and integrated individuals equipped with a high degree of social competence. Teaching is intended to emphasize qualitative over quantitative assessment methods. Each school has a high degree of autonomy to decide how best to construct its curriculum and govern itself.
3. Neuro Linguistic Programming.
4. I love my sister to pieces and I am SO happy she was born. But in 1990 I was nine and a half and I was fucked off. I wanted a kitten. My brother had a rabbit, and it all felt very unfair.
5. http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/About_the_Court/index.html I think we went so that she could research EO (Education Otherwise). There was a brief period where they thought about educating us at home.
6. Tipi Valley is the daddy of all UK Eco communities. Founded in 1976, it’s a 200-acre expanse of rolling countryside bought piece by piece from local farmers by its 200 or so residents (100 during the winter). The community includes families, singletons, activists, hippies, many ‘originals’, festival junkies, environmentalists, astrologers, artists, musicians and the like. The majority live in low-impact dwellings – tipis, yurts, caravans, huts, round houses – scattered across the idyllic valley. Source: http://www.huckmagazine.com/. For more information about communal living and eco-communities see http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/.
7. http://www.millionaireminduk.com/ A 3-day seminar created by T. Harv Eker on money and mindset.
8. To identify your money memories and reframe them go to www.misfit2maven.com/bonuses
ALWAYS TOO MUCH, NEVER ENOUGH
I moved to a proper high school in the spring of 1992. Big school. Fucking HUGE school. I went from a class of 21 children and 8 classes in the whole school to a class of 35, 10 classes in a year and 5 years in one campus. Mind BLOWN.
It was scary, but it was also exciting; the ultimate chameleon test.
The lessons were boring, the teachers were boring and most of the people were boring, but this was normality and I had arrived. Some of these kids were cool and I wanted to be like them.
I wanted to engage, I wanted to make friends and be a part of their world, but I’d joined in the spring term and everyone already had a best friend and a group that they hung with. I didn’t know how to act in this environment, I hadn’t worked out the rules yet. So I just loitered in between the groups, flitting from one to another and trying to figure it all out. I desperately wanted to belong, but I didn’t fit anywhere. I saw this move into normality as an opportunity and I was determined to make the most of it.
Why won’t you like me? What are the rules? How do I play?
Outside of school I had festivals, not the big music festivals you might know of, but smaller camps organised by peace-loving, art-making eco warriors. Some I went to with my family, some I went to alone or with festival friends and their parents. At these festivals there was always a space especially for teenagers like us and I could relax and be myself there. I didn’t feel like I fully belonged, most of the other juves1 knew each other outside of these camps, their families and lives were intertwined beyond the time we spent in a field and in my mind this was their space. I wasn’t the same as them either. They didn’t seem to have the kind of ambition I did. They weren’t interested in things and stuff like I was. I wanted consumerism. I wanted the status a job title gave. I longed for the badge a fancy car provided. I ached for external validation and proof that I belonged. They belonged here, and I was an inbetweener, I wasn’t quite one of them and I wasn’t quite a normal person.
However these people were kind and inclusive and so I was accepted as one of them, and with them was the one place I felt most like myself. I am grateful for every single one of those people in their fields of tents and yurts and tipis for what they taught and instilled in me.
I lived for the summers and half-term holidays. There was always a gathering or festival to go to and I got to feel briefly that I was somewhat part of something. The people at these festivals have huge open hearts, it was always a big extended surrogate family, and they were kind enough to include and love me. I got to be out in nature and I could be all of myself there, I was just really unsure who that was.
Back in term time I still just could not figure out how to get the normal kids to like me. I tried my best to blend in, but I just didn’t get it. They didn’t get me and I so desperately wanted to get them. I felt sure that if I figured them out I could work out how to fit in. I could bend and sculpt myself to be one of them.
ME?
WHEN I THINK, WELL WHO AM I?
I TAKE MY TIME AND PONDER HARD,
I REALLY CANNOT SAY IN WORDS...
I’M FAT AND SHORT AND FUNNY AND PROUD!
I STAND UP TALL AND WATCH THE CROWD.
I LIKE TO LOVE, AND LOVE TO BE LIKED.
I JUMP, I HOP AND LEAP AND SKIP,
(AND WISH THAT I COULD BACKFLIP)
BUT MOST OF ALL I SLEEP AT NIGHT, AND DREAM...
AND HOPE...
THAT ONE DAY I’LL FIND A PLACE I FIT.
– EXTRACT FROM MY DIARY IN THE SUMMER OF 1993 AGED 12, NEARLY 13.
One day a group of girls invited me to come to the fairground with them.
Oh my God they like me!
So I went. As we dawdled at a snail’s pace along the pavement, dragging our heels and sprawling across the entire walkway, completely unaware of anyone trying to get past, one of the girls pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
‘I stole these from my mum. Who’ll smoke one with me?’
And I was in, I belonged.
I decided that the goal was to be normal enough to blend in, but edgy enough to be cool and hide the fact that I was not really at all normal. This meant pushing the boundaries in every direction but not drawing attention to my rebellion or recklessness in a way that would alert my parents or teachers who might raise the alarm.
During the years that followed I did many things to prove that I belonged, including but not limited to:
• Skiving off school, particularly maths lessons
• Shoplifting – I used police cars as taxis for a while, and tried to steal only from large corporations and not independent storeowners.
• Hitching from the countryside
