computers.

dancing dogs' arseholes. I've been trying to put the Ubuntu Operating System on my ageing laptop (a Dell inspiron 3500 with 256k and an external 40gb hard drive, since you ask) all evening, to no bloody avail. Sodding bollocks. I'll just have to clone a decent hard drive loaded with Windows XP off someone.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

...it's back to work we go. And so far, so discouraging. Paperwork. Updating forms, letters, handbooks, texts. Checking classrooms. Testing and enrolment. Inadequate pay. Corridors whose smell is transformed from industrial cleaning product to sweat, crisps, old biscuits and old footwear as putative students arrive to enrol.
And yet there are bright spots. In particular for me, My proposal for a paper to deliver at the English UK conference in November has been accepted, something I am both very glad about and rather nervous of doing. The topic is 'English Tenses and the Notion of Distance', and I'm afraid that I'm going to bollox it up big time. Then again, a little fear is always a useful thing. That's what I tell my students anyway, as they nervously anticipate what I'm about to do next...

Nuts!

The first batch of hazelnuts from the trees around our place.

A step, nothing but a step:
Yet all these footfalls
Help me climb the tallest peak.

Reading Festival, bottling and...

...the six hundredth posting!
It's the time of year when I wish a) I had the money and b) I was a bit younger - not much, just a bit - and I could go along to enjoy The Reading Festival. Well, I can get it on BBC3 and recreate the experience by pissing in my garden until it turns into a quagmire, pitching a tent in the middle, have bouncers posted at the gate to prevent me bringing any food in from outside, and have someone in the garden shed sel me overpriced and undercooked burgers and expensive piss-weak beer in a plastic glass, which I then drink until I keel over next to the bonfire I've made out of extremely toxic bits of plastic, and do that for three days, but, I dunno, it wouldn't be authentic enough.
One thing that would be missing is the opportunity to bottle a bad band. I read an amusing piece in the Guradian guide this weekend, and it brought to mind my first experience of it, appropriately at my very first Reading festival back in 1986. It was still very mind a metal festival then, and that year it was the first time it had been held after the Tory council had barred it for the previous couple of years. However, they only gave their permission for the thing to be held six weeks prior to the August bank holiday, and perforce the line up was not overly amazing. The sunday night headline were, for example, Hawkwind.
The weather was pretty crap, but it didn't matter; I had a wonderful three days, wandering round in a drunken daze, taking photos and pretending to get high. Inside the main arena, the Melody Maker tent was handing out free seven inch vinyls. This were instrumental in what was to come. Around about three in the afternoon, some really crap set came out. They weren't metal, or even rock n roll - perhaps more like twitch from side to side, making 'doo-wop' noises. Anyway, that's when I saw it: A glistening missile, very clearly full of piss, rise into the air, make a graceful arc, and splatter the lead singer. He stopped, horrified at what had besmeared him, but thengamely continued. And that's when the bottle barrage began. Bottle flew, mainly at the stage, some full, some empty, some gaining their target, others falling short. The ones that fell before their intended target were the problem, as those who were unwittingly splattered with the foul contents decided to lob other stuff back. Eventually, the audience were having a bottlefight with each other, when some clever soul decided that the seven inch vinyls were the perfect frisbee, which they were. First one, then another, then hundreds of the things were zooming round, and causing nasty cuts wherever they landed.
However, there are times I wish I could have seen some of the legendary bottlings: Meatloaf having his nose broken by a cider bottle full of piss: Bonnie Tyler screaming obscenities at the crowd after being poo-bombed; Courtney Love ripping out her tampon and flinging it enraged at the crowd.
You see, sitting in the garden just doesn't come near to being visceral enough.

God I'm tired. I've had an absolutely horrid night's sleep. I spent yesterday feeling knackered, and unfortunately for me (and anyone else trying to sleep in the vicinity) whenever I go to bed really worn out, I start snoring loudly, waking myself up. And so I spend another tired day, go to bed, start snoring, wake myself up, et cetera. And, of course, I'm in a terribly crabby mood, which helps no one. And, because I'm tired and crabby, I can't concentrate, meaning that I end up writing inconsequential entries such as these. Anyway, here's a couple of pics.

It's almost midnight: Sean has not long woken up, yet again, and is being suckled back to sleep by Nur, while Angus is hunkered beneath his duvet in a room that smells of fresh blue paint. I am sitting at the cheap old bureau that used to belong to mum and dad, wondering what to write, knowing that I have to write, impelled to drive my fingers thither and yon across the keyboard, all the while reflecting on the fractured four weeks I have had at home.
My holidays are almost invariably crap. I will except last year, which I spent reading books on the top floor balcony of a villa overlooking the Marmara, getting pissed on raki. It's generally just a bad combination of circumstances. This year, there has been the worrying lack of money to, er, worry about, as well as having little Sean to look after. I don't quite resent it, yet I feel as if I have done absolutely nothing for one twelfth of the year. I can't help but feel sorry for Angus - we have no cash to go anywhere and do anything - but also for Nur too, for the same reasons. We end up staying at home, bickering over that most stupid of things, cash.
I would love to do some studying, but when? When I try to, it seems that there is always some other demand on my attention.

The Joy of Working from home

..or not, as the case may be. I should be getting on with doing a) my diploma studies, b) the paper I may (or may not) be presenting at the English UK conference in November, c) writng up my CV and scouting out other job opportunities (of which more later), and d) painting the bedrooms. However, it is easier said than done, especially when it comes to studying in a house containing a bored nine-year-old and an increasingly curious ten-month old. It means hiding in the bedroom and trying to study there in order to get a bit of peace, the planned shed-cum-study idea having been knocked on the head. God, what wouldn't I give for a proper desk and work space! However, there is always the domestic stuff to do, the cleaning and taking an interest in the children and so forth and so on, that obtrude into the space of time I need to do the other things. Or at least, that's how it seems.
One thing that has become very obvious over the summer, and that has also been gnawing at my mind to the extent that I think about little else, is the fact that I am not earning enough to support us. Even when Nur returns to work, virtually all her wages will be swallowed up in nursery fees, meaning that my salary has to cover almost everything, and that there will be a significant shortfall. This leaves me in a quandary: do I find a new job, in which case, why do the Dip? Or do I stay at TVU, do my dip, and find other part time work, in which case, will I ever be able to find time to complete my studies, and have a life? The paltriness of what I'm earning, which is in real terms roughly what I was getting as DOS at Dilko back in 1999, was cast into a stark highlight when I was chatting with a couple of relatives over a barbecue the other day. I discovered that their son, my 37-year-old cousin, had been earning over £50K for managing a shop and had been offered £8K more a year by a rival company. I literally felt gutted. It's not through jealousy of my cousin, far from it: I know how hard he works. Rather, it was the fact that I had sweated my life out in teaching, I had done my studying and working, and here I am doing a demanding and highly complex job, and I earn less than half this. There's something truly and terribly wrong with the world.

mnuuh. Still a bit knackered from travelling to Brighton and back to suprise my old flatmate Graham's wife, Deniz, on her birthday. The car bumped and buckled and vibrated all the way there and back - I suspect I might need to change the tyres and get the bloody thing rebalanced.

Here's Grimbo with his eight-month-old son, Ediz.

smalltown boy

As if by magic, the lyrics appeared in my head:
pushed around and kicked around,
always the lonely boy.
You were the one they talked about round town
as they put you down.
But as hard as they might try to make you cry
you'd never cry to them
just to your soul.
Accompanied by Jimmy Sumerville's falsetto and his slightly unnerving resemblance to a singing potato.
And I remembered a time when those lyrics, ostensibly about growing up gay in a small town, had a tremendous resonance with me for different reasons.
It is natural for a teenager to feel apart, alone, different from the herd - it's part of the process of growing up, when we detach ourselves from the family in order to find out who we are. For me though, my sense of alienation, detachment and solitude began early and finished late, and certainly I felt that others pushed and kicked me around, that they talked about me behind my back, that I was being criticised just for being me. For many years, I felt that I was deliberately ignored and belittled, and this affected the way I viewed life, understandably. Indeed, it still colours it somewhere deep inside - when I feel down, for example, I cannot help a certain feeling of put-upon insecurity creeping over me, and I find certain people who give the impression that their lives are fine, perfect and dandy, who look like they fart flowers, insincere and false. As such, as I have grown older, I have given the impression of, first, shyness, then diffidence, and worst arrogance. I also have great difficulty in accepting my own abilities for what they are and being positive about myself in front of others.
Nowadays, though, I cannot help feeling that I am somewhat at fault. Was I ever really pushed round, as I saw it then? Sometimes, yes, and definitely when at primary school. Were people putting me down behind my back? Possibly, but to nowhere near the extent that I thought. The fact is, I think, that I was extremely poor in interacting with others (in fact, I still tend to keep my distance from people until I know them better), and so I blamed this on others - that it was their fault they didn't want to know me, that I wasn't worth knowing, and so forth and so on. Now, many of those I know and love may not recognise this portrait of me, yet I feel it to be honest.
And while I listened in my head to the potato singing his falsetto of loneliness back in the eighties, I recalled myself sat in the corner of the sixth form common room with considerably more hair than I have now, looking over the room to a group of fellow sixth formers laughing and smiling with each other over petty nothings, yearning to join in and yet unable to.

Not the best way to start your new job.

You've got to feel sorry for Gordon Brown: Since he became PM, he's had to deal with the wettest summer recorded and devastating floods, crap terrorists, a postal strike and now trhe return of Foot and Mouth. Not the most auspicious of beginnings. I blame Tony Blair. There was always something of the malevolent pixie about him, and now I envisage him darting hither and yon, sowing discord and misery around him and doing his evil pixie dance of joy at his latest piece of malice.

Menus and Pirates

While out and about recently, I saw two things I felt I had to share:
Now the menu is from the estimable Griffin pub, but I couldn't help noticing that it describes its cream as being, er, creamy. I bloody well hope it would be.














meanwhile, is it me being weird, or is this picture of a pirate tucking into a pasty a bit obscene?

I've had my holiday head on for the past week, and haven't really got an awful lot done at all. What I did do got wiped off the college's main servers, and is, according to the IT bod, 'irretrievable'. Arse. There's hardly anyone around now, so I shall leave soon.

and another one!

Just perusing the personal statement of one of my students, who is making a deferred UCAS entry for 2008, I came across the following:

In my leisure time, I occasionally write poems filled with grief and misery

Blimey. And he always seemed such a happy chap.

hmm.

from the staff governor's newsletter, regarding the new Vice-Chancellor's inauguration:

The VC’s inaugural presentation

I do not wish to regurgitate Professor John’s presentation here as no doubt he will want to do that himself and to much better effect.

I don't think he expressed himself in the way he intended.

And on the flooding front, talk of a wartime spirit being engendered is inevitable, as is finding a veteran to speak (from the BBC):

Long queues formed in supermarket car parks on Wednesday as people waited to collect their daily ration of six two-litre bottles of water.
At the Tesco in Quedgeley residents said the crisis had fostered a war-time spirit.
Reginald Davies, 91, who fought during the Second World War, said: "I did five days without water in Burma.
"I've seen men go mad from thirst. This is nothing. The worst thing is getting out of bed in the morning at 91 to get water."

Damp.

Don't you just hate those days full of humidity when your hair goes all frizzy? That's what mine's been like since the incessant bloody flooding began. Fortunately, nothing has happened in Reading - yet: Apparently, the Thames is expected to reach a peak sometime tonight. Cycling in through Caversham, I noticed that a few shops had sandbags to hand outside, although it all looked a bit scrappy and pathetic. The news is full of people, looking for someone to blame. Um, God, perhaps? Human activity, leading to extreme weather events due to global warming? Gordon Brown? He's certainly not had a good start to being Prime Minister: Crap Terrorists attacking, shitty summer weather and the worst flooding since at least 1947. Any more of this, and I can see that the people around him will slowly start to edge away, just in case he leaves the Curse of Brown (or should that be The Brown Mark?) on their heads.

wetness and disappointment and a moment of pleasant surprise.

I have just spent half an hour in the locker room trying to dry myself out after quite possibly the wettest cycle ride I have ever had coming into work. It's July, for God's sake! I drove Angus up to school this morning, rather than do our usual walk up. As we parked, I noticed that the other children going to school didn't have their uniforms on. Most had different costumes, mainly of the circus persuasion. I knew something round the circus theme was going on that week, and I had asked Angus specifically if Friday was a No Uniform day, twice. Both times he said no.
'Angus, is it a no uniform day?'
'Yes.'
'Why did you lie to me?'
'Why not? It's not as if we've got circus clothes anyway.'
At that, I must admit I blew my top at him. What angered and disappointed me most is that he deliberately and to my face lied about it. I still feel really annoyed now. The question is, what to do about it?
Anyway, fuming about that, I came home, got the cycle out, and was soaked within a hundred metres of leaving the house. I went into my local corner shop to get a newspaper, and as I was paying for it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they sold RAKI! Bottles of Sari Zeybek, which is one of the quality ones, with a price label to match. £24. Ouch.

One of those days.

I've had a fairly crappy day of it. I couldn't seem to make any headway with my studying; It felt more like doodling at the edges of my mind. This was partly because of being interrupted by various things like having to do an interview and placement test for a student, and from a sudden sense of ennui sweeping up out of nowhere. It left me feeling frustrated an annoyed with myself. In addition, I had to take some new students on a tour of the town and take a couple of them to the police station to be registered; Somewhere along the way, I managed to lose my passcard, thanks to a gust of wind, of all things - it caught my passcard holder, which I had hanging round my neck, and flung it behind me, but I didn't notice the loss until later. Despite retracing my steps, there was no sign of the bloody thing. The students who needed to register hadn't completed their forms; One of them didn't have enough money, so I ended up lending her some, and the other didn't know his address. Instead, he produced the menu from a Chinese Takeaway restaurant somewhere in south Reading, and said to the desk clerk, 'I here with friend two day'. Fortunately it had the address on that, so she accepted it, but told him to return once he'd found himself a permanent gaff.
Overall, a niggly, annoying day, and one that might usually be expected to leave me fuming, yet strangely, and pleasantly, I found myself in a relatively philosophical and calm mood about it all.
Why, I don't know, but certainly the opportunity to immerse myself in study has had a beneficial effect, just as writing does. It's the stretching, and importantly, the focusing, of my mental capabilities that does it.
Anyway, I think that this will be the pic I'll put on my profile:


that is, of course, if the bloody profile thing will let me upload it.

Badgers!

Another danger in southern Iraq - man-eating badgers!

One of those posts....

..where I don't know what I'm going to write. Partly this is due to having had only four hours' sleep last night (something that has become depressingly routine since young Mr. Sean was born), and I'm feeling a bit frayed round the edges, and partly because I'm focusing on some of the more enjoyable aspects of my job, namely research, study and developing materials for class. I've mentioned before that summer is a good time to get things done in this job; There are fewer people round and the atmosphere is markedly more stress-free. Not entirely so, but more so. As for my summer, well, lack of money this year (babies are an expensive habit) precludes going off anywhere far. Hopefully we'll manage a few days by the sea, or something like that. And hopefully I'll get some hiking and climbing in, too. I'm trying to persuade Angus that he would like to come too, but he's resistant to the idea, even after I bought a tent and showed him how to pitch it. Anyway, what I suspect I'll be doing most of is research and study. As long as I can do it in the garden under blue skies and with a cold beer to hand.