Just a little update about some things I heard a child say today.

 “I know all the w(h)ales: the country, blue and killer”

“I did used to want to go to Antarctica but now I don’t want to because I might find I’m the wrong way up”.

An interesting thing I found out about today is scorpions. As I have mentioned before I like to know about things that are a bit frightening and I think scorpions count.

The thing I found out that I thought was most interesting is that when scorpions are angry they say “ha-tsu”. So if you hear someone say “ha-tsu” watch out as they may be a scorpion about to attack. I also did not know that there is a belief that scorpions commit suicide if surrounded by fire by stinging themselves. I don’t know if I’m relieved to discover this is not true. They can’t do that as they are not sensitive to their own venom. Which makes sense really as it would be bad to carry a substance around with you which could kill you. They have also been known to survive radiation testing. And they are occasionally born with two tails. This is a genetic abnormality.

Other animals also say strange things when they are cross. Both tigers and weasels say “fuff”.

This week there was another one of those things when someone goes into a school and shoots a load of kids.  The thing I think is strange about this is that there is then a whole series of reports about how the person had mental health problems, as though this is a big surprise.  Surely going into a school and shooting children is a pretty clear indicator of mental illness.

The slant never seems to be: how come this person didn’t get more help?  Why isn’t there much support for people with those types of problems?  This is particularly ridiculous when you consider that about 1 in 4 people suffer a period of depression in their lives.  Obviously only a fraction of people with mental illness will go into a school and do some shooting, but I think this all points to the fact that there’s not enough focus on helping people be well mentally.  I think this probably starts with parenting and education.  After all, there is so much emphasis on academic achievement that actually being ok is forgotten.  It also doesn’t help that any other label will do, just not mental health problems.  I’m very often involved in the process of diagnosing autism and it seems to me that some kids get that diagnosis instead of a diagnosis of mental health problems, or they may have both difficulties but just get one label – autism. 

One real problem with this is that it means that people don’t realise that more people need to be paid to work in mental health for adults and for children so no-one does anything about it, and that it should be a part of home and school life too.  Also, people think they’ve got the answer and everything is down to autism, when maybe we’re missing something…

It’s the same with the original “I don’t like mondays” case.  Turns out Brenda Ann Spencer used the gun her father gave her when she was less than 17 in the shootings and never had any coherent reason for what she did.  Didn’t anyone wonder why her father had bought her a gun in the first place?  And isn’t there something wrong when a person doesn’t seem to understand why it matters that she killed some people?

I think this will probably keep happening as long as society doesn’t try to care for children’s needs rather than just their education.  And whilst anything is blamed instead of realising that one way or another those people just weren’t looked after well enough.

I am very glad of all the messages that have been put up so far – thanks.  I did not think anyone would look so it’s really good when people do.

I am about to go to bed (feeling sleepy, as Liam advised) but a quick addition to my comments on spiders:

I found out today that tarantulas can die by falling down stairs.  This is because they have an exoskeleton rather than an endoskeleton so they can be “broken”.  This makes them, in this respect, a little more like a crab than a spider.  Last night my sleep problem involved waking up in the middle of the night thinking there was a spider on me.  I had to put the light on and check all around.  Sorry Ben.  Now I know that if I think there is a spider on me, I just have to thrown it very hard against a wall and that will break it. 

Sweet dreams.

I would have thought now that the weather is warm that the spiders would go and live outside.  But we have had two very enormous spiders in our house in the last two days.  They were definitely not the same spider as their proportions were different. 

The first spider was getting on for the size of my hand but with a medium sized body and quite long legs.  We thought about (and briefly tried) to drown it but then decided to let it outside as spiders are really useful.  They eat all the dirty things like flies and also make good food for birds. 

The second spider was also nearly the size of my hand but this one had a most enormous body and fairly stubby legs.  This is more like me.  I have a very long body and short legs.  I am about 5″3 and have a longer body than my sister who is 5″5.  This means that I am surprising when I stand up because you will have been expecting me to be taller.

I wonder if the spiders are staying in our house because we have an unusually large number of birds around outside.  Our house has quite a lot of tress outside and us and the next door neighbours have seed hanging up.  Within 24 hours the birds have eaten all our seeds as there is so very many of them.  They are really nice, there are all kinds of different ones and I’m only just learning their names.  So maybe spiders feel too threatened outside.  They don’t need to worry though – the birds must always be stuffed full of seeds.

The other thing that will come up now and then on here is things to do with my job which is a speech therapist.  I work in mainstream and special schools and it is pretty interesting.  The thing I have found is that parents sometimes have no idea what to look for in a school.  I think someone (me?) should publish a guide with suggestions.  Not that everyone should look for the same thing, but they should know how to identify what it is they want.  Also I don’t think parents know how good it is to have children with significant needs in the same class as their child.  There is no way they could know I think.  After all you would think it would mean that their child would get less support. 

What I think really happens (or can happen at least) in a school where there is every kind of child, is that the school looks at the children as individuals so they can support the child’s whole development, not just academic progress.  It helps them recognise the good things children can do which maybe aren’t measured by tests.  So not only do they recognise skills in children with special needs, they can recognise important skills in all the children.  Like learning to be fair and kind and thoughtful and considerate.  All the things that make you a good person to know and to live with… That’s not to say children with special needs can’t also suceed academically, just that you begin to realise that’s a small part of what helps a child to be the best person they can be in every way.

 I don’t suppose I will ever write such a document, but I think it’s really good to think about what actually matters for a child and how you can spot those things in a school.  And maybe if parents stop thinking that children with special needs will deprvie their own child of support then staff at schools won’t feel that way either.

 Sorry, this is probably a really boring entry but I still think it’s interesting!

Well, as predicted playing Harry Potter very quietly wasn’t particularly effective.  So thanks to Liam for his suggestion – I will try that this evening.  This obviously provides opportunities for any malicious sly-plotters to get me to try strange and obscure sleep cures but I think Liam’s sounds quite safe.  Except I might have trouble getting up in the morning.  But then I don’t have to get up in the morning.

 Also QI is on tonight at 10pm on BBC2.  This may not help me sleep, but it will provide fantastic entertainment whilst I am awake.  It is a re-run of the last series – I was hopeful for a minute that it might be a new series, but that is still very good.  I think it is my best programme.  It is followed by the new series of Peep Show.  This is bad news at it is Ben’s best programme and my worst.  I can see it’s very funny but it just makes me cringe inside so badly.  But I have to get a bit immune to programmes before I can like them.  Took me months to like The Office so there is hope.

This is my first blog entry in my new blog and it is about sleeping.  This is likely to be a recurring theme on this blog as

                             1.  I like sleeping a lot

                             2.  I am having trouble sleeping.

So any remedies would be gratefully received.  At the moment I am trying listening to audio books in bed – sometimes this works but often it doesn’t.  I think maybe Harry Potter is just too exciting.  I like listening to it though.  It is Stephen Fry reading it which is really good.  Also, although I don’t think J.K.Rowling writes particularly well the key thing, it seems to me, is that she creates a world I enjoy being in.  That makes me want to listen to or read her books because it would be great to actually be in those books.  So even though her use of language is a bit limited at times, and at others sounds like she’s been looking through a thesaurus for long words, I still like the books.

 But they’re not helping me sleep.  I think the next thing to try is having it on really quietly.  Only then I might be listening so intently that I’m even less likely to fall asleep.

 Goodnight.

• 4 large christmas dinners in 4 days
• blubber
• 4 inches of snow at home
• but we are in birmingham
• very cold
• nice presents
• bad tv
• better books
• jose gonzalez
• jonny greenwood
• other people whose initials are jg?
• open fire
• plans for next year
• new job in one week
• hibernating

The only reason that I look at the internet is to see pictures of jumps, so as a Christmas present for you I want to find the 10 best pictures of jumps that there are. I have got some on my hard disk but if you have any you want to suggest then either put them on the book or email them to ben at scruffian dot com.

If you haven’t seen this yet it’s crazy.