The real Malory Towers experience: Take your child to boarding school!

"You have to dress up posh too, mummy," says my daughter, half stern, half playful. "Or we'll never get away with it!"

Saturday morning and me and my 11-year-old daughter are going undercover.

We're going to the most expensive girls' boarding school in Britain (£37,275 a year to be exact) for their Open Day – as a pretend prospective pupil and parent. My bog-standard-state-school educated daughter has devoured Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series – just as I did when I was a kid – and her head is filled with a fantasy life of midnight feasts and hockey sticks. Wouldn't it be fun – and a tiny bit mischievous – to see inside that world for real? We're a little nervous (do we have the acting abilities to pull it off?), but really, what difference will one extra mother and daughter tagging along make? They'll barely notice us.

Wrong! All parents potentially willing to fork out £37K a year on their daughter's education will be noticed. People have flown in from all corners of the globe for this Open Day. It's a v. big deal. As soon as we enter, my bobbly coat is whisked off me (in the end I’d decided the I'm-so-posh-I-can-be-scruffy look would be more convincing) and we are greeted with fresh coffee, still-warm Danish pastries, and programmes with our names on (sports fixtures in school today: showjumping and lacrosse). 

A pretty, skirt-suited woman, a member of the leadership team, bounces over to us. "Just act confident," I whisper to my daughter. "It's all about confidence." The woman introduces herself and reassures us that she has worked in prep schools for many years before coming here so she "knows where the girls are coming from". "What school do you go to now?" she asks my daughter. My daughter looks her straight in the eye and says the name of her bog-standard-state-school loudly and clearly. I see the woman flicking furiously through her mental files of prep schools. Nope, that one's not in there. She moves on quickly. "So, would you be a boarder or a day girl?" "Oh, definitely boarding!" says my daughter, beaming. (Impressive acting!) "Oh yes, boarding is great fun," says the woman. "Like a perpetual sleepover, right? The other day, the girls all took their duvets down to the den with hot chocolate and marshmallows and slept there all night!" she continues, feeding my daughter's fantasies. 

Then she plucks us our own personal schoolgirl to be our tour guide: a quietly-spoken, very sweet girl in Year 8. I notice that both her shoelaces are undone and she has a big smudge across one of the lenses of her glasses (seems £37K a year doesn't get you quite the care from Matron you might hope for). "First, it's really great here," she says, without changing her expression."I have to tell you that first." (Have to? Like, instructed to?)

She takes us down Alice-in-Wonderland marble corridors and past a huge wood-panelled library with spiral staircases. "Wow, wow, wow!" my daughter and I mouth to each other with sneaky sideways glances. Her tour is interjected with bits of housekeeping information, like, "That's where you put your lac stick while you're in lessons". I nod, knowingly, as if lac is a word I bandy around a lot. 

I notice the door security code she presses to let us into the drama department is in roman numerals. (That should keep the riff-raff out.) She seems super-excited about using the lift to take us up to the theatre. "It's the only lift in the whole school," she tells us. "Everyone loves using it." I look at the buttons. There is only G, 1 and 2. "Erm, do you ever get to go out of the school?" I ask. "Yes!" she says. "Sometimes on a Saturday, Matron takes us to Waitrose." 

She escorts us to the astonishingly beautiful Assembly Hall with chandeliers, balconies and organ playing and we take our seats for an introductory talk and Q & A session with the Headteacher and senior teachers, a row of neat grey bobs and androgynous types in tracksuits. I get myself into slightly sticky waters when the couple next to me strike up a conversation. "It does make one reflect on one's own schooling, doesn't it? And whether you want the same or different for your own child." (Erm, yes, but not in the way you think). I bluff my way through with vague answers, reddening. I'm glad I put foundation on at least.  

The Head actually has a bun. And an ample bosom. Perfect. She's like a nice Miss Trunchbull and has a down-to-earth sense of humour. In answer to the question, "How do you keep the girls secure?" she replies, "Well, if I lose a girl, it's game over for me!" We're also reassured that House Mistresses keep an eye on the girls' table manners. She tells us that she went to this school herself. Now she works here. This is her world. "The chance to go into town with Matron [not just Waitrose] when they get to Year 11 becomes a wonderful thing," she tells us, without a hint of irony. 

Next we are taken to a Boarding House by two pupils from China. It is modern. Smart. Comforting, if not exactly cosy. We are greeted by the House Mistress (who lives in an adjoining apartment with her cat) and shown around: Dorms, showers, prep room, dining room. There's also a common room on every floor with sofas, cushions, beanbags – and microwaves. For their Waitrose-bought snacks.

Now, who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? It's fantastic. A choice of hot meals with a choice of hot side dishes, a salad bar, an assortment of fruit and desserts and cheese and crackers. We sit down with our trays and a group of five girls immediately join us. "Great food!" I say. "Yes," they agree. "Though you have to moan about school food. It's just what you do!" They seem eager to meet people from the outside world. Super-eager. They compete for my attention, talking over the top of each other, and I feel motherly towards them all. 

We're feeling really brave now and ask all the things we really want to know. Were you homesick? How often do you see your parents? Can you choose who you share a dorm with? Are you made to have a shower everyday? Do you have midnight feasts? They use words that are foreign to us like mufti and exeat and tell us the nitty-gritty details of their daily life: How their dirty laundry comes back to them washed, ironed and folded in their cubbyhole. How they have to do prep for an hour and a half every evening (though they're allowed to personalize their study booth). How you must walk to and from lessons with your Walking Buddy. How they get sanctions if they talk at night. And how they have to keep their mobile phone in a pigeon hole and are only allowed access to it twice a day (though one parent, they tell me with joyful horror, gave her daughter two phones, so she could secretly call her anytime). The chef rings a bell and two of them jump up like Pavlov's dogs. "That means seconds," they say. "Do you go to school with boys at your school now?" the others ask my daughter. She fends them off wonderfully. "Yes, but I  wish I didn't. Boys can be soooo annoying." She's way better at this than me. 

"So what are you doing this afternoon?" I ask as we get up from the table. "We're going to Waitrose with Matron!" they answer. "Everyone seems really keen on Waitrose here," I say. "Why's that?" They look puzzled. "Well...it's really big," one of them ventures. "So what's on your shopping list today? I ask curiously. "Strawberries!" they say. I look round at the food counter. There is a big pile of strawberries ready for the taking. Clearly, the thrill of Waitrose isn't about the food. 

As we enter the outside world, I'm eager to know my daughter's opinion of the place. "It's a bit like a prison," she says. In Malory Towers, it always says things like 'Daryl nipped off to post a letter', but those girls are there 24/7 – apart from when they go to Waitrose."

"That reminds me," I say."We need to get a few things for dinner on the way home. Let's go to that Waitrose over there." "Urgghhhhh..." she groans. "Do we have to?"

If you go down to the woods today: Go fairy-hunting

Fairy doors popping up in Oxfordshire said the BBC local news headline. Oh boy! Where were my wellies? I'm a sucker for imaginary worlds in the woods. The Magic Faraway Tree was my favouritest book in the whole world when I was a kid.

But where EXACTLY did we need to go to find these doors? It wasn't easy to find out, but eventually Google threw up some (enticing) directions: Cross the railway and go over the canal bridge. When you see the fairy wishing well on a tree by the gate, you'll know you're on the right path...

"Can I ask my friend William if he wants to come with us?" asks my daughter. "Yes, absolutely...[I stop, think] ... but maybe use the word 'elf' or 'gnome' rather than 'fairy' when you invite him..." [I'm being realistic, not sex stereotyping!]. He's up for it. And his mum says she's not missing out. We have our gang of fairy/elf/gnome hunters.

After a while, we start to wonder if we're on the right path. We've found nothing. And then there it is, a tiny wishing well with a super-cute rope ladder. 

And we're off, darting here and darting there, eyes scanning tree trunks, scrutinizing branches, till we make each delicious discovery. 

We linger over the details of the doors...

 

"A Chinese fairy must live at this one," says my daughter ...

"Can we make our own door and put it here?" says William. 

We know, they know, that there aren't actually any fairies, but it doesn't matter. It's exciting and happy-making all the same because it's out-of-the-ordinary, unexpected, mysterious. Someone (who?!) had the lovely idea to create these delightful doors and secretly crept around (at night?!) putting them in place. It merges the real world with the magical world of hidden, non-human creatures upon which so many children's books are based: The Borrowers, The Hobbit, The Indian in the Cupboard...

I half expected, half hoped Moonface would pop his head out of a tree to say hello. 

But anyway, let's get real. Want to go find these fairy doors for yourself? Send me a fiver and I'll tell you where they are. 

If you like this, you might like A fairy lives in our house. You can find out more about the Oxfordshire fairy doors here. You can also go fairy-hunting at Gelt Wood, Brampton, Cumbria. Fairy doors have mysteriously appeared there every summer since 2010.

A real eye-opener: Visit the National Guide Dog Breeding Centre

My daughter has a new friend who is visually impaired. She is easy and comfortable with him. Puts herself in his shoes. At least, knows to read him out the descriptions of the different flavours of Quality Street, not just pass him the box. She’s also started asking me to lead her while she walks all the way home from school with her eyes closed.

So when I recently found out you could visit (for free) the National Guide Dog Breeding Centre near Leamington Spa – which includes a ‘sensory tunnel’ where you briefly experience life without sight – it couldn’t have been better timing.

Our tour guides are Mary, from Cumbria, full of warmth, humour, snippets and stories...

...and Holly, a gentle brood bitch labrador-retriever, pregnant with her third litter of future guide dogs. My daughter and her friend can’t keep their hands off her! And she doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

They are going to take us around the centre and show us the whole Guide Dog ‘production line’ (output: up to 1,500 dogs a year!) – from pre-whelping (ante-natal in human terms) to the seven-week-old puppies who are ready to leave the centre and begin their socialization programme.

We do, however, politely bypass the “honeymoon suite” where the stud dogs and brood bitches do their thing – though Mary gives us an Adult Only aside: “They can choose whether to do it indoors or al fresco, and there’s a special rubber grippy floor and a grass mound – you know, for optimum positoning!” she winks.

Now I am itching to take you on a step-by-step blog post tour of the centre and blurt out every single fascinating fact we learnt – but as that would spoil your visit should you go, I will just give you a little taster and limit myself to: 

FIVE FUN FACTS!

1. A pregnant bitch spends the week before giving birth in a luxury suite with hydrotherapy and a 24-hour personal nurse in a bedsit next to her. (Note to self: In my next life, have my babies here!)

2. Each newborn puppy is marked with a splodge of pink nail varnish on a different part of its body so the carers can tell them apart.

3. Guide Dogs are trained to be spacially aware UPWARDS as well as forwards and sideways – so they will warn their owner, for example, if they are going to hit their head on the ceiling!

4.Guide Dogs are trained to obey their owner but DISOBEY if they think they know better than their owner. e.g. they can see a car is coming!

5.It costs 50p to get a Guide Dog (a token amount for paperworky reasons) but the cost of a Guide Dog from birth to retirement is £50,000!

And one unfun fact: 
By 2050 there will be twice as many visually impaired people because of the rise of macular degeneration.

When we get to have a go in the sensory tunnel, we are given special blindfolds to put on. “They allow you to open your eyes behind them,” explains Mary, “to make your brain think you should be able to see.” 

Then we go, alone, one by one, through the tunnel in total darkness. There are traffic noises and different surfaces underfoot. 

“That was fun!” says my daughter as she emerges from the other end. “But scary. It makes you realize how utterly difficult life is if you can’t see.”

An educational day out, for sure, but I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t admit that a huge part of the appeal for the girls was the Cuteness Factor.

“Even if you didn’t like dogs,” I overhear my daughter’s friend saying, “There’s no way you could look at those puppies and not think they were adorable.” She’s not wrong. I’m no dog lover and my heart’s turned to mushy peas.

And there’s a final bonus: Complimentary tea or squash and home-made cake – donations welcome, but no pressure to do so (the cynic in me had expected we might be pushed into signing up for a monthly direct debit!).

We leave full of red velvet cake, knowledge, empathy, appreciation of our sight – and awe for these very special creatures.

“I used to think when I saw a Guide Dog, you just put a harness on them and off they go,” said my daughter on the way home.”I didn’t know how much intense time and effort and money went into them.”

Then she reverts to a more basic side of herself. “Mummy, PLEEEEEASE can I have a puppy?”

Visit the National Guide Dog Breeding Centre's website here. You can also do a tour of the National Guide Dog Training School in Leamington Spa. 

Rrrrip-roaring fun: Make an altered book

I love how creative ideas can bounce unexpectedly out of random conversations. One minute I was chatting to a friend about the pros and cons of being a perfectionist, the next minute me and my daughter were immersed in a pile of paper, paint and masking tape and having a whole lot of fun.

My friend had been telling me about how her daughter had done her Year 9 Spanish project with so much care – and flair – that it had made her teacher cry. Instead of handing in a few A4 sheets like the other students, she had created this, an 'altered book'...

Turning an old book into a 'new' book, beautifully designed and crafted...

It even had a box-shaped space carved out of the last pages...

 ...to put in the cassette of the oral part of her project.

I couldn’t wait to have a go at making ‘altered books’ ourselves.

Not that it’s an easy process. Emotionally, that is. Because the first step is to rip pages out of a book. Yep. Rip pages out of a book. There is something about this that feels instinctively, intensely, insanely wrong. “Are you sure it’s okay to do this?” asked my daughter, tentatively tugging at a page. 

I guess, without registering it, we are brought up with some kind of deep reverence for books. I mean, a friend of mine recently told me that a book cries when you turn down the corner of a page to mark your place. 

“Let’s think of it as rescuing them, rather than ruining them,” I said. After all, they were second-hand books that I’d seen sitting unwanted on the charity donation table in our local supermarket for at least a week. Big gulp of air. Rrrrrrrrrip...

So, onto the practical bit:

Step one: Take an old hardback book. 
Step two: Go through the book ripping several consecutive pages out together at even intervals e.g. turn over 3 pages, rip out 3 pages, turn over 3 pages, rip out 3... 

Step three: Take two to four pages at a time and bandage them up together in masking tape, covering all the text, to create lovely, thick, satisfying-to-turn, blank pages, with the text peeping through the tape in a very appealing way.

Step four: Now think of a theme or story and write, draw, paint, collage on the pages as you wish to create a 'new' book. (You can cut out and stick on words from the pages you ripped out if you like.)

My daughter had a very clear idea that she wanted to do a treasure hunt story. After a couple of totally-absorbed hours, humming away to herself, she produced this.

 

  

  

Who knew she’d squirrelled away these gold chocolate coin wrappers since Christmas?!

I decided I’d make mine a present for my sister’s upcoming birthday. It took more than a couple of hours, that's for sure, but I got it posted off just in time. I won't show you the whole story but here are just a few of the pages.

  

  

 

On the morning of her birthday, I received this email.

Flippin' Nora. I have only just finished crying. The best present I have ever had in my life!!!!

Seems I'd created a tear-jerker too, just like the Spanish project – the creator of which, now 20, is a perfectly superb cook with her own perfectly enticing food blog. Check it out here for a different kind of inspiration. 

Trash to treasure: Do Found Object art

I can never resist a glance at other people’s rubbish. You never know what you might find. A nice retro piece of furniture in a skip? Someone’s abandoned half-written novel in their recycling? I even like old shopping lists left on supermarket trollies. Because all rubbish has a history, a secret previous life. Who did it belong to? How did it end up here?

So one day when my daughter had a friend over, I thought we could try and give some rubbish a new story, a second life, by using it to create pieces of art.

First we needed to get ourselves some rubbish...

The Rubbish Hunt

We set off on a stroll around town, plastic bags in hand. 

The girls were not optimistic. “But there won’t be much to find,” said the friend. “Yeah, just like old wrappers and stuff,” said my daughter.

So I told them about what I call the White Horse Syndrome (not sure what it’s actually called but it is a thing!):

If you ask someone how often they see white horses when they go on a car journey, they’ll say hardly ever. But the next time they go on a car journey, they’ll notice white horses everywhere. Once your brain is alerted to something, it homes in on it.

Their eyes and minds opened wider and soon they were tuning into ‘treasures’ everywhere. Oh, the thrill of finding a smooth “emerald” piece of glass or a bottle top that “looks like gold”... 

Or a Christmas elf, a popped balloon with the string still attached, a rusty nail, a silver star... 

 

A neighbour gardening at the front of her house gave us an old piece of old pottery she’d just dug up. Nature presented us with a few goodies too, like unusually-shaped twigs and those aeroplane seed things.

 

We got expert at spotting an interesting shape or splash of colour in the distance and became addicted to getting the next ‘hit’. (Oh, and just in case you're shuddering, I had my beady eye out for dangers and dog-poo!).

The rubbish became more precious to the girls as they started to form plans in their head.

“I might make a scarecrow picture with my stuff,” said my daughter, looking at a piece of frayed fabric she’d picked up.

“I want to make a funfair picture,” said her friend “Because this piece of metal could be a rollercoaster track.”

The Trading Session

When we got home, we each spread our finds out on pieces of paper. 

There had been some objects the girls had both spotted and raced to pick up at the same time, leaving one disappointed. So I decided a show-and-swap session would be good fun – done with mock-formal ceremony.

We took it in turns to point out something of someone else’s we really, really wanted...

...and if there was something of theirs the owner was happy to swap it for, an exchange took place – sealing the deal with a handshake!

The Arty Bit

I’d planned to show the girls some art by proper Found Object artists online before we started our own pictures. I wanted to encourage them to think about the effect of the ‘whole picture’ – like painting their canvases with a background colour first or using their finds in an abstract way. But by the time I’d nipped to the kitchen and back to make myself a cup of tea, they’d already got stuck in. 

 

And were in 'flow'.

They were using the objects to make little disconnected and ‘real’ pictures, doing things in their own happy way, humming to themselves.

Stones, a tassel and a chopped-up drinking straw became a donkey...

A snail shell became a snail (obvs!)...

Feathers were used to make a candy floss stall...

And birds...

 

I loved this seagull...

We used a hot glue gun to stick the objects to the canvas. (Hot glue guns by the way, if you haven’t got one, are The Best Invention Ever. The answer to 90% of the problems in life I’ve found!).

“This isn’t turning out like I had in my head, but it’s really fun,” said the friend.

I decided to use my own finds to make a sort of ‘Museum of Found Objects', with little compartments of paper painted with a reddish-brown ‘rusty metal’ colour.

“Ahh…you’re not making the things into things, you’re just using them as they are,” said the friend.

Before I knew it I had two little helpers. They even made me phone the friend’s dad to ask if she could have an extra hour. They typed out labels on our old child’s typewriter, helping me think up the ‘story’ behind each object.

This was our final collaborative picture.

A few weeks later at a friend’s house, by sheer coincidence (or perhaps it was the White Horse Syndrome), I saw this gorgeous Found Object mirror on her fireplace. 

She said her mum had made it out of her and her brother’s old toys and bits of pieces found around the house.

That's our next project sorted then!