When I was seventeen my boyfriend discovered that I had never been on a roller coaster. In fact, I hadn’t been to fairgrounds much, despite growing up in a seaside town. My father didn’t really approve of fairgrounds per se and my mother went along with his decisions.
My father had a similar attitude to the shellfish that was sold out and about around the town - almost certainly unhealthy, was the mildest thing he said about them. Neither did he go to pubs very much. Consequently we children never spent time sitting on the wall eating crisps and drinking lemonade outside the Fisherman’s Rest, a pub we were always hurried past on our family walks because it was notorious for the salacious paintings you might get a glimpse of if the door was open.
Another experience we missed out on was looking for Mr Lobby Ludd, a strange character who spent odd days at seaside resorts waiting for people to approach him and challenge him with exactly the right wording so that they could claim a prize. We could not take part in this delightful 1950s and 1960s activity because my father was a printer working for the local paper and thus the whole family was banned from participating.
Getting back to fairgrounds, funfairs or whatever you choose to call them, Silcockks travelling fair used to appear at various times in the year in a field at the bottom of our road. My older, and bolder, sister used to go along with her friends. The rest of us would clamour to be taken there by our mother who would eventually give in. It was always a bit of a disappointment. Candy floss looks good but cloys after the first few sticky mouthfuls. The most exciting-looking rides always looked too rickety to be really safe. My mother worried about pickpockets and other thieves and vagabonds.So while it was quite exhilarating with its noise and bustle, it was never really satisfactory. And when my sister came down with some mystery illness which my mother was convinced came from the travelling fair, that was the end of that. None of us ever went again. But I still occasionally see Silcock’s lorries around transporting funfair rides to temporary venues.
Anyway, my boyfriend of the time discovered that I had never been on a roller coaster and decided one day that it was time to remedy the situation. So we went along and had a ride on the Big Dipper. Compared with modern rides it was undoubtedly very tame and it has long since disappeared. But we had a ride and I did not appreciate it. My natural antipathy to being thrown around and hurtled down slopes was vindicated.
Something like thirty years later I accompanied a group of Advanced GNVQ Travel and Tourism and Business students to what was still at that point called Eurodisney, now Disneyland Paris. I was the foreign language expert, taken along in case proper French speaking was required. The educational point of the visit was to study the running of the hotels and restaurants in the theme park but for a few hours every day (fortunately only three days) the students had the run of the park and its rides. So did the staff.
Some of the accompanying staff were not a great deal older than the students and were enjoying themselves as well.
They wanted me to join in the fun. I pointed out my dislike of roller coasters but said I would, albeit rather reluctantly, go with them on a ride that did not go upside down or in the dark. So they selected Space Mountain and at each stage of our queuing if we came across a notice someone would distract my attention. Eventually we were seated in a carriage of sorts and advised to put our sunglasses, etc, in a safe place where they could not fall out. Warning bells rang! Too late! We set off, up and up until the lights went out and we plunged down through the darkness, twisting and turning through 360 degrees to avoid meteorites and other space rockets.
By the time we got off, I impressed a younger member of staff by having turned a tasteful shade of green!
I tell these stories because today I have read about a man who seems to be addicted to roller coasters. Now 52, he went on his first roller coaster with his dad at the age of ten. His dad stopped accompanying him when the writer was 13 and they went on their first loop-the-loop ride. He continued, however, and has now ridden 1,200 different roller coasters.
Then he discovered clubs for roller coaster enthusiasts and visited the USA with the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain, visiting 14 parks in a two-week stay!
Who even knew that such clubs existed?!
It gets odder.
At some point he read an article in the club magazine - yes, the Roller Coaster Club has a magazine! - about a park in Wales where the owners and park management had stripped off to ride the roller coaster naked. The writer and some friends accepted a challenge to do the same and they have been going back year on year to repeat the experience. He and his companions have five times broken the Guinness Book of Records record for the number of people taking part in a naked roller coaster ride.
Interestingly, his wife takes no part on this particular activity. She likes roller coasters, indeed they were married on a club trip to Las Vegas, but she doesn’t do the naked riding thing. That seems to be a macho activity. Perhaps his wife and the other wives have more sense!
What a strange world we do live in!
Saturday, 11 May 2019
Friday, 10 May 2019
A pessimistic look at a fishy problem.
I like fish.
I was most impressed recently when I saw coy carp as big as my forearm in one of the local mill ponds. Presumably somebody put some unwanted goldfish in the pond years ago and they have been growing ever since. In the pub garden next door to our house they have a fishpond with equally large fish in, much admired by our smallest grandchild.
I also like to eat fish.
One of the very good things about going to spend time in Galicia, in north west Spain, is the abundance of fresh fish in restaurants and in the supermarket next door to our block of flats. A nice fish or some good shellfish and a good bottle of Albariño wine. What more could you ask for?
We go to restaurants and I get new ideas for how to prepare fish dishes.
Here in the UK, I run to Uppermill, two or three miles away, on a Wednesday morning and buy fresh fish from the fish-man there. He usually has some good deals: two sea bream fillets for a fiver, a couple of river trout also for a fiver, a bag of fish pie mix which he chops for you there and then from the fish on his display. And no, you don’t have to make fish pie as such; it’s good for a fish chowder or a pasta dish. So I get to try out my new ideas.
But now George Monbiot, one of my heroes who writes about all kinds of ecological matters, is telling me I need to stop eating fish. He maintains that the biggest threat to our seas and to our marine life is not plastic, for all that everyone and their grandmother is going on about how plastic is reaching and contaminating the deepest reaches of our oceans. No, the biggest threat is industrial scale fishing.
Enormous boats go out and catch vast amounts of fish at one go. We have been encouraged to eat more fish and want it at reasonable prices. Much of the catch gets thrown back in as the fish caught are too small to meet international regulations. What he didn’t say is that in some places the very littlest fish are not always thrown back in but are served up as “pescaditos fritos” little fried fish eaten whole - quite delicious but apparently often illegal!
Fish farms don’t help either as they tend to scoop up stuff from the seabed, mash it up into a pulp and feed it to the fish and shellfish they are “cultivating” - not a good process for the seabed!
What we need to do, apparently, is establish huge no-fishing zones out in the wide open sea and restrict fishing to national fishing waters. The fear that there will not be enough fish in those designated areas to meet demand is, experts maintain, unfounded. Once we stop massive-scale fishing in the wider international ocean areas, stocks of fish and shellfish will re-establish themselves. And as there are no fences down under the sea and the fish don’t know where they are supposed to go or not go these newly enlarged stocks will spread into national waters.
Supplies will be sufficient to meet demand although we might need to pay a little more. But maybe small fishermen could make a living as well.
Of course, to organise this kind of thing we would need to have international agreement, a global decision to save the sea.
We already know we need a global decision to deal with other environmental problems. In the same way, we really know that we need a global decision to tackle the problems of refugees, people fleeing famine zones and other problems all over the world.
If we ever do come to a global solution, some time in the future people will look back to now and wonder how it took us so long to sort it out.
I am not optimistic. The leaders of our political parties are finding it hard to work together. Even within parties they are having difficulties reaching a consensus on all sorts of things. Do we really think that we can come to international agreement sensibly?
I was most impressed recently when I saw coy carp as big as my forearm in one of the local mill ponds. Presumably somebody put some unwanted goldfish in the pond years ago and they have been growing ever since. In the pub garden next door to our house they have a fishpond with equally large fish in, much admired by our smallest grandchild.
I also like to eat fish.
One of the very good things about going to spend time in Galicia, in north west Spain, is the abundance of fresh fish in restaurants and in the supermarket next door to our block of flats. A nice fish or some good shellfish and a good bottle of Albariño wine. What more could you ask for?
We go to restaurants and I get new ideas for how to prepare fish dishes.
Here in the UK, I run to Uppermill, two or three miles away, on a Wednesday morning and buy fresh fish from the fish-man there. He usually has some good deals: two sea bream fillets for a fiver, a couple of river trout also for a fiver, a bag of fish pie mix which he chops for you there and then from the fish on his display. And no, you don’t have to make fish pie as such; it’s good for a fish chowder or a pasta dish. So I get to try out my new ideas.
But now George Monbiot, one of my heroes who writes about all kinds of ecological matters, is telling me I need to stop eating fish. He maintains that the biggest threat to our seas and to our marine life is not plastic, for all that everyone and their grandmother is going on about how plastic is reaching and contaminating the deepest reaches of our oceans. No, the biggest threat is industrial scale fishing.
Enormous boats go out and catch vast amounts of fish at one go. We have been encouraged to eat more fish and want it at reasonable prices. Much of the catch gets thrown back in as the fish caught are too small to meet international regulations. What he didn’t say is that in some places the very littlest fish are not always thrown back in but are served up as “pescaditos fritos” little fried fish eaten whole - quite delicious but apparently often illegal!
Fish farms don’t help either as they tend to scoop up stuff from the seabed, mash it up into a pulp and feed it to the fish and shellfish they are “cultivating” - not a good process for the seabed!
What we need to do, apparently, is establish huge no-fishing zones out in the wide open sea and restrict fishing to national fishing waters. The fear that there will not be enough fish in those designated areas to meet demand is, experts maintain, unfounded. Once we stop massive-scale fishing in the wider international ocean areas, stocks of fish and shellfish will re-establish themselves. And as there are no fences down under the sea and the fish don’t know where they are supposed to go or not go these newly enlarged stocks will spread into national waters.
Supplies will be sufficient to meet demand although we might need to pay a little more. But maybe small fishermen could make a living as well.
Of course, to organise this kind of thing we would need to have international agreement, a global decision to save the sea.
We already know we need a global decision to deal with other environmental problems. In the same way, we really know that we need a global decision to tackle the problems of refugees, people fleeing famine zones and other problems all over the world.
If we ever do come to a global solution, some time in the future people will look back to now and wonder how it took us so long to sort it out.
I am not optimistic. The leaders of our political parties are finding it hard to work together. Even within parties they are having difficulties reaching a consensus on all sorts of things. Do we really think that we can come to international agreement sensibly?
Thursday, 9 May 2019
It’s all down to how we interpret stuff.
As I prepared our evening meal last night I half-listened to the news on the radio. You can’t really do more than half-listen because of the noise of kettles and pans and the like. So I sort of heard an announcement that the Sussex baby was to be called Archie Harrison Outback Windsor.
That was a bit of a surprise.
“Archie”- well, Harry and Meghan are clearly a modern young couple, down there with the trendy people who give their offspring names that are already diminutives. Babies are registered as “Freddie”, “Bobby”, “Tilly”, “Maddie” and “Daisy”, all diminutives! What these children will do when they grow up and want a grown up version of their name remains to be seen.
“Harrison” is also very on trend. There are quite a lot of little “Harrisons” around and not all of the, can claim, as this one can, to be a true “Son of Harry”. Mind you, I still think of it as a surname!
But “Outback”? Where did that come from? And then the announcer repeated it and I realised I had misheard “Mountbatten”, which by the way is an anglicised version of the German “Battenberg”. His surname is Mountbatten-Windsor.
(Hmmm, I wonder if the Duke of Edinburg has had to apply for settled status. Does he have the relevant proof of residence and working here?)
We must be careful what we say, and especially what we put out there in social media. The comedian Danny Baker has lost his job with the BBC because he tweeted a joke about the new little Windsor which involved a photo of a couple with a baby chimp. A joke in very poor taste even if he meant no racist comment, which he maintains:-
“Once again. Sincere apologies for the stupid unthinking gag pic earlier. Was supposed to be joke about royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted. Royal watching not my forte. Also, guessing it was my turn in the barrel.”
Not totally repentant however, he later more or less accused the BBC of overreacting, calling his sacking “a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity”.
He added on Twitter: “[They] took a tone that said I actually meant that ridiculous tweet and the BBC must uphold blah blah blah. Literally threw me under the bus. Could hear the suits knees knocking.”
I can almost sympathise.
There is an awful lot of political correctness about and a lot of fuss about who says what and has the right to say it. Some people just accept things as they are though.
There is a musical version of Andre Levy’s book “Small Island”. The book tells the story of her parents coming to England from the Caribbean and the culture shock, not to mention the racism, they went through. It’s a good book. I am a little surprised at their turning it into a musical but then they managed to do so with Les Miserables and Oliver Twist, both stories of rather upsetting content. At least Small Island does have a lot of humour in it.
But I digress.
Lots of people expressed their opinion of the production in this article. Among the comments about the shock people felt that West Indians had had to undergo such treatment, and the confirmation of that treatment by many who had experience of it, one person made this comment about the adaptation itself:
“It doesn’t bother me that Andrea Levy’s novel was directed by a white man and adapted by a white woman, if they are truthful about what they’re putting out.”
There you go. A bit of common sense.
That was a bit of a surprise.
“Archie”- well, Harry and Meghan are clearly a modern young couple, down there with the trendy people who give their offspring names that are already diminutives. Babies are registered as “Freddie”, “Bobby”, “Tilly”, “Maddie” and “Daisy”, all diminutives! What these children will do when they grow up and want a grown up version of their name remains to be seen.
“Harrison” is also very on trend. There are quite a lot of little “Harrisons” around and not all of the, can claim, as this one can, to be a true “Son of Harry”. Mind you, I still think of it as a surname!
But “Outback”? Where did that come from? And then the announcer repeated it and I realised I had misheard “Mountbatten”, which by the way is an anglicised version of the German “Battenberg”. His surname is Mountbatten-Windsor.
(Hmmm, I wonder if the Duke of Edinburg has had to apply for settled status. Does he have the relevant proof of residence and working here?)
We must be careful what we say, and especially what we put out there in social media. The comedian Danny Baker has lost his job with the BBC because he tweeted a joke about the new little Windsor which involved a photo of a couple with a baby chimp. A joke in very poor taste even if he meant no racist comment, which he maintains:-
“Once again. Sincere apologies for the stupid unthinking gag pic earlier. Was supposed to be joke about royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted. Royal watching not my forte. Also, guessing it was my turn in the barrel.”
Not totally repentant however, he later more or less accused the BBC of overreacting, calling his sacking “a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity”.
He added on Twitter: “[They] took a tone that said I actually meant that ridiculous tweet and the BBC must uphold blah blah blah. Literally threw me under the bus. Could hear the suits knees knocking.”
I can almost sympathise.
There is an awful lot of political correctness about and a lot of fuss about who says what and has the right to say it. Some people just accept things as they are though.
There is a musical version of Andre Levy’s book “Small Island”. The book tells the story of her parents coming to England from the Caribbean and the culture shock, not to mention the racism, they went through. It’s a good book. I am a little surprised at their turning it into a musical but then they managed to do so with Les Miserables and Oliver Twist, both stories of rather upsetting content. At least Small Island does have a lot of humour in it.
But I digress.
Lots of people expressed their opinion of the production in this article. Among the comments about the shock people felt that West Indians had had to undergo such treatment, and the confirmation of that treatment by many who had experience of it, one person made this comment about the adaptation itself:
“It doesn’t bother me that Andrea Levy’s novel was directed by a white man and adapted by a white woman, if they are truthful about what they’re putting out.”
There you go. A bit of common sense.
Wednesday, 8 May 2019
Royal babies, titles and deciding what to do.
Well, Meghan Markle has had her baby. And they had the audacity not to tell the media until it was all over! And they haven’t even told us where the child was born! There’s so much fuss being made about this sort of thing that I am surprised people haven’t demanded a blow by blow account of the labour and delivery! It’s all a bit medieval, almost demanding witnesses to be there to guarantee that there was no baby switch because there was something wrong with the royal child.
I suppose that if your job description is basically “provide bread and circuses to distract from Brexit and other such shenanigans” then maybe you really should step up and tell the people what they want to know. Or what they don’t give a monkey’s about in the case of a lot of people I know.
My phone, by the way, just sent me a little “plink”, informing me that I can watch Harry and Meghan show off their baby on Sky News. This is the modern age and your phone tries to tell you what to do!
My daughter tells me she quite likes Harry. Does she know him well, I wonder. He seems quite “genuine”, she says, whatever that means. To this I respond that it must be difficult to get on with your life when effectively you have no proper role, other than being the brother of the second in line for the throne. However, I also point out that it must also be difficult to get on with your life when you have no proper role because there isn’t a job for you and you don’t have a rich family, and often a decent state-provided income, to fall back on.
William and Kate have become Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Harry and Meghan have become Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As the children, particularly the sons, of these dukes and duchesses grow up and marry will they also be create Duke of somewhere or other? Will we run out of bits of England to make into duchies? It’s almost a full time job keeping up with the titles.
And we should perhaps feel sorry for royal correspondents who have to stand outside the palace or the hospital where a child is possibly being born and say a lot of stuff without really knowing anything at all about what is going on.
In the fictional world of Game of Thrones, they still have to decide who is their king or queen. According to this article we should also be getting a little agitated because “there is barely a brown person left alive in the long-running fantasy series”. Oops!
We have to remember that it is just that: a fantasy show. And yes it could have been a bit more egalitarian but, at the risk,of coming in for criticism, the important thing was to have a good storyline.
And the other long-running fantasy show that is Brexit also seems to be losing the thread of its plot. Maybe we need another royal baby!
I suppose that if your job description is basically “provide bread and circuses to distract from Brexit and other such shenanigans” then maybe you really should step up and tell the people what they want to know. Or what they don’t give a monkey’s about in the case of a lot of people I know.
My phone, by the way, just sent me a little “plink”, informing me that I can watch Harry and Meghan show off their baby on Sky News. This is the modern age and your phone tries to tell you what to do!
My daughter tells me she quite likes Harry. Does she know him well, I wonder. He seems quite “genuine”, she says, whatever that means. To this I respond that it must be difficult to get on with your life when effectively you have no proper role, other than being the brother of the second in line for the throne. However, I also point out that it must also be difficult to get on with your life when you have no proper role because there isn’t a job for you and you don’t have a rich family, and often a decent state-provided income, to fall back on.
William and Kate have become Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Harry and Meghan have become Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As the children, particularly the sons, of these dukes and duchesses grow up and marry will they also be create Duke of somewhere or other? Will we run out of bits of England to make into duchies? It’s almost a full time job keeping up with the titles.
And we should perhaps feel sorry for royal correspondents who have to stand outside the palace or the hospital where a child is possibly being born and say a lot of stuff without really knowing anything at all about what is going on.
In the fictional world of Game of Thrones, they still have to decide who is their king or queen. According to this article we should also be getting a little agitated because “there is barely a brown person left alive in the long-running fantasy series”. Oops!
We have to remember that it is just that: a fantasy show. And yes it could have been a bit more egalitarian but, at the risk,of coming in for criticism, the important thing was to have a good storyline.
And the other long-running fantasy show that is Brexit also seems to be losing the thread of its plot. Maybe we need another royal baby!
Tuesday, 7 May 2019
Another education rant!
At Grandma’s Cafe this morning for breakfast, my daughter told me a tale of badly-behaved children in a shopping centre. Her smallest child, who has been learning good manners and insists that when her older brother burps “pardon me” is not good enough but he should say “‘scuse me!”, was sitting in one of those kiddy rides, in this case a little bus. She was sitting in the back, probably singing “The wheels on the bus”. Another child came storming over, no parents in sight, and sat himself in the driver’s seat. Then another slightly older child, probably his brother, arrived - still no parents - and yanked the other out of the driver’s seat and pushed him into the back of the bus so that he could take over the driving. Two more unaccompanied siblings arrived and piled onto the bus.
Our grandchild, on her best I-know-my-manners behaviour moved over to make room and said, “There you go”. Whereupon the “driver” of the bus turned and roared at her. When she protested, “Mummy, this boy shouted at me”, the younger child, the one ousted from the driver’s seat, slapped her.
My daughter had been watching this. She is a primary school teacher and went into teacher mode: no shouting, just a serious teacher voice saying, “Now, we don’t shout and slap, do we? We use our kind hands, don’t we”. Pretty restrained, I thought.
By now the parents had arrived and the father blustered over to ask what was going on. When the situation was explained to him, he clearly felt no compunction to apologise himself but simply growled at the child, “What do you say?”. He then pulled the child out of the bus and roared at the others to follow.
Presumably this is one of those fathers you read about who assume that school should teach their children how to behave as well as teaching them to dress themselves, use a knife and fork, and just as a sideline how to read and write and do a bit of basic Maths!
Recently I read about an academy chain who had decided that a solution to bad behaviour was to make the uncouth youths repeat a year. Nothing like a bit of humiliation, not to mention the boredom factor of doing the same stuff over again, to make the world go around. And, of course, there is the encouragement that these older miscreants give to the younger would-be miscreants. Other countries in Europe have mostly phased out this practice for just those reasons. The “repetidores”, big louts two or even three years older than the rest of the class, have largely disappeared from Spanish schools. So quite why the academy chain thinks it would work is beyond me.
The behaviour problem is one of the reasons why young teachers tend to move out of the profession after only a few years in the profession. A contributory factor might be something else I read about. According to the Times Educational Supplement, it is increasingly hard for experienced teachers to find work in schools unless they actively seek promotion. “Just think about it. You're on the upper pay scale and want to move schools. Perhaps, you've held a position of responsibility and want to "just be a teacher" once again. After all, didn’t we go into this job for the love of teaching? But there’s a hitch: why would a school, with the financial pressures that they now face, employ you, as opposed to a newly qualified teacher who costs almost £20K less? After all, there are situations where taking the NQT would make some sense, especially if the department is strong and could support and mentor them, at least until they are up to a similar standard to the more experienced teacher.”
Consequently there is no longer the mix of young-and-enthusiastic and older-and-more-experienced which used to exist, the second group helping the first to deal with recalcitrant or just plain naughty students and the first group reminding the second about the joy of new ideas!
Cost cutting has its costs!
Our fourteen year old grandson, not always a little angel, sometimes a bit too quick with a sharp or indeed cheeky retort, has been selected to be in the group at his secondary school which does the English Baccalaureate.
Despite being described as just doing enough to get by, he is recognised as bright enough to be one of this group. What would he be like, I wonder, if he really tried?!
So what is the English Baccalaureate, apart from seeming to me be a misnomer since in other countries “baccalaureate” is equivalent to our A-Levels?
Here’s an answer from their web page:-
The EBacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps young people’s options open for further study and future careers.
The EBacc is:
• English language and literature
• maths
• the sciences
• geography or history
• a language
So our rather idle young man will have to continue with Spanish. He is a bit miffed about this. I am a bit miffed about his reaction. It might be because he has had a string of different teachers over the last three years, none of whom has managed to give him a love of language learning or any sense of the fun that can be involved. I need to start doing some remedial work now, I think!
He is not alone in his age group to want to avoid foreign language learning. Apparently some youngsters are getting so stressed about it that they are getting doctors’ notes to excuse them from those lessons.
Oh, boy! Yes, you have to work at understanding the ins and outs of a foreign language but the same applies to Maths. And I’ve not heard of parents taking their offspring to see a doctor so that they can get out of Maths lessons!
Something needs to be done at all levels, it seems to me!
Our grandchild, on her best I-know-my-manners behaviour moved over to make room and said, “There you go”. Whereupon the “driver” of the bus turned and roared at her. When she protested, “Mummy, this boy shouted at me”, the younger child, the one ousted from the driver’s seat, slapped her.
My daughter had been watching this. She is a primary school teacher and went into teacher mode: no shouting, just a serious teacher voice saying, “Now, we don’t shout and slap, do we? We use our kind hands, don’t we”. Pretty restrained, I thought.
By now the parents had arrived and the father blustered over to ask what was going on. When the situation was explained to him, he clearly felt no compunction to apologise himself but simply growled at the child, “What do you say?”. He then pulled the child out of the bus and roared at the others to follow.
Presumably this is one of those fathers you read about who assume that school should teach their children how to behave as well as teaching them to dress themselves, use a knife and fork, and just as a sideline how to read and write and do a bit of basic Maths!
Recently I read about an academy chain who had decided that a solution to bad behaviour was to make the uncouth youths repeat a year. Nothing like a bit of humiliation, not to mention the boredom factor of doing the same stuff over again, to make the world go around. And, of course, there is the encouragement that these older miscreants give to the younger would-be miscreants. Other countries in Europe have mostly phased out this practice for just those reasons. The “repetidores”, big louts two or even three years older than the rest of the class, have largely disappeared from Spanish schools. So quite why the academy chain thinks it would work is beyond me.
The behaviour problem is one of the reasons why young teachers tend to move out of the profession after only a few years in the profession. A contributory factor might be something else I read about. According to the Times Educational Supplement, it is increasingly hard for experienced teachers to find work in schools unless they actively seek promotion. “Just think about it. You're on the upper pay scale and want to move schools. Perhaps, you've held a position of responsibility and want to "just be a teacher" once again. After all, didn’t we go into this job for the love of teaching? But there’s a hitch: why would a school, with the financial pressures that they now face, employ you, as opposed to a newly qualified teacher who costs almost £20K less? After all, there are situations where taking the NQT would make some sense, especially if the department is strong and could support and mentor them, at least until they are up to a similar standard to the more experienced teacher.”
Consequently there is no longer the mix of young-and-enthusiastic and older-and-more-experienced which used to exist, the second group helping the first to deal with recalcitrant or just plain naughty students and the first group reminding the second about the joy of new ideas!
Cost cutting has its costs!
Our fourteen year old grandson, not always a little angel, sometimes a bit too quick with a sharp or indeed cheeky retort, has been selected to be in the group at his secondary school which does the English Baccalaureate.
Despite being described as just doing enough to get by, he is recognised as bright enough to be one of this group. What would he be like, I wonder, if he really tried?!
So what is the English Baccalaureate, apart from seeming to me be a misnomer since in other countries “baccalaureate” is equivalent to our A-Levels?
Here’s an answer from their web page:-
The EBacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps young people’s options open for further study and future careers.
The EBacc is:
• English language and literature
• maths
• the sciences
• geography or history
• a language
So our rather idle young man will have to continue with Spanish. He is a bit miffed about this. I am a bit miffed about his reaction. It might be because he has had a string of different teachers over the last three years, none of whom has managed to give him a love of language learning or any sense of the fun that can be involved. I need to start doing some remedial work now, I think!
He is not alone in his age group to want to avoid foreign language learning. Apparently some youngsters are getting so stressed about it that they are getting doctors’ notes to excuse them from those lessons.
Oh, boy! Yes, you have to work at understanding the ins and outs of a foreign language but the same applies to Maths. And I’ve not heard of parents taking their offspring to see a doctor so that they can get out of Maths lessons!
Something needs to be done at all levels, it seems to me!
Monday, 6 May 2019
Some of the weirdness of the world!
Of all the problems you could imagine the police facing, the oddest must be an invasion of fleas. Yes, fleas! Apparently a police station in north-east Paris had to evacuated on Sunday for just that reason. It began about three weeks ago and has continued until working conditions became intolerable and several policemen were bitten. Not only that, but some of them inadvertently took fleas home with them, causing havoc on the domestic front too. The police station has been closed for proper fumigation.
I am waiting for someone to spin this as a left-wing threat against the establishment, a weird new kind of terrorism or the revelation that someone was taking revenge for something that happened long ago. It is of course possible that I watch and read too many detective stories and police dramas and my view of such things has become skewed.
Or maybe I am just out of touch with the modern world.
In a bit of fashion reporting in yesterday’s paper I was brought up to date with the latest trends in weddings. The item featured lots of trouser outfits for brides. This has become a “thing” lately. Some of the outfits were quite elaborate so I wonder if they will moulder in the back of a wardrobe, as many frothy, meringue-style dresses do, never to be worn again. After all, white trousers are not very practical.
Another “thing” is the bride having more than one outfit for the wedding day. This is not the old idea of a wedding dress and a “going away on your honeymoon” outfit. No, this is a dress, or now also possibly trousers, for the actual ceremony, something different for the wedding breakfast (even if the wedding breakfast is really a late lunch!) and yet another outfit for dancing at the “evening do”.
Then it seems there are more and more weddings that last several days. I can understand a register office ceremony followed by a religious ceremony or blessing in a place which does not have a license to perform registered weddings. But the item I read suggested that some people just have an extended wedding celebration anyway. Considering how expensive a one-day wedding can be, some people must have more money than sense.
Things have changed a lot since we went to the register office with a bunch of friends!
Here is another tale of extravagance:- I read that when Donald Trump became POTUS he asked the Guggenheim to lend him a Van Gogh to put in his presidential quarters in the White House. I believe that presidents choosing works of art to decorate their White House home is a long-standing tradition. However, the Guggenheim refused to lend him a Van Gogh and offered him a solid 18-carat gold toilet, a work by Maurizio Cattelan instead. I have no idea which work of art Mr Trump finally accepted but he must have refused the toilet (maybe he already had a gold loo in Trump Tower) as it is now going to be displayed at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
It will be plumbed in and will be a working toilet. Is this real life or art? I wonder! Visitors will be able to use the toilet and enjoy the questionable thrill of sitting on a golden throne to do their number one or number two. Quite why you would want to is beyond me!
Reports say there will be enhanced security - is there a fear that someone might un-plumb it and walk off with it? - but it remains unclear whether there will be a queuing system, booked slots or even a coin in the slot and how long visitors can spend in the luxury loo is equally vague.
Life is indeed strange!
And, finally, here is proof that the English language can also be strange: “All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.”
Explain that to a student of English as a foreign language!
I am waiting for someone to spin this as a left-wing threat against the establishment, a weird new kind of terrorism or the revelation that someone was taking revenge for something that happened long ago. It is of course possible that I watch and read too many detective stories and police dramas and my view of such things has become skewed.
Or maybe I am just out of touch with the modern world.
In a bit of fashion reporting in yesterday’s paper I was brought up to date with the latest trends in weddings. The item featured lots of trouser outfits for brides. This has become a “thing” lately. Some of the outfits were quite elaborate so I wonder if they will moulder in the back of a wardrobe, as many frothy, meringue-style dresses do, never to be worn again. After all, white trousers are not very practical.
Another “thing” is the bride having more than one outfit for the wedding day. This is not the old idea of a wedding dress and a “going away on your honeymoon” outfit. No, this is a dress, or now also possibly trousers, for the actual ceremony, something different for the wedding breakfast (even if the wedding breakfast is really a late lunch!) and yet another outfit for dancing at the “evening do”.
Then it seems there are more and more weddings that last several days. I can understand a register office ceremony followed by a religious ceremony or blessing in a place which does not have a license to perform registered weddings. But the item I read suggested that some people just have an extended wedding celebration anyway. Considering how expensive a one-day wedding can be, some people must have more money than sense.
Things have changed a lot since we went to the register office with a bunch of friends!
Here is another tale of extravagance:- I read that when Donald Trump became POTUS he asked the Guggenheim to lend him a Van Gogh to put in his presidential quarters in the White House. I believe that presidents choosing works of art to decorate their White House home is a long-standing tradition. However, the Guggenheim refused to lend him a Van Gogh and offered him a solid 18-carat gold toilet, a work by Maurizio Cattelan instead. I have no idea which work of art Mr Trump finally accepted but he must have refused the toilet (maybe he already had a gold loo in Trump Tower) as it is now going to be displayed at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
It will be plumbed in and will be a working toilet. Is this real life or art? I wonder! Visitors will be able to use the toilet and enjoy the questionable thrill of sitting on a golden throne to do their number one or number two. Quite why you would want to is beyond me!
Reports say there will be enhanced security - is there a fear that someone might un-plumb it and walk off with it? - but it remains unclear whether there will be a queuing system, booked slots or even a coin in the slot and how long visitors can spend in the luxury loo is equally vague.
Life is indeed strange!
And, finally, here is proof that the English language can also be strange: “All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.”
Explain that to a student of English as a foreign language!
Sunday, 5 May 2019
Bits of inequality and oddness.
Yesterday we went out to lunch en famille. Well, almost en famille. This was the northern end of the family. The southerners are still down south, no doubt doing southern bank holiday stuff. Phil didn’t go because he was playing chess. The teenagers didn’t go, one because he ‘couldn’t be bothered to have a shower and get dressed’ and the other because we were going to Manchester and she ‘doesn’t do Manchester’.
So there was me, my daughter, her partner, the eldest granddaughter and the youngest granddaughter, who goes almost everywhere her mother goes. En famille - sort of. After some discussion we ate Lebanese. Very good!
In the car en route for Manchester my daughter’s partner and the eldest granddaughter (not his child) were doing some bonding, talking about computer games. This was largely sparked by a poster for one of the games-related films and led on to some negative comments about the new version of Sonic the Hedgehog. Most of this went over my head, but when the conversation moved on to Star Wars characters, I was able to participate finally with a reminder that Chewbacca was dead.
Not the actual Chewbacca, who still lives within the Star Wars world as far as I know, but Peter Mayhew, the 7 feet 3 inches tall actor who played the Wookie in the film. He died of a heart attack the other day, aged 74. This pulled me up short. The ages of deceased actors are coming within my range. Not very encouraging!
However, the eldest granddaughter went on to tell us that it is a scientific fact that unusually tall people die younger than normal sized folk. We scoffed at this and accused her of making it up. When I got home later, though, I did some research and found this.
There you go. Granddaughter number one is crowing a little!
Another unusual person is Caster Semenya, the female athlete with too much testosterone. All her life she had to prove she is female. Very degrading, I should think. Now new rules are saying she has to take medication to reduce her testosterone before taking part in athletics events. Here is the response of someone who wrote to the newspapers:-
“Some children are born with a natural aptitude for numeracy, or for art, or for music. This aptitude must nonetheless be honed through hard work and application. Scientists have not yet identified any singular genes which may influence this, but they may in the future. Will we then insist that such children are medicated to counteract their genetIc makeup, in order to ensure that fairness exists in the highly competitive environment of the academic and artistic worlds?”
I am reminded of a science-fiction story I read long ago where people with any kind of talent were made to carry handicaps of some kind so that everyone was “truly” equal!
Here’s another oddity: a nurse who works for the NHS ran the London Marathon in uniform, hoping to make it into the Guinness book of records. Guinness World Records has recognised records of marathon runners dressed like a telephone box, a star and a crustacean, among many others. This wrongly dressed nurse finished in a time of 3:08:22, but was told that she did not qualify for the record because she wore medical scrubs. Nurses are supposed to wear a blue or white dress, an apron and a white nurses cap.
She said: “I was quite taken aback when I read that they’d rejected my application and I did email them to ask them to reconsider but they said no. Some of the nurses I work with do wear dresses but mostly we wear scrubs or a tunic and trousers. I’ve certainly never seen a male nurse wearing a dress to work.”
A bit of adverse publicity works wonders and Guinness World Records have said they will review the application!
And finally this:- Camden council plans to ban ice cream vans in parts of the borough. The problem is they keep their engines running so their fridges stay cold. Thus they emit black carbon and nitrogen dioxide. But there are those who think ice cream vans will continue because “queuing half ironically for an ice cream is an amusement in demand at weddings and corporate events”.
Who knew?
So there was me, my daughter, her partner, the eldest granddaughter and the youngest granddaughter, who goes almost everywhere her mother goes. En famille - sort of. After some discussion we ate Lebanese. Very good!
In the car en route for Manchester my daughter’s partner and the eldest granddaughter (not his child) were doing some bonding, talking about computer games. This was largely sparked by a poster for one of the games-related films and led on to some negative comments about the new version of Sonic the Hedgehog. Most of this went over my head, but when the conversation moved on to Star Wars characters, I was able to participate finally with a reminder that Chewbacca was dead.
Not the actual Chewbacca, who still lives within the Star Wars world as far as I know, but Peter Mayhew, the 7 feet 3 inches tall actor who played the Wookie in the film. He died of a heart attack the other day, aged 74. This pulled me up short. The ages of deceased actors are coming within my range. Not very encouraging!
However, the eldest granddaughter went on to tell us that it is a scientific fact that unusually tall people die younger than normal sized folk. We scoffed at this and accused her of making it up. When I got home later, though, I did some research and found this.
There you go. Granddaughter number one is crowing a little!
Another unusual person is Caster Semenya, the female athlete with too much testosterone. All her life she had to prove she is female. Very degrading, I should think. Now new rules are saying she has to take medication to reduce her testosterone before taking part in athletics events. Here is the response of someone who wrote to the newspapers:-
“Some children are born with a natural aptitude for numeracy, or for art, or for music. This aptitude must nonetheless be honed through hard work and application. Scientists have not yet identified any singular genes which may influence this, but they may in the future. Will we then insist that such children are medicated to counteract their genetIc makeup, in order to ensure that fairness exists in the highly competitive environment of the academic and artistic worlds?”
I am reminded of a science-fiction story I read long ago where people with any kind of talent were made to carry handicaps of some kind so that everyone was “truly” equal!
Here’s another oddity: a nurse who works for the NHS ran the London Marathon in uniform, hoping to make it into the Guinness book of records. Guinness World Records has recognised records of marathon runners dressed like a telephone box, a star and a crustacean, among many others. This wrongly dressed nurse finished in a time of 3:08:22, but was told that she did not qualify for the record because she wore medical scrubs. Nurses are supposed to wear a blue or white dress, an apron and a white nurses cap.
She said: “I was quite taken aback when I read that they’d rejected my application and I did email them to ask them to reconsider but they said no. Some of the nurses I work with do wear dresses but mostly we wear scrubs or a tunic and trousers. I’ve certainly never seen a male nurse wearing a dress to work.”
A bit of adverse publicity works wonders and Guinness World Records have said they will review the application!
And finally this:- Camden council plans to ban ice cream vans in parts of the borough. The problem is they keep their engines running so their fridges stay cold. Thus they emit black carbon and nitrogen dioxide. But there are those who think ice cream vans will continue because “queuing half ironically for an ice cream is an amusement in demand at weddings and corporate events”.
Who knew?
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