I should have listened more at school

I was a girly swot at school, there is no getting away from it. I went to a tiny little primary school, which I loved, and I always did really well. Spelling, English, maths (stop laughing, those who know me - this is primary school we're talking about!). We had a little spelling test every Friday, and a little maths test the same day, and our teacher kept a graph for each child to show how they'd performed throughout the school year. Mine was always in a straight line, because I could spell, and I could do maths (then).

Comprehensive school was a lot different. It was HUGE. There were lots of kids there and they were really loud. And I was really quiet. (I've told you before, STOP LAUGHING. This was when I was little). So I stood out more, because in that sort of school, its not really cool to be a girly swot. At the end of my first year, my school report had a comment in it from the Head which said 'Could be a high flyer'. I bet she choked on that when I left school with only 2 O'Levels. Like I said, it wasn't cool to be clever, I'll tell you the rest of that story another time. I still learned a lot at school, and I've done lots of resits and further education, and now find myself in an almost respectable education position..

But I should have listened more at school.

Now, you see, there are huge gaps in my school type education. Not the sort of things that you learn in night school, or by distance learning. I went out with my son today, and we passed a birds egg on the ground. It was opaque white, shiny, about half the size of a hen's egg. My sons said 'What's that?' I told him it was a bird's egg. He asked if the bird was still in it. I didn't think so, because I could see a little crack in the egg and some gunky stuff at the side of it. Also, it was on the road, near the garages. Which is probably not its natural nesting place. I said no, and he asked where the bird was, I said it looked as though it might have died, because there was all that gunky stuff (Boys love gunky stuff, I'm not a sadist). He said it didn't look like a bird, I had to agree. Which is when I started to flap a little. Like a bird. Shouldn't it have looked like a bird? Even a little one?

On the return journey, we walked down our little path to the front door. My son stared at his flowers (snapdragons), and asked what that flying thing was in his flowers. I looked and told him it was a bee. I told him it was a good thing because it was collecting pollen. He asked me why it was a good thing that a bee was stealing pollen from his flowers to give to someone else's flowers. That's a good point, I thought. A bee is stealing from us. How can that be a good thing? I think it might be something to do with spreading pollen around, but I have no idea. What if I'm confused, and the damn bees are stealing from me? Is that why other people's flowers look better than mine? Because bees are stealing from me, because I don't know any better?

I need to go back to school and learn about birds eggs, and bees.

Or someone needs to give me the telephone number for the Bee Police.