is a fun game you can play which is called Bubble Factory.  You put bubble bath in and then see how much foam you can create by agitating the water to make bubbles.  This is particularly fun if you are in the bath with your brothers and sisters.  Also, you can make foam hair and beards and pretend to be Father Christmas, and you can make designs in foam on your tummy.  Foam is amazing!  It’s incredible that you can create it from just a tiny bit of soap and water.  Once my brother put bubble bath in a special bath called a spa-bath and it made so much foam that the room was filled almost to the ceiling and he couldn’t see the door to get out!

So a morning bath can set you up for a happy day because of all the lovely things that you get to experience in the water.  In the house I live in now, I can also see the sky from the window in the bathroom which means that sometimes I can lie in the bath and watch clouds float past.  Then it’s like there’s foam in the bath water and foam in the blue sky, which makes it feels like the inside and outside worlds are singing call and response to each other.