 Not long after I had retired from full-time teaching, I visited the local pre-school centre, with an offer to play the piano for the children, if, and whenever they would like.
“Piano?” the teachers questioned. “Piano?” they again asked, looking at me as if I were a visitor from some distant galaxy. “We don’t have a piano,” they said. (AS if!) I could only apologise for being such an ignoramus but retained enough courage to ask what they ‘did’ for music. “Oh, we have a CD player,” was the answer. I walked away, feeling demoralised, elderly, and disappointed. Perhaps it was just me who assumed that music – and, in particular piano music - played an important part in young children’s learning days. Apparently not. It was then that I realised I had been fortunate to have a had a piano in my classroom more often that not during my 30+ year teaching career. Although there were a couple of times when I had made do with an electric keyboard, that was okay. To ‘start the day with a song’ had been my sort of credo when teaching in primary school. This often extended to a joyful 20 – 30-minute session with other classes joining ‘my’ kids. Therefore up to 90 children beginning the ‘working’ day with songs and smiles. Lately, I am hearing a lot about how stressful school has become for many little children. Mainly connected with the disruption caused by Covid-19. Parents have spoken of their children refusing to go to school or being miserable about school days. I may be naïve – and I know that there is a huge worry about the Covid virus for parents and children, but I do wonder if a little more music in schools, especially first thing in the mornings, creating a happier start to each day, might appeal to the reluctant students.
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 Hey, King Charles. . . Listen up!
The year is 2023. Displays of pomp and ceremony - and vulgar wealth-splashing - are well past their use-by date. Your coming coronation is nothing but a gaudy, ostentatious display of privilege that is unnecessary in these times. Too late now, I suppose, to stop this spectacle. But, once it is over, how about you have a good hard think about what it was all about and what it achieved? Time to sell off the diamonds and other crown jewels. Use the money towards helping the sick and needy. Give the golden coach to a museum and charge for viewing. Auction off the golden thrones. There’s sure to be narcissistic American billionaires who would buy them at a price. Rent out rooms in the various palaces to ‘entitled’ poseurs who would delight in possessing a posh address, and give that income also to the sick and needy. Cast off the hangers-on and leeches, such as your brother Andrew, and make him fend for himself. Free the servants and find them constructive jobs elsewhere. Set the horses free to roam in peaceful country paddocks. You and “Queen” Camilla could surely find a small cottage in Surrey or Devon to live self-sustainably. Be useful for once. And, while I’m on the subject of gold and wealth and spectacle, don’t start me on the Pope and the Vatican! (WWJD?)  Any followers of my blog posts will know that I had stopped posting for a while, due mainly to the ‘argument’ I have been having with Weebly, who insist that I pay them for the privilege of posting words attached to their site.
The upshot of this is that (paradoxically), even though I have succumbed and am paying a small amount, I am now out of the habit of blogging. I have been reading over my past blogs, starting back in in 2012, and am a little amazed at what I was writing over 10 years ago. Nevertheless it has been interesting to read, but now I seem to be out of ideas. No subject that grabs me seems worthy of writing about. Politics is boring and, in many cases, depressing and maddening. Take, for instance the Australian opposition leader’s approach to wrecking what I consider to be an essential referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution. Then, looking overseas, in U.S., the bizarre debacle over Trump’s criminal charges and the response of his supporters is too grotesque to even bother reading about, let alone commenting on. In the UK, the resultant mess of leaving the European Union and the ghastly state the nation is in is too upsetting to mention. France is descending into chaos over a two year increase in the pension age. And Putin is demolishing Ukraine because he wants it. So….in desperation I Googled “subjects to write a blog about”, only to be disappointed to see suggestions included writing about fashion, celebrities, business, films and a few other unappealing (to me) topics. So, here I am, back on the blog wagon, with nothing to say. Astounding that I can just now write over 300 words about ‘nothing’, but there you go! www.diannaedwardsandwriting.com  ,After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I am back on my blog site, allowed to post, as I have reluctantly paid Weebly a small sum ($10 per month) to allow this.
I am not happy about it and will follow their plans and regulations to see if I will be permitted to, one day, after ceasing to write blogs, I may stop paying the fee, yet NOT have Weebly obliterating everything I have written over the past 12 years. Hopefully I will have some interesting thoughts to share soon. In the meantime, I have been reading over blog posts from 2012 and discovered that I wrote more frequently then - and yet not as many words. Interesting! |
