Knowledge

This morning I walked in the sunshine down to the local train station with my daughter. I was there solely as a beast of burden, my task was to carry a lightweight but large and unwieldy canvas, a crucial resource for her GCSE art exam on Thursday and Friday this week. Although producing creative work under exam conditions feels rather counter-intuitive to me. Apparently the reason why many exam boards have moved away from the assessment by coursework that was so in vogue when I was taking exams, is that it’s almost impossible to verify whether the work submitted has been produced by student effort alone. Once parents would have shamefacedly admitted that they had done most of their offspring’s coursework, now they have been supplanted by AI. Allegedly. My daughter’s drawing skills far outstrip my own, words are more my thing, and her coursework sketchbook is a thing of original beauty.

As I write I am surrounded by many students, as I sit in the barrel-vaulted splendour of the reading room at Bristol’s central library. Exam season is approaching, and so despite the beautiful sunshine outside the window, they must sit heads bowed, revising and reviewing their stock of knowledge, hoping that it will be enough. With the return of settled sunny weather, I have felt so fortunate over the last week to have spent most of my time outdoors, including a couple of idyllic days supply work at Forest School, where summer term feels like a reward for sticking it out through the freezing muddy months of winter. Learning about bluebells and the difference between the native variety (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) with its delicate curving stem and delicate fairy bells and the more vigorous and invasive Spanish invader (Hyacinthoides hispanica) with a chunkier, more upright stem and bigger flowers. This is part of learning to care, to learn that native bluebells are protected, and that these woods are a special place to be treasured.

The parts of my week that were indoors were less joyful, requiring sitting in rooms with institutional sofas whose main attributes are that they are wipe clean and difficult to throw. It makes me waspish to see mental health awareness posters, syrupily urging people to ‘reach out’ for help. But then if you do ask for help from an institution, the process is extremely uncomfortable, requiring clipboards and set questions. The awareness that these services are under pressure, are rationed, there are thresholds that must be met, hangs in the air uneasily. I felt scrutinised and judged, and can't imagine it was any easier for my daughter. It was a relief to be outdoors again on Friday at Grow Wilder, where I am now over half way through the Grow Leader course. Here was another place to accumulate knowledge, but in a more organic and collective way. At lunchtime I passed the thicket of hazel saplings we transplanted at the beginning of March and was quietly thrilled to see them well established in their new home and coming into bright leaf.

Over the weekend I worked resolutely in my garden, hoping to exhaust myself enough to sleep well at night. The sunshine has boosted growth and there’s plenty to do. The pigeons and I are locked into a battle for incipient plums, as the white blossom from a few weeks ago has morphed into brilliant green jelly beans. Each time I see a plump woodpigeon land on a slender branch, weighing it down with its corpulence, I rush over, clapping my hands to scare them away. But the many fragments of leaf and blossom on the path below show me that I can’t always be around to protect the fruit. Hopefully there will be enough for us both to share. Although I do find myself thinking dark thoughts about the sparrowhawk we saw last autumn, she would be handy right now. Butterflies have appeared with the sunshine too, a tiny blue one and several pairs of cabbage whites spiralling around each other in their springtime dance. And I haven’t even begun to tell you about the herb bed, overflowing with buds, maybe next week...

This week a friend lent me Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton, as she thought I would appreciate a gentle read, I would highly recommend it. I have also just started Craftland by James Fox, which chronicles the vanishing traditional crafts of the British Isles. Yet another type of knowledge, which isn't measured by formal exams. More about what makes bluebells so special here. Photo shows my view up into the canopy on a break from work last week.