A fresh start?

It has been an odd few days here. Since I last wrote, I have been to a funeral and a Portugese restaurant, and of the two the funeral was probably more pleasant. I had to put on a jacket of course and some shoes and socks, something that I rarely manage to do in the summer months. The funeral was for Bill, and a lot of old faces were in attendance as i expected there to be. Sitting in a church is never the most comfortable of experiences for me and friday was a hot day. As the gobbledegook continued , I sat and squirmed in my uncomfortable seat and equally uncomfortable clothing feeling as much out of place as it is possible to feel. The service was dull, and even the vicar's attempt as a synopsis of Bill's life lacked any real spark. I spent the hour, looking at the assembled throng and trying to figure out who most of them were. Prayers were uttered, hymns were sung and finally Bill was carried out in his wooden suit and we all emerged into the sunshine and could reacquaint ourselves with those we hadn't seen for years. Pledges were made to not leave it so long or at least not until the next one of us pops off and we gradually dispersed leaving Bill to be buried in his garden. That struck me as being odd but I guess that is as good a place as any.
The pub was the next port of call and a swift pint or two were raised in Bill's memory before we headed home for an afternoon doze.
While we were on our way home, there was an armed robbery in the town. It took place in broad daylight and was filmed and photographed by many tourists. Three young men with a gun and sledgehammers smashed the window of an expensive jewellers and made off through the narrow high street with a few watches. They are still on the loose and are likely to have got away with it.
The evening found us at the Portugese restaurant, which was new to me and as it turned out was a very mediocre and overpriced venue. having to wait an hour between starters and main course was not good and the food when it arrived was ordinary and my chicken was undercooked.
So those were the weekend highlights I guess. In between somewhere, i have cut and pasted the blog entries into one document and i find that I have around 300 pages of stuff without images. What to do with it now though? Maybe I'll bind it into a book and start all over again.

Post capitalism day 1

Well there we go - an experiment that failed. I tried to join the other side for a while and thought i was playing to the right set of rules and what happens? I get barred. Actually I am quite glad to be rid of the burden of money and the hundred dollars were never real to me anyway, and i wonder if I would have ever got around to claiming it - I suspect not. So here we are back to a plain old boring but uncommercial site.
This has been a strange few weeks and 6 people that I knew have shuffled off this mortal coil and will by now, either know what it's all about or more likely have gone to total oblivion. This brings stronger feelings of mortality and drops them on the doorstep. Tomorrow is Bill's funeral and I will have to venture into the church and probably even wear a jacket and tie. Not sure which of those options I like the least but sometimes it is best to conform to what is expected.
Two of the six deaths were people of my age and that I grew up with. Both succumbed to cancer and lingered many months before they finally gave up the struggle. I hope that they did not suffer too much.

I was thinking this morning while drinking my tea and listening to Melvyn Bragg talking about philosophy on the radio, about the parlous state of our Education system. I know i have already wittered about it this week but surely it is time that rather than tinker with it as usually happens, we should as a nation totally rethink it. At present it is largely about reading, writing and maths with other subjects cobbled on to produce a gigantic and unworkable system that is at best inappropriate and at worst damaging to the kids. I would like to venture some suggestions as possible ways of making things better.

We need to prepare kids for becoming civilised members of society and perhaps before they are forced into the formalities of the three Rs, children should learn that although they may be the centre of their own or their parent's universe, that they are simply a part of the whole. They should be taught to give and take, to share, to be aware of others and to operate as members of a group. In those circumstances they will learn more from each other and be better able to achieve common goals. No child should leave primary school unable to read and write and perform basic computation. Those that have learning difficulties should be given all the support that they need and should not be thrust into a competitive mainstream until they can cope. All students should be given help in developing their self esteem.

Secondary education should begin fro around 11 depending on whether or not the children are ready. They could be exposed to a broad curriculum that would include ethics, logic, environmental awareness, teamwork, community studies, families and interracial studies. They could be taught listening skills and be encouraged to discuss issues of the day or things important to them. They could have informal "lectures" on history, geography and other so called core subjects and given time and structured assistance to follow subject lines that they found to be of interest. There should be small tutorial groups with teachers and members of the community combining to guide and assist each student to choose the path most appropriate to them. There should be no examinations or even tests at this stage, and homework should be optional and requested by the students.
Each student should have a laptop computer and their work and progress as well as their attendance logged centrally and accessible to them, staff and parents (maybe even to anyone). Poor or antisocial behaviour could be dealt with within tutor groups, with peers and tutors combining in constructive behavioural therapies. (With the groundwork done in primary schools, this should be less of an issue than it is now.)
By the time that students reach 14, they should have an understanding of the way that society works and be aware of the paths that they can choose from. Those who favour academic work could then make subject choices appropriate to their needs and those who do not may choose to develop practical skills and this could be partly done alongside people in work. Students should stay at school until they are ready to leave. With some that may be as young as 15 and employment laws could be changed to allow more apprenticeships. Others may stay on until they have tried all that they want to, and senior pupils should play roles in the development of the newcomers. Subject groups should be ability based and not year groups, and able students should be encouraged to push their skills to whatever limit they choose to impose. Even the school day and school year could be flexible and new teachers trained not only in one subject. There should be no faith schools and religion should be taught only as a comparitive or social phenomenon.
Exams should be there for the academic students and be available for anyone that wishes to take part. Parents should be free to make use of the school facilities and students encouraged to take part in evening activities.

Well I could go on but won't...........I am not being paid to. :-)

Damn and blast it!

You may notice the lack of ads! I have been disabled for allegedly encouraging people to click!!!

Heat wave??

Allegedly we are experiencing a heat wave. Admittedly we could use some rain but where I sit now the temperature is a pleasant 24° ane outside it is warm but not overwhelmingly so. We love to complain don't we, and people are moaning that it is too hot to do anything; I confess that I wouldn't like to be working on the roads or out in the fields at the moment, especially as health and safety requires the wearing of all sorts of silly clothing, but can we not just enjoy the nice weather while it is here? Next week it could be pouring with rain and then people will be complaining about that, and people who have bought houses on flood plains will be bewildered because their Nintendo's are floating over the submerged carpets and wondering why the insurance doesn't pay up.

We are a nation of moaners and complainers and I am sure that we didn't learn all of that from the Americans. They do it very well and anyone who has ever served Americans in a bar or a restaurant will know very well not to give them anything to complain about. Having served my first American his ordered Martini, I had it thrust back at me with the words -"If I'd wanted a vermouth, I'd have asked for a vermouth. Now give me a ....king Martini." It was a swift lesson in understanding that American sometimes needs translating.

I like to moan and complain. i do it here most days, but am not one to do so to other people. I can tolerate fairly adverse conditions without commenting and very rarely tell anyone if I feel ill or in pain. I tend to suffer in silence and some may see that as a failing, and yes it probably is. I work on the principle that a problem shared is a problem doubled, and why should i inflict my misery on another.

My mother is chronically ill as I have already written. She says that she is not one to complain, and yet she is adept at manipulating those around her buy subtler methods. Emotional blackmail is an insidious alternative to complaining and very effective in some cases. She gets her own way much of the time and always has done, and so I visit rarely. When I phone her, i have stopped asking how she is because i know that she will tell me, and describe how her condition is made worse by the heat or the wet or the wind or the cold. She never mentions that it is made so much worse by the smoking and so we talk about the weather and other mundane issues.

So for the time being I am going to enjoy being hot. The feel of the sun on my skin is soothing and building the Vitamin D levels. The world looks wonderful and the beaches are full, what on earth is there to complain about?

Good Schools?

Most western governments get elected on manifestos that include pledges to improve the education sytem. Quite rightly, they assert that it is education that is the most important of all governmental concerns as well as being the most expensive.
We have all had an education. We have probably experienced the primary classroom as well as the pot pourri of secondary school lessons, and have been moulded and changed by those experiences.
I spent most of my life in schools, though I never went to a primary school, and am far from convinced that the changes that have taken place over the years, have improved the education of our children.
In this country, we have an expensive organisation called OFSTED, that is charged with the inspection of schools and the enforcement of government regulations. It is their role to peer and probe into the way that schools are run and to produce the league tables that give parents an illusion of choice as to which school they should send their children to.
OFSTED has been around for long enough and by now we should see a difference. All schools should be good schools and all children should be receiving an education that is suitable for their needs. I do not believe this to be true. The powers that be instituted a National Curriculum, than forced all state schools into a strait jacket and all students into a fact based learning system that fundamentally was not suitable for the very bright nor those with learning difficulties. The national curriculum is aimed at the middle ground, probably on the idea that the able will learn despite the system and the less able…… well they won’t learn anyway.
There are schools that pass inspections with flying colours, there are those that fail, and there are those which fluctuate around a mediocre standard, ducking and diving among the men in grey suits, drowning in oceans of paperwork, firing at targets that are constantly moving and getting further away from the real needs of children.
So what makes a good school? I guess that is not easy to define but in my opinion a good school is led by a management that has not lost touch with the classroom. A head teacher should be a figurehead within the school as well as the community. That person should have an awareness of the needs of the community that their school serves and I believe that they should live within that community. A head teacher should have the respect and confidence of the staff and that staff should feel that they have a say in what goes on, both in the classroom and the school in general. Teachers should have the freedom to deliver their subject with freedom to express themselves and their personalities, and should expect to be able to do so with minimal disruption. Students should be able to feel safe and secure whilst in school and not be intimidated by disruptive or violent students. They should feel that they are equally important and that they are cared for. They should be exposed to ideas and experiences beyond what the community may offer. They should also expect that when they leave school, that they are prepared to operate within their local community and to live as responsible human beings, to be able to make use of leisure time as effectively as work. A good school communicates effectively and all should feel that they have a voice that can be heard and taken notice of.
I still maintain that in the seventies, although there were some strange educational experiments going on, that many schools had got it right and there was no ridiculous attempt to drive square pegs into round holes and far fewer disaffected kids attending school simply because they were being paid to do so.
Going to school should be seen as a privilege, but before that is possible the schools need to make that so for all of their students, treating them all the same is not appropriate.

Warnings

The cherry trees look pretty ugly right now. The younger leaves are curled and sticky, blackened with aphids that drip honeydew, weakening the trees and making a mess everywhere. They are however an abundant source of food for ladybird larvae and there are hundreds of them on every tree. I predict that there will be a plague of ladybirds this year. It happened a while ago and people were complaining about the clouds of insects that seemed to manage to get everywhere.

Populations in general have tendencies to surge in the good times and then decline as resources become scarce or as disease takes it's toll allowing the strongest and fittest to survive. Of course this is a part of the driving mechanism of evolution and all species are subject to it.

The human population is exponentially increasing but there is evidence to suggest that overall there is an inverse relationship between intelligence and family size. Certain groups are increasing in size more than others, and this gives some cause for concern. There are Muslims in France who are claiming that within 20 years that France will be a Muslim country. The same thing is creeping insidiously into most European countries and the prospect is very scary. At the moment there is a freedom within the the western world to think for oneself unless you are born into a religious society. Being a Muslim removes that freedom to think and a society that is led by the Mullahs can only move backwards. Within decades we too could be executing our children, stoning our women and building Mosques rather than feeding the poor and basing our lives on a medieval text that advocates a barbaric way of life and murders those who leave or disagree with them. An unthinking population will be so much easier to lead and this is what has been the basis of all the major organised religions, all of which have their origins in the middle east, a region that is and always has been at war with itself.

The ladybirds that have infested my garden are most likely Harlequin ladybirds - a foreign species. They are bigger and stronger than the native varieties and better able to compete for resources. It is likely that within a few generations that the natives will become a small minority or even die out.

Remembrance

It would seem that the world can be divided into four distinct groups, those who worshipped Michael Jackson, those who thought he was a joke or a very sad individual, those who couldn’t care less and those who have never heard of him. I suspect that the latter group may be found in remote locations and/or those ruled by mindless religious zealots.

Love him or loathe him, it has never been easy to ignore him and though I belong in the third group, I have to admit that he had a prodigious talent and an ability to entertain. He has always been seen as a victim of his success, and yet just like the rest of us he has made decisions that have steered his life and had to live with them.

The media will of course make he amounts of money from his early demise, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when it comes to his funeral. I imagine that it will be rather like that of the blessed Diana, whose untimely death was used by the media to whip up mass hysteria in the tabloid reading sea of humanity, many of whom will be made to feel that they have lost someone that they actually know or who meant something to them.

In reality he was just a normal human male, blessed with a talent that fitted into the zeitgeist, and thanks to the manipulations of those around him, he found fame and fortune while losing himself along the way.


There are so many more individuals with different talents, whose work and ideas touch our lives in different ways, many of them more tangibly than mere pop singers and yet mostly they pass away unnoticed. Most of us will hardly be missed, except by those closely connected to us and our marks on the world will quickly fade. To be remembered is the only sort of afterlife that makes any sense and I guess that privilege is reserved for those who perish at the hands of the press.

Debts

I would like to say thankyou to the fingers that are doing all the clicking. Some of the ads are pretty odd I must say but nevertheless you persist and for that I am grateful.

I was talking to a student the other day, someone that I play scrabble with online, and she asked, rhetorically, "Why is money so important?" For many people of course it is the most important thing in their lives, either in its accumulation or in the spending thereof. Some spend their whole lives working hard to make their piles, just like Mr and Mrs Dung Beetle in yesterday's pic, and then they die and leave the pile for someone else to spend.

When I was a kid, we never had very much money, but living in a village there wasn't much to spend it on anyway and so we never really felt deprived. Pocket money was spent on sweets or saved, and only when we got older were we encouraged to take on jobs in the school holidays. That mostly involved harvesting fruit or vegetables, working all day long for not very much. However it was more than the normal pocket money and it kept us occupied.

College days meant living on a grant, and although all my expenses were paid in terms of accommodation and food etc, I was still in control of very little money. My bank account never had more than fifty pound in it and was frequently empty. I had no overdraft facility and went into adult life and employment without ever having been in debt.

My first teaching job paid me fourteen pounds a week and for the first time i was responsible for managing my life, and being afraid of debt lived within my means. Mr Micawber's advice has always been there in the back of my mind and I always hate being indebted to anyone. Taking out a bank loan or a Mortgage was, for me, very stress inducing and the relief of shedding all those debts was wonderfully liberating.

I don't like to borrow and yet I am quite happy to lend. I don't often lend money but I have lent out a vast number of books, CDs and DVDs and I can never recall to whom I have lent them. Hence I have lost much of my collection.

I recently read Margaret Attwood's "Payback" - a critical examination of the concept of debt and it's place in society and literature. I recommend it as a fascinating read.

Google now owes me 80 US Dollars thanks to your busy fingers, and maybe one day if sufficient funds accumulate, I may claim it. For now though it remains a debt in my favour.

A black and white world

I have spent a considerable proportion of this week sorting through and scanning old photographs. There are dozens of albums full of bad pictures, many of which are out of focus with horizons at all angles, and many more that are fading like the memories that they represent.

Instants in time that can never be recaptured, old photos remain a treasured part of many families posessions and even those which contain images of people that we never met or have no recollection of, are kept and passed down the generations. I have ancient pictures of people that died before I was born and yet I look at them and wonder what sort of people they were and what their lives were like.

It reminded me of a conversation that I had with my own children a while back. They were talking about things that they believed as kids, and one startling concept was that both of them thought that their parents grew up in a world that was black and white. They had seen the old greyscale images and the black and white movies and of course for them it meant that was how things used to be. neither could recall when they realised that their perception was false.

It is so easy to read into images from the past, what we want to imagine. We can look at a happy looking family group and imagine that all was as it seems to be, but family albums are filled with posed pictures and a posed picture by definition is a lie.
Many of the images that I have scanned today were of school plays that I produced all those years ago; moments onstage or assembled montages of people who have long since grown up and gone their separate ways. Some I know have died, and yet when I look at those images I see the vibrant and wonderful people that they once were.

It has been fun restoring some of those faded images to life - good old photoshop - What a pity that there is no such device for restoring the faded memories.

I will, as was my original plan, upload these images to facebook so that many, now approaching their middle years can wax nostalgic about their school days. The photo albums can then be replaced and forgotten about once again.

Bloody Tennis

Well, the institutionalised insanity that is Wimbledon is upon us again. Two weeks of bonking, overpriced and allegedly tasteless strawberries, screaming and grunting female prima donnas and people actually caring how a bunch of wealthy athletes interact.
Wimbledon brings out the almost jingoistic patriotism in support for the British players who nearly always disappoint, mainly because they are not good enough to compete with the hothouse reared imports.

For me, watching tennis is just about preferable to watching paint drying, though I have been following with some interest the contoversy regarding the screaming players. Screaming seems to have become endogenous in young women, along with waving arms around and repeating expressions like OMIGOD. Why is it that when excited they feel the need to squeal like stuck pigs? It is, like the tennis players an affectation, and a very annoying one at that. Screaming when you strike a tennis ball seems like such a waste of energy and must be offputting to one's opponent. Surely it is time that this practice was stamped out.

It would seem that at the moment the country is rallying - no pun intended - behind the rather arrogant Scot, Andrew Murray. Personally i hope he gets knocked out in the early rounds. This is the young man, who during the last world cup, publically stated that he would support any team but England, and now he looks to the English for his own support. He will get it of course because the British public has the memory of a fruit fly, and are manipulated by the tabloid press.

Bill

Today I heard of the death of another friend. Bill was into his nineties and had been leaving the world for quite some time, and so his departure was neither a shock and nor was it sad.

Bill was actually the best headmaster I have ever worked for. He appointed me to the school where I spent most of my teaching career and he was an inspiration and a role model for so many that were fortunate enough to know him.
Oh yes he drove people wild on occasions, but Bill was always Bill and you always knew what you were going to get. He was a headteacher of the old school and would sweep around the corridors in a huge black gown, making his presence felt and making sure that the students knew of his existence. These forays into his empire didn't take place very often and he preferred to stay in his office letting his staff do what they were paid to do. He had excellent deputies, one who ran the curriculum and the other who managed the pastoral system. Bill was there as a figurehead, and he maintained that role so well, being much respected in the school and in the community at large.

He loved to support everything that happened in school and would attend every performance of plays and concerts, although he was not a great fan of competitive sports he would always sing the praises of individuals or teams that did well.
Recalcitrant students were very rarely sent to him. The bad lads would come out of his office thoroughly confused, as Bill would talk to them, give them cups of tea or tell them stories and then send them on their way. He celebrated success always and his claim that the school was the best in the south of England may have had some truth to it.

He was allowed to conduct assemblies from time to time, but they would frequently go wrong. I never worked out if his faux pas were deliberate or not. I suspect that he knew exactly what he was doing when talking about an abundance of jewellery in the school addressed the assembly with the opening words - "This morning as I walked to my office, I was confronted by a girl with the most enormous danglers." The students had more control of themselves than the staff who were beside themselves with giggles. His assemblies were the best attended of all and not just because we were expected to be there.

When he retired, there was a celebration at the end of the school day that was the best attended do ever and he was finally transported to his home through the streets on a school medical trolley. Drinking went on in his garden for some time afterwards.

Bill was there at every social event and was frequently invited to staff parties. He was amusing, charming and always had an eye for a pretty face. He was good company well into his eighties and I am sorry that I will not be able to say a final farewell. perhaps this will suffice. Farewell Bill - I hope for your sake that you were right about your God. It was a pleasure knowing you, I will miss you.

Purple loons

The ads seem to have picked up on one word - Bollard. Co-incidentally, that was the name of the student magazine when I was at college all those years ago. This "literary" publication allowed all those with pretension to publish their prose and poetry for anyone who wished to and was able to read. I recall that having recently read Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings for the first time, writing a series of what I thought were satyrical tales of the way in which the Union was operating. Much to my surprise they actually published them and somewhere i still have copies of Bollard containing my only published work.

A college education is worth it. I lay no claim to having been exposed to high standards of academia; in fact I am rather grateful for that as I may well have failed, but to be with like minded individuals in a situation where there was really nothing to be too concerned about, was pretty wonderful. In terms of Mazlo's heirarchy, all our prime needs were taken care of, leaving us time to play, to experiment and to generally grow up in a rarified bubble of the real world.

One of the problems of youth is the tendency to think that you are pretty much the first generation to know it all. Another is the feeling of invulnerability. Escaping from home enabled me to become a part of the 60's generation, for the first time in my life, able to express myself as i wanted to and for the first time to be able to think for myself. I allowed my hair to grow, and although I had little money, I dressed as i wanted, however inappropriate that may have been. I recall a fashionable item called Loons. These were very tight fitting cotton trousers, hipster fitting with huge bell bottoms and they came is a variety of very bright colours. They were also very cheap and so I managed to buy a pair in bright purple. They were my pride and joy and they must have lasted all of six weeks until the fly burst and that was a sort of expression that I was never into.

We thought we were untouchable and when one of out friends was set upon by a gang of local skinheads whilst waking home, a little corner of our world collapsed. The anger that it generated was enormous and there was much talk of reprisals and gang warfare, but being trainee teachers, there were more opinions than people and in the end everything died down again, but things were never quite the same.

It seems odd now writing about a past that is becoming fainter as the days pass. It is so much easier to look backwards than forwards and I know that it isn't necessarily a good thing. The world has moved on and sometimes it is hard to keep up.

Stones

A new day

Thinking about Pete's premature demise has got me thinking and made me more aware of my own mortality. I guess that I have been lucky in so many respects and have had relatively few experiences of deaths. I have only ever seen one dead person, and yet for some it is probably a daily event.

Parents like to shelter their kids from the concept of death, telling them fairy stories about how Tiddles has gone to heaven, or Granny went to sleep etc etc rather than expose them to the grim reality that it is a termination that comes to us all with absolute certainty. I recall the deaths of three of my grandparents and I also recall not being allowed to attend their funerals. The same was true of other relatives who just seemed to fade from my consciousness as I grew up.

When my brother, Mark, was killed in a stupid motor cycle accident, it was like being hit in the face with a huge blow. It was unexpected and such a total waste of a young life. He was seventeen and out with a group of friends. They were as unsual messing around as kids do and for reasons we will never know, he crossed the road, mounted a pavement (sidewalk) and then rode out into the path of an oncoming vehicle at a time when there were very few vehicles on the road.

I was at college when i heard. It was a sunday morning and the warden of the hall of residence woke me up to tell me that my Mother was on the phone with some bad news. I dragged on some clothes and he came with me in the lift. We descended in an uncomfortable silence, I guess that he knew already what had happened but it was my mother that broke the news. My parents had no phone at the time so I expect she was calling from a public phone box. She was in tears as she told me what had happened and when I hung up I was numb. I didn't know what to do, i didn't know how to feel. I took the lift back to the seventh floor and collapsed onto my bed face down, trying to block out the reality. Denial didn't last long and I remember sobbing into wet pillows for what seemed hours. I ignored people's knocking on the door and imploded into a cocoon of utter misery. At some stage i donned my army greatcoat and went for a walk along the harbour, through the municipal refuse dump and smoked the last of my cigarettes. The rain came down in stair rods but I didn't care, I wanted to be alone and I wanted this terrible reality to be washed away. Eventually I found myself back in my room where I lay, soaking wet with curtains closed until night came. My best friend Dave was the first to appear that evening. The grapevine had been at work and he had just found out what had happened. Immediately he offered to drive me home the following day and replenished my supply of cigarettes

We drove north making some conservation while dreading getting to my parent's home. My family is/was totally disfunctional. Nobody hugged anyone, nobody expressed a feeling and we discussed nothing. My father was the only one with an opinion and his word was the law.

He was sitting in his chair and mother in hers when we arrived. He, shuffling through some papers while listening to classical music at high volume. Mother sat gazing into the coal fire. She made Dave a cup of coffee but it was clear that his presence was deemed unnecessary. I was so grateful to him for his help that day and yet he was more or less ignored. Once he had gone we all sat in silence. Nobody spoke about anything for ages. My sister was in New York, and being a hysteric must have been in a terrible state but nobody mentioned her. There were no tears in that awful room, icicles could have formed in the air around us, three individuals that lived in separate bubbles.

When the day of the funeral arrived nothing had changed, we left the house together and yet apart. I remember climbing into the black limo and seeing his coffin for the first time and realising that in that wooden box lay someone that had been my brother. It was almost as if i could see through the wood and see the damage that he had done to himself, and at that point I broke down again. I remember nothing of the funeral service, very little of the burial but I do remember going back to the house knowing that there was to be no wake, nobody was invited back to the house. That didn't surprise me as so few had ever been welcome there.

And so Mark vanished into the past. I went back to college and lives carried on as they always do, but I was changed. My eyes had been opened to the reality of my so called family and if I didn't know already, at that point I knew that I would never go back.

Since then my father died and I attended his funeral too but with no sadness other than a regret that he had not been a different person. A father figure should be a role model and not someone to be feared or despised. Those who have that or have had that in their lives should forever be grateful.

"And that is all i have to say about that." Forrest Gump

Pete

I have just learned of the death of an old friend. I met Pete at college many years ago and lthough we were never the closest of buddies, we did spend a lot of time in each other's company, and I am saddened at his early departure stage right.
Pete was a one off, diminutive in stature but enormous in personality and everything he did was noticed. He was a Drama student and one of life's enthusiasts. He had a wicked sense of humour and an infectious laugh and that was accompanied by a sudden and often violent temper. His rages however didn't last long and he was quickly back to himself.

Pete was a gadget sort of guy and he loved his music. He had the latest equipment and we would frequently gather in his flat listening to this and that or playing around with his tape decks. He was a fun person and though we loved to wind him up, we also enjoyed his company.

There are many stories about Pete but I won't go on about them too much. I remember the night of my 21st Birthday when a few of us hit the town drifting from pub to pub. We'd had a few by the time we reached The Still and West down on the hard at Portsmouth. Outside was a cobbled are with various bollards that kept cars out. Being students and being drunk, we vaulted over these on our way in to the bar. Pete was, as i said, short and his legs were never his biggest feature. Attempting to cock his leg over a bollard was not a good idea as his foot made it to the top - just, stuck there, and the other foot followed leaving Pete on his back in the road. Being supportive sort of persons we all scuttled into the pub laughing hysterically. By the time we had got our first round in, the door opened and he crawled into the bar on all fours. I think his words were "You bastards" but I couldn't be sure.

We were driving in his mini estate one day - he was avery aggressive driver, flat out on the motorway heading towards his home in Buckinghamshire. A lorry decided to pull out as we were alongside it and pete of course took evading action. The road was dry, it was dark and the car fully laden. heading towards the central reservation, he applied opposite lock and as he did the tyres lost traction and we began a series of graceful mid motorway spins. The car seemed to go round and round as lights spun all around us, tyres screamed and lives passed in front of our eyes. We came to a halt, sideways on in the centre lane, and without a word, he restarted the stalled engine and set off as if nothing had happened. I think that was the most scared I have ever been.

Pete was a good teacher, musician, husband and father. I haven't seen him for many years and yet is seems only yesterday. He will be remembered by many and no doubt missed a great deal. Farewell Pete.

Just a thought of my own

Someone else's thoughts

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A new week

I spent the weekend with good friends who live reasonably close to Oxford, and though I am not one for cities generally, we spent a while absorbing the sensations that make Oxford a unique and fascinating place. Although dominated by the colleges, the city is a bustling melée of tourists, locals and academics all going about their business, blending into a continuum of humanity surrounded by history.

We took lunch in a pub called the head of the River; there were many students there, who had just finished their summer examinations. At oxford the students wear formal dress, including gowns, to sit their exams and they sat around in clusters, clearly overjoyed to have finished for the year. No doubt within a few days they will scatter to their homes around the world and the city will be taken over by the tourists once more.

I enjoy watching people, observing the dynamics of groups and while observing these bright young things, it struck me how privileged they are to be able to study in such a rarified place with the intellectual elite. Those with high intelligence always seem to look different to the rest of us, there is something in the eyes that seems to set them apart and clearly there is a cultural gulf that lies between the poles of society.

I was never smart enough to go to such a place, though I have attended courses there, and in that short time became aware of the unreality of it all. Students generally live in a world that is neither one thing nor the other. They are cocooned from the realities of life and that is probably more true of Oxbridge than most other centres of academia. I have no doubt that those that attend appreciate their time there, but I wonder if they realise just how lucky they are?

It is good to see the change in the ads. I hope this will encourage more clicking as things seem to have calmed down again.
May this week be a kind one to you.

Randomness

It has been so nice to receive a flurry of comments this week, not to mention the clicking that has been going on. For the readership and the dedicated pursuit of the adverts/commercials, I thank you. I am sorry that there has been so little change in the last week but i seem unable to sway things. Maybe a list of arbitrary key words might work - bear with me a moment while i digress - Elephants, microsopes, orgasms, xenophobia, heamophilia, leopardskin, strippers, strip scrabble, sawdust, oilpainting, Canadian flag, Italy in the spring, France in the summer, America in the winter, randomness, Richard Dawkins, The wire, Lost, Beer, more beer, Gin and tonic in plastic glasses. There that should get some results. Do not look too closely at the list, I am sure that a psychologist might come up with some interesting results for me but frankly I don't want to know.

It has been a strange few days in many respects. Sobering in that the National Front has won two seats in the European parliament - I told you so! - and I have been suffering from nasty dizzy spells, so much so that I went to bed at six last night, unable to do anything else. Today it is less dramatic but still i feel slightly drunk without the other benefits.

The base of the conservatory is done and the surveyor has been for the final measurements and hopefully all will be done by mid july. It will be nice to have a dining room again.

I just spent a pleasant morning talking to a friend. She is nervous about having to do a presentation to a group of people tomorrow and we were talking about strategies for dealing with that. It struck me that for many people, doing such things are very difficult, while some of us made a living out of it. It reminded me how much I miss performing, and yes that is what teaching is by and large. Performance and bluff can carry one through and I recall some of my best lessons were those for which I had not prepared. Flying by the skin of one's teeth can be very stimulating and adrenaline producing, though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has an ofsted inspection due. I know that i could join an Am Dram group but I have done that before and couldn't stand the politics and backbiting that goes on.

So for now my sole voice, my only outlet for expression remains here, and i thank anyone who takes the time and trouble to read my drivel. I will be away for the next few days and will of course be unable to write. Hopefully when i return, it will be in an inspired state and perhaps i can come up with something of more interest. I am bound to have done something stupid by then!

Keep clicking please..................

Pet hates

I like to think that I am quite a tolerant person, though perhaps I am seeing myself through rose tinted specs. I know that I lose patience more easily than I once did, especially with the foibles of other people. It struck me this morning while taking a reading break in the bathroom, that life is rather like a toilet roll, in that the closer you get to the end, the faster it seems to go, and with that knowledge one doesn't want to waste that time on things that get under your skin.

Cellophane wrapping is one of those things and I seem to have no talent at all for opening items that are coccooned in this nasty and ubiquitous material. Each time i buy a DVD or a CD I have a real struggle to open the damned things and I am well aware that there are still discs on my shelves that are not worth the effort of opening.

For weeks now I have been doing a daily battle with the dishwasher tablets that all come neatly wrapped in their own little transparent cases. Each day I unload the thing putting all the mugs the right way round on their hooks and all the plates and cutlery in the right places. I then reload it and once that is done, spend the next ten minutes trying to break open the seal and remove the tablet before angrily slamming the door and switching it on.

O I know that I am not the smartest person on Earth, but yesterday I had a "What if" moment. It struck me that i have wasted days of my life doing this and it seemed that I might be doing something wrong. No, I didn't read the packet, but I did run a skin from a tablet under the tap, and yes it dissolved. Ever felt stupid??

I think that there is a market for a cellophane like material that will degrade when looked at. It would save so much time, fingernails, tooth enamel and outbreaks of domestic rage.

As it stands I am enormously grateful that most things in life, especially those that are important, do not come in cellophane packing, especially toilet rolls.


PS- that should prompts some fresh ads! Do keep clicking.
PPS- Thankyou for commenting - feedback always worth having even if it is stuff I don't need to hear!