Martin Cooke | Navigating Fatherhood and being a Stay-at-Home Dad

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 00:00
Welcome to

Jesper Conrad: 00:01
Self Directed. We are your host, Cecilia and Jesper Conrad. And now it's time to welcome this week's guest. Got it, we're live. All right.

Cecilie Conrad: 00:12
You do the welcoming.

Jesper Conrad: 00:16
So today we're together with Martin Cook. And uh the thing is, uh, we met back in Granada in 2019 in December. And besides his lovely curls and big smile. Was it October? To be annoying. To be annoying, it was October, not December. It felt like a good December. No, it was October. Um, so and now it got all weirded out. I will start our over.

Cecilie Conrad: 00:42
No, no, no, I will, I will, I will and you just got very attracted to him. Let's face it.

Jesper Conrad: 00:48
You said I'll it's a friend, he's a good man. Yeah, and and so we uh talked and uh chilled out for some time and uh had a lot of fun. Uh but what I was impressed by with you, Martin, was that they you said, hey, they have a woman's circle, let's make a man's circle.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:09
Um, and and what was actually more impressing was that you participated. Yes, because for you it was like something like really weird the circle word.

Jesper Conrad: 01:20
Yeah, I didn't like that.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:22
Yeah, it's funny because we're like real hippies, and still we don't do circles that much.

Jesper Conrad: 01:27
No, no circles, but why why did you want back then? What happened? Why were you like, hey, let's make a circle for us men?

Martin Cooke: 01:34
Yeah, thanks for asking, and hello, thanks for having me. So three and a half years ago, we were in Granada, World Schooling Summit, and uh what a beautiful place to be. The connections were great, and um and there was a women's circle, and I was like, Where's the men's? Not because I was like, Where's the men's, but for a long time I have been interested in starting a group. This is not a group I've started, that was perhaps the first circle, but it was uh the invitation from Lainey, who who runs that was she said, What was it? She said it's all about saying yes. She's being open to being open. And I don't know if she quite said that, but that is now almost like a mantra of mine. I'm open to being open.

Cecilie Conrad: 02:19
And uh funny because I I say I try to be ready to be ready.

Martin Cooke: 02:23
Right. Okay.

Cecilie Conrad: 02:24
Getting ready to be ready. That's my thing, you know. Now I'm ready to be ready.

Martin Cooke: 02:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 02:29
Coffee in the morning.

Martin Cooke: 02:30
Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 02:30
Or please continue.

Martin Cooke: 02:32
Yeah, no, I um yeah, so I've I've I've thought about men's circles for a long time. I suppose my my background over the last 10 years or longer, maybe 15 years, I've worked in adult mental health in the UK. Um, specifically in uh helping people find work that they're passionate about. So I'd work with people who are really miserable and uh out of work or doing work they didn't like. And a common common thread was loneliness, really. A lot of people are really lonely. And um, I suppose I've noticed that it's a generalization, but men perhaps find it harder to vocalize uh emotions more broadly. So I yeah, my part of my intention in thinking about men's circles and doing all that is really to address my own loneliness. I'm really I I like people and uh connections and and I also like it when um when people feel like they can be vulnerable. So the the thought of a men's circle, that's that's really um, yeah, it's good stuff really. It's creating a safe psychological space so that men can open up. So yeah, I did have an experience with it years years prior, um, which was really powerful. Um, but yeah, you were gonna ask something.

Cecilie Conrad: 03:48
Yeah, it's just you mentioned now you started something because all I know is the men's circle at the World School Summit like three and a half years ago. So what is it that you are doing now with it?

Martin Cooke: 04:00
Oh well, off the back of that, it's not it's not so much that I've started a men's circle or anything like that, but it was funny because we met in the October and then uh the big C arrived, the corona thing.

Jesper Conrad: 04:13
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Martin Cooke: 04:15
And uh bit of background was I was traveling with my family. I've got four children, and we were traveling around Europe. Um, we'd actually been traveling for about five years uh prior, well, four years prior to that. Um, and it wasn't our intention to stop traveling, but it just so happened COVID stopped us in our tracks. We were uh we were traveling. Uh, people often ask about world schooling and travel and how do you fund it and what do you do and your work. And our our line of work, if you like, was we rented out our house in Brighton, England, south coast of England, uh, on Airbnb. So that's what we did. But we didn't do a normal version, we did the uh kind of supercharged version. So every weekend we had 14 women having a hen party, which is like a bachelorette party in our house, and of course that stopped. That stopped. Yeah. Um and then COVID kind of stopped that. It kind of stopped that, and then I then we were thinking, oh god, I'm gonna have to get a job, you know, like a job, right?

Martin Cooke: 05:13
But um the actual how how I got back into my line of work, it came about because of an intention that I had. I uh I for a long time too have been thinking about a podcast, and um no doubt you guys weren't thinking about it just a few weeks ago. It it had been bubbling.

Cecilie Conrad: 05:31
Yeah, it's been roaming around, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 05:33
Yeah, yeah. So it had been rolling around my head, and I had the perfect person. I thought I'm gonna interview this old dude, you know, he's in his late 70s and he's really into smoking rollies, drinking wine, women, and God. He's like he's a really perfect kind of like perfect, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 05:52
I I look forward to listening to that podcast.

Martin Cooke: 05:54
Exactly. Yeah, so he's called Roger, and I really I didn't actually know whether Roger was alive. So I called an old colleague and I thought I'll find out if Roger's alive. And this is literally when COVID's starting. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to get a job. But I wasn't thinking about that. I was like, I want to do a podcast. And I called my old colleague and he he picked up Martin. He said, Are you calling about the job? I said, What job? He said, Your old job. We need someone uh now. So within a week, I had a laptop and I started back in my line of work through the I like to think it's kind of serendipitous. I don't know, I was thinking about something joyful, yeah. And the serendipitous thing came off the back of it.

Cecilie Conrad: 06:38
Yeah, well, that's very often how it is. We have this saying, what if it was easy when things are like if you when you have this, oh shit, I have to get a job, then nothing works. But if you're like, let's go do something fun, and then suddenly someone's paying you money for doing it, and yeah, and it's just sunshine, and it's not all sunshine, but easy.

Martin Cooke: 06:59
But goodness does flow, I think, when you are fearless. I wasn't fearful about getting a job. I thought I can just drive a van, I can do whatever. And um and I had hadn't had it in mind to go back to my previous work, which I really enjoyed. I really, you know, a bit of it's interesting because I think when you when you travel, like you know, people talk about identity and who are you and what do you do? You know, that kind of what do you do?

Jesper Conrad: 07:25
Yeah.

Martin Cooke: 07:25
Um, and part of most people's identity can be bound up in their their work, can't it?

Cecilie Conrad: 07:31
It's a normal thing, but it is also to be fair, what people do with their time. I mean, my answer would be I go for a long walk after lunch with my family. That's what I do, and and it it it's a weird answer to the question, but that's what I actually do. And when you ask more normal people or people living a more mainstream life, then what they do is they do what they do at their job because that's what they do most of the hours. So it's not like a fake identity or it's a real it's real because that's really what you do.

Martin Cooke: 08:07
It holds it holds you up, doesn't it? It's part of who you are.

Cecilie Conrad: 08:10
But it should.

Martin Cooke: 08:11
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a psychological, it's like if you pull that apart, it's it would be uh psychologically damaging in some cases, I think, you know.

Cecilie Conrad: 08:22
But I think also it's real. If you go get up every morning and you make bread and then you sell it, you're the baker, and that's what you're actually doing. So you're the one feeding the the village or whatever the neighborhood with bread, and you you you you identify with this. I'm the baker because it's real. And I think this it can be a very fake um idea to say, oh, you can't identify with your job because then you don't know who you truly are, and and maybe you truly are the baker.

Jesper Conrad: 08:57
You know, yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 08:59
I just think it's of course it's it's it's too bad if you know nothing else of yourself than the making bread part, um the the professional identity, but but it's not fake to identify with what you're doing all day. I don't think so, at least.

Martin Cooke: 09:20
Yeah, it's interesting. At at the moment, all day I've I've stopped my work. Uh six months ago I stopped and I've switched with my wife. Um and and now I'm full-time with the kids, so I'm I'm looking after, feeding, cleaning, talking with, playing with, moving around the children.

Cecilie Conrad: 09:40
So interestingly, what is your answer?

Martin Cooke: 09:42
If so, yeah, well that's what I need you to ask me. What do I do?

Cecilie Conrad: 09:46
What do you do with my thank you?

Martin Cooke: 09:49
What do I do? Well, I suppose it's uh I've got lots of different hats on at different parts of the day, but I I I was gonna say I look after the children, but that doesn't really they mostly look after themselves, right?

Cecilie Conrad: 10:03
They're big now.

Martin Cooke: 10:04
They must be 12, 12, 9, 7, and 4.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:09
Yeah.

Martin Cooke: 10:09
So yeah. Yeah, yeah, ish.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:12
Four is not exactly big.

Martin Cooke: 10:13
No, no, but he's yeah, he'll be uh big.

Jesper Conrad: 10:16
But he's okay, yeah, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 10:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, carer, yeah, carer, nurturer, questioner. I'm learning a lot as well, actually. It feels like I'm going back to school, but I don't mean school in the traditional sense. But so many questions come come up from just I was just reading a book with one of my children, and it was about Faraday, and you know, he Michael Faraday, what did he do? And he was an inventor of I, you know, I don't know. Um, I got it wrong. He got it right. And and then I was reading a book and he said, What's the East? meaning the East. And then we got out the map, and we we started, and he said, Well, it's just one big country as we looked at Europe and Russia and all of that, and all these squiddly lines that were made up, and it it just so many questions, and it's so interesting just being around children, if you allow the time and space for it, because they ask the most kind of intelligent questions.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:16
They do.

Martin Cooke: 11:17
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:18
And our ageism, I think, is one of the big um things we have to work with as unschoolers in in our deschooling process and our personal development as parents of three children. This I was just saying to yes, but yesterday in in the van, we were driving, it was late, and and our sons was were playing a computer game and they read out loud um these um, what is uh tale bubble in English? Yeah, it's so when there's like subtitles, they read it out loud and and they they make voice acting. And

Cecilie Conrad: 11:50
our youngest is 11, and he read it out loud, and and I was just amazed by it because it's in English, which is not his first language, how he just reads it out loud. It's like nothing, and he's even making the acting, and it's hard words, it's not like uh little frog said hi, it's it's complicated stuff, it's this interesting game about psychology, and it's like really complex. Yeah, and I was amazed by it, and then I had to reflect on why am I so amazed by it? The kid has been speaking English for five years and and he's doing this reading every day. Why am I amazed? I'm amazed because of his age. Would he have been 15? I would not be amazed. Yeah, and there's this age-ism thing, we have this idea that because they have this age, they're supposed to, you know, the questions cannot be intelligent from a four-year-old. That's what we think or are brought up to think. And why not?

Martin Cooke: 12:48
They can be really profound because they're without without looking through filters or lenses, aren't they?

Cecilie Conrad: 12:53
They can be even unsettling. Like, yeah, shit, how do I answer this?

Jesper Conrad: 12:58
Yeah, Martin, I have a question for you. Please. You've been a dad now for my age. Yeah, no, I I've been uh a dad now for many, many years. You have been for 12 years. Yeah. Um in my life, I started out as the breadwinner, a guy with a career and different hats on, and and that was part of my identity. But uh, my what I get from you is that you and your wife have switched on being who is at home. Um, so how have you been in your masculine role? Have you ever felt the need to be, oh, I have this title, or have you always been just cool with being uh, hey, I'm a stay-home dad. This uh now?

Martin Cooke: 13:44
Yeah, I feel I feel like I've perhaps unusually always been very comfortable in the feminine and and being around women, I suppose I've been quite used to. I'm I've got one younger sister. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't the the youngest of five with lots of older sisters. But yeah, no, I've never felt um the kind of masculine or machismo like I'm the breadwinner kind of thing. I've always uh I suppose I've always my wife works in um in IT, you know, in data. And so she's always uh uh earned a decent wage. And all the time we've been together, I've worked for charities or or the NHS, that kind of thing. So I haven't earned as much. So I've been quite comfortable with that, I suppose. Um and yeah, I I suppose I don't hang out with people with with with men like that, is the answer in part. Um so I don't feel it just feels kind of normal. Actually, one of my best friends who I've known since I was five, he for the last four years has or for five years has been the primary care of his children. And I've just moved moved house so I can walk to his house now, and it's um it just feels very normal. Um I mean I am interested in the role of of men in I'm I'm in childbirth. I'm particularly fascinated by having worked in mental health, it kind of feels like adult mental health, kind of feels like it's almost too late. I'm fascinated how how we w the conditions under which well we're we're conceived and birthed and then nurtured and you know cared for in the sort of formative years. I I find that really fascinating. And um I was present at all four of the births, they're all home births, and the last two were actually free births, you'd call them. So intentionally, no midwife's there. But um, I definitely brought fear into the room uh as the man and felt like I shouldn't be there. It felt like a sacred feminine thing, and it feels like like it's more of a modern notion for men to be um almost like a confusion that men should be there. I don't know if we looked at it anthropologically whether men would have been there at the birth or whether it would have been mothers, aunties, other women like that. So so yeah, going back to the street.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:06
I have no idea actually how it looks like in in from an anthropological point of view if there are any traditions anywhere.

Martin Cooke: 16:14
Yeah, I just felt like I was uh interfering. Like my my partner had had it, you know, she was there in her strength, in her feminine energy, and I wasn't gonna really bring much to the party apart from a cold towel and a glass of water.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:30
Uh to share the stories of how uh how yes we're really supported. Yeah, yeah, I was there.

Martin Cooke: 16:38
No, I was good at it. I was good at it.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:40
I'm not gonna share that.

Martin Cooke: 16:42
I was I was I was told that I was just kind of not getting in the way, but you know, she didn't need me. Um, which is I think that's amazing. You know, that's the feminine strength and energy, and like I think that's absolutely amazing.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:54
Did she have like a sister or a friend or no?

Martin Cooke: 16:58
She she's quite um uh independent.

Cecilie Conrad: 17:02
She didn't, yeah, but you know, maybe she would like to have a sister in the room, or yeah.

Martin Cooke: 17:07
Well, interestingly, yeah, she hasn't got a sister, and um she recently said, Oh, it'd be really nice to have a sister, you know, to understand the understand each other. Yeah, have have you got a sister?

Cecilie Conrad: 17:18
I've got three.

Martin Cooke: 17:19
Have you? Okay, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 17:21
Well, it's complicated. Because of an early divorce, I have like step and half, and yeah. So maybe I wouldn't have two. Depends on how you look at it. I have two that I'm really close with that feels like sisters, and I also have um just as many brothers, so I'm like list. Yeah, well, it's two families. Yeah, because my parents they were divorced when I was uh four or five, and they found the right one right after, and both of them married more children, so they found someone who also had children. So when very early in my life I had all these step siblings or half siblings, or I just call them siblings. Um, and then my mother and her new husband got one more child, so I have like one. I don't really care about the whole gene thing, it's more about the feeling, yeah. Um and and some feel more like siblings, not as yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 18:23
I would I would love to return to the masculinity part. Um, and I am a very uh pink uh kind of guy, uh, love colors and uh very happy with flowers. I love to run over to flowers and smell them, but if you just look at me, then you are like very, very fascinated by romantic movies. Oh, yes. Romantic movies and everything.

Cecilie Conrad: 18:50
Stay awake.

Jesper Conrad: 18:50
But if you just uh look at me and I wasn't smiling, you due to my size, would think, oh, that's kind of a man's man. Uh, but uh I'm very little a man's man. So back to this circle we had on the World Schooling Summit, we were sitting and talking about some of our vulnerabilities, and one of mine back then, we still um had an idea if we should drive in the big red bus we had. Um, I I talked and I was like, but I'm so afraid that it will break down. And there was um uh and and I mentioned in this circle that I was really fascinated by men uh who you know can fix an engine. Uh for me that's like magic. I don't know how they do it, but I'm very impressed by it. Me too. It's incredible, it's like witchcraft, yeah. Yeah, they they and they got grease on the hands and sweaty and sexy and all that. No, but it's it's you know it's not sexy to me. No, no, but it's fascinating for me that they know how it works and how it fits together. Um, and I I talked with one of the guys in the circle about how I was afraid to even touch my engine on this big red bus we have. Uh and he said something to me. I have we have used that as an advice later. He said, Don't worry, you cannot fuck it up as much as a professional cannot fix it later on. Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:11
But you can we say it nicer.

Jesper Conrad: 20:13
We say it nicer.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:14
We say you can't break it so much no one can fix it.

Jesper Conrad: 20:16
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:17
So you know, if it's broken already, you can give it a go and and and then if it still doesn't work, well it didn't work to begin with, and then then you call the mechanic.

Jesper Conrad: 20:25
Yeah, but I've actually used that and then have changed something on the big old machine and try to do it myself. I'm still afraid of it, but trying to do it was uh a nice accomplishment to to remove the fear of uh breaking everything.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:42
Yeah, so how is this, you know, how is it because you started this out as a masculinity question.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:50
And what I think is it would be very healthy for you to let go of the idea that a real man should be able to fix the motor. I mean, let's just call the mechanic and not waste our time because we don't know what we're doing. I don't know what you don't know. Would be really feminine to to know about, I don't know, fashion or nail polish, some things I don't

Cecilie Conrad: 21:07
know, you know, and and you be you and I be me and yeah, but it's in kind of it's like it's two things.

Jesper Conrad: 21:14
It's it yeah, but it's put down the true, I've been programmed by society to think that men should be able to fix stuff when I was young.

Martin Cooke: 21:23
Um yeah, yeah, no, well, it's a really I think it's a really important observation that society well thinks that it's a masculine thing, and it shouldn't be that, should it? It shouldn't be at all, it's not a gendered thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 21:37
Specifically, more men are interested in motors than women, so I think it comes from that, but that doesn't mean that all men are interested in motors, and it definitely doesn't mean that all men are able to fix one.

Martin Cooke: 21:50
No, I'm terrible with motors and DIY and things like that. You know, I I've and we've just bought a new house and it's really old and it Everything's broken, you know, like all the windows are rotting. It needs just had a new boiler where, you know, we've got a digger out the back, we're having an extension built. And um, I would love to get involved and do things. And I I changed a lock on a on a shed last week. And I I thought, yes, I'm doing it. It's in the rain, I've got the wrong drill. And then I triumphantly closed it and realized that I'd managed to screw it in wrong so it's permanently locked again, even without a lock. I'm just so terrible at DIY. So I was telling the builders just yesterday, I said I'm I was telling this story, and um I'm I'm kind to myself now, definitely. But I've it's it's been a long journey of of realizing that it's not so much, yeah, we can't be good at everything, can we?

Cecilie Conrad: 22:49
And um I realized with all these DIY things that when we talk about all this maintaining the house and fixing the motor, it's it's an education, and we should we should like really value that. I'm loving people don't have it. If you don't have the education, none of us have had any interesting in in building tables or fixing motors in our lives, and we're closing in on 50 now. I mean, maybe we should just face it. Other people do that, and we have other stuff that we're good at because we've been interested in it and been doing it all of our lives. You can't just build a a drawer out of nowhere, you know. People who do that, they have they have learned from someone and they've spent a lot of time learning. And that comes back to the whole education question where we have this traditional, very wrong idea that academics are the high ranking, that's what takes some intelligence and hard work, and all the the things you do with your hands, it's more like you know, anyone can do that and it doesn't really matter. But we're losing respect to people who who can do something that we we all three can't do, and we really need people who can do it.

Martin Cooke: 24:11
So I have a lot of respect for people who can do things that are practical, and indeed, I we've actually consciously moved so as to be closer to a place that we're quite heavily involved in, local to us in East Sussex, the county of East Sussex. It's called Wilderness Woods. So it's a wood that was um bought about 10 years ago by a couple who were traveling around Europe looking for a place of land to be with their children, and she's interested in alternative education. And uh what happens there are there are about 30 young people like under our age who live there and work there for free. So that like woofing, yeah. You so they they live on the land, but they and they volunteer some of their time, but they also uh make things there, so they make the drawer, the table, the there's a potter, you know, there's there's people that cook and it's a community, and and our children have lessons there. So my daughter of now is just doing green woodworking, so she's learning practical skills, lovely. Which is so nice. And I was just gonna say, um, you I think as a child, it depends on what you experience, right? As what what you're around. I I didn't have I didn't have people that I was around that were were showing me things. I mean, my my dad did oversee building a house, he he managed the whole thing, he wasn't laying the bricks, but I was around that. So that did give me a kind of um it has has given me the desire to want to do that myself. I have this desire to want to build something, and so this thing out the back that we're building is a small version. Maybe in 20 years' time, Charlie and I, my wife, we'll we'll build a little place in Scotland, probably. My ancestry is Scottish, so I like the idea of somewhere wild with a fire, very warm, enclosed. And I I'll be involved in building it somehow, but I know that I'm not gonna be a builder, and I that's fine. That's fine. And uh I was actually invited. I've I I studied psychotherapy. Um, and perhaps like lots of people who study psychotherapy, uh when you train as a psychotherapist, you have to be in therapy yourself. Uh, and I couldn't just give myself permission just to go into therapy, it was a legitimate thing. I had to do it. So I spent many years in therapy, and I remember early on feeling very upset about the fact that I couldn't change a lock or do anything, you know, crying about it, being really like, why am I such a failure? And the therapist, he just gave me permission. He just said, You can't be good at everything. That's why we all do different things. You you're really good at these things, just pay someone to do that.

Jesper Conrad: 26:52
And exactly.

Martin Cooke: 26:54
It was like, oh, it just it just gave me the permission to be kind to myself and to realize that we're not good at everything.

Cecilie Conrad: 27:00
No, we don't have to Martin.

Jesper Conrad: 27:05
How did you get into the whole traveling with your kids and alternative education? Um, because you have kind of stepped a lot outside the the normal rule uh from that is otherwise people travel.

Martin Cooke: 27:22
I'll uh so if I start, I'm about 14, 15. Uh I've all my all my family work in IT. I see the trappings, I think money, I want a BMW, I'm gonna study IT. So off I go to university. I've got my grades, I've been a good boy, I've been educated, but really I know nothing. It's all gone in here and out here. I've remembered it. And um I traveled for the first time when I left university. Actually, no, it was in a placement year. I went to America and I was caught up in 9-11,

Martin Cooke: 27:57
actually. I was in Washington when the when the planes hit, and I'm really passionate about photography. So photography gave me a reason to travel, really, or it gave me something to do. You know, when people say, What are you doing? Oh, I'm traveling. I needed I needed the more permission to be traveling in a valid way. I couldn't just be, as you said, going for a long walk after lunch. That'd be too indulgent.

Cecilie Conrad: 28:19
Yeah. But that is actually what I'm doing.

Martin Cooke: 28:23
Exactly. Good for you. You know, that's loving, nurturing, and the ripple effect of that, it just goes out into the universe, doesn't it?

Cecilie Conrad: 28:30
It does. Yeah. And I would um I need to continue the uh the story you were so yeah.

Martin Cooke: 28:36
Yeah, I needed photography to allow myself just to be, just to come like a I suppose like a butterfly comes out of the chrysalis. You know, I I I was like the caterpillar, all trapped at university, thinking, I hate this. I I just don't want to do it. I it doesn't it doesn't, I'm not very good at it, and it doesn't feed my soul with anything great. Um and I was really confused about the money side of things as well. I saw all the the money, but I I kind of knew internally, so it was a conflict. And um and so traveling and just being still with no purpose. This is when I'm 21, 22, 23. It really was the first opportunity to sit in that stillness and kind of find myself. And uh I went when I was 23, I went I went on this charity expedition uh called Rally International. It's a charity in the UK, and they run adventure projects and community projects around the world. So I went to Borneo for three months, and it was a really, really formative experience. I was 23, and most of the uh people there were 17, 18. So I guess I was an elder amongst the younger ones, and it was there that I found my vocation, really, which was you know, we'd be on a building site in the rainforest building this library, and all these kind of 17, 18-year-olds who were off to university. I really identified with them because I'd kind of been there and I just found myself listening to a lot of them, and I just really enjoyed that kind of listening role. And I guess I always think about jobs in terms of the village. You know, what would we have done? There would have been a baker, wouldn't there? And there'd have been a magician, and there'd have been the woodworker and the this and then that. And I've I I think my role, what do I do? I'm a listener and I'm a connector. I really love to connect people up and join the dots between people. So yeah, I really enjoyed listening to young people, and I came back with the passion for photography, and almost immediately I said, Right, I want to go and be staff for this charity. I want to go and volunteer again, but as running the project. And so I went back as a staff photographer uh in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and I was I was given a Land Rover and my camera, and they said, Go off and photograph the two countries, and that was for three months, and it was amazing, you know, getting getting stuck, you know, in the Land Rover, down swampy lanes and getting towed out and just stories about experiences, and that's where I met my wife. So day one, I'm photographing everyone getting off the bus for a little ID card, and Charlie walks off, and she'd just quit her job six months prior, had been traveling around Asia and was doing this thing, and we met and we traveled afterwards. So Charlie and I met traveling. So that was, I suppose, both of our DNA. We we got traveling, and it wasn't a conscious thing to travel with our children. Uh, but sometimes life has to get tough to, or or rather, we we consciously or subconsciously engineer the conditions to make our life more difficult in order to push or guide ourselves towards our true path, I think. So we were living in London, we were visiting Brighton every weekend. Oh, Brighton's great, it's on the south coast, it's a great city. Why don't we move there? So we moved there, but I was still working in in London, commuting, you know, two hours each way.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:13
Oh shit.

Martin Cooke: 32:14
Right. So you've got a three-year-old and you've got a little 18-month-year-old. And Charlie looks at me and she said, What are we doing? Why are we doing this? But we made it difficult, and then we had to think, right, we need to improve this situation. What can we do? And she said, We could rent our house out and go traveling. I said, Are you mad?

Cecilie Conrad: 32:36
Like, you know, like what's like a story we've had, right? Yeah, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 32:45
Yeah. I'm definitely so Charlie's like the visionary, like anything's possible, and I'm I'm sort of not, uh, but I'll go along for the ride. Once once I'm in it, I'm like, I'm there. So she says, but I I'm sort of coming up with problems like how will we afford to travel, right? As you know, we'll rent our house out. And I said, but it'll only just cover the bills and the mortgage. She said, No, no, no. We'll rent our house out to holiday makers because they come to Brighton all year round. It's very, very busy. And I said, Okay, um, all right, get the person round, we'll find out how much money we could get. And it was like, let's say it was £2,000, £3,000 a month. It still wasn't enough to travel. I thought, well, no. So she says, I've got this man who's coming round, he does hen parties. And uh have you heard of a hen party or a bachelor?

Cecilie Conrad: 33:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what it is, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 33:38
Right. So yeah, it's basically a massive, raucous party where you know, like the the caricature of it is women walking around with like learner plates on and short skirts and being loud and all that kind of thing, letting their hair down. And Charlie said, There's this guy coming who doesn't do holiday homes, he does holiday homes just for hen parties. I said, No way, no way, what like and at the time I thought it'd be like eight women because we only had a three-bedroom house, it was quite tall and thin. But he arrives and I he's a geezer, he was like, you know, in his flash car and he starts walking around our house. And I'd already decided no way. And he's counting people. He's he's looking at the floor and going, two, four, eight. And I was like, what is he doing? He's counting how many women he can fit in our house. And um 14 was the number, and we did it. We did it. We we we we went with hen man, as he was called. We did that for a year, and he didn't pay us on time. The house was a state. When we got back from our first travels, which was we went to Southeast Asia, so we we had friends in Bangkok, soft landing, and then we went up through Thailand and Cambodia, and uh and then we were in Bali for two months. We stayed in a beautiful, we just just through connections, Facebook, you know, we found this lovely, lovely guy who was traveling back to the States and he sublet his basically a bamboo house open, you know, snakes and monkeys and in Bali. And we were there for a couple of months. It was it was amazing, but it was also hard. It's it I think it's really important, as you uh as I think you said, you got ill on the road recently, right? And yeah, and I think this is and I've totally been there, you know. Anyone who's traveled for any length of time is gonna get ill.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:22
It's a lot happens when it happens, it does happen.

Martin Cooke: 35:30
Right, yes.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:31
It's not just us, it was just because, you know, yeah, at the moment there's this virus around and we get it as well, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 35:37
So yeah, but there's a kind of duality to to to everything, like people think, oh, you're traveling, you're having like your best life, and it's like, no, we're just living, like we're trying to live our best life, and um our premise is different because it's not in one place, it's not a house, and and the advantages are quite obvious.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:00
I mean, I I've I've just been walking alongside blossoming trees, almond trees, looking at the snow at the top of the mountains here in Italy this morning with my teenage daughter. It was beautiful. But but yesterday, you know, we were just roaming around looking for a place to park our van with in some weird it's not always amazing. Amazing is easy to describe and it's easy to take pictures of. But the real life that we bring, and maybe we we could call it obstacles or disadvantages, they're a little harder to describe.

Martin Cooke: 36:40
But but photographs photographs are nice, you know. I I felt really conscious when we traveled, you know. Charlie said, Oh, we can we can have a better income traveling because we'll do a blog, we'll be vloggers and things like that. And and I just kind of felt like that wasn't the thing because it it wouldn't allow us to show a balanced, or I don't know how many well, some vloggers do, but I did a very small photo stream just for an extended group of family and friends, and I would take pictures of we like when we were in Bali, we went to New Zealand and we bought a van in New Zealand. It was an old VW Westphalia pop top. Um was really, really cool. And I know that one. You know that one, you know, it was brown with the the checkered, the checkered thing on the side. It was beautiful, and it was left-hand drive, and it was um, yeah, and and everybody, my friend Tim who lived there, he said, you really shouldn't buy this van because it's a Volkswagen and all the parts come from Europe, and we're here right next to Japan. You should buy a Toyota, but there wasn't that there was a romance, you know. We wanted the van, the van turned up, it had a lovely story, and uh, so I drive the van six hours, but I flew, and then I drive it back and we put all our savings, so we put like 8,000 pounds of savings into the van to live in. I drive it back six hours, and Tim, and it was like this, it's like mountains of of New Zealand. And he said, It's an old van, it was like 38 years old or however old it was. He's like, You've got to take it easy, just do like 50 miles an hour, stop every couple of hours, check the van. I was too excited. I just drove at like 65 miles an hour, flat out. Triumphantly came home with the van, and then the next day I drove into town and I park up and it's a rear engine, water-cooled, water-cooled vehicle, park up, and there's all water pissing out the back of the van. I was like, Oh, what have I done? I've I've I've ruined it, we're gonna live in it. It's too expensive to live in New Zealand. We have to be in a van, you know. We haven't got the money coming in from the from the hen hen house. In my head, we're screwed. I've made the biggest mistake of my life, it's awful. And um, and so what happens, of course, when you take a risk, you get rewarded. And we um I start ringing around. I I was like, right, I need the VW Owners Club for New Zealand. And I start speaking to all these old dudes on the phone, and this name kept coming up. Oh, you want to speak to this guy called Marty, he lives in Blah. And I look where Blah is, and it's 10 miles away from where we're staying on a farm with our friends. And it turns out this guy's got six of them in his garden. He's an aircraft engineer. What he doesn't know about this particular model, like he's like the best of the best. And he spends the next two weeks every evening with me. He's working during the day, every evening. I camp in his garden in the thing, um showing me how to how to fit a new cam belt. And I'm just kind of nodding just because he's like, You'll need these tools. So I like buy the tools, thinking I'll never use these. Like it, but he was um, he was really, and what a beautiful man. He really wanted to uh make sure that the engine didn't crap out on us as he described it. I don't want it to crap out on you, but he wanted us to see his country that he was really proud of, and he was just a really beautiful human being. And I'll never forget his kindness and love in doing that, and it really yeah, that was and the van was perfect from that day onwards, and it the whole engine could have blown up. If all the water had gone, it would have yeah, exploded.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:14
Yeah, all gone. I like that one when you take a risk, you get rewarded. We really, we really, every time we've been in these it really resonates with me. This, you know, now everything is falling apart, this feeling, something happens, and and you're like, okay, this is the end of the road. Then something happens. Always something happens. There's always someone to help. Like, right, like totally like next to you. Then they come themselves.

Martin Cooke: 40:47
You you can't be tough with it, like you've you've got to be vulnerable with it, and you've got to surrender. Yeah, and yeah, it's like you've got to let the love in, right?

Cecilie Conrad: 40:56
Yeah, like you know You just had a flat tire, and the story is the exact same.

Martin Cooke: 41:00
Really?

Cecilie Conrad: 41:01
Exact same sign. Yeah, we had a flat tire in Sicily, right?

Jesper Conrad: 41:05
And first it was raining, but we got a warning sign, so we drove in, parked under and so we wouldn't get wet, and like um But the thing that happened was first we tried with all the insurance and calling and handling it ourselves because actually there was a guy coming like should he help us?

Cecilie Conrad: 41:24
And we were like, No, no, no, we'll figure it out. And then after like 20 minutes of phone calls and WhatsApp and what have you, I said to this rescue lady on the phone who couldn't like understand the address. I told her, you know, I'll call you back. And then I went and talked to that guy who wanted to help us. He was right there, he was still right there, and and said, you know, in my Italian, yeah, don't speak. Um thank

Cecilie Conrad: 41:51
you very much. I would like to receive your help. And from that moment it was like this, and we had new tires and fresh coffee, everything.

Martin Cooke: 42:02
But you've you've consciously chosen to take yourself out of your comfort zone by by uh saying goodbye to a traditional life. And I think that's where the that's where the I love the film The Matrix, you know. But the the film The Matrix perfectly describes for me the the the conditioning and the world that most people are living in. And when you when you can see the matrix and you consciously choose to uh to uncouple from it, life does become more difficult on on many levels, but it it's also not difficult. It's it's almost as it should be.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:39
It's you know the first guy who showed up to help us the first time our it was the second, one of the first times the big red bus broke when we were traveling. Yeah, one of the first guys who of course there was a mechanic right across the street who could fix an old timer, of course. And he came to help us, and this little part that you know hasn't been in production for 35 years, he somehow he managed to replace it. Or to fix it or whatever. And when he left, I I noticed on the sleeve of his t-shirt it said angel. It did, yeah. It was like, okay, okay, universe, you're talking to me, and I I I'll I'll try to like adjust the the listening device. Yeah.

Martin Cooke: 43:24
So so let's talk about um what what this is then. Would people have ever have people ever described you as lucky?

Jesper Conrad: 43:32
Oh yeah, right.

Martin Cooke: 43:34
I think this is fascinating, right? So the the extent to which you you you feel or one feels that you can make your own luck. There's um I I personally believe you can make your own luck. I mean, but just because I've had a lot of lived experience of having these lucky connections or you know what people would perceive as as very fortunate, but I think it's when you're on in a flow state and on the right path, things just Kind of come to you, don't they?

Cecilie Conrad: 44:02
It's not luck.

Martin Cooke: 44:04
So how can we how can we uh share how to increase your your your luck? We have a friend Chris complicated. It's complicated. Okay, we won't go there.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:16
I love complicated. I'm just I'm not gonna do it like in one tweetable sentence.

Jesper Conrad: 44:21
No, but our friend Chris has uh a nice saying, uh, and it is about being in tune with the universe.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:28
Is it the intention, attention, no tension?

Jesper Conrad: 44:31
That is also good, but it's not that one I was thinking about.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:34
That's a good general rule that to be aware of your intention. Like, what is it? What kind of life do you want? What what kind of emotions do you need to like get rid of? Or what is it we're looking for? To be intentional and to be able to describe it quite clearly to know what sounds wrong if I say to know what you want, because that could be like I want to be a V or W or whatever. It it's more like it's a more emotional thing, actually.

Martin Cooke: 45:07
What is your heart desire?

Cecilie Conrad: 45:08
Yeah, and and how do I want to feel? It's not about what do I want to have. Um so that's the intention, and then there's the attention. You have to be you know, you have to take it when it comes, you have to be ready to to to be, you know, oh, that's where it is.

Martin Cooke: 45:27
It's like perhaps I've never surfed, but it's perhaps like watching the wave and knowing like I want that big wave, and it's having the attention to see that it's coming, knowing it's scary.

Cecilie Conrad: 45:38
Yeah, but you have to look at the ocean if you want that big wave.

Martin Cooke: 45:41
Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 45:42
Otherwise, you know, if it's there, you you you have to so that's the attention. And then there's the no tension, which is the hard part, I think, is to let go of the whole thing. Like, I'm okay either way, I'm happy. Oh, is it the this or something better you wanted to see? No, no, no. Because that's actually the no tension is you know, I'm happy with this, or it could be something better.

Martin Cooke: 46:04
Is it no attention or no tension?

Cecilie Conrad: 46:07
No tension, right? So intention, you start with intention, you continue with attention, you do your part and you're sure that you're looking at the ocean, yeah, if it's the wave you're looking for, and then you have no tension, you're not like very attached to the idea that it has to be right now, or it has to be perfect, or it has to be in this special way, or it has to happen. If it's not happening, I'm not doing it right. Chill.

Jesper Conrad: 46:32
You're tensing.

Martin Cooke: 46:33
You'd be in the peas, you'd say universe, kind of, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:36
You call it being in the flow state, or without narratives.

Martin Cooke: 46:40
I use the word narratives quite a lot when I'm working with people. Uh they will use language about themselves like I'm not good at this, or I should do this, or I should do that, and um, and being aware of what your narratives are, because the narratives are quite powerful, they can have quite a powerful hold of over you, I think. And that can get in the way of the universe sorting things out beautifully for you. It can get in the way of your luck, almost.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:08
But they get in the way of your attention because your narrative actually is the filter that you you you you look at the world, so you can't actually see it when it happens if you have the wrong quote unquote um narrative going on.

Jesper Conrad: 47:23
We actually have a um thing that is down the same line, which we call when you do what is difficult, life becomes easy. And sometimes we take it when we are super hungry and we live on this vacant gluten-free uh diet. Yes. On the road, and it's super hard. And but then you go into a supermarket, and if you are into organic uh produce, uh then it's very easy.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:50
You don't have to buy the five things they have and then you eat them, and then you walk out of the supermarket.

Jesper Conrad: 47:55
It's it's actually kind of easy. You don't need to take a stand on all these hundreds and hundreds of uh things that are in a supermarket. It's like, okay, these three, yeah, we go.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:06
It's a very simple example of if you do what is hard, your life becomes easy. Yeah, and and it's also what you describe this process of actually making things very complex. And sometimes, you know, I you you ended your story at Bali, I think, in an accommodation, maybe not perfect, yeah, or beautiful and adventurous, and lovely to share stories about afterwards, but maybe it was no fun actually living there.

Martin Cooke: 48:33
No, uh it was absolutely so we were in this hut. Well, it wasn't a hut, it was a enclosed and it's three bedrooms upstairs and then downstairs, traditional Balinese, just tiled floor and out into the garden. And um, I pretty much went mad there. So, you know, like if if I was on Instagram, it would look amazing. Like it would look amazing. But the reality was, and it was amazing, you know, we'd get this takeout delicious food would come. This little man would sh come down the gate, it was in the middle of nowhere, backing onto this jungle, and he would shout Bali Buddha and bring this, you know, beautiful salad every evening for no money. And you know, there was a cleaner, and she was sweet, and it was all like really nice. And I got a little car, hired a car, and we'd drive to this drumming circle, and it was it was like really great. And everyone who would have heard about it would have heard all of that. But the thing that made me go mad were the ants. I don't know if you've been to Asia, but like imagine you've got two children, right? And they're eating a bit of bread or a bit of porridge in the morning.

Cecilie Conrad: 49:36
And if you didn't clean every single little crumb, second in the second it dri it touches the floor, you you remove it.

Martin Cooke: 49:45
You've got like a whole motorway of ants. I'd come down in the morning and I'd be sweeping them up, and I was just kind of going mad with it. And Charlie didn't care. She was like, You just sweep them up, who cares? Whereas in my head, it was and it's really it was really interesting. I almost uh it was like I started uh meditating upon it. What is it the ants are trying to tell me? Like and they I think in retrospect, they were trying to tell me here we go, you cannot control life. It's an illusion to think that you're in control of anything, and surrender is key. And here's me here's me trying to change the jungle. I'm living in the jungle, even if I had walls and doors, they'd have been underneath anyway. But here's me trying to like sweep up every evening rather than doing some yoga, I'd be like downstairs for an hour, like cleaning everything. And and so I think the lesson there was that you'll go mad if you try and control the ants, everything.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:51
But it is this uh this like the narratives you described before. You had this narrative or this idea that ants equals not clean or not looking good enough after your family, or something bulkingly in the end.

Martin Cooke: 51:09
Yeah, I was having dreams about them, it's horrible, you know.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:13
But you have to remove that idea to surrender to the jungle and it was happiness that was readily available.

Martin Cooke: 51:22
It's only when it's only what almost right towards the end of something that I realize, you know, it's like when it's ending, I can see the beauty in it, and and when I've left, you know, so yeah, so maybe that's a good thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:37
I mean, maybe we take with us the good memories.

Martin Cooke: 51:41
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:42
As long I hope you can see some beauty while it's gone.

Martin Cooke: 51:45
And the lessons, the lessons learned throughout it. Yeah, we we actually returned to New Zealand two years after that and and had the same experience of of buying a van, but this time with less money in the bank and another child. So, you know, we needed a bigger and better van, and what we got was a smaller and worse van. And uh if anybody's in the market for a smaller and worse van, it's the Mazda Bongo with the pop top. Don't get it.

Jesper Conrad: 52:12
We've got but Martin, um uh about your your kids and schooling, why haven't you just sent them to school? Uh why not choose the the normal way of doing things?

Martin Cooke: 52:24
I like to think about

Martin Cooke: 52:25
first principles and what does success look like, right? And the first, the the most important question, I think, for me is what is what is a life well lived? How do you live well? And so I suppose in part schooling has come about uh as a result of my in a substandard school experience. I wasn't very happy at school. Not that I was depressed, but I just didn't, you know, I was not in with the cool crowd. I didn't, I wasn't like on all the football teams having having my best life. You get some children and they seem to really thrive in schools in that environment, and that's great. But I was quite shy and I was quite academic, but I certainly struggled in some subjects. And so I think I've carried that through that that kind of belief that it wasn't great, and and um and we didn't feel like our first child was ready, not that she was ready in the UK. You're in school at four years old, way too early. And we looked at we looked around, and you can see that obviously in Europe there are countries where it's six or seven, and we just like arbitrary numbers, like you were saying, you know, we're we're you're ready now, you're four. Just like they say, right, you're ready.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:36
Another kind of ageism.

Martin Cooke: 53:37
Exactly. You should have the number after 40 weeks, you know. So that's the gestation period, but in other countries it's 39 weeks, so you're late, you know. So we're gonna inject you full of drugs and force the child out of you. So there's so I suppose it feeds into questioning systems and um so first hand experience and then questioning systems um of kind of control and power, uh and also asking uh looking forward. So I suppose like thinking consciously thinking what are the skills that are going to be required uh to thrive in life. And for me, that's uh emotion like grounded uh emotion, being able to express your emotions and feeling like you have choice and autonomy, because we assume that most adults do, and yet we somehow feel that it's okay to essentially imprison children from the age of four with no choice. Oh, you're enjoying art next next lesson. You know, I remember school. We uh we had an activity week at school where if you had money, you'd go off skiing, and we didn't have money that year, so I spent a week in the art class. Um, but usually art was half an hour, and then so I thought I was terrible at art. I loved it for a whole week. I could just get in really into something, so I could deep dive and I really enjoyed that. I really remember it. Um, so the feeling that you don't get the opportunity to deep dive and follow your interests, and so that's kind of how we've got to home education. I wouldn't call it unschooling. There's definitely a uh it's not, it's always on my mind, perhaps more so my wife's mind, that it's a tension between getting some grades that are going to be useful to open up doors if you did want to go on and and get a degree as an architect or if you wanted to, yeah, whatever you want to do. Uh so there's a tension between uh like not doing any exams or doing some exams, and so I'm tasked with uh the laptop is is is propped on a book here. I thought I'd prop it on this book so I could mention it. Yeah, not really. Teach your child to read in a hundred easy lessons. That's the book that's under the laptop now. And um thinking about what is my role, I'm here to teach them how to read and um maths. I'm getting into maths, even with the kind of nine-year-old to use these labels. It's difficult for me. I'm back to school. Can I do it? I don't have to do everything. At the woods, there's a math teacher. I can outsource bits of it. It's it's kind of I think the uh don't they say a child needs well, we all need a village. You know, it takes a village to raise a man, right? I'm not good at everything, and that's why I want my children to be surrounded by happy, grounded adults and children of all ages who are kind of Yeah, I want to go to that forest. Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 56:39
Like really nice.

Martin Cooke: 56:40
It's super cool, it's really, it's really great. And the people that run it are really they say yes, and they say, Yeah, like I've just set up uh on a Sunday something called Sunday sessions with somebody who lives there, she's got this health hut, and we're running a circle where people can just come in and we're just kind of shaping it, however, the people that turn up do it, right? So that they said yes to my friend here who wanted to set up a food business. They said, Yeah, just test it out, you know, because they know how important it is for people to do stuff they're passionate about. So so I think back to your question, which was how come homeschool school, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it's broken as a system, I think it serves the it serves the the few, you know, um and it's it's uh yeah, form of imprisonment uh its most extreme or you know No, I totally agree.

Cecilie Conrad: 57:39
I don't find it extreme. It is a prison.

Martin Cooke: 57:41
Yeah, it is a prison. And and so yeah, I'm I'm interested in in nurturing free thinking individuals who have autonomy over their own minds and bodies and how they choose. And I'm not perfect. I'm um, you know, none of us are. We're not, you know, like I suppose you might say you'll be judged on your results, you know. Um, but define success.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:06
Yeah, and and it's it's not fun for a child to be your result, right?

Jesper Conrad: 58:11
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:12
I mean, I should be able to define myself and judge myself and let myself be judged on who I am and on what they are capable of. But I think that's very important.

Martin Cooke: 58:22
There's a really big culture of how how your kids are doing, you know. So, oh my my children have got these grades, they're off to this university, they've got this children. Yeah, and good on him, not on. So what is he happy? Are you happy? Yeah, how do you live well?

Cecilie Conrad: 58:39
How's your relation with that son?

Martin Cooke: 58:41
Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:42
Can I I'm sitting on something? Can I give you a question?

Martin Cooke: 58:48
Just one piece of advice on the reading thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:51
The reading thing. I'm very passionate about it because it took me forever to learn how to teach kids to read.

Jesper Conrad: 58:57
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:58
And my best advice is this don't do it. Right. Please. You read them stories because you like stories, you read books yourself because you want to read the book. Reading is a culture, but do not teach the children. And they learn like this. It's crazy. I've seen it in real life, and I wouldn't believe it. We had in our stories as um home educators, we had a great failure with our first.

Jesper Conrad: 59:26
Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 59:27
Oh, yeah, like huge, like in shit.

Jesper Conrad: 59:30
He got stubborn and didn't have to learn to read.

Cecilie Conrad: 59:32
Got angry and decided that he would never learn to read.

Jesper Conrad: 59:36
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 59:36
And what would we do about it? And um well, basically, he finally decided to learn to read, and then he learned. But it was not because I was helping him, it was his decision. And he was, I think, 13 at the time. He decided. And it was because there was this book he wanted to read. Yeah, he was listening to audiobooks uh because he couldn't read and he didn't mind, and uh he had decided never to learn to read um and because we had pushed him in the wrong way, yeah, uh at the wrong time in the wrong context. And he decided to learn to read as when he was 13 because there was this audiobook, and book two was not available as audio. And the thing was it was not even translated into Danish, and the book was so interesting, he decided I need to learn to speak English and I need to learn to read a book. So he did, and he did it in like two months after hardly, you know, he could hardly read his own name.

Martin Cooke: 01:00:47
Can I ask you a question then? Where did your motivation to let's say push or to to get him to read? Where did where was that coming from?

Jesper Conrad: 01:00:57
Uh from me and society, yeah, right. Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:01:00
No, actually, first it because we have a 23-year-old. And so this first I'm talking about is the first home educated child who is now 17. And 23-year-old, she was in a free school in Copenhagen, very, very free and lovely school. And we thought our second child would be in that school.

Jesper Conrad: 01:01:19
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:01:20
So closing in on the time that he would start in school, I realized that he was he's a very spiritual child, very highly sensitive, very much himself. He's not weak, it's

Cecilie Conrad: 01:01:36
not weakness, it's just he's in his own state. And I thought learning to read plus learning to be in school will be too much for him. So I'll teach him to read before he starts. And and the context of that is that me and my siblings all learned to read when we were four or five years old, and our oldest child learned to read when she was five. So for me, it was not a thing. In Denmark, you start when you're six. So when he was five, I thought, okay, I'll just, you know, teach him to read. It'll take me like two weeks, and that's it. So he got annoyed with that. And then when he didn't start schooling, Jesper said that okay, you can homeschool, but then he has to learn to read.

Jesper Conrad: 01:02:18
Yeah. So I knew if I'm not teaching anxiety, you know, of uh other people other pe of other people's judgment on you when you do something that is out of the ordinary. When you homeschool, uh, it's like, ooh, what would people think?

Martin Cooke: 01:02:35
Um, what would the neighbor say kind of feeling inside of it? Absolutely. And it what's interesting also is when couples, when we come together and we have we come at it from slightly different angles or we come at it with our own stuff, don't we? Of course.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:02:52
And obviously, obviously. And you have you he I'm not very nice, to be honest. I'm like so much anarchist and so I'm not nice.

Jesper Conrad: 01:03:02
I'm I'm not he's very nice, but powerful.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:03:04
But I'm not nice, I'm not compliant, and I'm not like going to obey things to be nice. I'm nice because I like people, and and I I like to to be in a in a state of of love and compassion and taking care of each other, but I'm not nice in order to be nice or to be perceived as nice. And that way I'm not nice. Very, I do my thing, and there is nothing that will stop me, and that's why I call me an myself an anarchist, because I will never a rule will not stop me from doing what I believe is right. Yeah, I just know this. So, and he's very nice. My husband is a very nice guy, he wants everybody to feel good, and and if that, you know, he's just you know, he's very nice, and I think that's the very big difference in that situation when we started to homeschool. I was, you know, I wouldn't care less what the world around me would think about the situation, but he was kind of not afraid, but no, no, but also mother to be.

Jesper Conrad: 01:04:06
But also the one being out in the world gives another pressure on you when you go to work and you meet people and they're like, Oh, you homeschool, but the the first question you get is can the read and deride? Well, it's a little different pressure when you are at home with the children, of course.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:04:21
Yeah, but no, but then okay, I'm just trying to to interfere with your reading process with your children, actually.

Jesper Conrad: 01:04:29
Yeah, you're a disruptor.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:04:30
I like this. Yeah, I'm not nice, as I say. No, I'm just saying, like in my personal experience as a home educator, once I let go of this teaching them how to read, they learn to read like so smoothly. The two last ones. So the the third child, she learned to read while I was trying to teach the other one to read. She got interested, and and she could read when she was four. And she read her first full novel when she was like six or seven. So and she did it on her own. I didn't even teach her the alphabet. I mean, I answered the questions when she asked me something, but it was not a teaching situation, and I had no agenda. And my fourth child, he learned to read when he was eight, and I got a little butterflies in the stomach there because I was like, is this another late reader? Because I'm okay with it, but it's a little complicated with the world. It is complicated with people around you when you're unschool, you live in a bus and you walk barefoot, and and then the kids can't read, you know. It can get you into trouble. So we were observing the situation with some emotion involved. But what happened was that he started reading in three languages.

Jesper Conrad: 01:05:50
Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:05:51
So once he started, he could read in in English, Danish, and Spanish, which is not the same system.

Jesper Conrad: 01:05:58
So it took longer time.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:05:59
So obviously. Longer time, yeah. And now uh he's the one I described yesterday reading out loud doing voice acting in his second language. So and and what my point is it's like teaching them to walk. You don't teach your children to walk, you hold their hand for a while if they stretch out their arm, hopefully. Well they see you walking and they observe, they see you walk, everybody's walking, so they walk at some point, they get up and walk. And and because we live in a culture of text and language, written language and books and and also on the computer, the internet, everything, there's so much text everywhere they learn to read.

Martin Cooke: 01:06:39
Yeah, and yeah, I mean it's and the lessons are not helping.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:06:44
That's my point. Yeah, lessons are not helping, the lessons are making the kids feel stupid. Whereas put them on your lap and read them a good story, that makes them feel loved, and that reading is something amazing, and then they suddenly they can read.

Martin Cooke: 01:06:59
Yeah, that uh that sounds good to me. I think my wife has more of the judgment when you were talking there, it's uh Yasby, it's the judgment of others. Um and I give less of a shit, but I'm still I'm probably in between the two of you or wherever you both were.

Jesper Conrad: 01:07:19
But but it is uh a difficult thing that I think all of us need to face, and when you choose a life different uh than what is the norm, then you are more aware of that. Oh, am I doing this because of what other people would say or think about me?

Martin Cooke: 01:07:38
Yeah. Um, what's driving the yeah, you must be able to do do this by this age?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:07:43
That's how we started identifying as unschoolers, because we realized that all the quote-unquote teaching we did, we actually did it because we were afraid of the system, the school system that would come and check on us.

Jesper Conrad: 01:07:58
It's the same. Yeah, yeah. But my fear families, mother-in-laws, mothers, you know, all of them.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:08:05
I was not afraid of your mother. No, no, no. But no, I was afraid because they have real power.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:10
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:08:11
They could actually interfere with our life.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:13
Your mother, yeah, absolutely.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:08:16
So um, no. The thing was I was afraid that the school system would come and check on us and find it not good enough and start forcing us uh into the school system or to do things we didn't want to do. So every day I thought I would teach the children. Most days I didn't, and I felt guilty about it, and some days I did, and there was a lot of negative emotion, and it was just a bad situation for them.

Martin Cooke: 01:08:42
This is the space that I'm in. I'm you know I'm I feel conflicted because I I suppose intuitively, well not intuitively, I just want to go out and have fun with them. Um, but I'm at home, it's winter, I'm in the house, the house is always a bit messy, there's always like things to do that isn't going out and having fun with them. I mean, it might be different in the summer, but they can have fun with each other. Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:09:06
I um they always I mean there are other options than you know schooling at home or going out having fun. You could also have just have fun at home.

Martin Cooke: 01:09:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They uh the the children are all really into Minecraft or the younger three. And uh it's amazing. The four-year-old within this he he fell and broke his arm a few weeks ago. And um, they say that children after they've been ill, they can have developmental leaps. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. Um after, especially after, I think it's specifically in the context of having a virus and getting a a really big fever. They can, you know, they can wake up and they can read, you know. Yeah, and um I watched him on Minecraft. There he is. I mean, the day after he broke his arm, he's doing Lego. He only he broke his left arm, but he loves Lego, and he's doing Lego with his good hand and his mouth, you know, he's he's improving right away.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:09:58
It's amazing how nothing will stop him, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 01:10:01
Nothing will stop him. And then this Minecraft, I was watching him and I was thinking, how do you know how to do this? That when you watch a young person that's native on a device, right? It's just like ding ding ding.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:10:11
Yeah, it's crazy.

Martin Cooke: 01:10:12
He's full and he's just picked it up just by observing how do I walk, you look around you, and you know, he observes it because he sits with his older brother who watches hours of YouTube videos on how to do Minecraft. So he knows how to do it, but he's internally self-motivated to do so, isn't he? He really wants to.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:10:30
And also, this is another thing I think we have to get over as parents, home educating parents. We think we are the educators, right? We think we the the knowledge comes from us to the children, maybe through a book we give them or something like comes from us, but it doesn't. In reality, it comes from the curiosity of the child. They go out and explore the world, and sometimes we get to be the helper or we get to get along on on the walk to the explore exploring. I have had, we have had so so many experiences with our children now. They are a bit older now, and where we're like, How do you know that?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:11:12
Why how did you I mean, I live with them even in a van, you know. I I'm with them 24-7.

Martin Cooke: 01:11:19
You've kept this extra lane.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:11:20
How do you know this? I remember, and this is a long time ago. We were at the Louvre in Paris, and it was a very hot day, and we went to see the lady as we call them, Mona Lisa. We have it's like a ritual. We go to see the lady when we're in Paris, and it was just a very hot day, and you can't take off your t-shirt at the Louvre, and it was very they have this glass ceiling, and it was like an oven. So we were like, okay, what can we do? We go to the basement, they have the I can't say this in I can't say this in English. Egyptologic, how do you say it in English? Like things from old Egypt collection.

Martin Cooke: 01:11:54
Yeah, old old stuff collection, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:11:56
Things stolen from Egypt.

Jesper Conrad: 01:11:57
Things stolen from Egypt. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:12:00
I don't think I think artifacts from it's called Egyptological, whatever.

Jesper Conrad: 01:12:06
I don't know.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:12:06
We went to see things from Egypt in the basement at the Louvre, and there I am, and Stormhe is nine, and he cannot read. We're like four years before he can read. And he starts to lecture the whole family in a nice way. I don't know if lecture is the right word to use, but in a nice way, explaining all of us about all of the hieroglyphs. Like this one means this, and this one, you see how the head is like different. That's because 200 years later they changed it, and they changed all of them. So see, here's one original, and here's one, and he was like, I'm not like I don't know this. We never talked about it, we didn't watch a movie. I don't know to this day, I don't know where he knew it from, but he knew. So I think this is what just like we think we have to teach them to read, yeah. I think the idea that we're the center of their educational universe is wrong. And this is something we have to get over.

Jesper Conrad: 01:13:04
But what yeah, and it it leads me. Oh shit, my leg is like it leads me on um this. How do we know what we think? How do we know what our children need to live a fantastic life? How and and I remember some to be emotionally grounded is well. That's one of them. We Cecilia and I talked about it at some point when we had some anxiety many years ago about being homeschoolers. And I sat down and really thought about what is it I want from my children when they are out of not our care, but our uh in the world. Yeah, then it's like okay, emotionally grounded is one of them. Uh being self-sustainable, uh, so they don't need to be dependent on the state necessarily, they should be able to This is economics, yeah. They should need to be able to feed and uh put clothes and the roof over their head, and those are the two most important ones. And then for me, there's like if they can find and nurture a passion, then life is on so many levels more easy because you just have a drive towards what you find fun. Um, and then to if you can ground yourself and do the other things, then I think you will be able to find love and a community around you.

Martin Cooke: 01:14:27
Yeah, I I can't disagree with any of that. I mean, amen to all of that, really.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:14:31
That's the hard part, the hard part is to let go of the idea that they also need the curriculum of math and the world history and the three or four languages and the grammar. And I find that to, in all fairness, it came from him all the pressure in the beginning. Yeah, but then when we realize we're doing all this in order to serve our fear of the state, our children are paying with their time and their self-esteem. So rather, we should be courageous and give them their freedom. And should the day come where the state is knocking our door and want to check on us, we will have to pick our fight and and stand up for it. And and until that day, let them be free and happy. And that was very easy for my husband. He could just let go. You know, he was like, I don't care if they can read and write, I don't care if they can do any math or know anything about world war, whatever. I don't care as long as they're happy. For me, this has been harder.

Jesper Conrad: 01:15:36
Can I ask one part of that? Uh, and then you can ask. Sorry. Yeah, no, no, but one part of that I actually think comes from me being um very kind of uneducated. I had a big interest in making movies when I was like 15, 16 years old, made an amateur feature film, wanted to go to the film school and stuff like that. I only went to high school because that was my parents only uh like you can do whatever you want, but please do this at least. So I did that.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:16:08
Uh because he's nice.

Jesper Conrad: 01:16:09
Yeah, but the nice uh boy from the the suburbs, you know. Uh but then later in life, I talked with my dad about it. About should I take a university degree? Should I go down the old normal road? And and he said something to me that lingered, which was uh back when I started uh my life, yes, um, as an adult, then what I ended up doing for the majority of my career wasn't invented when I it was time to go to university. Yeah, and if I look at my same life, uh my own life, it's kind of the same. I ended up with 20 years in the media industry, but on the internet, with the worldwide website. Um and the ET University of Copenhagen was grounded the year I started full-time working inside that industry. So I would have had to wait five years to start my career. It would just have been stupid. Um, so for me, I think the choosing choosing not to go to university and and just giving um a flying uh fuck about it was for me, uh, I always believed I could make it, that I could find my way, that I didn't need a support system to do it. So when we

Jesper Conrad: 01:17:24
came back to what our children needed, I was like, they don't need to go to university uh unless they they find it fun.

Martin Cooke: 01:17:33
I I'm a really big skeptic of university now. It's very expensive to go, and I think it's terrible value for money. Um, you should go if you love a subject, but I don't think enough people love their subject. And my in my line of work, I've I'd work with people who'd been in a line of work for maybe 20 years, and I'd ask them, How long have you enjoyed being an accountant? I said, Well, never, but it pays well. I said, Well, that's number one problem, you know. What and then I say to them, What do you what do you what are you passionate about? It's the um Ica guy. Have you heard of Ica guy? Um Ica guy, if uh I k a g a i, it's the Japanese um philosophy of I'm I'm doing a disservice, you'll need to look it up. But the the essence of it is how to live well. And um there are uh if you uh examine these three or four, I can't remember the fourth, but the three I remember, they're very very important questions. What are you passionate about? What are you good at, and what motivates you? These are kind of English interpretations, but if you look up a hicker guy, it's it's the the belief that kind of what you do with your life is at the cross section of what motivates you, what you're really passionate about, uh what you're good at. And um I don't think we're taught enough about or not even taught, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:18:57
So school doesn't teach you how to think is the thing is the whole structure of the school system doesn't, you know, it's not individual. Everybody goes through the same thing. So it's not about what you are passionate about. No, that's that's not in the matrix of it. And and I think one of the big problems of of being schooled is that you don't get to find out what you're passionate about, you don't get to be bored, you don't get to feel unsettled, uh, annoyed, frustrated because you're not fulfilled. Uh you don't get to make bad choices about the structure of your day or your week or your week year. You don't get to realize that there's something you really need to know. You really want to know it because it was really annoying not knowing it in in XY situation. Because you don't make any decisions on what you're doing. That's why it's the prison thing. You get up in the morning at a certain hour, not when you're done sleeping. You put on your uniform or not uniform, but you you leave at a certain hour. You you you you jump when they say jump, and you learn what they teach you, you should learn, and and you learn to be happy if you get the good grades and sad if you don't, and you even learn, you said before some kids are thriving. Yeah, maybe they are, but they learn that oh, I'm the one thriving. Yeah, you know, and and they don't learn to figure out they would might maybe they would rather knit all day, yeah, or sing all day, or go for a long walk after lunch. They're just good at the things that you're supposed to be good at at, and and luck on that. What do we call it? Lucky you, you know, it's good for them, good on them, I think you say in English. Um but it doesn't teach even the thriving children, and they they will not learn from experience what makes them happy. That's the catch for everyone.

Martin Cooke: 01:21:00
Everyone it was really interesting doing my work trying to help somebody unravel years of conditioning in six sessions, you just can't do it almost. So I would I would just be playful and just be interested in who they were and you know, just just let the stories flow. And um, that's kind of why I found it fascinating, really.

Jesper Conrad: 01:21:26
Yesterday, Cecilia and I talked about uh ownership of your child. Um and and because if you look at a child, do they own themselves or do you own them? A lot of kids grow up with not choosing their own clothes. Uh some of them grow up with not having an ownership over their own hair. Somebody tells them when their hair needs to be cut. What does that actually say to a person about being them, about how they are present in the world, if they cannot decide over their own body? And with the school, they don't decide when to eat, uh, when to go to the toilet. Uh and it's just wild to think of how that's affects you.

Martin Cooke: 01:22:14
Yeah. And if you're if you're homeschooling or unschooling, you you might presume that you give less of a shit about what others think, you know. And so, you know, like have have you have your kids brushed their hair and you know, are they wearing shoes and all this kind of this fear of judgment of others?

Jesper Conrad: 01:22:35
Yeah.

Martin Cooke: 01:22:36
But certainly I'm I'm I always thought that home education, you you're kind of crusty and like hippie, and you know, you've got dreadlocks and you've got rainbow clothes and things like that. And there are many different ways of doing it, but I certainly um I look at my children who've got, I mean, my yeah, all my children have got long hair. My youngest boy's got, you know, everybody says he's a you know, like oh, yeah, yeah, same in our family, yeah. You know, and um and I just think what people say to you says more about them than it does about what they're observing. It's their own, it's their own fear or projection onto the child, whether it's thinking about oh, you know, they're not reading yet, or you know, don't you want to cut their hair, or you know, don't you want to wear a nice dress because you're a girl, that kind of thing. It's it's all on them. And and actually raising children to give less of a shit about what other people think of them, I think is part of what I'm interested in.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:23:37
I think it's a very nice question to find the balance, because I think also not giving a shit, not a shit at all, as that's not what I'm aiming for. Because I also want for myself being this not very nice person, and for my children to be able to balance caring themselves as as they are feeling that they are okay and and whatever they find right is right, but still caring about the people around them, how they are perceived and how comfortable people we meet or people we are in some sort of relation with, how they feel about the whole thing. I think actually and and because what we do is rare, it's more rare where we come from than it is where you come from, but it's still rare. We we will always be some kind of representative of the homeschooling uh community. So if it's if it's very much rainbow clothes and dreadlocks and bare feet that has not been washed for two years, and um Minecraft at the restaurant, and you know, very much of this maybe dirty clothes, maybe things that we make a bad case for everyone else coming after us, and we don't teach the surrounding society anything good about who we are and what we're doing. So actually, I tell my children to comb their hair and I tell them to change the t-shirt, I tell them to take a shower, I tell them to cut their nails. I'm not telling them that they have to if they like really no, I don't want to cut my nail, I want to have long nails. Okay, it's your nails. But I will share with them the price of it, what will be perceived in the reality that we live in, because we don't live in a hippie community. We drive around in our van in all of Europe and we find ourselves in so many different contexts. You can't take off your t-shirt at the Louvre, you'll be kicked out. Yeah, and and if you want to talk to people, they have to perceive you as a somewhat interesting, nice person.

Martin Cooke: 01:26:04
Integrated, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:26:06
And and you know, three-day old ketchup on the t-shirt is just not a good sign to send. Yeah, so there's a balance here, it's not all just freedom.

Martin Cooke: 01:26:15
Yeah, you're right. You're yeah, it's not freedom, anarchy, and and middle fingers.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:26:20
That's not where I am.

Martin Cooke: 01:26:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I was just um joining some dots in my head, and I realized that I was talking about New Zealand, and part of the inspiration for travel as well, going to New Zealand was because of somebody who I think you've recently interviewed with our old neighbour. Um so we stayed with them in their yurt, and you know, they were bat.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:26:44
Now I remember, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 01:26:46
They were living off grid, and they just arrived in New Zealand and and we kind of kind of gate crashed their woofing place, and we were living in the van there and kind of hanging around and saying, How do we get around your country? But they've lived a really you know, they were our neighbours in London, living a normal life, and they they sold up and travelled round Europe first in a Volkswagen T25 and a type three, and you know, did that thing, and then and then he's he's a native Kiwi. But they they really went went brave and hard on you know buying a bit of land and living in a yurt and all of that.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:27:24
And I was a really brave story.

Martin Cooke: 01:27:26
Yeah, yeah, and I haven't heard the the interview yet, but um they their bravery is very inspiring and certainly part of our journey in giving us the confidence about knowing what you want. And it's a very personal thing to you, isn't it? Like where you're uh where you're uh don't know if it's boundaries, but you know, you you're like actually brush your hair because it's you know it's just gonna lubricate the wheels of of things, you know. This is where my boundaries are. It's really it's really interesting and important, I think, to surround yourself. With different otherness. There's not one formula for living, let alone home educating or unschooling. There are many different ways of doing it. And being around different people, I think is really great and healthy.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:28:15
Yeah, that's why we travel around in different cultures and meet different people. And we never really were attracted to at least not full-time living in communities, because exactly this, they close around, you know, being right, and they are very often very right. It's just there's not much contrast. And I think reality has many layers and levels, and it's a good thing to for our children and for us to be able to walk into the Louva as well as you know sit on a beach playing guitar and having a bonfire with all the other barefoot hippies. It's it's just different social settings and different elements of life and and different social languages, if you want.

Martin Cooke: 01:29:05
Yeah, so it's the richness, isn't it? It's the richness. You're you're learning. It's like um, you know, like a lot of people, if you imagine there's a spectrum of of living, and most people are in in here, and in there there are highs and lows, and there are extremes and of of all different things of of of cultures and uh uh yeah educational models and work, everything, isn't it? It's uh so I I I commend the way you're traveling, I think it's amazing. My question, I know we're almost out of time. Let's do it was uh to what extent was the motivation for getting up and uh into the van motivated by the uh not fear, but you know, the the oh the authorities observing us. You know, if we get in the van, they can't, you know, see you later. Come and get us if you can, catch us if you can.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:29:58
I think it was more the other way around. It was other things motivating us to get into the van and go.

Jesper Conrad: 01:30:06
Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:30:06
But it was a great advantage.

Jesper Conrad: 01:30:09
As a bonus, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:30:10
We knew we knew once we're in the van, we're safe.

Jesper Conrad: 01:30:14
See you later.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:30:15
Yeah, it was see you later. It was you know, we can just in our language we say leave the bakery if you don't like the smell.

Jesper Conrad: 01:30:23
Yeah, but it's also the the the really fun thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:30:25
We can leave the bakery.

Jesper Conrad: 01:30:26
It's a really fun thing, Martin, was you know, um in Denmark we are less than one percentage, less than a half percentage that the homeschool. Uh and even unschooling is uh weird. And when we started back then, there was maybe 10 families maximum. Um nowadays it's getting more and more common, um, among others, because people share about it, more people get their eyes open. But when we were in Denmark, homeschooling our kids, unschooling them, when we talked with people about it, there was kind of that's a little weird. That's uncommon. I haven't heard about that. What are you doing? How will your children survive? And uh will they ever be able to read and do math and all these things? But as soon as we started our full-time traveling, that skepticism became interest. It's like, oh man, I always wanted to travel. What a dream come true! Oh my god, stop. We are doing the same.

Martin Cooke: 01:31:23
Stop it. That that that is absolutely what we experience so much, even when well, you have the reverse situation, I suppose.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:31:31
How do you mean that you traveled for a long time and now you're based in one place, and and when you get all this, how will they it's rather interesting, just um, yeah, having lived the got out of the matrix.

Martin Cooke: 01:31:43
I feel like we got out of the matrix, and then we've kind of consciously gone back into it, you know. Like Charlie's doing a very normal, like you know, clever job, yeah, and I'm at home with the kids, but actually, in many ways, it's kind of like I don't think we would have continued traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling. Um, it's just like chapters of a book, you know, it's chapters of a book. And I'm I'm we're in a chapter now, and we're we bought a wreck of a house that we'll do up and we could sell it in two years and move to Mexico or or stay here for 20 years.

Jesper Conrad: 01:32:17
We don't know.

Martin Cooke: 01:32:18
I don't know. I'm I'm comfortable with not knowing.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:32:21
Yeah, yeah.

Martin Cooke: 01:32:22
Sitting with not knowing, I think is a really I I hope you're still uh staying long enough for us to come visit. Well, we're gonna be in uh where are we? We're doing a little trip with all the people from the woods actually. We're coming to the south of France. Nid Toulouse in uh end start of September, so I think we're gonna be in France maybe for September, but here here in the summer, certainly. Yeah. We will drop by perfect, perfect.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:32:48
You're gonna make it. You're gonna make it so you can definitely. I've got all the papers right this time. And I know which ones I don't have, which okay.

Martin Cooke: 01:32:57
It was an admin era, wasn't it? Admin.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:32:59
Uh it was admin, yeah. Okay. It was admin. Not meant to be the stuff. It was not meant to be, exactly. It was just the universe, you know, knocking us in a division.

Jesper Conrad: 01:33:08
Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:33:09
But this we have a shuttle on the 17th of July, and we are coming.

Martin Cooke: 01:33:15
Cool, lovely.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:33:16
We're going to the home education family festival. Are you coming there?

Martin Cooke: 01:33:19
Oh, where's that?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:33:20
That's October in the north-ish, like two hours north of London.

Martin Cooke: 01:33:25
August, later. August. Oh, cool. I don't know about that. You have to send me the details. Yeah, we will, we will.

Jesper Conrad: 01:33:31
And we will share them in the show notes. And we

Jesper Conrad: 01:33:33
should kind of wrap up because we've been talking for hours and I know.

Martin Cooke: 01:33:38
If anybody's still with us, thank you for having lovely. Uh it just it's a very personal thing, isn't it? I just feel like I've been chatting to you, but perhaps with one one eye that somebody might be listening. But hopefully it's been of uh interest and value to somebody.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:33:52
It's been very nice to talk to you.

Martin Cooke: 01:33:54
Yeah, but it's just but for me, it's just nice to connect with you again and like once. I feel yeah, like when you know, when you connect with people in there, there's a nice saying, I don't know if you've heard of it, friends are for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Sometimes you meet people and you're okay with not not speaking to them all the time because you know that you'll just always know them.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:34:14
Yeah. I think that's what he saw in you. Like, yes, where he told me, like, look at that guy over there. I think he's a friend.

Martin Cooke: 01:34:21
Like he saw. I felt I felt a brotherly love for you. Just and that was it. It was just you just know.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:34:29
Yeah, perfect. That's why I want to end this conversation on the we're coming thing.

Martin Cooke: 01:34:34
Yeah, we are coming.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:34:35
We are coming.

Martin Cooke: 01:34:36
Excellent. Lovely time.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:34:38
And we'll have a great hug.

Martin Cooke: 01:34:40
Indeed, I've really enjoyed it. Okay. Thanks a lot for your time, Martin.

Jesper Conrad: 01:34:44
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