This house with

its G-Plan living-room / a lineage of photo albums / framed embroidered landscapes / denial seeped deep into its walls / the boxed silverware and its DNA of Christmas meals / milk in the freezer / so much forgetfulness / its meaninglessness of ornaments / dusty hooks where pictures once hung / steam trains puffing a past / my signed poetry books / paeons to Royalty / so many Syd Lawrence albums / collectors’ plates like beacons / boxes packed and waiting / medicines nearly sorted / places he fell into / a message from the Queen / only echoes as a home

He pulls up outside his house and I walk over the road from where we are staying this week at the mother-in-law’s to say hello to Ray who has got his own gravy – the good pension, he tells me in talking about elderly needs, and all that this buys layered in the back of the car, this red runaround which uncannily through an unknowing local purchase by Ray once belonged to my father-in-law Jim who had driven it till quite old and with a shade more geriatric danger than his neighbour now does – parked half on and half off the kerb – and then Ray’s oblivious disregard for, at the time, a dribbling nose, and his young man’s performances in the Black and White Minstrels all those years ago which we only learned in a passing anecdote while talking about music at Jim’s funeral.

Accumulation of knowledge
is properly sequenced about:

the colon
…ellipsis

and Jack the Ripper.

10,000,000 memorised grammatical terms
properly sequenced to allow

apostrophe and
Newton’s First Law

in an eighteen page appendix.

Incremental accumulation of knowledge
is properly sequenced about –

using evidence /
parallelograms using evidence –

and James I.

The spirit of Hirsch
and prescribed knowledge,

possessive pronoun and
more valuable skills,

calculate the area of what pupils learn.

[Source: Knowledge and the Curriculum, Nick Gibb introduction]

Back in December I posted a few pics here from a self-produced book by way of celebrating the process.

I am doing so again from my latest to recommend having a go: I’m not promoting the actual company [and this one is different to December’s which will make my point] but if you search around you can find amazing deals to compile personal photo/text books that are professionally produced.

You simply upload from your files and drag and paste, either as a whole background page, individual item, or compilation. I keep it very simple. Text is best transferred in as a ping.

The three pics from this are from a 100 page book that cost £10 to purchase [!] and £4 to post, here as a slideshow:

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but let there be no filthiness
no corrupting talk
no mourn and weep

if you was filled with laughter
with crackling of yourself
with striving after wind

have lips with shouting
with cup overflows
with a heart made glad

but let there be no derision
no business of sorrow
no love in the wicked

if you was to please him
with faith out of your mouths
with even a pig’s snout

have delight with time to laugh
with love that eats its hungry
with your upbuilding

but let there be no gnat and swallowing
no beautiful women without discretion
no delivering up my body

if you was to laugh at mourning
with time that dries bones
with whoever loves for hunger

have punishment with fruits
with mocking to anoint
with righteousness as vanity

[Source: Bible]