Category Archives: Growing up

Whither GP1?

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It seems a long time ago since I started this blog. My concerns at that stage seem so distant. Life has indeed moved on. It is over a year now since Tim (aka GP2) left school and Standard Grades, Highers, SQA, Curriculum for Excellence, Leaps, are now of no more than passing academic interest. Time for a round up.

So, Chris/GP1/Ginger left that fine academic institution that is Ross High School three years ago with a respectable assortment of Highers, Advanced Highers and various other SQA offerings. I can’t really say, hand on heart, that he ever quite got studying but hey, he did what he needed. We suggested he took a year out to figure out what he really wanted to do before moving on to more studying but he didn’t want to, so onwards it was. I think perhaps he couldn’t visualise the alternatives to the school-college route – it was a sort of comfort blanket that didn’t require too much thinking. LEAPS summer school (he didn’t really get that, either) was followed by Sport Science at Heriot Watt University.

Oh dear. Oh Heriot Watt – do you have no student support system that flags up when things are not going as they should? It was obvious to us by Christmas Continue reading →

Vintage – or maybe retro

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I keep having failed attempts to reboot my blog.  Unfortunately, it may have found new impetus from an entirely unwanted direction.  So just to cheer myself up, I thought I’d dig out something for this week’s Gallery – Vintage.

My father took this photograph of me (I’m the little one at the front) and my older sister and brother, just about to set off for school. It must have been roundabout 1960, when we lived in Kuala Lumpur.  Don’t you just love those school baskets?   We had cute little straw hats for going to church on Sundays.  And the sandals! I think the shoe shop was Batu Shoes.The car – a Zephyr, I think but I might well be wrong – is classic rather than vintage but let’s not quibble.

I’m not sure why I’m looking so cheerful in this picture. My earliest memories of school Continue reading →

Onwards and upwards

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Life has moved on in the Guineapig  Household this summer.  In fact, I was wondering if it was time for a name change but I’m really quite attached to Guineapigmum so I think I’ll stick with it for the time being.  The biggest change is that Number 1 son, GP1, is now in residence at one of those institutions where teenagers practice sleeping, drinking and spending their parents’ money.  Yes he’s now at university. It’s not quite as far afield as originally planned. He got cold feet at some point during the summer (it may well have been the point at which he hitched up with a new young lady) and changed his UCAS options. He’s now in halls somewhere on the outskirts of Edinburgh and learning to cook, drink (did I mention that?), run up phone bills and play. And he’s home almost every weekend.  Well, you get fed at home, don’t you?

He didn’t work quite hard enough during 5th year Continue reading →

Drifting thoughts

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I know that, as a responsible citizen with a fully paid up TV licence, I should have been watching the Prime Ministerial debates during the election campaign. And I did, I really did, listen to part of each of them on the kitchen radio  following the Guineapig family’s various Thursday evening jumping around activities in disparate parts of East Lothian.  But I only listened to part of them because on Thursday evening at 9.30pm Outnumbered came on the box.  The series is now finished, sadly.  Political debate v Outnumbered?  Scripts v improvisation? Adults arguing like children or children arguing like adults? No competition.

Anyhow, one of the best episodes of the election campaign was the one where the family discovers that Ben’s a whizz at chess.  It suits him because spear wielding knights can charge through the opposing army and lay waste in all directions while alien pawns come hurtling in from outer space.  As part of the discovery process there were dicussions about the relative merits of letting your child win as opposed to playing to win yourself.  Of course, when Ben trounced them all they all protested that they’d just let him win.  No, they didn’t fool the viewers.   It set me wondering, though, at what point I stopped playing GP2’s Scrabble hand as well as my own and started playing for my own survival.  I’m just about hanging on to my winning record, but only just.  And when did I start finding the crossword has been done by one of the children before I get there?

There are so many other events that slipped past me unobserved.  Continue reading →