Musings

Long time no write. I guess it must have been the move, the new job, the new partner, the whole new life, and the new annoying glandular fever virus that have kept me from this blog for so long. Oh, and the new pain in my rear lack of internet access from home too. I hate BT. With a passion.

Now that I've got something worth describing, I thought I'd summarise the last few months' experience of London, for all my huge audience around the world. Firstly, there's been the new job. A myriad of oddness, working for the French government, teaching English - sometimes the British curriculum - as an Irishman, thought to be English, among French colleagues... The school is something of a conundrum. I won't go into the politics here, but suffice it to say that the little channel of water which separates Britain from France is no barrier compared to the cultural chasm which separates how they think of education.

The move; I now live in Acton. It's an odd place, full of internet cafes and dodgy grocery stores where people look at you funny if you come in and ask for things they'd normally have in a grocery shop. It's an odd mixture of Arab-muslims, antipodeans and Poles, and shops which seem to cater for one of those three groups. It's got a great Portugese restaurant, though, where I just had a fresh coffee and apple pie for £2. In these times when the pound is worth less than the rouble, it's worth saving where you can...

My new lady. What can I say. It makes all the difference to have someone in one's life who can both boost and kick your self-satisfied male ego. That's Ruth. The most colourful, musical person I've ever met.

Onto a less pleasant subject, glandular fever. It's the strangest illness, because it's viral and can't be medicated, and doesn't express itself till I make some kind of physical effort. So no running, and therefore a feeling of constant tiredness. It basically doesn't go away, but dies down within 6 months, if you're lucky. Until it does, you feel like you've been hit over the head with a shovel half the time, and feel absolutely normal the rest of it. People get tired of you feeling tired. Are you ill or are you well? You were fine yesterday, make up your mind... It's all the more frustrating for someone like me who wants to either be healthy or die trying. Grr.

Finally, my MA course. It's in Critical and Cultural Theory, and we started last Monday with Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I wasn't too impressed with this essay, but have taken to reading Benjamin, and think I might be a convert after all. Meanwhile, it's got me back into reading all sorts of pretentious European philosophy. That's the idea.

This exhibition is what I got up to yesterday before burning out and going home to sleep. This guy makes waxworks of various bodies, and they are frighteningly real. You arrive in the exhibition hall and it looks like somebody has just fainted or fallen down.




As you can see in the second picture, the body is just a reproduction of himself. It doesn't look like much here, but it's really convincing when you're actually there. He captures a lot of what Foucault had to say about the body and how we have a pornographic way of looking at bodies nowadays. Our aesthetics in the media seems to be obsessed with turning the body into something to be admired or loathed, but in any case changed and improved. Xin shows us the body the way it is, and we wish it wasn't.

Too loose

It's been a while. I've been so caught up with visiting apartments around London I've hardly squeezed in enough time to write a short entry.

I was watching Les Poupées Russes by Cédric Clapisch today, which had to be one of the best films I've seen in recent years. It's the sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole, a rambunctious tale of a Parisian exchange student's life-changing year in Barcelona, and the odd cultural mixity he finds there. This sequel skips about ten years into his life, where he becomes a script writer for French daytime television, and narrates his experience of trying to make it as an author, punctuated with his complicated love life.

The film contrasts Xavier's expectations as a single Parisian male in his thirties with those of his British and Spanish friends and girlfriends. He seems uneasy around butch, testosterone-driven men and prissy, girly women, being much more comfortable around his lesbian best friend. A sentiment I can definitely empathise with. Too much of one hormone seems to really mess people up.

Being back in Toulouse, I've had the joy of being around my niece a lot, go running when I want to, cook meals with my sister and play badminton with my brother-in-law. It's my idea of the best sort of holiday. It contrasts nicely with the frenzied, money-fuelled, angst-driven existence of London life. I just can't imagine going on one of those package holidays full of drunks like my housemates seem to do.

While I was running along the canals in Toulouse yesterday, one of the barges was named "Too loose", which seems to summarise a foreigner's impressions of the city in a clever pun the locals probably don't get. The Toulousains are chilled out, not too bothered about things. Great for a holiday, but probably too loose for my liking, as a place to live.

Off to Avignon and the Dentelles de Montmirail in the morning. Let's see what that brings...

Blues Festival

Another weekend going down like a fine wine into Gorbachev's gizzard. Boy am I loving this city.

I was flathunting in Acton, looking for the perfect house, which I might well have found, to share with a new cohort of potential housemates. While I was left waiting in the estate agent's office, I picked up a paper which had an ad for the Ealing Blues festival. It was going on all day, but I would have enough time to attend when the flat visits were over, since one of my friends bailed on me for dinner that evening (not mentioning any names, Kades).

So here was some of the result. The sound is pretty awful on this because it was so loud in the tent, but I've rarely come across a band as good as this one. Funkydory, they're called. They rocked the funk out of the whole funking audience. I like saying 'funk' as a euphemism, you'll observe.

This festival is the closest the English get to the big Mediterranean musical gatherings like those you get in Andalucia or Marocco. Babies potter about your legs, and drunken granddads dance unabashedly as you order your beer and your burger just outside the tent. It feels like a giant family holiday with really good food and music.

I'm hoping the afterlife is something like this. There's an episode of Six Feet Under where Claire visits her dead father in a dream and they end up in a sort of festival like this one, to represent life after death. If only...

An Odd Weekend

Rufus Wainwright's voice is haunting. I found that out after receiving a text message on Thursday saying:

"We've got an Xtra ticket for Rufus Wainwright on Saturday. Want 2 come?"

to which I willfully replied

"F*** yes!"

and off to the gig I went. The venue was Kenwood House, up the back end of Hampstead Heath off towards Highgate. You either take a bus all the way round the park (if you're clever), or you walk all the way through the Heath and get hopelessly lost about forty times, along with countless other wayfarers with their picnic hampers.

Yes, how Hampstead. It was an outdoor 'picnic' concert in a heritage site, and the Pimms flowed aplenty. The sun, however, didn't. A layer of threatening dark cloud sat over the whole of London as Rufus mocked himself between songs, and prayed that his audience didn't vanish off home with the first signs of downpour (I don't know that many fans who are that fanatic as to sit in a muddy park for the evening when they could be at home. It's not Woodstock after all!). But the rain held off long enough for me to be blown away.

He was interesting, funny and poignant at intervals. He stopped songs halfway through if he didn't like them, and had the confidence to deliver the standards with real gusto rather than warmed-up hackery. I was left in that reverent that the really good concerts give.

So Saturday night edged to a close as we all left the park and tried to cram onto buses to get home. Sparing you the account of the journey, I was back in Twickenham by about midnight, preparing for the race I was meant to run the next day.

I had signed up for a 15 mile race out in Kent, in a really pretty area called Bewl. The idea was to break myself into longer distance running by trying out a half marathon, and I had to get out there on a train. Now luckily on Saturday night, despite getting home a lot later than planned, I checked the trains only to find there was no way from my place into London to get the train I wanted. So I set the alarm for 6.00am to be ready to get the Tube into London.

Everyone in this city is completely used to the idea that transport just doesn't work. It's the norm. Nobody complains that the bus is 20 minutes late; they just look at you blankly when you comment on it, as if to say "Well yes. What else did you expect?" So by 7.45 I was still sitting on my rear, under the rain, with all my running gear on, cursing my stars that the transport was bust.

I decided to go into town anyway to see if I could at least get the next train in, and run the distance even though the race was over. But then as I approached Picadilly Circus, the Tube packed up completely with runners. It turned out the London 10km run was on that very same morning, and was about to start at 9.30. I took my chances and went to see if I could enter. And I did.

It was a gruelling race, trying to keep up with the front row of runners I ended up with. These are people who don't go to bed at night without running at least 10km or the equivalent on a rowing machine. They look like they're made of sheer sinew. Hardly any bone, not even to mention fat. Just bark-like sinew.

I completed the run in 41 minutes, which is a competitive enough time for a beginner, and to my glee, gave chase to a Ugandan who looked like he was born running. It rained, the sun shone, the cloud came, and it rained again, and still the crowd of charity runners cheered us on. It was a real privilege.

Where else but London could you wake up after a Rufus Wainwright concert in a park, only to stumble into a 25,000 person race the next morning...?

Badgers

"The world of badgers is in some ways analogous with the human world. Like us, their behaviour is greatly influenced by their need for homes and living space, and being social like we are, they too have their problems of learning how to live together ..... and with us"

Ernest Neal

Ah, the badger. A completely irrelevant and unimportant issue in today's Britain with its teen knifings and its completely volatile political landscape, and its overpaid bottom-teeth-grinning Keira Knightleys. But think again...

In the words of the great www.badgerland.co.uk...

The Badger (Latin name Meles meles) is one of the most popular animals in the UK. Widespread across England and Wales (with a few in Scotland), the badger is loved by most but seen by few. All too often the Badger and its environment are harmed by man (by accident or deliberately).

There's food for thought to fill your lost internet hours.

"Um why the bejesus are you filling up this godforsaken weblog with this drivel?" I hear you ask. Well for two reasons:

Firstly, there's a badger in my garden, right now. It's there, burying itself under a bush, which is right under my clothes line, and I actually shied away from the little fuzzball. How wimpy am I? Then on reflection, I had a good look, and the little critter was curled up in a ball with its head underneath it, pretending I wasn't there.

See now in that sense, I'm surrounded by badgers. People who turn away from reality, bury their heads, and hope nobody notices them, whenever things go wrong. I mean, there's a bit of badger in everyone, and I'm no exception. Right now, for instance, I'm badgering my way out of marking the piles of Year 10 coursework that's stacked on my desk. Why else would I be blogging about badgers.



My colleagues like to avoid any conversation which doesn't relate to work, ever since I called them on singling out people they don't like from their little "friendship" groups. They asked to make sure that nobody invited the Drama teacher for drinks with us even though she was right there in the same pub, so - being who I am - I went right over and invited her to join us. From that moment, it was decided I was to be avoided at all costs. I'm no longer part of that badger set. I cry a river every night in my cosy little bed, as you can imagine.

And if you're wondering, yes, teachers are always that immature. It's uncanny. They spend their time around petty, surly groups of teenagers, telling them to grow up, and this is what they do.

So I've been badgered out of the group. But still, there are times when curling up in your own ball and keeping the outside world out can actually be a creative way of dealing with a problem. Recently I've taken to wearing an AIDS badge on my lapel, in support of a Stuttgart-based initiative I was involved in, and a good few kids started asking what it was and why I was wearing it, which encouraged me to keep wearing it. Silly me for thinking that kids should be asking questions nowadays when it comes to AIDS. But in the den of brilliance of my staffroom, this was read as code for being gay. Of course, who else would wear an AIDS badge but a gay man? And this wasn't just the gaggle of gossiping English teachers, but an outwardly gay teacher who was alerted for exactly the same reasons. He thought: "single, vegetarian, interested in theatre and musicals, wearing an AIDS badge... there's no way a straight man would live like that" So when I was asked as to my sexual preferences by one of the more dim-witted teachers, the conversation went something like this:

(Let me just set the scene here)

Dramatis personae:

Me: me
C: Dimwit blonde middle-management English teacher
D: Outwardly gay Canadian drama teacher

D: (Opening his mail, without looking up) So what's with the AIDS button?
Me: I wear it all the time. I was involved in an organisation which brings AIDS patients into schools and has them dispel fears from the kids
D: Really? I see. I just started wondering about you. You know... you eat fish, you like theatre, now the AIDS badge...
C: See I knew there was something there
Me: Right...
C: See D. likes young men so you'd better watch out. Much younger men.
(D shuffles awkwardly, reading his mail intently)

C: (Trying to break the silence after the awkward 'joke') So are you...?
Me: Am I what?
C: Well... No, I was just joking.
Me: Well, you just never know, do you?

(C looks at me askew)

Me: Like Woody Allen says, it increases your chances for a date on Friday nights by 50%
C: So you're not letting on then.
Me: I just did.

(The conversation moves on to something even more inane and pointless, probably to do with the colour of somebody's skirt on the weekend, while C flicks her tall heels at somebody an twiddles her hair. I'm not even sure, I probably was mentally dead by then)

So that was my badger moment this week. It keeps them guessing, that lovely coven of well-intentioned teachers and the concerns which keep them from realising how boring their lives are and throwing themselves under the first Picadilly line train.

Then again, it's good for the psyche having people around who keep you on your toes. No wonder I'm in such badger-mode around my staffroom.

So let's finish with a literary moment, just in case this post hasn't been insane enough. John Clare who went totally loop-the-loop and ended up in an asylum, wrote this poem with a predictable title based on this post. I bid you goodnight and good burrowing.

Badger

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den,
And put a sack within the hole, and lie
Till the old grunting badger passes by.
He comes an hears - they let the strongest loose.
The old fox gears the noise and drops the goose.
The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,
And the old hare half wounded buzzes by.
They get a forked stick to bear him down
And clap the dogs and take him to the town,
And bait him all the day with many dogs,
And laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs.
He runs along and bites at all he meets:
They shout and hollo down the noisy streets.

He turns about to face the loud uproar
And drives the rebels to their very door.
The frequent stone is hurled where'er they go;
When badgers fight, then everyone's a foe.
The dogs are clapped and urged to join the fray'
The badger turns and drives them all away.
Though scarcely half as big, demure and small,
He fights with dogs for hours and beats them all.
The heavy mastiff, savage in the fray,
Lies down and licks his feet and turns away.
The bulldog knows his match and waxes cold,
The badger grins and never leaves his hold.
He drives the crowd and follows at their heels
And bites them through - the drunkard swears and reels

The frighted women take the boys away,
The blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray.
He tries to reach the woods, and awkward race,
But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase.
He turns again and drives the noisy crowd
And beats the many dogs in noises loud.
He drives away and beats them every one,
And then they loose them all and set them on.
He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again;
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and crackles, groans, and dies.

John Clare

Exhausted but happy

It's been a while. I'm really not doing very well at this blog, am I.

So much goes on in the round of a week, in a school, I think those who aren't in it anymore forget what a crushing death-march it is. Like Godzilla, school life just drives ahead regardless of everyone and everything crushing anything that gets in its path. You join it, or you are splattered to smithereens.

I attended an interview for a MA course on Monday, visited my new school (the one I'll be teaching in from September) on Tuesday, went on a theatre trip on Wednesday, and had a parents' evening on Thursday. A pretty insane week by any standards, but productive.

The most worthy of blogging about was the visit to the theatre. It's a shame I can't get hold of the pictures here. Our kids were a bottom set year 8 group, so we're talking 12 year olds with very short attention spans, and little or no experience of ever being in the theatre before. They were taken to the Old Vic by myself and two other teachers they knew fairly well. After an initial spree of surreptitiously filching their sugar-enriched supersweet caramel snacks on the train (they were asked to save them for lunchtime), and about ten arguments between the girls about who got to sit next to who, we finally made it to Waterloo station.

They left the train in a huddle and quietened down a bit while waiting for instructions. It's a big train station, and they don't usually get to go to London. To give you an idea, most of them stare out of the window with a provincial "Woaaah!" when they see the London eye. Hounslow has no such architectural delights. The sheer size and ostentatiousness of the architecture of Waterloo shut them up. They were waiting for us to buy the group ticket at the ticket booth (yes we got it after travelling, don't ask), and of course saw all the crowds on their way to the Ascot races.

Now at the best of times, Ascot hats look a bit surreal to those of us who know what it's about, but to our kids, it was about as foreign as I would feel at a tribal wedding in the Congo. They watched these pasty-faced, bare-legged 'ladies' sporting feathers, mounted animals, you name it, getting onto the train in the other direction, probably wondering why on earth those poor deluded people were going out towards Hounslow, and how likely they were to survive their trip.

We were then ushered through the suicidal traffic around the station to the Old Vic theatre, and greeted there by a sprightly young man who was by all accounts a graduate of a drama school turned professional guide. He seemed to love his job, and really engaged the kids in a discussion of how the theatre was built, and for whom, selling it to them very well, I have to say. They entered in quiet admiration for being allowed into an empty theatre, and got to go about asking questions about the place, and see the set of the play we were going to see. I was very impressed the theatre trusted a bunch of 12 year olds to not mess up their set before a major performance. But there you go. Just goes to show what Kevin Spacey has done with the place.

So after our tour, we were ushered to our seats, after a few drama warmup exercises and some questions to answer after the play was over. The show was Pygmalion, and was quite certainly the best Shaw production I've ever seen. Even our kids were kept on the edge of their seats till the end. Literally; we had limited visibility seats and had to lean forward the whole time to see anything. Kids that age rarely stay engaged more than 10 minutes with those sorts of seats, and ours stayed riveted for well over an hour.

The idea of Eliza Doolittle being transformed from a "gutter-snipe", as the Professor subtly puts it, to a lady is one which still hugely amuses kids from outer London. The teens I teach here are so class-conscious, fascinated by the wealth which surrounds their little pocket of depravity in Hounslow; their haven of British Asian family-centred life with its obsessions and dramas so removed from the busy city life in central London. They instinctively know they belong to an underclass, and can completely empathise with Eliza's hilariously goofy faux-pas as she tries to pass herself off for somebody she will never be, losing her working class identity in the process. I was just astounded at how engaged they were. Even their replies of "Yeah. Kay." when asked how they liked the show didn't mask their evident delight in seeing Eliza shift social boundaries and succeed and fail all at once.

All in all, the trip was a huge hit with them, and they even got their ice creams during intermission. Even though parents didn't show up till 45 minutes after we got back to pick up some kids, I was left with a real feeling we'd done something worthwhile. If those kids had that experience of the theatre at that age, perhaps they won't be completely condemned to a life of eating fried chicken in front of some crappy team sport every weekend. Sounds a bit classist, but it's true; we might just have opened up the question for later in their lives: why don't we go out to the theatre for once?

You can only hope!

Loving the chalk

Yesterday was the last day of our Year 11 students' obligatory secondary education. They were absolutely ballistic. It was a great reminder of what people like myself are there for.

Thursday was our last lesson together, and they were almost beyond control. We had a few last things to cover on the syllabus and amazingly we got through most of them, which was a lot more than I thought we'd get done. Then they chose a spokesperson to tell me what they make of me as a teacher, and then asked me to sign yearbooks, have pictures taken with me... This is the class I've been battling with for the last 6 months, having to raise hell for the first 15 to 20 minutes, and threatening detentions etc. to get them to do anything. It always comes as something of a surprise to find that students who are the toughest to teach are often the most attached.

The strange thing is, all the conflict going on is what seems to make all this work. The kids in most of my classes don't really have people around who have insisted they calm down and concentrate on anything. Their lives are fraught with conflicts, urgent orders to help out around the house, around the shop, pick up their little brothers, or fight with the rest of their siblings to earn some attention or any other sort of reward. So anyone who can get them to sit down, shut the hell up, and concentrate on a piece of writing is actually doing a hell of a lot for them. Doesn't feel like it when you're the idiot at the front of the room dealing with 30 kids trying to pull every trick in the book to wind you up, but it has its value somewhere.

My last few posts have sounded a bit disillusioned with teaching, as a couple of my friends remarked. Of course I love this job; I got out of it for a time and realised nothing else was quite so satisfying. So it's worth remembering why I'm in this.

Beyond the Hegelian struggle that was year 11, finally behind me now, the real solace of my week's work is creative writing lessons with the younger kids, particularly year 7s. One of my classes is a lower set with mostly non-native speakers, who are amazed by the fact that I can type really fast and spell correctly each time. They do exercises in their workbooks, and correct them using mini-whiteboards on which they hold up their answers. When I use the interactive whiteboard (a big screen where I can project documents) to type up our corrections, they look around in amazement that all my fingers are moving at once, and I can put all the commas in the right places without looking at the screen.

My year 8 class - a top set - a bit sneakier than year 7s, after a year of having streams of English teachers going past, so they're not so easily impressed. They clearly read a lot, though, and two of them are always keen to perform their writing in front of the class. Last week was an extract from Touching the Void which is a biographical account of two mountaineers who survive an incredible mountain accident over three days. They had to write a chair-gripping interview with one of the survivors, and our lesson ended with the performance of one of their scripts, which was like a cross between a circus clown act and a Brazilian soap opera.

When things get tough at school, the moment you think it's the most frustrating, pointless system of government hackery, and you'd prefer a 9 to 5 in KFC than sticking around the stinking staffroom for another second, a partially-sighted 11 year old with a backpack bigger than he is stares up at you from the front of a classroom and tells you it was the best poetry lesson he's ever had, and can he take it home to show his Mum. Now who could turn away from that?

Teaching

I've started to wonder what teaching was like before there was any such thing as school. Is it possible that we've somehow killed teaching with school, just like hospitals generate illness or a Ministry of Defense can generate war?

I'm reading through some openings to Gothic novels which I set as a creative writing task for my year ten students, and most of them have gone to town on it. Tried to incorporate the Gothic setting and characters into an original script, making use of twists or red herrings to lead the reader on... Basically they've ticked all the boxes, and in some cases, tried to do something new or interesting. But Claire, one of my brightest students, wrote a tale called: "Bruce the Emo Shark Who Cuts Himself" in which she derides this shark for being 'emo', or as the kids understand it, a depressed, self-indulgent Goth who takes himself too seriously.

I'm sure this is a crucial part of her path to fulfilment; rebelling against her English teacher by deriding the writing task and seeing if he'll pick up on it. In the Freudian sense, it's all very healthy, normal and adolescent. But a part of me muses as to what Claire is doing taking up a seat in a classroom. Wouldn't she be better suited to doing something else? She's coasting her way to a mediocre GCSE, for whom exactly? Certainly not for her own benefit.

Before there were huge buildings called schools which housed dozens of classrooms, interactive whiteboards, book cupboards, libraries, canteens, and absolutely mind-numbing amounts of paper (where does it all go???), people still got an education. They paid for it, or offered their labour in exchange for training. They picked stuff up, trained at things to be considered worthy of a trade, or made damn sure they were found in the right place at the right time by people who needed them.

I'm sure it was all quite undemocratic and class-biased. Just like school still is today, mind you; nobody is fooled by the comprehensive school's used of streaming by 'ability'; it's basically a social segregation. But ok, it could be a little more meritocratic than depending on the size of your father's address book for your career prospects. But nonetheless, I wonder if education systems kill education.

At the moment my Year 11 class is one week from their study leave. Only for them, that means a week from holidays. They basically refuse to work now, and I have to kick out 4 or 5 per lesson to have any peace and quiet from them. They've given up, imagining that somebody will rescue them out of this. And they're probably right.

The paradigm in the UK is that education is the problem of the educators. Teachers are responsible and accountable for how much students achieve and learn, and parents are only consulted for a 5 minute interview once a year, where in fact they are told what they should or shouldn't be doing to support the school. So it's not their problem.

Plus, when a kid does mess around and give the finger to the whole system, they're basically taken off to a room, a programme or a college which will give them another option for 'success', which basically amounts to somebody else telling them something less difficult they're being offered in exchange for cooperation. At no point does anybody really say: "Either you perk up or you're out", and actually mean it.

I certainly don't think education should be a privilege of the well-behaved and the most able. But I do think somebody should call Claire on her talent at scraping through year after year of school without learning anything, by telling her to perk up or face the consequences. It means treating kids like adults. Do we have the guts?

Really?

Yesterday was a day of celebration in the tiny town of Whitton which I currently inhabit. The neighbourhood is sandwiched between Twickenham - a well-to-do riverside haven for Land-Rover driving, middle-class bankers - and Hounslow - a pocket of working-class Asian, Polish and Ethiopean families, bunched under the Heathrow airport flight path to keep their house prices nice and cheap. So Whitton is a bit of both. It has the white suburban feel to it, but it's also pretty rough round the edges. Mullets and football scarves in just about every pub, a big St. George's day parade etc... you get the picture.

So Cancer Research was holding a three-legged-race, presumably in honour of May Day in some vague form, but it was bascially an excuse for people to get dressed in ridiculous costumes and get shamelessly drunk in the daytime, during a long weekend. I was dragged out by my Irish housemate, who rightly told me I wasn't getting involved in any of the local colours and I needed to experience this thing. So down the pub I went, and chewed the fat with Tim, while watching the residents spilling themselves out of their hula-dancer skirts and tight-fitting leather outfits, ironically quoting Little Britain or Shameless, or other similar TV shows.

By the time we got home to eat dinner, my housemate was completely worse for wear, and ended up eating my starter as well as his, spilling his plate on the grass (I served the food in the garden out of well-timed precaution) and pouring wine all over the kitchen floor. He went to bed punchdrunk, and there was no way I was either waking him out of it, or going back to the alien world of the local pub without him. It would literally have been like an episode of Star Trek, with Captain Spock lost among a tribe of Clingon-hostile locals, but without the option of being beamed up by a Scotsman. So I kicked around at home reading, watching TV and realising I'm as much of a foreigner here than I ever was in Stuttgart, if not more.

I enjoy going out for a pint, don't get me wrong. I like standing around a pub talking rubbish as much as the next guy. But it genuinely disturbs people that I don't have an identifiable accent or a single place that I come from. It makes them feel awkward, uncomfortable, and even somehow judged. They keep asking "But no, really, are you Irish or what?", and when they don't get a straight answer (because there isn't one), they sort of peter out the conversation or change the subject and wander off. They're either afraid I'll say or do something they won't understand and will therefore look ignorant or stupid, or else they think they'll say something which is offensive or racist, but won't know till it's too late. After all, the French love their food and the Swedish make Ikea furniture, but what do you talk about (or not talk about) around a French-Irishman with an accent from god-knows-where?

Ah, the thrills and spills of being the product of an 'international' background. You are successfully trained to never quite fit in anywhere except other people who've had a mixed background, however freethinking and culturally aware you think you are. You think you've got the freedom to adapt to living anywhere, without suspecting how people will (or won't) adapt to you...

Meanwhile, as I went out for my evening walk yesterday, I noticed some kids hanging around a chip shop, at about 10.15 at night. I realised one of them was from my year 7 English class, and he was holding hands with a bleached-haired blonde in a miniskirt which left precious little to the imagination. He's twelve! I know this is a sign of aging, when you start railing against young girls' clothing, but I just couldn't get over that this twelve year old was already so streetwise. It just begs the question as to what he's going to do when his real teenage rebellion sets in, if that's his normal Sunday evening at twelve years old.

I'm decidedly not a Whittonite, if that's what they're called. But it's an eye opener, at least.

Book Review: Why I'm Not a Christian

Over the last Easter break, I got tired of reading fiction, and decided to dabble in some philosophy. Anything that was well written and accessible, and funnily enough, there's more than you'd think. One of the books recommended on the shelves in the shop I was in was a collection of articles and speeches by Bertrand Russell, entitled Why I'm Not a Christian.

It probably sounds like a Richard Dawkins-esque attack on the lack of evidence for religious belief, which bluntly discards religion as a sort of senseless craze, and discredits the history of theology which supports it. Far from it. Russell was writing and talking from about 1895 to 1960 on this topic, and never really made it his academic specialism. He was a logician and mathematician who simply had a few things to say about religion. It just so happens that he puts arguments I have always believed myself far better than I can.

Firstly, that the arguments in support of Christianity are almost identical to those supporting other dogmas which we now discredit as being either dangerous or irrational. For instance, the idea that the beliefs are worth supporting because they're good for society or it helps to uphold moral values - regardless of whether or not they are actually true - is a slippery slope. It's like telling children that the bogeyman is out to get them to keep them in bed, or lying to your wife about cheating on her. It assumes people are willing to settle for untruths, and sets up a very bad social precedent.

Regardless of whether the moral principles of Christianity are 'good', its history is pretty dismal. From crusades to inquisitions, to attacks on its strongest ideologues, like Thomas Paine or Martin Luther, Christian institutions have done at least as much harm as they have good. Russell argues that any ideology which claims to have an unquestionable access to truth, coupled with a sense of owning moral values, will inevitably result in haughy, judgemental and eventually punitive behaviour. He draws analogies with Russian communism, indicating that the various strands of Christianity have followed an almost identical path. The purges, genocides, pogroms all stem from that same dangerous cocktail of dogma and moral superiority.

Russell puts it far better than I do, of course, and one chapter even transcribes a debate between Russell and a leading contemporary theologian, arguing about the requirement of a God to talk of a meaningful universe; a debate which has largely been railroaded by the Dawkinses of this sensationalist world.

More's the Pity.

London city centre

Spent yesterday meandering my way about the sights and sounds of the capital. London is absolutely huge. An unplanned sprawl of neighbourhoods, which are almost independent cities of their own, each with very peculiar identities.

On Saturday, after cancelling an impromptu visit to Paris, I ended up walking all the way down Regent's canal, from King's Cross to the Camden lock, and on till Little Venice, which is out by Maida Vale. You wouldn't believe how pastoral it feels. The sun was out, as well as the bellies and skinny white legs of a lot of tourists and passters-by, and it was like being in a small Italian town, or in Cambridge, even though trains were screaming in and out of King's Cross right next door.

London is full of gorgeous walks that nobody seems to tell you about. The city is so hectic and busy that people tend to get out of it to enjoy calmer countryside, when they want peace and quiet. Only it's right there at their doorstep; they just don't have the time to see it.




This part of the canal borders Little Venice, which is almost like a port for barges. It's a nook of tranquility in this mad, buzzing city. People seem to live much more peacefully than in the rest of London. And when you walk down here and see rusty old barges with 'for sale' notices, it can only make you fantasize about a different life right downtown.


I'm quite sure they're hellish to maintain, and I can hardly imagine how many insects you get in the summer. But still. There must be people who are nuts enough to live this way. Anyway.

This part of the canal is right next to the London Zoo. I can't imagine what the zoo itself is like, but from the canal it looks stunning. Especially since it's near the part of Camden where loads of people come walking from Camden, so you get every possible freak of nature around there. People hanging out consuming all sorts of entertaining items, with more piercings on their bodies than skin that isn't pierced.


See London is a bit like a giant anthill. Very impressive architecturally, makes you want to admire it, and observe it aesthetically, but before you know it your shoes are covered in odd things you didn't even know existed. And you love it, even though it itches and you'll need a shower when you get home. But boy will you have enjoyed the ride.



The graffiti down brick lane isn't that far off from Picadilly, where the canal ends. It's a pretty-boy pretentious part of town with lots of fashionable designer shops which find 'retro' clothes and sunglasses which they sell for an outrageous fortune. Sort of like something out of a Jennifer Saunders sketch, but taking itself far more seriously. There are DJ stores all around, which sell overpriced second hand records.

But it's fantastic.

When you're not stuck in the tube, that is...

Teachers' strike

I'm sitting in the almost empty staffroom of my West London school, finishing off some marking, as most of my colleagues are out on the streets protesting. Strange that. I never thought of myself as a strike breaker.

I simply didn't get my act together to join the teacher's union after moving back here a few months ago, and now they're swamped with requests for people to renew memberships, with the strike action starting. Seems like teachers are keen to be in a union when it gets them out of school.

Funnily enough, this is still a view held across the UK. Last night when we went for dinner to celebrate a colleague's birthday, someone started railing against strike action, and complaining that she had a 10 hour workday while others were out parading on a street for more pay. She wanted them to deduct their day's pay and remunerate her for her extra work, or so she quipped, at the top of her bellowing voice, across the restaurant. Playing right into the hands of Labour government's rhetoric, she saw striking as just another way to skive off a day of school. No political significance, nobody taking risks in order to improve conditions for everyone else, just plain laziness.

The fact of the matter is that this strike is not about getting more money. Essentially, the government is proposing a pay increase which is below the current inflation rate, and has done so for two years running already. So this effectively amounts to a fairly hefty pay cut, since prices rise, and our salaries don't match that rise. To quote Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers:

“The Retail Price Index, which features on Government websites as the figure used for pay bargaining, is currently running at a yearly average of 4.1%. The current pay offer of 2.45% is well below that and can be seen in no other way than as a pay cut.

“Year on year pay that fails to keep pace with inflation has real consequences for the profession and our schools. It saps morale and causes problems of recruitment, retention and teacher shortages, not to mention real financial difficulty for our members. It is time to call a halt.

“Real term pay cuts hit youngest teachers the hardest. Not only do they have to contend with high housing costs, fuel bills and escalating food prices, they also have to pay back student loans at a rate of 4.8%.

(www.teachers.org.uk)

So this is about a profession which is a benchmark for a lot of others, which is slowly having its salaries eroded. The knock-on effect of allowing this to happen is that doctors, academics, civil servants, and pretty much anybody whose job is related to the government is going to have a harder time keeping up a decent standard of living, if Labour gets away with cutting teachers' salaries. I don't argue that I should be earning the same as somebody working a tough, dog-eat-dog business job, who can be 'let go' because of a downturn in the market, nor even that my job has the same social significance as a General Practitioner. But when you know that a starting lawyer earns well over twice what I earn after 5 years on the job, or that a starting GP earns well over three times my salary, then something is out of joint.

A whole load of other unions are following the NUT's lead and announcing strike action over pay issues, which is a first in recent years in this country. I can only breathe a sigh of relief that people are mustering up the courage. It's harder than it seems to face a group of kids and tell them you're choosing not to teach them...

The attitudes towards striking are very rife in my current school. Arguments break out between teachers who see striking as troublemaking, and those who are so involved in this that they won't accept they are also being manipulated by a union.

One way or another, it's great to see these debates coming out in a country where, as I mentioned in my previous post, people are willing to put up with the most ludicrous inequalities or dysfunctions in government, and see protest as being childish or confrontational (as though these struggles can be resolved without confrontation...). Teachers have had pretty much any authority over their curriculum taken away in the past decade, and have had little or no say in the way that schools have been run over the past 20 years. I can't think of any other profession which has seen so much change with so little consultation as British teachers have, and for once that they stand up and are counted in this struggle to stop their basic salaries from being chewed away inconspicuously, they are railed against and branded...

It's about time I put my money where my mouth is, and sorted out that NUT membership so I can proudly get the hell out of this staff room if another strike day is set...!

St George? Who's that?

Just spent my last weekend in freedom before going back to the grind at school tomorrow. It was a phenomenal week of doing as little as possible, travelling to Toulouse to spend time with my niece, getting back here and eating and sleeping a lot. And last but not least, renewing some really valuable friendships.

Meanwhile, this weekend, London hosted the St George's day celebrations, which were quite something. As I was waiting for the train to get downtown yesterday, I realised that the tiny little town I'm living in - a suburb of Twickenham - had its own St Geroge's Day parade. Far from the gaggle of bewildered kids I was expecting, it was quite a spectacle. Everybody, from the local drug volunteers in a double decker bus, to the line dancing group hot on the heels of the enormous military orchestra, was out under the dark, soupy April sky, braving the likelihood of rain.

I'm pretty flabbergasted to see how much is going on in this suburban sprawl of a place which I thought completely barren of everything except 99p shops and Tesco's. I suppose people don't advertise what they do here in the same way they do in downtown London, because they tend to stick around here for Longer, and don't need as much attention for what they do. I really should get involved in something, and find out for myself what Whitton is actually like.

Something I really enjoy about living in the UK is how small, grassroots-type stuff works. People have this unending ability to create small groups to address a local problem, or keep a social group going. As compared to France where people complain about the government not doing enough to improve their lives, but hardly ever actually set up any viable alternatives of their own, the British are far more proactive and resilient. Then again, they let their government get away with gross incompetence or negligence a lot of the time. The transport, the health system, overcharging everyone for everything and doing little to pay it back... When stuck in the Tube for the millionth time, with a 45 minute delay, and everybody patiently sighing and saying "Mustn't grumble!" the Frenchman in me often thinks "Yes you should grumble! Why are you so damn resilient??!"

Anyway, I got into town and moseyed about the city centre, looking for something interesting to do. As I got to the British Museum, I heard Indian music playing. I went into the main hall - which is a spectacle of gigantism in itself - and witnessed this unbelievable music and dance show. This snippet doesn't really capture how colourful and graceful the six dancers were. It culminated in a Tarantella-like frenzy of drumming as the dancers spun wildly out of control. The audience - mostly composed of tourists visiting the museum - were completely wowed, as I was myself. That was probably the first time in history that the British Museum was anticlimactic. What an unbelievable place.

It just strikes me each time how absolutely enormous the British Empire project was. My friend Chris has helped bring this to the forefront of my thoughts by bringing me all sorts of documents on Sudanese politics in the 19th century to translate. But while moseying around the Islamic and South Asian sections of the British Museum, I couldn't but think what a massively organised enterprise of pillage the Empire was. They actually organised raids, or 'razzia' as they called them, to break down local resistance to their government, where they would steal the odd woman here, shoot the odd herd of cattle there... And of course, get hold of any interesting-looking booty on the way. So the grandeur of this museum is always mitigated by the knowledge of how it was acquired, in my case.

I can't help but enjoy the simplicity of British attitudes. The way they can be uncomplicated about organising themselves to get things done and address problems. Of course, that simplicity can sometimes translate into oversimplifications when it comes to understanding foreigners, as many of the idiotic TV programmes on immigration display. But then there's also a sort of instinctive acceptance that outsiders like myself can disagree with the non-essentials. That I can look at the St. George's Day parade with amused detachment, without being anti-British. And of course, the most interesting Britons, those who like Chris display the mixture of humility, self-mockery and genuine cultural interest, are the most critical of their own Empirical history. And long may it continue, despite the rants of Boris Johnson, or Tony Blair's Americanism.

The China Saga

After seeing all the protests in London the other day, and everyone sporting Tibet flags, it was tempting to be involved in some way. It's hard to stay out of this one.

I can't help sympathising with the Tibetan cause, even though I think the Chinese are right to say that Westerners butt in without really understanding the situation too well. I mean, we take no real interest in Chinese politics except to show pictures of their military propaganda and then to criticise their foreign policy without having much knowledge of how it works or why. Admittedly it's a bit hard to understand it when they don't allow foreign journalists. But it's important to acknowledge, most of us criticise the policies without any clear idea of what's going on.

Two things are clear to me. Firstly, that you can't dissociate sport and politics in this whole Olympic affair, the way people like Steve Redgrave call for. The Olympic Games are political one way or another, however much sportspeople would like to live in a fancy schmancy world where they're furthering the cause of sport without playing to anybody's agenda. The protests are countering another political agenda which is China promoting itself through the Games, they're not "politicising" it, as many would have it. Let's lose the rosy glasses if we're going to be realistic athletes.

The second thing is that whatever way you look at it, the Tibetans are drawing attention to the sores in Chinese government policy, which somebody needs to do. Whether this is territorial in-fighting or - what seems blindingly obvious - a superpower determined to crush a legitimate people's right to self-determination, the Chinese have no right to keep everybody out of their "internal politics" if they want media attention for how wonderfully developed their society is. You can't have your media cake and eat your Tibetans.

Not that I'm an expert on any of this, but it certainly brings it home when you've got friends on either board, or when somebody comes up to you in the street asking how much the Dalai Lama is paying you to take his side. Literally, a host of Chinese students were convinced down to the hilt that the only reason these protests were taking place - and that idiot Westerners were getting involved - was financial gain. They simply couldn't accept it was on moral grounds.

I for one will make a point of boycotting as many Chinese products as I can at this time, if for nothing else to make the separation between the government and its people, which is all to easy to conflate in this situation. After all, I wouldn't like to be amalgamated with Gordon Brown's appearance on American Idol just because I happen to live in the UK...

Back In

This morning I woke up to the clattering of the roadwork going on outside my sister Michelle's house. The sun was blazing, but because the shutters were all fastened, I had slept in till 11:30. A disturbing notion for one who is usually sweating down the road to the melody of Jimi Hendrix music on a morning run, at 5:00am on school mornings. So I got up and went for a run to purge my laziness.

Since I came to visit Michelle here in Toulouse, I've been able to stand back a little from the madness of the last few months. Landing back in London, getting back in touch with friends and family I've missed, and fighting my way to some sort of normality in a tough work environment. Being in the airport and reading Bertrand Russell's lectures on why he's not a Christian gave me solace in my pagan condition. And spending time around my neice Zoe is just great. She keeps patting me on the chest and reminding me that I'm her Tonton (uncle), and that she's Zoe. Obviously she's picked up on the clueless, confused look on my face and wants to set things straight for me.

I've littered the place with books I've brought on my own initiative, and one series requested by Zoe herself. It's called In the Night Garden. A rather disturbing airheaded bimbo called Upsy-Daisy prances about a hill littered with multicoloured balls of something or other, and is invariably joined by an alien creature with a head in the shape of a monkey-nut, known to his viewers as Iggle-Piggle. There is no discenable plot to any of this. They give each other kisses and eventually engage in some form of dance resembling a bunch of drunken babies trying to perform Cats, the Musical but forgetting the steps.

I feel so old reading this stuff and lamenting some sort of narrative. The poststructuralist senselessness of it disturbs me. Maybe it's a good thing that kids are brought up on this stuff now. It might do a better job of preparing them for the insanity of education and the world of facebook and myspace which awaits them, than Enid Blighton's pathetic trash.

Bertrand Russell is helping me remember why I reject Christianity now. A brilliant article in this collection, called Nice People, is a hilariously scathing reminder of the vagaries of Christian thinking, and how its rampant righteousness pervades Western thinking. He is clearly biased against the faith, but seems to know enough about it to be genuine and lucid. I definitely reccommend it to anybody in need of a good, clear analysis of religion, without delving into overcomplicated theological rants.

Meanwhile, the prospect of moving further into the centre of London looms now. Got to get a flat somewhere downtown so I can be nearer to my new school, and generally within reach of the rest of the human race rather than at the total mercy of London's fashionable Hounslow.

I am more and more comfortable in the knowledge that my senseless chaos of a life, hanging by a thread of momentary reflection between episodes of Scrubs on Sky television, is actually good fun. Accepting like Russell does that we don't need to live in fear by clinging onto religious belief, is actually quite comforting. And if all else fails, there's the knowledge that...

Sheep go to hell

News

Just a quick news flash to say that I took a job in a French school right downtown. Yes, a French Lycee in London's glamourous South Kensington (quite a contrast from London's glamourous Hounslow).

Better rush off and do the marking I didn't do yesterday as I was so wired about taking the new job. Who knows what it'll actually be like, but it helps the old ego to be offered a job like that while working for such a mental school where people won't even give you the time of day!

More to come soon...

How long now?

Boy it's been terrifyingly long since I've been able to post on this thing. My new job, being stuck in Twickenham without internet, and general disillusionment with blogging have conspired to my silence. So if anybody still checks this thing after over 3 months of silence, thank you for taking an interest.

I'm actually writing from Coffee Republic in Twickenham (how middle class of me) over my honey-flavoured cappucino, as I'm supposed to be searching for a new job for September. The school had apparently hired somebody already, so I'm on my proverbial rear for the new term. Luckily there's a horrific shortage of teachers still, so it shouldn't be that hard to find work.

I can't imagine why people don't want to be teachers here. I mean, you get to wake up at 5.00am to get to school in the transport system (a short commute is about 1 hour), get to school where you don't have any workspace of your own to prepare for a full day of teaching, with 11 different classes. You get a laptop which doesn't work, you get to see about 8 different classrooms in the space of just one day (they move you around to keep you on your toes), and all this for about half the average salary of anybody else with the same qualifications in London. You are told exactly what you should be doing at any moment of your teaching just in case you don't trust the four years of university and teacher training you've put yourself through, and you get to attend a parents' evening, a department meeting or any of 5 other types of meetings in the space of an ordinary week. Meetings!!! Yay!

Report writing, documenting absences, filling in forms for the Head of Year, filing resources and not being allowed to contact parents are only some of the perks of the job which aren't even mentioned in the job description (they must run out of space on the website), and if you are afraid you might get bored or lonely on a lunchbreak, you can be sure someone will get you to supervise a lunch club, a detention or any of the other activities which replace the ennui of actually eating.

When you are removed forcibly from the building by 6pm, you'll have an evening of marking to keep you from any dangerous personal activities (sports, culture, reading - God forbid) which will be due the next day. Two pieces of homework per week, set by somebody else, for each student of your 11 classes, plus marking the enormous copybooks they carry will guarantee that they don't go into any real depth in the topics they study, by keeping all tasks short and snappy. Happy clappy. Year ten and eleven exam coursework will be controlled, moderated, set and moderated again - and then, just in case, moderated - by other teachers in the department (i.e. you, when it comes to everyone else's coursework) to ensure complete exhaustion of the marking process. Complete and utter exhaustion to the very last toe-curling drip of coursework juiciness.

Sharing classes with other teachers means that you can avoid those pesky relationships with students, or getting attached to them and building an intellectual response beyond what happens in that one lesson. And lessons are divided into 30 to 35 minute periods, guaranteeing that nothing too substantial happens in the classroom (because if it did, then the marking would be ridiculous!).

So by and large, the system here works well for everyone concerned. Throw interactive whiteboards (giant computer screens) into each classroom and a training session for each teacher, and you've got the real deal, the interactive entertainment, Warner-Brothers-eat-your-heart-out, surround-sound experience of your local Imax cinema in your local classroom. You can shower with video clips and powerpoint the bejesus out of every kid in that room to stave off the boredom of listening to the teacher.

What more could an educator possibly ask for?

Off I go to apply for another job, in anticipation of tomorrow morning's fun-loving schooltastic experience.

By the way, for those of you who are wondering, the picture is of the famous London guitarist Will Rutter standing in front of a car-pooping chicken, sported by a trendy modern art exhibition in central London. Don't ask.