Angus and Harry.

A.A.M.G. Wylie (b. 1910, d. 1992) and H.M.Gallantry (b. 1922, d. 2004) were my grandfathers. Angus Alastair (or possibly Alastair Angus) McGregor Grey was born in Fort William, lived in Perth, and came south just after the second world war. Harold Montague, or Harry, was born in Southampton and moved north. Both of them ended up in Reading. Both of them served in the R.A.F.; The former as a weather observer at an airfield in Scotland, the latter as a fitness instructor, having been a carpenter (a retained trade, and vital for the construction of aircraft parts) prior to that. Following the war, Angus worked in the Post Office, while Harry went on to work in his own carpet shop. Angus had seven children, two of whom died in infancy, and Harry had four, and thence numerous grandchildren.
What a bald, dull summary of two lives. Two lives that I knew, two real people who lived, breathed, loved, did the right thing and made mistakes, who filled an unmistakable space, who were missed when they went - indeed, still are. Grandpa Angus, to me, was a strange mix of warmth and distance. He smoked pipes, played golf, and talked in a loud, warm Perth accent that could rise into sudden storms of power - a voice not to be crossed. Once he took me on a visit to the Science museum, and, on a stop in a cafe, grimly showed me the variety of pills he was forced to take for various ailments, the most grievous of which was the arthritis that cut short his sporting prowess - as a young man, he had been a champion rower, amongst other things. Later, indeed, the last time I saw him, when he had lost all sense of time and space just before he died, he sent my mother out of the room after she'd fussed over getting him a cup of tea ('You and your damn cups of tea!'), then asked me to help him get his socks on. I helped move him round so that he could sit on his bed, then, bending down, I pulled socks over feet and calves that seemed to have been withered by time and fire. The skin from knee to toe was a bruised, tired brown. As I pulled up the socks up, our eyes locked, and he gave me the look of a man who has suddenly understood the joke after a long, long, time. We smiled; we both knew that this would be the last time we would see each other, but strangely this was suddenly alright and nothing to fret about, nothing at all. There was no need to say a thing. My mother and my aunt then came in, and the moment was lost. Grandpa died two days later.
While both my grandfathers seemed old to me, Grandad Harry was, in my young eyes, younger, despite having less hair. He was a warm, booming presence, with a truly distinct Hampshire dialect that years of living in Reading never leavened. He always seemed much more approachable than Grandpa. Whenever I saw him, he seemed to have a smile like a split melon and would always say 'Hello!' with a heavily aspirated H, as though he were genuinely greeting you with a breath taken from the deepest parts of his soul. I loved rooting around in his shed and greenhouse, or among his books, or, when he still had the carpet shop, going into the basement. He'd also take me and my sister upwards; He told us that the shop had once been a police station and that they'd used to execute people there, pointing to what I can now recall as a rather frail looking pulley anchor point.

I never got to say goodbye to him. Before I could go to the hospital, he'd died, several hours after my birthday.

There is still too much to say about both of them, but perhaps for now I should explain why I'm writing about them. Apart from both being my grandparents, apart from both having served in the RAF, apart from both having ended up in Reading, one other thing connected them. They both had prostate cancer. In Grandpa's case, it was an illness he died with; In Grandad's case, it was a disease he died of.
In both their names, I'm doing this cycle ride to Bath on saturday. If you can sponsor me, please do - the link is in the right sidebar, or just click on this - http://www.justgiving.com/kennetpc

More cycling and the joy of views

Just a brief one, because it's already late and I've a heavy day tomorrow. Went for another ride on sunday, again up to Oxford with Rob - a good steady rate of just under 15mph all the way. The one difference was our route. Last time, we took a more direct road to Ipsden, involving a spectacular downhill. This time, we took the official NCN route 5 road from Stoke Row to Ipsden. All that can be said is
woooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww
the view! I would put a photo up, but it simply would not, could not, do it justice. It just has to be seen. From our vantage point, we could see the whole of the Thames Valley up to Oxford and beyond, a magnificent, marvellous view taking in Wallingford, Abingdon, the Wittenham Clumps, and, of course, Didcot. Didcot, with its bloody huge power station cooling towers slap bang in the middle of everything.
But there it was - the view of the whole rolling green place, with ample evidence of human industry protruding like a strangely graceful lump in the middle of all. It was a view that said 'This is England!' as much as any view there is to be had here. Looking over it, I started hearing Vaughan Williams playing in my ears.
Then I told the annoying idiot in the car behind me to turn down Classic FM.

Stretch Limousines - What goes on within?

I just saw one of those white stretch limousines pass by the college where I work, and, it being the idle stretch just before the evening classes start, I began to speculate about the inner workings of the thing. You can see these limos most friday and saturday evenings in and around Reading, usually booked for someone's birthday or a hen night or something. Once, one of these would have been seen as glamourous, a whiff of Hollywood on a rainy street; However, once they became more available to hire, they went instantly from Cool to Chav. Alongside the white vehicle, they are available in lurid shades of pink. You can also get a pink stretch Humvee, taking tacky excess to new extremes.
 But what goes on within? Here are a few bits of speculation:
1) the inside is covered in easy-to-clean pink satin and pink leatherette seats
2) there are little twinkly lights and a very small disco glitter ball. Possibly there is also a tiny tiny dancefloor.
3) there is a loud sound system, playing stuff like 'all the single ladies' on an unremitting loop.
4) there is a fridge containing 'quality' drinks like bacardi breezer and lambrini
5) there are at least 6 women in various costumes, one of which involves wings. They are screeching with laughter.
6) there is some kind of floor show. I speculated it might involve Shetland Pony Horsejumping, but that's ridiculous. No,
7) They have midget strippers doing a reprise of the ending to 'The Full Monty'.
8) After 2 am, a little man (possibly one of the dwarf burlesque artists of earlier on)pops up at the back, ladling out doner kebabs with extra chili sauce to anyone still standing.
Sheer class.

Oh my God - You haven't changed a bit! (apart from the grey bits and the saggy bits) - and by that, I mean me.

No cycling this week, which was a bit bad of me, considering that there are now only 20 days to go till the Reading to Bath run. If you'd like to sponsor, please go to the link on the right. However, I had a perfectly good reason not to. Yesterday saw me go up to meet an old university mate of mine, Jo Halstead, though I suspect she'll object to the 'old' bit of that description. She'd come down to Oxford to stay with her sister (who's a Research Fellow at Christchurch) for a few days, and we arranged to meet for the first time in twenty years.
 You might ask why so long; well, it's a combination of work, life, happenstance and fortune - in other words, just normal everyday thingys. I couldn't quite believe how much time had passed since we'd go together for the UCNW Drama department reunion, an event recorded in my old diary, and I'm sure there may be some of you out there thinking, how is that possible?, but there it is. What seems like the work of moments is a thing of years - and, sometimes, vice versa.
Anyway, Jo and I met up and had what is best described as a Very Pleasant Time Indeed. I have to say, in reference to the title, that I mean me - it seemed to me that she really hadn't changed at all. Actually, this was one of the things we chatted about, along with what had happened to old university friends, who had died, old gossip, reminding each other of who said or did what and possibly with whom, families, and an awful lot about our respective teaching jobs and respective grumbles about said jobs.

In all, a really good day, and one that I hope to repeat sooner rather than later - and certainly sooner that another twenty years!

if in doubt, shoot.

As you might imagine, there has been some not inconsiderable anger in our house regarding the botched Israeli raid on the aid flotilla yesterday, and the subsequent fudging and flummery that Israel has stammered out since then. It's like watching a kid holding a bloodied hammer behind his back while standing next to the battered corpse of a kitten, yelping, 'I didn't do it! And anyway, it scratched me!'
There's a dramatic enough image. Honestly, why does the Israeli state do this kind of crap? It's hardly winning friends and influencing people. They could have waited till dawn and until the ships had entered territorial waters, after which they could have boarded entirely legitimately and with maximum visibility, thereby minimising risk for all. By abseiling from bloody helicopters in the middle of the night, they were clearly steaming for a fight. Imagine someone bursts into your house in the darkness - what would your reaction be? The Israeli authorities claim that the people on the ship beat the soldiers with poles, clubs and knives, and admittedly in the video released by them, it is clear that some people are waving and hitting with poles of some kind, but nothing else is evident. What hasn't been released is the moment when the soldiers opened fire and killed.
Now Israel has lost its one Muslim ally in the region, and the one that it really does not want to piss off - Turkey. Turkey, a country with over a million men under arms. Turkey, an important trade partner with Israel. Turkey, a NATO member and thereby a country that can call upon all other NATO members in times of crisis. Turkey, a country with a military hierarchy, gradually having its political influence and ability to interfere with the democratic system removed by the ruling AKP, that is absolutely gagging for a fight.
The best thing that could happen now is that the absolute idiot who was in charge of this operation is arrested and tried, along with a full inquiry. Better for cool heads to calm angry hearts. It would be better if the blockade of Gaza was lifted, but this being Israel, that's probably wishing for too much.When will these bloody-handed politicos realise that people only bite back when they've been pushed into a corner and have got nothing left but anger to keep them alive?

short circuit.

No, I have't blown a fuse - I'm just referring to today's cycle trip, a very pleasant, but hilly twenty-mile ride. I started off from home, then headed towards Stoke Row, down to Highcliff, then Rotherfield Greys and Henley, followed by Harpsden and up to Binfield Heath, Emmer Green and back home - an hour and a half all told.

Bleary eyed

I'm feeling knackered. It's been a fraught week, and things, work-wise at least, are going to get fraughter. Yes, I know it should be 'more fraught', but if Lewis bloody Carroll can get away with 'Curiouser and curiouser', then I'll bloody do as I like. The trouble with this season is the exams: I'm responsible for organising the things for my department, and it all gets on top of me somewhat at this time of year. It is not helped by having to do two twelve and a half hour days. And, just to add to that, there is also the small matter of training for a 90-mile cycle ride to Bath at the end of June, hence the reason for the last post.
Last sunday saw me and my cycling partners (Rob Podolski and Julie Shepherd, plus her boyfriend) ride to Guildford via the Thames Path, route 4 and the Wey towpath route, all on the hottest day of the year so far - up to 29c. It started well, going along the Thames to Sonning, then turning off towards Charvil and the Wargrave, followed by a truly spectacular piece of riding through fields of bright yellow rapeseed overlooking where the Thames Valley descends towards Windsor, then a trip through the suburbs of Maidenhead and into Bray, past the Fat Duck and then deep into Becoming Lost. After recourse to a couple of maps, we got under way again, just in time to get lost once more. Finally we got to Windsor and into the Great Park, where we had a lunch of bananas and shortbread, before descending through Bishopsgate towards Egham and Shepperton, where we took an exorbitantly expensive ferry towards Weybridge, and thence onto the Wey Navigation Towpath, which also included an oportunity to get lost one more time, just before what I can only describe as a mostly HELLISH 20-mile ride over rutted, dusty, hard, knurled and knuckled and tree-root-twisted towpath, cycling against the flow of some kind of cross-country run and old people walking unfeasible numbers of small dogs that seemed to be fatally attracted to fast-moving cycle wheels.
 Overall, I covered just about 100 kilometres, so I'm pretty pleased with that.
But the real reason I'm feeling bleary eyed is twofold: being woken up by birdsong at 4.30 and my bloody hayfever, which has reduced me to a red-eyed mess despite medication over the last week. bluh.

Robert Podolski is fundraising for PCaSO Prostate Cancer Network - JustGiving

Robert Podolski is fundraising for PCaSO Prostate Cancer Network - JustGiving

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Bloody Elections... and cycling

I've avoided posting anything for the past week simply because so many other would be posting on the subject of the General Election results. By and large, it's been rather depressing - actually, seeing David Cameron's posho smug face outside no.10 tonight, very depressing. As an aside, will it be a requirement of all future PMs to have a sprog born in the Prime Ministerial residence from now on? First Blair, then Brown, now Cameron; it's like the British version of porphyrogenita.
 I don't know about you, but there is something utterly maddening about the current batch of Tories. The fact that three of them - Cameron, George Osborne (the newly-incumbent Chancellor), and Boris Johnson (Mayor of London)- were all in the Bullingdon Club at the same time seems suspect, but more irritatingly is their smug belief in their innate, almost god-given, right to govern others. Says bloody who? Cameron had only one or two short-term jobs prior to becoming a politician, selling advertising, and George has never held down a proper job in his whole life. What the hell makes them think they're bloody qualified to do a damn thing?
As for Nick Clegg - well, I think he was given a terrible choice, and he (and the Lib Dem leadership) chose terribly. Once the spending cuts and tax hikes that are inevitable are announced, they are hardly going to be popular. However, trying to be positive, if they are seen as full coalition members of goverment, they may provide a decent check on Tory policies.

Sorry, I thought I just saw a flying pig there.


OK, enough about politics for now. In other news, I cycled from Reading to Oxford via NCN route 5 (approx 40 miles) on sunday, doing it in three and a half hours. Far more enjoyable than trying to strangle a TV because David Cameron's face is on it. I will be atempting a 90-miler to Bath in June - I'll be whacking the link to a justgiving page on here soon.

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

You may be wondering,perhaps, why I haven't commented much on the General Election, considering that politics is a frequent subject of this blog. It's a combination of exhaustion, lethargy, geberally avoiding Doing Things and a degree of puzzlement. By nature, I'm more of a Labour supporter than anything else, but this election has thrown everything up in the air. I have the feeling that whoever gets into government come next thursday will decide the way this country is going for many, many years to come, far beyond the lifetime of a single Parliamentary cycle. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, may well be right when he says 'whoever is the government this time around will be out of power for a generation after'. He says this because whoever gets in will have to make cuts and tax increases of such severity that they will not exactly be Mr. Popular with the electorate.

 Perhaps it's precisely this issue that is haunting all the three main parties to the extent that not a single one has a Big Idea - a single, defining thought for change. By and large, they come out almost sounding the same, bar one or two bits here and there. Having listened to and watched the Prime Ministerial debates over the last three weeks, I can't say that anyone come out on top - certainly not David Cameron. I really don't understand why opinion polls put him consistently ahead. He didn't say anything of substance, just anecdotes of dubious provenance and the phrase 'We've got to...' repeatedly. It's all very well saying that something has to be done, but how? that's the real question, and Cameron didn;t answer it. Gordon Brown was much better on facts, substance and method, but he has all the charisma of a sock full of thistles. Clegg was a revelation, only because he hadn't made any impression whatsoever beforehand. Some of his ideas were, I felt, on the naieve side, and he would certainly get a shock if he tried to implement them in the febrile, jumpy atmosphere of government.
There's only one idea worth going for that two parties have suggested - electoral reform. Both Labour and the Lib Dems have it in their manifestoes. Whether it would ever be put into law within a parliamentary cycle is debatable, to put it mildly, and it certainlt won't cure the economic woes of the country. What it may do, however, is open governement to a new democratic paradigm within the UK. It would also force the Big Three to alter, in some cases radically, and open them up to new ideas and policies, rather than have the Same Old Politics again and again, and which seem to end up getting all of us into the Same Old Mess eventually.
And as for the person who said to me that they wouldn't vote because it was against their beliefs, I say that making no choice is still a choice and often the worst one. When faced with a decision, avoiding it does not equate to a good thing. Vote, and vote according to what you have read, understood, want and need. Don't vote in a particular way just because you've always voted for this or that party, or your parents have, or someone's told you to. Vote and know you've done it for the right reasons.

everyone has to start somewhere

Sean's splodges. Good, aren't they? In a blobby, Rorscharch ink blot test kind of way.

Above us only sky....

See that? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just a perfect blue sky. Not a single contrail to be seen, thanks to the Volcanic Ash cloud currently floating over Europe.With the exception of a few small airplanes, the only sound of flying things is that of birdsong.

Death of an Anarchist

Just heard that Malcolm McLaren has died. There's nothing quite like the death of a figure who loomed large in the public eye during your childhood to make you feel old.

And they're off!

So we have a month to the General Election. I think you can surmise, from previous entries, which way I'm likely to vote, but I still have my doubts. The problem is the manifestos published by each party - they're not all that inspiring. The BBC's web coverage already looks set to be excellent, and well worth checking out. Looking at the key priorities, Labour seem to be edging it in terms of stats to back up their targets. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems offer the scrapping of the ID card scheme, which is commendable, but hardly a key priority right now.
The trouble with the Tory manifesto is that it looks like it was scraped out of a Daily Mail editorial. It reads more like a wishlist than a set of concrete proposals. The most absurd, coming from my own career background, is the idea of Academy schools run by local communities and independent of local authority control. At first glance, it looks quite appealing - after all, it's the notion of communities helping themselves. Unfortunately, whoever dreamt this one up omitted to ask a very simple question: Why aren't local communities already investing themselves in the schools that already exist? Why not invest in them? In fact, I suspect the proposal is probably thoroughly unworkable. For starters, it would involve the diversion of budgets to establish the schools, whatever the Tories may say about private funding; Second, the chances of these academies ending up being run by private businesses or rich institutions with their own agendas is incredibly high. Public accountability would be limited (an opt-out school would not be subject to OFSTED inspections)- and don't we all want to know what happens to our children at school? Finally, I suspect that the whole scheme would eventually crumble - that, or we go back to a model of education that was discredited a long time ago.
Labour's Cancer notification plan is just an attention-grabber, and I suspect impossible to deliver within the time-frame of the next parliament. The same, probably, goes for the adoption of the Alternative voting system - any governement wishing to put through such a change to electoral procedure would need a solid majority.
The Lib Dems 'Identify £15bn of lower-priority spending and cut' is highly suspicious - define 'lower-priority spending'.
And this election is set to be the most personality-driven ever. So, based on what the potential PMs look and sound like, I'd say:
David Cameron: Posho Fake. Tony Blair Lite. Just does that sincere semi-frown thing like he's about to fart out a mini-turd of a policy
Nick Clegg: A man in search of someone who's got a mate who bought a dog off a bloke down the pub who knows where he can lay his hands on a nice bit of gravitas.
Gordon Brown: He's the bear, these are his woods, and damn if he isn't going to crap just where he likes.
And of course, all these politicos have to convince the electorate that they aren't bent, not like those expenses-fiddling lot last ti....oh, sorry, it was them, wasn't it?
If I were doing a campaign, I would start by this:
Each constituency candidate, in their publicity, states what their aims are,  both on a local level and on a party level. They limit this to just a few key items - whatever local issues there may be, and stuff like economy, defence etc.
Next, they state, explicitly, the steps required in order to achieve these aims, and the time frame required. next to this, they state as accurately as possible the amount of money required to complete these aims and each stage. That way, candidates can demonstrate a) value for money, and b) whether they're being fiscally realistic.
After all, good government comes out of good finances.

demigods and demons!

It was Angus' birthday yesterday - his twelfth! I find it hard to think that he will be gearing up for his first driving lessons in just over five years' time. And possibly moving off to university just another 18 months after that. They say children keep you young: However, it is in the counting of their years that you start to feel old. The fortunate thing is that this sense of impending senescence can be shared quite freely with friends and colleagues.

 He wanted a fairly quiet birthday - no parties, no jelly and ice cream - so we went to the cinema instead. Actually, it was an early introduction to the cinema that probably hastened his birth. Nur and I went to see Face/Off, and the volume on the thing was cranked up so loud (a typical feature of Turkish cinemas) that he started kicking and moving around violently in his mum's belly. He was born a few days later. Anyway, we went to see Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, the first of what bodes to be a long series of films. Angus has read the books, and had really wanted to see this. I wasn't too sure about it, even though I'm a great fan of anything fantastical and mythological, but how could I possibly disappoint my son on his birthday?
 I have to admit, I struggled somewhat through it. For starters, and for various reasons, I'd only had an hour and a half's sleep the night before, so you can imagine how I struggled against the morphean dark and warmth of a cinema. The film itself - hmm. Perfectly decent teen fodder, actually, although at odds with the book, as Angus couldn't help loudly pronouncing at various points throughout. However, I couldn't help but get annoyed by some of the extraordinary liberties taken with Greek mythologies. The worst was the portrayal of the Underworld as a place of burning torment. The ancient Greeks saw it as nothing such - rather, the place, with the exception of the lucky few who made it to the Elysian Fields, seemed to be rather like a particularly dismal office party somewhere in Croydon, except everyone had forgotten why they were there. This is still a step up from the Sumerian view of the Afterlife, however, where the soul was seen a limed bird, scratching futilely at dust forever. And I thought the portrayal of Hades as a dissolute ageing rock star was one of the laziest pieces of stereotyping I've seen in ages - you know, rock is the Devil's music etc. Obviously done with an eye on the pious God Botherer market, just to cater to their perception of what the underworld is.
 Two other things bothered me. Firstly, it was way too much Harry Potter, but with Ancient Greek Bits. It was the Destiny of the Orphan Boy story, where he is revealed to be far more than he thought. Now, this is a great meme - it has universal appeal: After all, who hasn't dreamed that they are some kind of Secret Prince, waiting to be revealed? Apart from Prince William, possibly. Which leads me into the second botherment, if you can survive such an ugly neologism. Why do we need Special? Why do we need Demigods? Why Gods? Why are we so ready to abrogate responsibility? Why do we need to to find the Get Out Clause and say 'I need a Hero?'
As far as I can see, the vast majority of Heroes in mythology are generally impetuous, not prone to introspection, eager to dole out violence, and mostly a bit dumb. But not quite as stupid as those who follow them, or look to them to solve their problems. You see, that's the problem with people - they're perfectly happy to hand over responsibility to some loud shouty fellow who says, 'I'm a leader, I've got the answer', rather than decide things for themselves, simply because they're a) lazy, b)busy with the minutiae of their immediate concerns, and c) stupid. After all, you wouldn't hand your valuables to a theif and expect him to look after them for you, so why hand over something far more valuable to someone who claims to lead - namely, your responsibility and your freedom?
This is precisel why I'm such a cynical bastard. I have no heroes. I never will. That doesn't mean I don't admire and respect people: I'm just aware that they are people, and thus frail. And they more they protest their strength, the more I see their vulnerability. I follow no flag, I follow no leader. I'm on no-one's side per se, since to do so would be to unfailingly accept all that they proclaim to be true, and that I can never do, for the reasons above. You might be on my side - but I will always point out my own doubts and weaknesses, and your own, too, and always this one phrase:
The Buck Stops With YOU. Deal with it.

Spring! Sprung! Racists abound!

The daffodils have finally put their trumpets out, the hazel trees in front of our house have their first tentative show of green budding leaf, there is the busy rat-a-tat-tat of woodpeckers in the stand of woods and the playful quarrelling noise of sparrows, red kites wheel overhead and sound their unearthly shriek, Easter eggs are half price and I've just spotted my first Nazi of the year.
  I went up to our local Tescos this morning to fill up the car with petrol and to buy some croisants. I had some problem getting a pump, as half of them were out of use - probably waiting for a delivery. Anyway, I got a pump, filled the car, then went inside and got the breakfast stuff, then waited on the surpisingly long sunday morning queue. Like most Tesco Expresses in the area, this one was staffed by young Asian men. In this case, Nepalis and Indians, guessing by the names. In the queue was a thick set man of about sixty, with what is most charitably described as a florid complexion, although Alcoholic's Red Face would also do nicely. His hair, though grey, was fairly full, as was his beer gut. He had on a blue Abbey Rugby Club tank top and checked shirt, and was wearing a face full of thunder. His turn came and he lurched towards the cashier. What followed was a load of very nasty invective, that began with 'Why don't you speak English?', to 'Are ye calling me a liar, paki?' (he was, I'd guess, an Ulsterman originally, judging by the accent), to other NF classics such as 'what are ye doing here?', to 'that's the problem with this place is youse lot', before stomping off to his car. The staff remained remarkably calm in the face of this. what was somewhat astonishing was that no-one in the very long queue said anything to stop this really rather nasty tirade. As it happened, it was my turn at the cashier who'd borne the brunt of this, and I said, rather loudly, 'morning. Sorry about the racist idiot', to which the guy smiled and said 'it's OK - he can come to my country and learn the language and see how he likes it', while the woman next to me said 'too right!'. I glanced back at the queue: Sorry to say, I got some hostile glances from two or three people, mostly those of the potato-shaped, shaven-headed variety.
I should also say, much to my own shame, that I only said the 'sorry about the racist idiot' line after the prick had left -I  very much wish I'd said it to his face.
Anyway, if you happen to go to Abbey Rugby club and meet an alcoholic sixty-year-old Ulsterman in a blue ARC tanktop, tell him what I think. Actually, give him a good kick for me.

And if I were to stop right now...

...how would I be seen?
Yes, I know, a very mid-life-crisis-type subject, and one that is born of a general dissatisfaction with myself and what I'm doing at present. Well, let's see: married, two boys, live in a nondescript semi-detached, degree and teaching diploma qualifications, steady job at the local college, moderately successful career, cycle to work, relatively fit, lived abroad for 7 years, speak a foreign language, aaaaannnnd that's it. Rather, that is what it looks like from the outside. And, measured against other people my age who have had successful careers etc etc (and who doesn't do it?), utterly bland.
And yet....photographer and photo editor for a magazine, contributor of poetry to a publication,writer of articles, writer of a novel (completed in 28 days), actor, enabler of others, creating the alchemy that allows people to suddenly function in another language, seeing my students go on to universities around the world, including Harvard, researcher, fluent in another language to the extent that can identify different accents and dialects, and able to understand more or less a family of languages that stretch from Edirne to the Western stetches of China, theorist, often of absurd theories admittedly, insatiably curious, completer of the 3 peaks challenge, teller of corny jokes and deliverer of witty ripostes, analytical, strategic-minded, someone who mostly seeks to do the right thing rather than the easy thing.....
Well, that sounds better.

Even so, there's only me to vouch for most of the above - it's true, honest! Yet what annoys me is that there is so much, much more to do, see, complete, and I feel that there just isn't time enough. And I also can't help but be waylaid by the notion of the general futility of everything. Here we are, little bright sparks thrashing briefly against the huge indifferent darkness, flash of fish scales in green gloom. Oh well, if futile it is, let it be positive futility. However, I'm far too adept at filling my time with nothings - being busy to no good purpose.

Kids' TV and applied physics.

I'm going back to an old topic of this blog, children's TV programmes. Currently, I'm watching an awful lot of these, thanks to 3-year-old Sean, who is an avid watcher of CBeebies. Actually, he's a tyrannical watcher, especially at the weekend. God forbid anyone should change channel while 3rd & Bird is on.
 I'm an amused and cynical watcher of kids' TV, but I have to say that British-made kids' stuff is largely better than the well-intentioned mush that emanates from the States - for starters, it's generally more whimsical and anarchic, and the only way to appreciate a majority of it is to either a) be three years old or b) have ingested huge amounts of drugs.Some of the older stuff on CBBC is actually quite good - 'Sorry, Ive got no head' is genuinely funny, especially the Witchfinder General sketches. And Horrible Histories is a truly Reithian piece of broadcasting.
 However, watching one programme today invoked an idle scientific question: What happens when someone shrinks? The programme was 'Grandpa in my Pocket', which is not, as the name might suggest, a child using blackmail in order to keep their grandparent under control, but the adventures of an old bloke, played by the indestructible James Bolam, who shrinks whenever he puts his Shrinking Hat on. Obviously.
Now, I began thinking, what would happen to someone if they did shrink to about a tenth of their height? Anyone more familiar with physics and chemistry than me out there, please tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I suspect the results would probably be somewhat disastrous.
 Imagine: you've got a person of roughly 1 metre 75 cm, weighing perhaps 75-80 kilos, with an average temperature of 37 deg. c. Now, if we say that the act of shrinking leads to a concommitant loss of weight, it still leaves us with a significant problem - where does all the heat go? you have a body pumping out a constant temperature and radiating over a constant surface area of skin. Now, if you reduce the surface area suddenly, wouldn't the result be that Grandpa would either a) be instantly cooked to a crisp or b) due to his blood boiling, explode?
Hmmm. That wouldn't make good kids' telly.
Mind you, I am half fearful sometimes when watching In the Night Garden that Upsy Daisy will stamp on the Pontypines, and have to scrape them off her shoe.

Normal service resumed

Phew!
A link to the hit counter had been hijacked, so I've removed the offending item..

Not much to write about at the moment, as I am currently in the middle of invigilating an exam, and keeping one eye on this and one on a particular student who I know can cheat in the blink of an eye.
I'm just going to give the thumbs up to Mangal Restaurant in Reading, a Turkish place that opened recently. If you're in town, try it - the food is pretty good, although I'm not too sure of the wisdom of tahini in an aubergine puree. Plus they sell raki, which can only be a good thing

WTF?

This blog seems to have been hijacked somehow - apologies. Hopefully, normal service will be resumed ASAP.

A correction.

It has been pointed out to me that it was Dr. Johnson, not Swift, who first uttered the original 'patriotism' quote.
Of course.
It doesn't make Cameron any less of a smooth-faced posho twat, however.

more on politics.

Apparently, David Cameron feels that he 'can turn this country round'. I bet he does - turn it round so he can screw it up the backside, like the last time the Tories were in. The Conservatives have apparently identified six key areas to campaign on, beginning with the deficit. What they do not have is any clue of a coherent political or economic strategy. And you can tell Cameron is a man out of ideas when he says:
"It is an election we have a patriotic duty to win because this country is in a complete and utter mess, and we have to sort it out."
A patriotic duty?
To paraphrase Swift, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of the politically clueless'.
Cock. Total cock.

Headline of the year?

Even though it's only February? And yes, it is for real:
Butler Handjob gives Wheatley Semi
It's about someone giving away a quarter final by handball, of course. What did you think?

Ill.

I feel terrible. I have a rough bloody cough and no energy whatsoever, plus blocked up ears. Just thought I'd give it a mention.

The Tory Imagination Isn't Working....

as I said in my last post, devoid of ideas.
Forgive the crappiness of my picture editing skills.

faffing round.

I'm just fiddling round with this at present. How many times do we actually do that - fiddling round? I'd say the vast majority of life, our working/study lives included, is a load of faffing round. Only the rare few actually bother to concentrate and work hard enough, and then for not entirely honest reasons. The latter refers to the majority of politicians and sneery-faced slimeballs who work in the city. What do you think - wouldn't life be better for politicians and financial analysts who were a little more laid back?
Actually, it sounds, on the face of it, a little counter-productive: after all, we elect politicians to dictate our daily lives and trust bankers to guard our wealth, and so we should expect them to be upright, honest and irreproachable - very much like priests, in fact. Or gods or something. And, when they behave like the humans they actually are, we get all spluttered and outraged, when in fact there is collective fault, and a terrible number of errors within the system.
Let's start with politics. Now, a politician should in fact refer to anyone involved in 'politics', i.e. 'the affairs of the city' - in other words, everyone. what we live in is not in fact a democracy - rather, it is an elective dictatorship, where political decisions, for the sake of expedience, are given to a minority of people to make. And of course, a certain type of person understands this, manipulates it to his or her own ends, and gets duly elected. By 'understand this', I mean the fact that the vast majority of people can't be arsed to think for themselves and involve themselves in their own communities. These are often the same people who whine about the politicians they have installed. It's the way that the Blairs and Camerons get elected. However, there is a difference between these two very modern titans of political rectitude - the former just wanted to be loved by the audience, and duly pulled out rabbit after policy rabbit from his magician's hat, while the latter is a bland copy who is seen as a safe face by those who bankroll him.
And talking of bankroll, let us look at the financial market. What this really shares with politics is the atmosphere in which it operates; a febrile, crazed miasma in which each decision must be instant, kneejerk, unconsidered. We somehow expect our bankers and politicians to take calm, measured, and considered decisions, yet when one looks at the bearpits of Westminster and The City, it is absolutely clear that this cannot possibly be the case. And of course, when you put your average, typical person in such a heated atmosphere, how can we expect them to react?
Yup.
Let's face it - we get the politicos and bankers we deserve.

far too long

..between posts. well, yes, I know, I posted yesterday, but you know what I mean. Sheer Inertia has hindered me - the torpid, leaden weight of Not Doing that stops me from doing a thing. That and watching crap movies on the telly.
There is also the problem I have of wondering what this blog is actually for - after all, it's not as though I have a huge readership - and thinking, is this just another way of distracting myself from all the other things i could profitably be doing?
the main other thing being writing, and that's something I'm not actually doing at present, much to my chagrin. Why, I can't begin to say: there seems to be far too much pointlessness to things at present.
Then again, there are things to bemoan: the government's new rules on student visas, for example, which threaten to put me out of a job. A brilliant example of really poorly thought out legislation, by people who don't even begin to understand what language acquisition and learning mean, and don't care, just as they can keep The Little Brown People out. totally unquestionably racist: if I'd wanted to elect the BNP potato scum into government, I wish I'd been informed of the fact that Labour had gone all Nazi beforehand.
Talking of elections, there's one up and coming, and anoter cause of depression. Who to vote for? there's Brown, the imprisoned beleaguered bear; Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Homunculus; or David Cameron. The best that can be said for this man is that he's a cut price Tony Blair, sans the 'sincerity' and fake empathy, a man who fell out of the middle pages of a Daily Mail editorial; a man who hasn't had enough time to go morally bankrupt, yet is so utterly hollow that one could, to quote Conrad, poke a hole quite through him and find nothing within save a little dirt. And anyone voting for this fool would be even worse that hollow.
rant over and out for now.

just trying something with Picasa. Normal service, by which I mean actually writing on this damn blog, to resume soon.

Diaries.

I'm passing this blog over to me,from twenty years ago:

Sunday, 26th November, 1989
Well, here it is, the first entry in this diary! At least, I hope it is going to become a regular occurence. It's about time I got down to some writing, and perhaps by doing this each day (or whatever), it'll instil some literary discipline in me. Today is a sharp, bright morning, a contrast to the blotchy, semi-forgotten haze of last night. Outside, the air is as sharp as the teeth of some small vicious animal, and the frost makes everything spangle briefly in thebrilliant but ailing winter sun. The house, however, is warm, like a loved jumper, except for the kitchen, whose cool atmosphere reminds me of a wintry toilet seat one would rather not sit on. Next door has been emanating a considerable deal of shouting again, most of it issuing from the sewage-infested gob of the drunken harridan. Still, she's leaving. I pity the people who're going to be her next door neighbours. She herself is really rather sad: V. lonely, I think, likes the bottle demons even more than I do, screwing a chap of dubious quality young enough to be her son. Then again, she did marry a psychoanalyst. Perhaps it's to be expected. No getting away from it, divorce is a messy thing. Affected us bad enough.
The pub was the same old boring thing, the same old drunken stench of nicotine and beer. I really don't know why I bother going up there: I know what it's going to be like , everybody sitting around drinking , sayng very little. There'll be that little weasel R, snickering and smirking, playing cocky and laddish; there's SC, trying the best he can to work out the vagaries and dumb chances of the world; IP, angry and silent, thinking where he might have gone wrong with women, trying to keep his sullen calmness; DT, fat and cheerful, a regular loadsamoney type, who doesn't give a damn about the future and continues merrily with the three basics, eating, drinking and shagging.
Then there is all the rest of that merry crowd and always the smell of violence, just waiting to erupt. You can feel it: a presence as tangible as cigarette smoke. I hope I'm not there when it happens, 'cos it's going to be one hell of a scrap. Still, it's a place to drink. I just miss the university bar conversations, that's all. It was such a relief to see Eunice the other saturday. All that had been bottled up inside came spilling out, and I could get a load off my chest. Hopefully I'll see her before long. In the meantime, I really should be writing! There is this poetry competition, I've got four days in which to write a poem and send it off in the vain hope of getting £5,000, which I could do with right now. I can't think of anything else to write at present, so I'll sign off. One thing I've noticed over the past few hundred words is the change in my writing style. Normally, when I'm writing to friends, I'll write in a far more open and flamboyant manner, rather like this, but as in this, I notice my writing more resembles some frantic spidery crawling over the page. Oh well.

Bloody hell. the past is truly a foreign country.
However, I can still identify some aspects that remain the same. One thing that makes me laugh is how much I had my eye on future publishing opportunities - the references to a back story and so on.

mnurg. I feel a)ill, and b)knackered. In particular, my shoulders ache, as if I've been carrying a heavy weight all day. It's become far more noticeable to me that certain parts of me ache far more if I don't sleep properly, noticeably my legs. Since I was woken at 3 a.m. by Nur coming to bed, then by Sean an hour and a half later, after which I couldn't sleep, you can imagine how I felt at 6.30.
Getting older seems to be a mixed blessing: on one hand, I can see far more clearly the fears and errors that made my younger life so much harder, and where necessary act upon them - by which I mean, I do not need to be ruled by those fears. On the other hand, I have become acutely aware of the slow physical accretion of age - eyesight getting blurred every now and then, reaction times on the slide, injuries taking just that little bit longer to heal, and the utterly galling appearance of myself in the mirror in the morning when I can see increasingly wider patches of pink skin gleaming through my hair. It's a bugger.

Here Come The Girls - run for your life!

I'm going to return in this post to one of my favourite topics - adverts. I've shyed from this subject for a while, simply because The Guardian Guide does demolition jobs on them so well. In a way, I feel writing on the same or similar topic feels just like aping, even though it's a tried and tested literary thing. Now, of course Advertistan is a fairly easy target, comprised as it is of stereotypes, models, cliches, fantasies, lazy thinking and fatuous claims, all played out under an eternal sunshine, but it's a sunday evening after a long tiring day and I can't be arsed aiming at anything else. Besides, I just want to put my own point of view on something.
The object of my ire is Boots' 'Here come the girls' advert. OK, it was a memorable ad a couple of years ago, but this year's version (and the scary thing is that this campaign seems destined to run and run) pokes a finger through the thin membrane of what we laughingly call reality and finds nothing inside, save a little dirt (apologies to Joseph Conrad for that stretching of a phrase). In other words, it's totally unrealistic. Here's the premise: an elderly couple are having a meal in an otherwise abandoned restaurant, possibly Italian. Next to them is a large table, clearly reserved. Suddenly, in burst a group of what are mainly women, obviously on an office do. I say mainly, as there does appear to be at least one bloke among them. They give each other gifts. One of the women is pregnant, and gets a gift of two 'In the Night Garden' hand puppet, to which all the women coo. the token bloke gets a beard clipping kit, the waiter (Italian? Greek? Spanish? but clearly Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke) gets a present, even the elderly couple who have had to endure all the festive bonhomie on the table next to them get presents. The waiter gets a note from one of the women. Then all the girls march out, arms linked and four abreast, singing 'Here come the girls'.
And it's bollocks because?
Not a single one of them is honking, screaming, gorilla-butt drunk.
In reality, they'd all be off their tits on lambrini and Bailey's and vodka and Cava ('cos that's class). They'd be throwing food round the restaurant. Two of them, previously best of friends, would be beating seven shades of shit out of each other, while The Fat Ugly One With Chafing Issues would be seeking to be the peacemaker. The Mousey One would have trapped the Token Office Bloke in a corner, earnestly telling him about her cat and her stash of chocolates and her box collection of Ally McBeal and her mum who calls her up twice a day, while trying to relieve him of his trousers. Meanwhile, two of the really fat office ladies would have Good-Looking Dopey Foreign Bloke pinioned down in some dark corner of the restaurant, doing and suggestig unspeakable acts. Finally, they'd all stagger out, chanting 'here come the girls' while any men with any sense would flee for their lives. and trousers. Then our troop would move into the nearest nightclub to cop off with blokes called Wayne, or Carl, or Danno.
And this is why Advertistan is crap.

Huh. It's been one of those days.
I took Sean shopping and decided to withdraw some money from the cash machine. Just after slipping the card in, I noticed that there was something awry with the thing - the screen was out of kilter and the plastic slot where the card feeds in and out looked like it had been battered. After I requested my dosh, the machine tried to spit my card out, but the thing got stuck. After frantically trying to rescue it, the machine, with a final high-pitched 'beep' swallowed it. I swore, then went to complain to the customer services.
'well, we can't touch it, because it belongs to the bank, not us', replied the customer service bod. 'It's done that to several people now'.
'So why haven't you put a sign on it warning people not to use it?'
'Oh, we're not allowed to do that, because the machine doesn't belong to us'.
After a couple of minutes' spluttering on my behalf, I managed to get the duty manager to promise to put one up.
I went home, nearly running out of petrol on the way, in order to pick up my chequebook. It was only after I'd got home that I realised that was no use, as I now didn't have a cheque guarantee card, it now nestling safely in the metal bosom of a dodgy ATM. So, shopping done on the credit card instead.
I had intended to start my crimbo shopping as well this week, in a bold attempt to break with my past habit of flailing around lethargically until the last minute.
And now it's raining.
Bah.

The road to Hell...

...is paved with good intentions. 'I meant to do this', or 'I didn't mean to do that', or more often 'well, that's totally buggered - how'd that happen?'
In fact you could say that the road to Istanbul is paved with good intentions. One thing that you can never level at Turkish people is that they mean or selfish. I've never met people who are so willing to go out of the way to help, even if it means considerable personal discomfort or inconvenience for themselves. The problem is that no matter how good the intention, the execution of the act seems to go totally tits up. Often this is no fault of the person offering to do the good deed: Generally speaking, Istanbul seems to contrive its own ways of ensuring that the best laid plans of mice and men get torn up, eaten, thrown up and flushed down the Bog of Fate, simply because it feels like it. However, there is also the fact that people say they'll do something, as they feel obliged to, and don't actually think about how they will do the act - which leads to all kinds of totally screwed-up episodes. The daftest thing is that it leads to all sorts of extravagant lies in order to justify something, or the lack of something happening.

The most common one involves estimates of times it takes to get anywhere. If someone says, 'it'll take us 20 minutes to get to Sisli', you should, being pragmatic, allow at least an extra hour to get there. And, while you are either stewing in a marinade of humid heat and petrol fumes or shivering at a foul, miserable and rainy day, the driver will inevitably say something along the lines of 'well, just yesterday, it only took me fifteen minutes to get here...', and to be honest, this should be accepted as the good-natured bullshit that it really is. I think it's one thing that British people really don't get - this need to lie to cover up organisational screw-ups, and to have them accepted for what they are.During my recent foray to Istanbul, I'd totally forgotten this aspect to the culture, and so spent a large chunk of the time simmering with anger and frustration at things ot working. It's not as if anyone deliberately set out to bugger up the holiday - everyone was full of the best intentions: it's just everything got buggered in one way or another.
Actually, we Brits are just as bad. We're full of good intentions: We're just better at covering up the reasons for buggering things up, such as The Wrong Type Of Leaves, or Adverse Financial Conditions. In other words, we create an official reason for things going all crap, as it were, rather than relying on an informal and far more inventive way of explaining why things haven't gone as planned.
I suppose that we all have our own cultural-specific ways of buggering things up.

ride the horse.

Apologies for not posting for so long. The truth is, I just haven't felt like writing anything, and I haven't had the will to, either. Each time I've opened the 'new post' page, I've stared at the screen and slunk off like a man with a pocketful of air, staring at the shop window display at the things he wants to buy. Still, I want to get back into the saddle, so I may as well start from wherever I can and go on, even if that leaves me sounding like a disjointed drunk on a soap crate.
I've felt myself getting more and more frustrated recently - the outcome of several things, I suspect: Coming to the end of a very intense period of work, worries about the increasingly rudderless senior management at my workplace and what that may mean for my job, worries caused by the credit crunch and what it's doing to my money, worry about money itself and the perennial difficulties about saving, mild depression engendered by the fact that the next Prime Minister will be a tory version of Tony Blair, a smooth-faced careerist with his eye on the main chance, a mountebank pretending to Care with a capital C, worries, worries. Plain and simple I feel anxious!
Yet when I just focus on the now, I should really wonder what it is that I'm worried about - after all, I do have all the perceived trappings of having a good life, along with my health, most of my hair etc etc - from an external perspective, so far, so great. However, I can't help but focus on the future - in fact, it's always been a thing with me, to ignore the jam today and fret about famine tomorrow. And then, of course, I look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.
I am beginning to think that it's time to move on, career-wise, and not necessarily stay in teaching. I haven't moved at all in several years, and all that seems to be happening now is that more and more work is being laded on with little or no reward of any kind. But what should I do next?

wine and computers - just say no.

Buggeration. My netbook (an Advent 4211) decided to have a drink last saturday - a nice refreshing glass of red wine. While I managed to turn it upside down fast enough - well, you don't want good wine to go to waste - the keyboard's buggered, so now I'm writing using a cheap old USB keyboard. So far, the only replacement I've managed to find costs £32, for a component that probably costs only a fiver. And I can't find the receipt for the computer, so I can't get anything done under warranty. Bugger.

a new toy for word fans

I was pointed in the direction of Wordle, and wondered what would happen if I put my 2004 novel into it.

Lacunae

I'm in the midst of a lacuna - and no, that's not a make of car. Having finished doing my Diploma in Teaching in the lifelong learning sector (DTLLS) and my Level 5 ESOL Specialist Qualification, and currently waiting for the results, I feel at something of a loose end. Even though I'm still busy at work and have plenty to do, I can't help but feel that I'm not doing enough, and I don't seem to have any interest in anything. hence the reason I feel that this is a lacuna - a break between things, a pause between actions.
In fact, it would be easy to say that my life is one long story of frenetic bursts of activity followed by lengthy periods of torpor, longeurs if you will (they're certainly not shorteurs). For some reason, once any given period of intense activity ends, I find it immensely difficult to become engaged with something new, or the next phase of a project. I'm damned if I know why, either: it's not for the sake of my health. One thing that becomes immediately apparent once I finish something is that I become extremely irritable, bad-tempered and generally depressed. My assumption on this is that this is probably a result of an alteration in brain chemistry - I suspect that the stress of an intense work project makes me produce a shedload of endorphins, and once the pressure is off, production subsides, leaving me feeling as I do - withdrawal? If it's the case that I feel so crap after finishing something perhaps it leads me to feel reluctant to move on to the next thing.
What is always worrying is the fact that it takes me so damn long to move on to that next thing. I'm far happier working hard than not - so why these breaks in the action? And, as you can see, it means that I don't write on this thing as often as I would like. Forgive the most recent lacuna.

What are you thinking?

"what are you thinking?"...
The car zoomed down country lanes last sunday. I looked out of the window as a gated estate was flung behind us, a quick glance at an advert - 'new development exclusively for over-55's only!' - and thought how the self-imposed ghettoization of a group, in this case of a specific age group rather than an ethnic, religious or cultural group, while seemingly desirable at first glance, is actually more likely to foment more overarching cultural problems. for the subgroup in question, of course sticking together seems to be ideal - any given community that shares a relatively common set of ideals tends to be healthier and longer-lived, according to several statistical studies - yet this leads to the identification of any other given subgroup within society as a whole as 'the other', as Sinfield sublimely investigated in his exploration of Shakespeare's plays, following on from other studies. In other words, these putative 55+ - year-olds would typify anyone below the age of twenty as aggressive little thugs, and the same under-20s would typify them as doddery old fools, feebly waving sticks from behind the compound gates.
This lead on to consideration of how we tend to identify various social groups as 'the other' , and ascribe all our social ills to them, and then to how it is that true evil begins when we see our fellow humans as nothing more than numbers or units or selling markets. This in turn made me consider the unit cost for a pair of jeans in Primark, and wondering how much of that final retail cost actually reaches the person who made the things - considering that a pair of jeans there costs about £7, it's highly likely that virtually bugger all gets to the person in whose sweat they were made. In other words, I perpetuate what is effectively a slave system whenever I buy cheap clothes.
Zooming down the road, impatiently overtaking a Rover (how do I know it's a Rover?) I remark upon the wonderful fresh green of the trees, a miracle of chlorophyll, and think how they will become a darker green thanks to a pigmement that renders the wonderful reds and ambers of autumn; then I consider the fact that, before the advent of the high-speed steam engine, somewhere in the middle of the Victorian period, no-one had ever travelled faster than 25 miles per hour, apart from those unfortunate few who'd managed to fall off a sufficiently high cliff, and even then they wouldn't have been able to reach the average terminal velocity for a falling human body. A couple of phrases from Milton then intruded, then, for no discernible reason, Andrew Marvell's 'the garden', followed by a snatch of The Ancient Mariner...
...and my answer?
'Oh, nothing'.

Brilliant bike ride!

While my sister was puffing and panting round London in the marathon (and getting a perfectly respectable time), I decided to go out for a ride on the bike. The weather was utterly perfect: sky a wonderful bright bluey silver, the temperature just about right, the landscape filled with the freshest, brightest green you could imagine - it was about as close as it is imaginable to cycling through Heaven. With added alpacas. I cycled past this farm outside Whitchurch and had to do a double take - I thought the farmer might have been exceptionally cruel to his sheep at first glance, but then realised he'd shrunk his llamas. as I was scooting down the lane, thinking it couldn't possibly get more bucolic, it did - two boys with stripped willow switches were walking three bullocks down the lane! After that, I passed a wonderfully pastoral scene involving sheep, then woods with bluebells and bright blue skies.
It wasn't a long trip - only twenty miles or so - but it was utterly wonderful. The only shame was that no-one else was tagging along with me.
And of course, the next day, it was absolutely tipping it down and I found my rear tyre flat as a pancake, and somehow I'm managed to run out of tyre cement and couldn't repair the thing.
pictures: Mapledurham House, with added cows; Alpacas; sheep being pastoral; bluebells; English woodland doing an impersonation of rainforest.
(edit) sorry, forgot to say the route - started out, went over Balmore Park, down to the Thames, went as far as Kennet Mouth, changed my mind, followed the Kennet to the town centre, cycled back to the Thames, went to Caversham Bridge, then through St Peter's and down through the Warren, off to Mapledurham, then followed the Bridlepath to Whitchurch; following that, went up the hill until the turning for Goring Heath, through there and past The Sun pub, then uphill and through the forest past the King Charles Head, then up to the Mapledurham crossroads and back home.
(another edit) I've added the route on here from Google Earth.

something in my ear.

I seem to be suffering more than usual from tinnitus, a perpetual buzzing and ringing in my ears. For starters, it's ongoing to the extent that it makes it dfficult to fall asleep and secondly, it seems remarkably loud - to me, anyway. I've had it at this time of year for quite a few years now, and I suspect that it's possibly due to having spent the best part of the previous few months in rooms made arid by central heating. It's probably something to do with ear wax. What seems different this year is the sheer persistence of the damn thing, and the fact that each ear seems to be slightly different - my left ear is a high-pitched whistle, while the right is more of a ringing sound. It's bloody annoying.
More annoying, however, is having a tune lodged in one's head. The German phrase for it translates as 'earworm' - a persistent piece of music repeating itself ad nauseam. For some reason, the current earworm is Beyonce's 'All the Single Ladies' (Aka 'If you liked it you should have put a ring on it'). It's annoying because a) it's a catchy repetitive rhythm, but mostly because b) it's a load of infantile drivel. It'sthe kind of song that you just know some dickwit of a DJ in a nightclub would put on just after Gloria Gaynor's 'I will survive' and just before the Weather Girls' 'It's raining men'. It's the kind of stuff a bunch of drunk women, one or two of whom have just split up from boyfriends/husbands/feckless idiots, dance to: the first song with defiant faces put on, the second whooping it up, the third celebrating drunkenly - just before the Dumped (Dumpee?)/Dumper breaks down in tears, mascara and Chardonnay-flavoured vomit.

What really pisses me off about Beyonce's song is the notion it implies: that a woman is only fulfilled by becoming engaged/married ('If you liked it you should have put a ring on it'), thus reducing one half of humanity to the status of chattel. It's demeaning and thoroughly infantilising, and the singer should be thoroughly ashamed of herself, if she has an ounce of intellect.
And the damn thing is still buzzing round my head.

"Farewell to the flesh"

Today is Shrove Tuesday, and, befittingly, I am stuffed on pancakes. I was discussing this with my students this morning - it being Pancake Day, that is, not my being stuffed - and we looked at traditions in verious other countries. The Polish contingent mentioned feasting on herrings, while the Germans mentioned the carnivals in various towns, in particular the one in Cologne that begins in november and continues until today. The Italian student mentioned perhaps the grandaddy of all these public festivals, the Venice Carnival, and she mentioned the festivities, the costumes and the riot of licence that pervades it.
The word 'carnival' derives from the latin Carne Vale - literally, 'goodbye to meat', or less prosaically as I have titled this post. It is the last chance before Lent to have a blowout, a bit of a party, a bit of fun, before the forty days of fasting and penitence that is Lent. It might seem strange to have a period of abstinence just as spring is round the corner, but think about it: in European latitudes at least, and certainly for our ancestors, this is the time of year when there is dearth and lack, when food supplies are at their lowest, when there is still the long and anxious wait before crops begin to sprout forth, animals grow, things to ripen. Now, as you traipse down the aisles of Tescos, buying strawberries in the dead months, you might not automatically make this connection, but there it is. By making a virtue of starvation and lack, lent creates a sense of communality - after all, everyone is (or rather was) supposed to follow the rules about what you could and could not consume - hence the reason why all the fat in the house had to be used up before the beginning of the period.
In Islam, of course, you have Ramadan, which follows very much the same principal - a month of conscious fasting and abstinence, with people coming together for Iftar at nightfall. The main difference from Lent is that it follows the lunar calendar, so it moves forward by ten days or so each year. This means that someone will always experience the discomfort of a long, hot summer of fasting at least once during their lifetime. It doesn't have the literally visceral connection to food production and lack of the Christian tradition, but it does focus the mind on how it feels to starve like the poorest. Its message is ' here's what it's like to have no food at all', while Lent reminds us of how little we need to actually live on.
And at the end of both? A great big blowout on sweets and chocolates.
All we are asked to do is say farewell to the flesh for a brief time. And, as ever, my birthday falls right at the beginning of the period! So, as I say Vale to my forty-first year and Ave to my forty-second on this planet, I wonder what new things, what changes will happen, and what else shall come.

Head in the clouds.

a day out at Popham airfield, in a two-seater microlite, courtesy of Nur's birthday present to me last year for my 40th. Just in time for my 41st.
[edit] - I forgot to say:
I WANT TO SO DO THAT AGAIN!
the microlite looks, from the front, much like any other small plane, but it really is tiny - the fuel tank is directly behind the seats, and the whole thing is more or less made of plastic. It took off in an incredibly short space - less than 50m - and got up to a thousand feet in just a couple of minutes. Michelle, the pilot, was very helpful and explained a lot in the short space we were aloft. what really surprised me was how receptive the controls were - they just required the touch of fingers. The way the plane bucked and dipped was a bit unnerving at first, but it was just, in the end, like riding rough water.

5 minutes

That's the title and theme of this, and for how long I will write this particular post. It's based upon something I've been trying out with students, which in turn was based upon something I read about the novelist Anthony Trollope. Apparently, before going to his job at the post office, he would write for exactly three hours every morning. If he finished a novel at, say two hours and ten minutes, he wouldn't stop: He'd start a new novel.
Well, I wondered what would happen if I let my students write for five minutes, no more, no less, about a given subject, and tell them not to worry about spelling or grammar - what would happen? In fact, it has so far been an interesting exercise in what happens - newly learned vocabulary appears to be produced with far greater ease, while certain errors, mainly of spelling, disappear.
I then wondered what else can be done in five minutes, so I've just done a load of mini-tasks so far today - clearing up a letters tray, phoning the council about a grant, choosing a couple of birthday cards - and so far, it seems very productive. And there's my five minu

music

get spotify. I've been listening to it while working on some rather tricky stuff, and it's kept me going for nearly four hours. That's all.

Hard day at the office...

he actually fell asleep standing up, with his head resting on the sofa.

Annnnd.....breathe.

It's an automatic process, of course: the exchange of gases within the spongy sacs that fill our thoraxes, the gentle rhythmic pull of the diaphragm, drawing air in, expelling the voided gas. Did you know, however, that with any given breath or exhalation, you only expel, on average, about 10-15% of the used up stuff? Athletes do a bit more, but not much.
Yet when was the last time you really, really focused on the act of breathing, or noticed it? There are days when the air really is like wine, a intoxicating heady rush, eager to fill your lungs; there are times when air blasts through you, cleaning you out - I once experienced this in spectacular fashion, while climbing Carnedd Dafydd, and I encountered a sudden updraught of pure, stromg cold air that didn't just clean my sinuses, it seemed to fill me with an wild, cold fire, and I felt I could have run for hours and hours; then there are days when the atmosphere is laden with perfume from honeysuckle and jasmine and late flowering trees and all is a lavish, luxurious drug of drowsiness. And still we breathe.
Yet when do you focus on the act of breathing itself? Try it: close your eyes, and carefully count the breath in, the breath out, diastole, systole. Feel the air moving through your nasal passageways, in, then out: sense how it feels against the mouth, the throat, the nose, the lungs. Feel your chest rising and falling, then become aware of how your pulse has slowed, and how much slower you are, all of a sudden, breathing. Now, if you're brave enough, stop counting the breaths, and let them flow, and now watch the show inside your head of your thoughts rising and falling, vying with each other to be heard, some gentle, some strident, all needy.
I must admit at this point that I've stolen this idea from Marcus' journal. The act of counting your breath, that is. And what I've found is remarkable. As I seek to focus on the breathing, suddenly I become aware of tens, hundreds of voices, all striving to be heard over the bell-toll of my counting my breaths, or the magisterial silence as I try to let even counting go. And eaach voice is a bit of me, all parts of me articulating worries, fears, anxieties, boasts, terror. Yet while I'm in counting mode, I can look at all this shouting audience and understand, REALLY understand, how trivial or important something is, and get it done if necessary.

ch-ch-ch-changes

I have, for my sins, or possibly just out of sheer torpor, just been watching the 1995 romcom The American President, featuring Michael Douglas as a singleton POTUS wooing Annette Bening. God I'm sad. There's one scene that stuck with me - the bit where the president is ordering an attack on some building with the full knowledge that a lot of innocent people will die. Just got me thinking: right now, someone, somewhere, is doing something that will have an impact on your life. It might be major, it might be minor, you might barely notice it, but because of someone else the course of your life has been changed, just because someone has said this or done that, or possibly because they HAVEN'T done this or said that. It might not be as dramatic as having the shit bombed out of your house, as Hamas and Israel between them have managed to concoct between them for the poor sods in Gaza, but nevertheless the path has been altered. And a small turn here ends up as a big diversion later.
Of course, this is a continuation of the theme of the last post. Who knows - maybe this entry has changed the course of someone's life by just a bit.

Do? Don't do? Mean to do? Do be doo?

And still the snow falls, and still the students straggle in. I was half hoping that no-one would turn up. Well, no, I was fully hoping no-one would turn up actually, but there you go. In fact, from what I've seen, my class is the only one with anything near full attendance today. Bah.
I've been sat here for the past hour, thinking over ideas for lesson plans, but distracted by other thoughts, mostly along the lines of 'I meant to do this and that, but..' I suspect it's the trip up to North Wales that's got me in this vein of thought. How much time have I spent pondering this very statement? I meant to study more. I didn't mean to become a teacher. I meant to do this. I didn't mean to say that. And so forth and so on... The fact of the matter is, we are who we are because of what we do, or don't do. Inaction is as bad as action, sometimes. Whenever I say 'Oh, I meant to do this (but didn't)' , isn't this an admission of some kind of failure? Isn't it me owning up to being an inert lump?
My failure, as a person, has been to be too analytical, too cautious in moving towards action, and thus end up not doing anything much. I have been afraid of action, its consequences and possible harm to others, to the point that not doing seems safer. Yet not doing is harmful in its own way, to myself in my self-esteem (because I don't do the things I want or should do) and to what others need from me, especially my children.
My aim this year, and yes, I know this seems like a late new year's resolution, is to move away from saying 'I meant to do...' and just do it, and avoid 'I didn't mean to do...' by doing the right thing - for myself, at least.

More Ice

Walked up to school with Angus this morning. There'd been a hard frost, and the hill that we have to walk up was one solid gleaming sheet of polished ice. It wasn't too bad underfoot, but cars were having a torrid time getting up. There was a queue of Mummy Tanks going nowhere quickly, stuck on the steepest part of the hill. Quite frankly, I felt absolutely no sympathy for them. These were people who were just driving a few hundred metres to take their kids to school before turning right round again.
Regular readers will know that I have no small antipathy to people in big cars, especially Mummy Tanks: These huge, seven-seater 4wd vehicles that are used solely for the ferrying of a couple of small children and the week's shopping, have never been used in an environment that would require 4wd (except today, of course, and then the Mummy Tank drivers didn't have a clue how to use it), and are there as sops to the egos of fearful, fret-filled souls. Why the hell use them? All you do is literally burn money in order to drive an extra half-tonne of metal around. All for the sake of showing what aBIG car you have, what a LOT of money you must have, what an IMPORTANT person you must be. And also, it shows what a bully you are, and how little you care for your own kids' future as you burn up just a bit more fuel and pollute just a bit more, just because you can.
I also despise them because they are the most poorly-driven cars around. Most of my near misses have been because some arrogant bitch in her Mummy Tank thinks she can drive any which way she likes - she's not going to get hurt, because she's in a big tank, and damn everyone else. However, they are not the only tits on the road. Men who drive vehicles with names like the Mitsubishi Warrior - they're high up on the list of Road Twats. why on earth do you NEED to drive a car called a Warrior? to show that you're a MAAAAAN? That you're macho? Or that you're a sadly deluded middle-aged fatty who's overdosed on pies? 'cos you ain't a warrior.
One of my favourite names for one of these stupid vehicles is the Pajero - this is because, in Spanish, it's slang for 'wanker'. And that sums it up nicely.

A weekend away

Oh my thumping head. I've spent the weekend in Bangor, attending the UCNW Stage Crew 25th birthday bash and going up a mountain. I went up by train last sunday: I was going to hire a car, but after working out costs and petrol, it worked out cheaper to go by rail. Besides, it allowed me to have a drink or several. And, when I got to my destination, to have several more, and then some. I stayed at the Eryl Mor Hotel, which conveniently enough was directly opposite the pub. It also boasts, as I found out the next morning, a spectacular view across the Menai Straits, Bangor Pier and harbour, and the wide, snow-flecked sweep of Snowdonia.
It was great to meet up with a few old faces - I wasn't sure that I'd recognise anyone, or whether they'd recognise me. In a couple of cases, it took a bit of intent peering behind fading hair and wrinkles to work out who was who. Besides, alcohol was involved, which didn't exactly help things at times. I'd half-expected that we'd be meeting up at the Student's Union, but no: apparently, it's hardly open anymore, it's losing money and it's about to be pulled down. It was a bit of a shame, because I would have liked to have seen the old place one more time. However, its failing state suggests that its heyday had been when I was a student there, in the times when a room with a fire safety limit of 125 persons was regularly filled with more than 4 times that amount, where the air was thick with cigarette smoke and cheap 80s perfumes and body spray and beer fug and a frantic joy. Whether this is a good or bad thing, I'm not sure. I did walk past the place as I went home, and I could see the toll of the years - if it didn't get pulled down, it would fall down. Some things hadn't changed: the faded Welsh graffito on the wall of Jock's bar, the signage painted by green algae, the curtains on the upper floors in their half-open, half-torn, mostly stained state - even a half-drunk bottle of Newcastle Brown, placed behind a pillar and visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, could have been there since 1989. Overall, though, I think we did best to stay in the comfort of the Tap and Spile.
On Saturday morning, nursing an aching head and a stomach full of a Full Welsh Breakfast (that's an English Breakfast, coooked in Wales), I took the bus up to Llanberis for a climb up Snowdon. My intention was to get the Sherpa bus to Pen Y Pass, then go over Pyg Track and down the Llanberis Path. Once I'd arrived at Llanberis, however, I quickly revised my plan. First, there was an awful lot of snow on the mountain: second, there was a freezing cold hard wind blowing gale strength. I realised that meant my original plan would be impossible to undertake because of the wind direction and strength and because the snow on the Pen Y Pass side would probably make any Snowdon ascent extremely difficult, even if well equipped. Instead, I took the Llanberis path, which is a tedious, dull, hard and very long slog up the mountain. There were plenty of other people going up the path, and it didn't cease to amaze me how poorly equipped some of them were. I went up with my trusty Berghaus boots, waterproof trousers, winter jacket, walking poles and a backpack with map, lights, food, medical pack, water and other useful bits; One chap I saw, while wonderfully coordinated in his clothing choice, had skimpy pixie boots, a lightweight summer jacket, a tastefully chosen bandanna and a jaunty little knapsack. Others were plodding up as though they were just popping back from the shops, including carrying a plastic shopping bag with a few bits and pieces in.
After getting past Clogwyn Station, the snow appeared, but it was deep snow that had been lying for quite a while and had turned into a very hard crust, with soft and rotten snow below. It had blown into drifts in some areas higher than my head, and left only very thin paths up, especially at the point where you walk under the rail line and look over Pen Y Pass towards the Glyders. I trudged on up, fighting my hangover and the wind and the cold, until I go to the point where the path deviates higher up from the rail line, under Carnedd Ugain and towards Clogwyn Coch, and saw a few groups of people sitting on the snow. Some where shuffling gingerly upwards on their bums, while others were shuffling gingerly downwards. After a few more steps, and not without a slightly rising sense of horror, I realised why: the snow had turned into an extremely dangerous sheet of ice, pointing down towards a sheer fall. I tried probing the snow, but it was quickly obvious that it was a solid icy crust. I also realised that I would have to be extraordinarily careful in order to turn round and get the hell out of there. It was brought home to me how you need crampons and ice axes whenever on the side of a snowy slope like that. Amazingly, some idiots with minimal equipment were still trying to get higher up. I decided to turn back, with lots of very small, careful steps and judicious use of walking poles. I wasn't helped in this by the wind, which was doing its best to unbalance me. What was also worse was the wind direction - from the south, meaning that it was relatively warm, meaning it was melting the snow, meaning that it was a rapidly increasing avalanche risk - if not that day, then later. Anyway, as you can tell, I made it off safely.
The next day, two brothers, in their 30s and both married, fell and died, less than 100 metres away from where I reached.