Kiev, city of extremes

To say that the country of Ukraine has undergone many changes is an understatement. Its history has been defined by its geography, overshadowed as it is by its neighbours of Russia to the east, Germany and Poland to the west and the once mighty Turkish Empire to the south. However it was the Vikings who first invaded, followed by Prince Oleg of Novgorod, then the Mongols. 1569 was when the Poles had their turn, an event that led to the rise of the legendary Cossacks who drove the Poles out.  Later they formed an alliance with Russia. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire! Russia was always going to dominate and Ukrainians were seen as inferior and eventually forbidden from even speaking their own language.  Much later, under Lenin and Stalin Ukraine was assimilated into communist USSR.  In the 1930s Stalin imposed the dreadful famines throughout Ukraine that led to mass starvation known as the Holodomar. Then came WW2 and the German invasion. Kiev fell in 1942 and much of it was destroyed. After the war Ukraine was handed back to Russia again until finally gaining independence in 1991. Yet despite all this turmoil somehow the city has survived, together with some of its most sacred buildings and interesting architecture.

On Wednesday morning, having finished my two days at Peschersk, the owners of Dinternal Books, who run the book sale during Book Week at the school, very kindly organized a sight-seeing trip. Here are a few pictures to share with you.

Volodymyrsky Sobor

Indoor market - no prices - you are expected to haggle

Kievo-Pecherska Lavra (Monastery Caves) This was fascinating. The caves beneath the monastery are visited by thousands of Orthodox Christians a year. We went in only a few of them. You enter in silence, with a taper as your only light. Women must wear headscarves, out of respect. Inside the low, narrow caves originally occupied by St Anthony of the Caves are the remains of mummified monks. I wasn't sure what to expect but the relics and remains are all covered in heavy brocades within glass coffins. Occasionally a brown wizened hand can be seen.

Crossing the roads in Kiev is difficult as traffic is heavy so these underpasses are common. Beneath them are mini shopping areas. As you can see from the lettering above the underpass everything is in the Cyrllic alphabet which is fascinating to look at but difficult to decipher!

borscht soup - recipes for this traditional Eastern European dish vary but ingredients include some meat (usually pork) , plenty of vegetables, including beetroot . It is served with sour cream and pampushcas - small white rolls. Delicious. This wasn't part of the guided tour, by the way. We had this in the hotel the night before!

creative minds at work

What better way to spend a wet Monday afternoon in March than with a group of receptive, keen and thoroughly pleasant Y7s?  Their English teacher, Ms Andrew, had invited me in as a reward to the group for raising money for charity by doing a ‘Readathon.’  I quite liked being a prize. i wasn’t quite as big a prize as the secretary thought that I was though. ‘Are you Anne Fine?’ she asked when I was signing in.

Anyway, on to the communal library where we shared the session with two older kids sent there for misbehaving in class. I have to say, they were as attentive as the rest of them. Maybe some of the enthusiasm of the group will have a lasting effect - who knows?  Good luck with the baby, Ms Andrew!

madalla

ribbon development

I went to a really inspiring exhibition at Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire on Friday (12th Feb). The exhibition was the end result of a project involving various secondary schools who were asked to explore ideas about what their ideal new school would be like.

At the entrance was this colourful wall of ribbons (left), an interactive response to the question ‘How does/did school make you feel?  Visitors were invited to cut a piece of ribbon, the colour of which closely described their school experience. I chose the yellowy gold for ‘happy’ and threaded my piece alongside several indifferent blues, quite a few greens for ‘anxious’ and a handful of reds for angry. What a simple idea though - every classroom should have one!

The section I was most impressed with was from the Grove Learning Centre. This is a facility for kids who, like my character Jenny-Jane who I recently blogged about,  struggle in mainstream school and require additional support with their emotional and social needs. The Grove group were lucky enough to be working with musician and poet Dave ‘Stickman’ Higgins. He engaged them in all sorts of creative activities. I particularly liked the wall hanging of a madalla (meant to be below but embedded itself above!). The idea of the madalla comes from the African 7 Principles of Man. They are nutrition, religion, spirituality, language, arts, work and family. I presume the thinking behind the principles are that if a person has the right balance between them all, they will achieve harmony.

The Grove’s madalla was a join piece of art in which the whole group participated. I’m guessing that for some of them to work co-operatively was a massive achievement in itself. To create something so beautiful in addition is fantastic. I’d have that in the main entrance to my new school, no problems. There were also some very moving poems, sculptures, a film, photographs and a recreation of a ‘Bloom Room.’ The Bloom Room was a neat idea. A cosy area with bright, colourful sofas and chairs, cushions and rugs the kids sat round to talk through their ideas, it brought home how important the right environment is for learning.  People thrive in safe, comfortable places. Why, then, do some schools feel so soulless and even hostile when you enter them?

In their book ‘Our thoughts are bees: writers working with schools’ by Coe & Sprackland there is a wonderful quotation that goes: ‘When children and writers come together a kind of magic happens.’ If  anyone wants evidence of that, go to Rufford Abbey this month.

As a writer, I am sometimes asked by journalists, publishers or bloggers to list my favourite things. Books, films, paintings and so on. I always find this difficult, if not impossible. How can I name one painting out of all the amazing works of art that exist, for example? Besides, my answer fluctuates from mood to mood, phase to phase, season to season.

Futility by Wilfred Owen was my poem of choice for a posting I was kindly invited to do recently for Norman Geras’s highly acclaimed  ‘Normblog‘.  I chose it because Wilfred Owen was the first poet I came across at school that I understood and that didn’t bore me witless.  He died in action right at the very end of the Great War aged 25.

Futility

Move him into the sun-

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

*

Think how it wakes the seeds,-

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?