I’ve mentioned Tom Hodgkinson on here before. He’s the editor of The Idler, and has written books “How to Be Idle”, “How to be Free” and “The Idle Parent”. I love the principles expressed in “How to be Free” (though not all the ideas in the book), and while I don’t agree with the term Idle I think The Idle Parent is a must-read and describes well how I was brought up and how I wish to bring up my own children.
I’m writing a series of blog posts exploring these two books, and the ideas contained in them further, in the hope that this will help me to explore further the principles behind my own way of living and parenting.
How to be Free
Chapter 8 - Stop Competing - START A GUILD
Is competition healthy? Since Darwin, with the concept of Survival of the Fittest, life seems to be about competing with the Joneses. But surely the net result of unfettered competition is that one company / species comes out on top, having destroyed or swallowed up all their competitors. Is this one the best, or just the best at competing? Doesn’t competition kill variety?
Tom suggests that competition in the realm of play is a good thing, leading to fun and games; competition in business and ethics is bad. It leads to poor wages, poor quality, poor treatment of staff – all in the name of “beating” the other guys. “You’ve got to be tough to survive” – is life really all down to survival? What happened to savouring life, living joyfully, and loving?
There are situations in both other cultures, and in nature, of mutual aid – symbiotic relationships rather than parasitism. Hospitality for the sake of hospitality. Giving freely to the poor and needy. At one stage in European history, the principle aim of most people wasn’t how to make lots of money, but how to save their soul, and working was often seen as just another vanity. Guilds were set up with a complex system of values to allow work that wouldn’t displease God. The aims were to work creatively, not do too much work, agree prices without competition, look after fellow craftsmen, including apprentices and those who can’t work any more, high quality. Members of the guilds paid a membership which went to look after tradesmen who couldn’t work any more, widows and their families and great halls and feasts. This has been tried again in various guises over the centuries, with people living in various co-operative communes. The key here is in neighbourliness.
How does this match up to the Ink Spots and Grass Stains life?
I like this idea. Anybody who knows me will know that I am competitive, but I hope that they would agree that I am more competitive with myself than with anybody else – which I don’t think is a bad thing. I’m certainly not one for keeping up with the Joneses, though I admit, I sometimes get a little smug when I compare my children with others – is that “competitive mum syndrome”? I love variety.
I am also very much in favour of what Tom describes as “mutual aid” helping other people just because it’s a good thing to do, not because there’s anything in it for ourselves. This does require us to break down some barriers, both for ourselves and with our neighbours, and ask for and offer help more freely – it’s something that in our culture we have got out of the habit of.
Easy to set up. Oodles of fun. Fish out all those empty plant pots from the shed or greenhouse and show your toddler how to make castles with them. Because the pots are different sizes they can learn lots about relative size. The castle takes shape straight away, so there's instant gratification. It's an activity that once you've shown them, they are happy to get out and play again without your help.
For the sculpture, I put all the shells on the table and the children explored them. They built little towers... had a taste... waved them around... and just had a good look.
Afterwards I brought in various twigs from the garden, some string and a large plant pot. I used big pebbles to wedge one of the twigs into an upright position. Then I asked C where we should attach the other twigs, and showed him how to tie them on.
I showed him how to thread shells with holes on to string.
From then on we just put the shells all over the sculpture, some threaded on to string, others on the base and some just hanging on to the nobbly bits of the twigs.
I’ve mentioned Tom Hodgkinson on here before. He’s the editor of The Idler, and has written books “How to Be Idle”, “How to be Free” and “The Idle Parent”. I love the principles expressed in “How to be Free” (though not all the ideas in the book), and while I don’t agree with the term Idle I think The Idle Parent is a must-read and describes well how I was brought up and how I wish to bring up my own children.
I like this idea. Anybody who knows me will know that I am competitive, but I hope that they would agree that I am more competitive with myself than with anybody else – which I don’t think is a bad thing. I’m certainly not one for keeping up with the Joneses, though I admit, I sometimes get a little smug when I compare my children with others – is that “competitive mum syndrome”? I love variety.
Best of all for Mummy and Daddy I think, while exploring the coast nearby, and stopping in some woods to take the Waggy-Tailed-One for a walk, we stumbled across the Scottish Beaver Project. I had been hoping so much that we would be able to see the Beaver place, knowing that it was in Argyle, but I had assumed that it would be too far from where we were staying and much more remote, so I was delighted! 
It was excellent. There was soooooo much to see and do. It was really inexpensive, especially as under 3's were free, and since there's so much to do you could stay there all day. We looked at and stroked the animals - there were pigs, calves (you could help bottle feed them), chickens, geese, a horse, ducks, goats (with lots of fun things to climb), as well as plenty of rabbits and guinea pigs.
There were museum type bits, with a water wheel, an old forge, old farm equipment and more. There are tractor rides and a narrow gauge railway (summer weekends), river side walks, undercover picnic area as well as loads of picnic space outdoors, a tea-room (a little over-priced for what you get, next time we'll take a picnic).
There were mini-ride-on-tractors to play with... 
...for both of them
There were swings, slides, indoor and outdoor play areas, picnic benches, a simulated archaelogical dig (big undercover sandpit with clay pots and bones and things to discover), trampolines (she loved it!), a wooden train (we couldn't get him off it!), a bouncy castle. 
