shiny

gauntlet:

bingoparaphernalia:

Instead of going to school, my siblings and I, like many children from travelling families, were taught about the arts, music and dance. Our education was learning about wildlife and nature, how to cook and how to survive. I didn’t know my times tables but I could milk a goat and ride a horse. I could identify ink caps, puff balls and field mushrooms and knew where to find wild watercress and sorrel. By the age of eight or nine I could light a fire, cook dinner for a family of 10 and knew how to bake bread on an open fire.

- Roxy Freeman (above, with her brother) on anti-Traveller/Gypsy prejudice, her unusual upbringing, and entering the formal education system for the first time at the age of 22, in today’s Guardian.

Also see this story in the Guardian from June 28 about a terrorist threat to Romanian gypsies living in Northern Ireland (who, incidentally, are there because they are discriminated against in their own country). The situation for Roma and other gypsies in Italy has been worsening for years.