Wholesome Socks - Patching Thoughts Together

Let slip the dogs of war

2008-11-23T20:53:00.007Z

They say that when pinecones close, it's going to rain.

If cows sit down, there's about to be a storm.

When rats desert the city, expect an earthquake.

And so on.

A lot of our boys have taken to wearing military dog-tags with their school uniform. Is it time for me to start digging a bomb shelter?

Level playing field

2008-11-15T19:24:00.010Z

FAO Mr Shorts - Head of Physical Education
Big Field
The Great Outdoors
Our School
United Kingdom

Dear Mr Shorts,

This isn't Hogwarts so just what is the magic spell you are casting over the kids in Physical Education lessons?

No, no, don’t worry – I’m not implying anything underhand. We know you're not like the last Head of PE.

But you obviously have a few clever teacher-tricks up your tracksuited sleeve and we tweed-jacket types can’t fathom how you do it.

It's the general attitude of children around you that's been turning scholarly heads your way. I've heard some of our slightly murderous pupils using positive expressions like ‘Yeah, alright’ in your company and referring to you as ‘Sir’, but in your absence they revert to apprentice-gangsters.

When I told a class you’d be covering a lesson next week some of the little creeps hissed ‘Yessssss!’

And when was the last time you actually had to walk from the playing field to the staffroom? Or walk anywhere, for that matter? You are so popular that an adoring crowd of children actually gathers to carry you upon their rugby-player's shoulders wherever you go.

Why are they sucking up like this, the sycophants?

You must admit that, of all the school-subjects, PE is the most akin to actual torture. Yes, PE ticks all the boxes: humiliation for those who can’t perform, physical punishment for those who can, lashings of psychological and verbal abuse for all. And, having eaten mud pie on the field, they have it washed down by a high-pressure, ice-cold shower.

If that list doesn’t bring Amnesty International protesting at our gates I don’t know what will.

And yet they treat you like a sports celebrity. What is this? Stockholm Syndrome? And how do you achieve it?

Is it the torture? No, it can't be that simple... Is it because PE is the only lesson where the girls and boys are herded separately, allowing unhindered bonding between the gender-tribes and their respective PE teachers?

Why do they do things for you they won’t do for the tweed-jackets? And they do things to us they wouldn’t dare with you?

Heaven knows I've tried emulating your success in motivating the gangsters.

‘Your mobile phone and make-up goes away and that’s two laps of the playing field, Chloe . No, I don’t care that your leg’s in plaster – I’m sure Mr Shorts wouldn’t accept such a lame excuse. You know the rules!’

Total failure.

The truth is that the only way I can make kids run is by telling them something like 'stay where you are, I’d like a word, please - nothing to worry about, just your future and the rest of your sorry life.'

I didn't give up.

‘Wakey-wakey! Shane! What are you, Sleeping Beauty? That’ll be ten press-ups!’

And did Shane do the press-ups? No, he did the telling me to fuck off and go fuck myself.

Have you encountered similar barriers to learning in your field? If so, how did you tackle these problems?

Sincerely,

Mr Socks

Copper-bottomed plot sinks without trace

2008-11-09T20:48:00.028Z

Hollywood-lore has definitely got this right: When something dramatic happens, the real world does go in slow motion.

Like me paying for a coffee and cake in the mall cafe this afternoon.

INT. DAY. (filmspeak for 'interior, daytime'.. oh, you'll get the hang of it).

Mr Socks is choosing a cake in the self-service cafe. Happy music. He places the slice of Battenberg on his tray and slides the tray along towards the cash register.

Close-up of Socks' back trouser pocket. Brooding, sinister music.

Socks approaches the cash register with friendly nonchalance. Happy music. The cashier-lady smiles.

Cashier: That will be one pound fifty-seven, please.

Interior shot of inside Socks’ back pocket. Darkness. Sinister music. Sound of unseen creature breathing. We hear Socks and the cashier talking in the distance.

Socks (distant voice): I might have the right money... hold on a sec...

Cashier (distant voice): Alright, dear.

Music becomes scarier.

Socks reaches down to his back pocket

EXT. DAY. 1912

Flashback to Socks as a child in Edwardian clothes, complete with cute little boots. Patriotic Edwardian music.

Mother Socks: Now you be careful young William when you’re helping Mr Perkins in the china shop! I know how clumsy you are, there's always a disaster when you're around!

Socks: Yes, mother.

Later: young Socks comes running out from 'Perkins Chinaware' store. The building explodes behind him as he throws himself to the ground.

As the smoke clears the wind blows the tattered remains of this newspaper into Socks' face. He slaps a dirty hand on his forehead as though to say 'but I didn't do nothin' !'

We return to the Present Day.

Socks: Think I’ve got a fiver somewhere.

Socks’ hand enters back pocket.

Close-up of Socks’ surprised face.

All in slow-motion

Socks: Whaaahh!

The cashier throws her arms up to shield her face.

Cashier: Aaaargh!

Socks: Ooooops! Coins!

Freeze-frame shot of coins suspended in air between Socks and the cashier. The camera does a Matrix-style 360° rotation around the scene.

Socks: I’m soooorry!

Close-up of coins striking the cashier’s apron like shotgun pellets bouncing off body armour.

Cashier: Arghhh!

End slow motion.

Socks: Sorry, I don’t know how I did that.

Cashier: Not to worry.

Happy music again. Camera zooms in on Socks’ back pocket as he carries tray of coffee and cake to table. We hear the unseen creature growling from within pocket. Scary music.

Breaking the spell (-checker) at The Last Supper

2008-11-07T21:01:00.023Z

Got unwanted elderly relatives? Or maybe you’re a pitiful OAP* yourself?

So painfully ancient, perhaps, that you’ve been wondering if, when all your affairs are put in order, there’s something to be said for this euthanasia thing?

Or maybe you are just depressed and have no wish to go through all the bother of another Merry sodding Christmas and a Happy bloody New Year?

Keep your heads out of that gas oven! Save those pills for someone who needs them for a headache!

Because there is a legion of children in blazers and stripey ties ready to help you out.

Maybe you’ve already seen the notices our angels have been pinning up outside the school... and along the street... and all over the town.

Maybe soon you'll be seeing angels?

When the idea first came up at the student council meeting I thought they said it was an ‘OAP Party’ they were organising. But my memory must be failing me in my autumn years.

Now, proudly presenting our school’s first and your last -

(That's the school name I've censored - I doubt the R.I.P Committee is planning for suicidals travelling in from outside the area).

I dare not imagine what goes in a 'minced' pie at an R.I.P Party, or what this choir is going to be singing as you drink your last sherry - the important thing is that some teacher gets this malarkey under control before the school has a misunderstanding with the local community.

*Speakers of non-UK English (in case you don’t know), OAP = Old Age Pensioner.

Talking the talk in Room 101

2008-11-06T20:07:00.011Z

I was listening to a wireless broadcast about the US election the other day and there was an English journalist introducing an interview like this:

‘.. I’m here with a spokes...person from the NAACP, that’s the National Association for the Advancement of Co...’

Cough! Splutter! Mumble, mumble ...

‘ ...ored People ...’ and so on. But I was lost.

‘What people?’ I spluttered back at the radio. ‘Whhhoooo?’ I strained, reaching for my hearing trumpet.

Scratching of head. Rummaging through badly eroded brain cells.

‘Oh!’ I had the revelation. ‘Coloured people! Well, why couldn’t you just say.... I don’t want people coughing and mumbling on the wireless because they don’t want to say a word...’

A harp strummed and my admonishment of the journalist faded into a distant echo, my vision became fuzzy, and when the world came back into focus I found myself in my classroom.

A recent memory.

I was sat in my swivelling chair, clutching a bunch of stapled A4 sheets, staring though the dirty windows at the clouds and traffic whizzing past like a speeded-up film in contrast to the silent stillness of the post-schoolday classroom.

One could almost hear the dust collecting on my head, the world around me rushing into the future. I reclined in the battered old chair. I had discovered myself to be anachronistic, lost and abandoned in this modern age, simply waiting to be found by the cleaners and wheeled out to be thrown on the skip.

The photocopied papers scrunched up in my fist are a school policy document listing words and expressions I have been told I must erase from the minds of the children and banish from use, lest 21st century western civilisation crumbles like a Babylonian tower should they ever be uttered again.

A careless word. An insensitive cartoon.

We have seen how easily unguarded thoughts or a few innocent strokes of pencil on paper can lead to embassies being turned into infernos, to streets being given over to the mob, baying for the blood of those who dared offend their precious beliefs.
I sit there in the empty room long into the evening, oblivious to the caretaker - ‘Locking up in ten minutes, mate’ - rising from my chair only to light a candle to see me through my night-long vigil and into the next day.

For hours I try forcing myself to read beyond the first word of the banned-expressions list. I am like a student on exam results day, holding the slip of paper but not daring to look because they know their grades will be as useful as an amputation to an athlete. I cannot persuade my eyes to look any further than the first word on the list.

‘Manning’.

It is gone forever.

‘Staff the lifeboats!’

‘The British army lost 57,000 staff on the first day of the Somme’.

I fear to contemplate what other terms could be deleted from our collective vocabulary.

Some time after sunrise children start wandering into the classroom. The ringing of bells. Soon all the seats are filled with children, the familiar mixture of the keen, the lost and confused, the criminal, the good, the bad, and the smelly.

The average form-group has 7 or so nationalities, children of all races (or visible minority ethnic groups, to use the jargon) , 10% are gay or bisexual (I am told), there are Christians, Muslims, Hindus - in fact my classroom is a Noah's Ark of religions.

This is an average form-group sitting before me. How did I ever manage to stop race wars breaking out before getting this list of words we mustn’t use? How did we previously manage to avoid Jihads and Crusades being launched across the room? Why did the girls not slaughter the boys, yet?

An Asian lad keen on his education floats around my desk and looks curious about the crumpled papers in my sweaty paws.

‘Good morning, Sir! Urgh, Sir, have you washed today?’

I break out of my trance for the first time in 10 hours.

‘Good morning and sit down. Right, listen up, little people.’ They don’t mind me calling them little people - I don't know how I survive with my patronising attitude - maybe someone should tell them to be offended.

I steel myself for the unsavoury task ahead of me, as I finally summon the courage to look at the list of forbidden words which I have to warn the children about.

‘Listen, I’ve got some new vocabulary for you to learn. Now let’s go through this list together... ’

PS. A reader wondered recently whether the surreal nature of my experiences recounted in these annals might be linked to teachers drinking something other than ordinary tea in the staffroom. Well, thank-you for that comment - and I think I've got to the bottom of the mystery.

Rat habitat endangered

2008-11-01T17:34:00.016Z

During a shopping trip I stopped at the mall's central cafe, a favourite vantage point to observe humans going about their affairs.

Sitting in the oasis, plopping sugar cubes into my coffee, watching the ripples moving out across the surface of the life-restoring liquid, I was astonished to look up and see a human carried across the shopping centre concourse in the ripples of the global economic money shortage, like a drowning rat swept downstream in a November flood.

I’ll try to explain.

The mall is an eco-system, with 'eco' standing for either ecological or economy – the terms are interchangeable in this context. In addition to the permanent shops, this eco-system also supports a thriving colony of predators whose job is to catch unsuspecting shoppers - their prey - and savage them until they agree to buy products such as insurance, windows, remote control toy helicopters, and so on.

Usually these predators are very relaxed and manage to catch prey with very little effort. The harshest tactics I had previously seen were the waving of a brochure at the victim, and a predator playfully flying a remote control helicopter around the prey's head.

What I beheld, while stirring my coffee and eating a biscuit, was one of these helicopter-sellers - a Socks-Scholar of yesteryear - actually chasing a mother and child through the mall, roaring ‘You’ll have hours of fun, and I’ll include the batteries for free!’, his helicopter repeatedly ramming the poor victims’ backs as they sought refuge in a shop.

This is the first evidence I have observed of desperation among the predators as the mall eco-system collapses in the world-wide economic storm.

I fear it will not be long until the flood waters reach the school gates.

Waves of economic-migrants from eastern Europe – with their attendant children - have seen our school prosper and expand in recent years. But will these guest-workers remain in the UK in the event of financial cock-up and employment melt-down?

With the loss of clients, what future will there be for those eking out a living from the dark art of teaching?

I do not believe we teachers are recession-proof. Kids = Cash, and my observations in the mall make it only too easy for me to imagine the desperate measures we may take to keep the education business afloat.

Maybe teachers will have to bribe children to stay in school?

Could we be required to compromise disciplinary standards so they won't want to leave?

If we run out of children to teach, will we have to keep them in school when they have reached an age when some of them would be more usefully employed selling toy helicopters? (Make them serve life, I say!)

Or will teachers simply ensnare escapees in barbed wire traps? Actually, we do that already, too.

If none of the above works and I do find myself hanging up my tweed jacket for ever, at least I know I can always get a job as a translator.

Thought crime - if only...

2008-10-29T21:09:00.008Z

My working life revolves around misunderstandings of various kinds. I make no complaint about that – on the contrary, as a teacher I see it as my raison d’être to embrace misunderstanding and the perpetrators of misunderstanding with the ardour of a seasoned preacher taking a miserable convict by the hand, inspiring him to join the flock and leave his life of sin behind.

I have an appointment with one of our school’s greatest sinners. He crashes through the door into my study.

‘Hello, Aaron, good of you to come. Take a seat.’

Aaron - a criminal by instinct, a thief by specialism - thinks I am trying to trick him with this sneaky ‘take a seat’ business. I can read the boy’s face – one beady eye is scanning an imaginary horizon to see if anyone is watching him. (He does this scanning thing instinctively - we are obviously alone in the office). Aaron’s other eye is on the chair, sizing up its weight (Can I run with it?) and market value (Who will buy it? How much will I get for it?)

I am not perturbed! I am not downhearted!

‘Sit down, Aaron’.

By this stage I have also started my own beady-eyed scanning of the room – what’s going to be missing if I turn my back? The stapler? A few pens? My computer?

Aaron lands his bum in the chair – he nods to himself, probably thinking something like ‘Nice chair that idiot Socks has got here. Fifty quid for it down the market, maybe?’

‘Aaron,’ – you have to keep repeating his name or his attention will be in outer-space before you’ve drawn your next breath – ‘Aaron, this is the second time you’ve been brought back to the school in handcuffs. Think about it. Do you want to end up in prison? What do you want to do with your life?’

Aaron looks back at me, his face, as always, more expressive than his words could ever be. His face says, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care! It means absolutely jack all to me! Stop wasting my time, I’ve got some stealing to do! Fool!’

‘You know…’ I try to illuminate the issue for him ‘…when you leave school. What you want to do with your life? Have you ever thought about that?’

Aaron speaks for the first time since profaning my inner sanctum with his presence.

‘What I want to do in… in… the after life?’

Let us all embrace Aaron - I think we are making progress, albeit in a direction outside my remit.

(Note to readers: I've tried to moderate the tone of the words Aaron would be thinking... this isn't intended to be an x-rated blog, and I don't want to offend readers in more sophisticated parts of the world).

You won't catch teachers with their pants down

2008-10-26T14:12:00.015Z

Derek is lurking in the (staff) toilets again, studying his nose in the mirror.

‘You alright, Derek?’ I call from the urinal.

‘You’ve got to keep them under control… nostril hairs, I mean. Or they will notice, you know. They notice everything.’

They.

They – that is, the little people in the school - are the ubiquitous inspectors and critics of every aspect of our appearance and mannerisms.

Our children - imagine the talking mirror from Snow White inflicted with tourette’s*.

‘Socks, big nose!’

‘Flab face!’

‘Fairest of them all? You must be having a laugh! Ugly old teacher!’

'Socks, smelly old Socks!'

Well, you get the idea.

In the high-octane world of teaching it is only too easy for harried professionals to turn up at work without the most carefully chosen clothing.

I step away from the urinal, double-checking my flies are firmly done up.

‘You’re absolutely right, Derek.’

As I wash my hands and make for the exit, I find myself suddenly trapped in a flashback-loop.

The words 'They notice everything' echo around my fevered mind as I recall last Monday's horror, when I went as far as lesson 2 before realising I was wearing one normal shoe, and one slipper.

'They notice everything, you know.'

I see in my mind's eye the day a colleague came to school with a hairbrush sitting in her hair. She had apparently been distracted while brushing her hair, and had left the hairbrush stuck in mid-brushing position. She then drove to school and taught three classes before it became a hot conversation piece for staffroom fashionistas.

'Everything! Notice everything!' The room spins around me, a young man appearing before my sight. Who's this? Oh, it's you, Keith. You did your teacher training here. And you didn’t need no education - you came to your induction day wearing a t-shirt of Pink Floyd: The Wall. Well done, that man.

Everything! Everything!

Then my flashback flashes into the future - a flashforward!

There's a teacher striding through the school gates in his dressing-gown, Arthur Dent-style. It's me. Have you seen what's in the carpark? Socks drove to school in his wheelbarrow today! What an old fool!

I come back to reality with Derek's hands on my shoulders, steadying me against the wall.

'Keep it under control, Socks,' he reminds me. We stride confidently out of the bogs and onto the catwalk.

*I know this isn't a strictly accurate portrayal of tourette's syndrome - maybe coprolalia. Hmm.

Doth Iceland protest too much...?

2008-10-24T21:43:00.007+01:00

Actually, I don't think they can protest enough. Here you see hundreds of Icelanders flaunting their non-terrorist credentials - 'We are not terrorists' - yeah, we've all heard that one before.

Basically the British government used an anti-terrorist law against an Icelandic bank, and the 300,000 inhabitants of Iceland are taking it all a bit personally - as I can well appreciate.

If you believe the Icelandic claims of not being terrorists - or even if you don't, but feel like reaching out to a small, friendly nation - do go and put your name on their petition against the British government. We are such rebels, you and I.

iPen gets a pasting

2008-10-24T19:30:00.011+01:00

The UK government is to spend £300 million (double that for a rough figure in US dollars) to give every child access to a computer at home.

Some fallacies I’ve identified in the BBC report on this computers-for-all plan are:

● Fallacy #1: ‘Digital Divide’

Mr Socks (to class): Who knows what plagiarism is? Why do we have to avoid plagiarism? Yes, Bill, what do you think?

Bill: It's where the rats spread the plague and if it happens again we will all be dead.

Mr Socks: Exactly.

The government keeps saying we must close the so-called 'digital divide' between those children from households with and households without computers.

It doesn’t matter how often the government repeats the words ‘digital divide’ – it still won’t exist. What they are really talking about is the ‘cut and paste divide' or the 'plagiarism deficit', or something.

The main way that children do school projects these days is by shameless cutting and pasting from websites like Wikipedia. I see them doing it when I take my classes in the computer room, and when they manufacture their essays at home I moonlight as a Google-detective finding the sites they plundered.

So the children without computers are indeed 'disadvantaged' because if they did bother to do their homework, this would actually mean have to do proper research and thinking.

There are honest pupils who take pride in their learning and the originality of their projects, but a growing number of children are rats and they are going to kill us all.

● Fallacy #2: The internet is the cure to all our ills

BBC says “the government set up a taskforce to ensure all children had access to the internet outside school.”

Great! – So can we sort out the internet access inside the schools, too?

Our school network has so many websites blocked you’d think you were in China or even North Korea (and while I’m on that point – our headmaster is becoming as reclusive as Kim Jong-il … they might even be the same person for all we know).

It’s not just the pornographic and obviously ‘inappropriate’ sites that are banned (our Year 10s are monitoring these porno sites and would put Bletchley Park to shame with their determination to crack the codes standing between them and the porn).

Also black-listed are most websites related to politics! I have yet to figure out how this tallies with government Citizenship initiatives to inspire young people’s interest in how the country is run. The young might indeed become interested in politics, but they sure won't be able to ~~cut and paste~~ research anything about it.

● Fallacy #3: Without computers we are nothing

Schools Minister Jim Knight is quoted "There has to be a culture where families see home access [to computers] is as important as making sure their children have pen, paper and calculator at school."

Never mind the paper and calculators – my school is rammed full with children for whom the concept of even bringing a pen to school is confusing and alienating. Strangely, these kids come from families with the latest widescreen televisions, Xbox thingies, and the rascals usually have their heads plugged directly into a little digital device called an iPod.

Digital divide!

Sew silly

2008-10-21T19:19:00.009+01:00

16 years old? Your attempt to escape the school grounds cruelly thwarted by the barbed wire? Torn your trousers (groin area) as you wriggled on the fence, your fellow escapees laughing at you and walking off?

Don’t despair!

Just pay a visit to your school’s secret-blogging teacher and ask to borrow a pritt stick to glue something in your exercise book. They won't be at all suspicious that you are suddenly taking an interest in your studies!

Then stand in the corner of their classroom and unsubtly try to glue the shredded fabric of your trousers together. When this doesn't work, just try sticking the cloth directly onto your leg - the teacher won't mind one bit when you hand back the pritt stick with stray pubic hair embedded on the end!

The secret-blogging teacher will either be too dumb to notice what you're doing, or too dumbfounded to say anything if they do! And they certainly won't want to tell the world!

As that Gestapo agent says to the gullible British officer in The Great Escape, 'Good luck!'

Smells like teen anthropology

2008-10-19T19:00:00.014+01:00

Deciding that BMX bikes plummeting from the sky, like lightning, probably will hit the same place twice, the Lady Socks and I postponed our sojourn to find somewhere safer.

We weren’t sure what to do with the bike stuntman who’d made an unscheduled flight over our heads. Abducting him for a quick visit to hospital would perhaps have been a venture into rather uncertain legal territory. The most we could do was persuade him to allow Lady Socks to patch up the more hideous of his wounds.

Like the hero of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Disabled’, the stuntman made the impression he was that kind of kid who ‘liked a blood smear down his leg’. He was also quite partial to the bruising on his cheek, the lacerations to his hands, and limping.

Strolling by the canal a few minutes later we saw Evel Knievel again with a mate, debating where they should go that evening.

‘Is there much birds* there?’ the stuntman was asking his friend.

The chum opened his arms expansively to indicate a large amount of something.

‘There is loads of birds there. Swear down’, confirmed the second teen.

This little exchange tells the amateur anthropologist something odd, maybe even important, about how the teenage male perceives his world.

These young chaps apparently preferred to think about their female counterparts as a kind of substance, the quantity of which can be measured in the way one measures substances like oxygen or beer. These guys would go to a bar and order 'Two pints of lager and.. erm... twenty gallons of girl, and a packet of crisps, ta'.

I am not sure why this new generation of male hunters - when they're not busy painting women on their cave walls or crashing their bikes on unsuspecting teachers - don't think of their prey as individual 'units', where one girl is a distinguishable entity from another.

Don't the lads want to be able to count exactly how many 'birds' they've 'had'?

(Please excuse my rather crude terminology - we amateur anthropologists have to 'go native' sometimes).

And do young males score more points with their pals if they boast 'I've had 450kg of girl!' rather than '8 girls' (just for example). Morrissey used to sing that 'some girls are bigger than others', so is this what he meant?

A possible reason for the fudge on numbers of girls ostensibly snogged or shagged could be to prevent fights amongst the males - it is harder for jealousy to develop if all the studs can claim to have snogged 'some girls' or 'a whole load of girls' rather than '3 girls', which would bring them dangerously close to conferring identities and personalities on the women, thus risking discovering they had 'shared' the same prey with a rival male.

As I stood there by the canal, cogitating on these weighty questions, Lady Socks grabbed my arm and told me to stop staring, and that we were going to feed the ducks and not worry about it today.

I raised my free hand in a salute from one generation to another, and the males looked back at me.

'Cheers for the plasters!' called the stuntman.

You will think I am making up the next bit. A whole load of teenage girls - 10 of them, to be precise - entered the park. They walked in a line towards the males, like suicidal wildebeest towards lions.

I felt like I was watching a real, live, nature documentary, as Lady Socks led me away.

Reaching the lions, the wildebeest sat down on the grass, and chatted with each other, with a few of them obviously taking a strong interest in the males.

Our heroes, however, glanced at each other, nodded in conspiracy, and left the scene. The nuances of the mating game have long defied understanding.

*Birds = Chicks.

Staying in the closet on speeding

2008-10-18T19:06:00.011+01:00

Warning: This post contains sweeping generalisations and I know it.

Here’s a picture of Wile E. Coyote coming to terms with gravity. It’s an apt illustration because I’m writing about drivers who speed like the Roadrunner and perceive the real world a bit like Wile E. Coyote's cartoon world, with the sort of upside-down logic that goes with it.

When there’s a staffroom conversation about Nigel who got a speeding ticket or Nicole who pranged her car for the third time I go and hide in a cupboard because I know I will only say something like, ‘well, Nigel, you don’t like getting tickets? So don’t break the speed limit! Please?’ or ‘Nicole, have you considered switching to public transport until you learn to drive?’ and thus find myself single-handedly responsible for the revival of lynching in the 21st century.

Paraphrasing Yogi Berra - ‘you can hear a lot just by listening’ - so that’s what I do when I’m in that cupboard with my ear pressed to the door.

Here’s a snippet of Nicole recounting her walk-away crash last night.

‘…the bend just came up on me… is there someone in that cupboard?’

The bend came up on her? So is it the case that cars actually remain motionless while the ground moves beneath them, and sometimes the ground decides to makes things interesting by spinning under you, or trees just come to life and give your car a vicious thump as you pass? What is this, The Wizard of Oz meets Wacky Races?

‘… I got flashed by another speed camera… yeah, Mr Socks is hiding in there, what’s wrong with him?' says Nigel.

This 'I got flashed by a speed camera' is a phrase criminal drivers love because it subtly shifts blame from them breaking the law to the speed camera which records them doing it.

It's a short-hand way of saying:

'I was driving along then there was a bright flash which startled me, and that made me put my foot down on the gas so I went over the speed limit, and I'll be damned, the camera took a photo and then the police fitted me up and gave me a ticket for speeding!'

Nigel and those like him in school staffrooms and pubs up and down the land avoid honest statements like 'I was speeding and I got caught' because that would leave them just short of admitting that they knowingly and willfully broke the law - which is one thing these white-collar criminals will never acknowledge. Because some laws just don't apply to them.

Here's a proper writer with a sobering story about speeding.

And here's the article about road-criminals that inspired me to take some of your valuable time with my views. It uses very mild language - curiously insisting on referring to criminals as 'drivers', but obviously the BBC doesn't want to alienate half a million of its potential audience (or about 1 in 120 people in this country).

Vagina Monologues

2008-10-15T21:08:00.005+01:00

Every rising of the sun and each new child enrolling for ~~purgatory~~ an education at our august institution brings with it a new linguistic challenge, each more baroque than the last.

Calling the attendance register for one of my classes I had to stop and pretend my glasses needed cleaning while I decided how I would tackle the name of a certain Vagina who had joined our happy band.

(Roll-call is usually the first time we teachers learn of new additions to our cohorts – we only receive prior information if the newbie is a known axe-murderer or someone of that ilk – also increasingly common).

In conclusion, Vagina should be pronounced something like 'Vajeenah', it has nothing to do with the meaning in English, and the young lady comes from somewhere in Africa (one of the former colonies) and is related to a tribal king.

I've now had so many people telling me they're related to tribal 'kings' I've come to understand that these monarchs hold a similar status to someone working for the local council over here... like.. well, me. I wonder if I can form an alliance with one of them?

Normality

2008-10-14T17:42:00.006+01:00

A girl with so many extra teeth her mouth looked like an ivory chainsaw came up to me while I was innocently going about my lawful business of being a teacher and she sweetly said 'Siiiir, don't take this the wrong way, but when I first came to this school I thought you were ... don't take it the wrong way... but I thought you were... were... were...'

…impossibly tall?

…a bit of a character?

…unlikely to last the year?

'...I thought you were.. like...'

'Alright, alright! Get on with it!' was my patient encouragement.

The girl was unperturbed, like a saintly ambassador from the Children’s Democratic Republic of Utopia making diplomatic representations to the mean, snarling president of Adultistan (we shall be re-naming our country when I think of something better).

The ambassador is entitled to her view. I am sure she represents the majority of her people. Sitting far away across the big horseshoe table she speaks into her microphone, and I cannot help but feel her tone is pathetically apologetic.

Interpreters whisper to each other as they puzzle over the most succinct translation.

Eventually my headset comes to life and I hear this transmission:

'... I thought you were a bit strange.'

I catch an interpreter's eye, my eyebrows raised. Is that what she meant? says my expression. The linguist goes down to his microphone again.

'I thought you were a bit strange.'

And I thought for a moment she was going to tell me something I didn’t know. Waste of time, there inter-generational peace conferences. I've got a totalitarian state to run, thank-you very much.

Seeing red, amber, and green

2008-10-13T16:12:00.003+01:00

I saw the most ungentlemanly behaviour on the Queen’s Highway this morning.

I couldn’t take a photo to show you otherwise I'd have fallen off my bike, but maybe I’ll catch him at it again one day.

What I saw was a car with a small trailer discreetly hitched to the back, and standing in the trailer were two traffic lights. The traffic lights must have been wired up to a generator because they were changing red, amber, green, and so on.

Now, if lugging your own traffic lights around to stop all the other cars is not cheating, then I will arrange for a few exam questions to be answered by a committee of teachers next exam season, with me as chairman.

Autumn can put a spring in your step

2008-10-11T18:07:00.010+01:00

‘This is lovely. Mmmm’

Lady Socks says ‘Mmmm’ during moments of pleasure.

The sun, your humble correspondent, and Lady Socks met up in the park this afternoon.

‘Really lovely, you wouldn’t think it was October.’

The azure blue sky.

The migrating birds stopping in flight, checking their maps, and deciding not to bother with Africa this year and heading back to sun-kissed England.

The children running and skipping and giggling at the sheer joy of life.

The feeling of oneness with nature, as we lay on the grassy slope, a million miles and a thousand millennia from anything bad.

‘Mmmm, let’s stay here a while.’

It was all too much for my cynicism.

‘Sssh, the gods might be listening and they’ll whip up a storm. Or the God… or whatever.’

I lifted my head from the hillside, as though to seek clarification for my own words. I came face to face with a flower.

‘Hey, since when was I a theist?’ I asked the flower.

A breeze helped the flower shrug its leaves but it gave me no further response. It just kept calling out ‘Look at me, bees, come on, I’m wide open! Just think of all the yummy honey! Screw theology! Calling all bees!’

As a bee heeded the call I lay my head back on the grass and closed my eyes - I knew the world could not have been so great as we had just been deluding ourselves.

Seconds later Lady Socks and I were startled by a crashing of metal, a screaming of surprised boy hurtling through the air like a human cannon-ball, and the whirring of an upturned bicycle’s wheel, spinning as the bike imagined itself still racing downhill and ripping through the finishing line of the world’s most important bike race.

Lady Socks was quickly on the scene tending to the human cannon-ball, who was to be found in a heap some distance further down the slope.

‘Oh crikey, my trousers* are ripped!’ wailed the heap**.

I stood like the village idiot, one stubby arm pointing at the crashed BMX, the other arm waving at the area of flattened grass where Lady Socks and I had been eulogising about the beauty of creation, my head now churning out clumsy calculations about the distances and speed of the bike and the velocity of the boy’s flight.

‘Look! One second later and he’d have crashed right on us!’

‘Get the blooming first aid kit out the car, you chump!’ Lady Socks replied.

‘Yes, I’ll do that. I knew all was well with the world. Yes.’

And to the car I skipped full of the joys of life.

*All our pants are 'trousers', here in Blighty.
** No boys were seriously harmed during the making of this post.

Don't have a heart attack

2008-10-10T23:12:00.002+01:00

Children regularly use these words to calm me. How wise the young can be.

Continuing the medical theme, the paramedic stretcher monkey over at Purple Plus has something more educational than all my silly diatribes.

The movie was so frightening I almost choked on my popcorn. Maybe I am not School Bully material after all.

Bad Blood?

2008-10-10T22:41:00.001+01:00

A colleague handed me a report form complaining about a pupil in my tutorial group. It appeared my lad hadn’t been particularly nice to a classmate. I scanned my colleague’s write-up of the incident, nodding and furrowing my brow in the right places to indicate my understanding of the narrative.

I thought I had my facial expressions under control, but then my head froze in mid-nod and my brow furrowed into a World War 1-style trench system, totally involuntarily.

‘You alright, Socks? You look quite pale!’

I pointed at the phrase of concern on the form. ‘Are you sure about that?’

My colleague looked at the words my pointy finger was pointing at with little circular motions, which I like to think give a ‘questioning’ appearance to my pointing.

‘Well, yes, the other kid has a right to his sexuality, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, yes you’re quite right, of course he does.’

‘You know your lad’s a right terror,’ my esteemed colleague added.

‘You’re not kidding… So it was definitely haemophobic bullying?’

‘Oh’.

‘Sorry’.

‘Damn you, Socks’.

The school takes bullying very seriously. In fact one year I was offered the post of official School Bully (for those at schools without a School Bully, it’s a bit like being the ‘Poet Laureate’). At that time I felt my best bullying was done ‘free-style’, but maybe it's time for some career development.

The Spy Who Fondled Me

2008-10-08T19:03:00.004+01:00

"They don't let people in to look at it or fondle it.”

It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

“That said, we have stroked the computer screen when we've seen the price go up."

I lurved this naughty sounding bit from this story about a fellow who sold his house for gold and is now experiencing the delight of jingly jangly coins in his pockets.

Someone in Holland took fondling a bit too far according to this Dutch website – basically, a Rotterdamer gets asked to leave a supermarket. He decides the best reaction is to jack off right there in the store. Eeek.

And now something completely different:

Teachers in the UK now have a chance to be like secret-agent spies, stopping children from turning to 'extremism'. (BBC News report - "Schools told to counter extremism")

I think the news media is trying to indoctrinate people into seeing the word 'extremism' but reading 'religious extremism' or more specifically 'Islamic extremism'. The article chats away about 'extremism' and you're about 1/4 through before they specifically mention Al-Qaeda, which is what they were referring to all along.

But aren't there lots of different types of 'extremism'? There are Christian extremists as well as Islamic extremists. And I'm a sceptic-extremist.

And how about my pupil who joined the army - the last I heard he was doing 'extreme' things to Taliban 'extremists'. Should I have reported him for wanting to enlist?

So if anyone influential in the mainstream media is reading this, hello, and please take care how you use buzzwords because not everyone has been brainwashed, yet. (At least, I don't think I have been).

And that is my brief and admittedly rather superficial round-up of things that amused me in the last 5 minutes. Now I must go and plug myself back into the BBC website to download more assumptions and world-views directly into my brain.

Stop-Press: Socks Puts Magazine In It

2008-10-05T18:36:00.005+01:00

Back in July I wrote about a colleague who fired a tissue-bullet from his nose during a moment of high excitement.

I thought the incident would remain a mystery, my colleague preferring to remain enigmatic about the nasal-missile, and I didn’t find it becoming to ask a fellow-teacher how he’d managed to get so much tissue stuck inside his head, a part of the body which I’d previously believed to be dedicated to tasks such as storage of the eyes, airways, and such brain matter as the person may possess.

Now, through sheer serendipity, I think I have discovered how the tissue projectile came to be lodged behind my respected colleague’s face.

I gave a lesson (sort of) last month where a girl was browsing through a magazine about make-up (or some similar topic) when she was supposed to be mindlessly copying from the board.

In full accordance with my training I said ‘Put that magazine away or I’ll eat it’. (Bungling fool!)

The girl said ‘Yeah, yeah, just a moment’. (Only reasonable, yes, I know)

I could see her eyes were scanning the page at a furious pace. It was a really good effort to finish the paragraph she was on.

But then my mouth did this: Muscles twitched into action, air started blasting up through my trachea, and the tongue waved, the lips wobbled, and this sound flooded out from the big stupid orifice -

‘Right theeeeen! Luuuunch time aah yuuuum’

= ‘Right, then! Lunch time!’ (Blithering idiot!)

This was the point of no return. This was the finger pressing the big red 'launch' button, the moment a pot of paint spills from the table of fate onto the Vermeer masterpiece of destiny.

I'm a teacher of my word. No matter how stupid the word is.

I pounced on the magazine like a squirrel grabbing a nut, and scampered back to the territory of my desk. I don’t know what atavistic force it was that erased the millions of evolution-years which have given the world teachers, but I tore a strip from the magazine cover, screwed it into a convenient bite-sized morsel, and started munching.

‘Well, get on with your mindless copying from the board, then!’ I growled through the 10% of my mouth that was not stuffed with Make-Up Monthly’s editorial.

‘Have you got this all written down yet?’ Munch. ‘Could be important for the exam…’ Munch.

Munch masticate munch crunch.

‘Come on, kids, I’m alright, really, just carry on copying’.

Mild panic.

‘I don’t set mindless copying for nothing, you know’

Chomp chomp.

Gag reflex.

Bin.

Splurting of shredded magazine paper.

I’m alive!

Calm down.

Back to teaching, the future is depending on you, Socks, you silly sod. Never mind the magazine, that’s all gone.

Or so I thought.

Now I think a tiny bit decided to stay behind my nose. I can feel it flip-flapping when I breath. I just have to shout loud enough and aim carefully, and it will end up splatting in some child's eye. I can do it any moment I please. Well, at least I don't eat tissue. That is just weird.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug #3

2008-10-05T15:00:00.009+01:00

In a week that saw the USA merrily squander $700 billion, the UK was desperately selling the family jewels, satirical cartoonists were unable to keep up with the pace of developing financial woe, and students were even giving up alcohol.

This is what staff and students at my school have been doing this week to smash senseless squandering. Our motto:

● Ablution Is Not The Solution.

The British were once the masters and mistresses of the environmentally- and fiscally-friendly practice of abstinence from washing. But with the establishment of the welfare state and post-war decadence, people came to value the fashion for hygiene more than they valued that most precious of resources - the jingly-jangly coins in their pockets.

Teachers are taking a lead in this shower-strike, but pupils who don't feel ready to 'see scents' and give up washing entirely can at least stop wasting money on luxuries such as soap and shampoo.

Those able to immerse themselves in the frugal peasant lifestyle may then be able to rent themselves out - turning a small profit, just like our feudal ancestors.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug part #1 and part #2 - please recycle them.

We all live in a total fantasy, a total fantasy, a total fantasy

2008-10-03T22:01:00.003+01:00

A favourite ‘What would you do if…?’ question from recent weeks:

‘Sir, what would you do if a nuclear submarine suddenly came up through the floor of this classroom?’

Note that the questioner specifies this is a nuclear submarine coming up through the floor, not just any old submarine. It’s not an out-dated World War 2 U-Boat, it’s not Jules Verne’s Nautilus, nor is it that cute little sub they used in Titanic to bring up the safe with the old drawings inside.

It’s a top of the range, kick-ass, nuclear submarine, and you cannot reason with it. The size of a small skyscraper, this merciless destroyer of worlds is civilisation’s nightmare manifest.

The classroom where this is supposed to take place is, according to my research, about 1/16th the size of the typical nuclear submarine. The room has a solid wooden floor, presumably sitting on concrete, submarine-resistant foundations.

But it could just happen. Otherwise why would my pupil have stopped the lesson, stopped everything else going on in the room, to bring this issue up? We teachers have what people who know these things call ‘a duty of care’ to our cohorts. It is our responsibility to fathom what to do in just such an emergency as a nuclear submarine emerging from the depths of the soil into a classroom full of innocent, peace-loving teenagers.

It’s not such an outrageous proposition. A Russian submarine planted that country's flag in the North Pole seabed last year. Who knows where else they could be going?

Hand-dryer blown away

2008-10-01T22:12:00.004+01:00

As it puffed tepid air on my dripping hands I noticed a tiny manufacturer’s plaque mounted on the hand-dryer. It proclaimed:

“This hand-dryer is helping to save trees which would have been cut-down to produce paper towels. This hand-dryer does not harm the environment.”

The point was pressed home by a little feel-good picture of a tree.

I placed my hands on the wall either side of the pompous little machine. I was the school bully cornering the lunch-money kid behind the bike shed.

‘No, hand-dryer, no.’ I shook my head. The hand-dryer fell silent. ‘I like you and all that, but don’t you believe that little goody-two-shoes plaque. They just wrote that to make you feel good about being a hand-dryer.

‘Look, all you do is shift the environmental problem further along the industrial process. You use electricity, right? And your electricity has to be generated somehow, yes? It probably involves burning fossil fuels, if not nuclear fuel. Can your little plaque tell me how that is not harming the environment?’

I began to pace up and down the bogs*, confident in the righteousness of my words.

‘You think you’re so “Hey, just watch me save the world!” Rubbish! … You’re no better than a Humvee!

‘The only way I’d believe that you’re really more environmentally-friendly than a paper towel would be if your electricity was from a renewable source. Like a wind farm, say. And that’s all you produce yourself: wind. But hardly enough wind to actually dry my hands. I only use you out of politeness. I’d dry my hands better holding them out the window for three seconds.’

I strode up to the window, resolved to prove my point. I fumbled a moment with the window catch, realising to my despair that it, like most fixings in the school, was caked with thick layers of paint, set like concrete.

Walking back to the hand-dryer I lifted a fire-extinguisher clear of its housing and felt the weight in my palm like a baton.

‘You think you’ve won, hand-dryer, don’t you?’

If I wanted you to sleep soundly I’d tell some lie such as ‘at that moment the caretaker entered and relieved me of the heavy, baton-like fire extinguisher’, or ‘as I approached the doomed hand-dryer, I realised it was foolish and insane to destroy a machine on a point of principle,’ and so on. However, I think your right to the truth is more important than your right to a happy ending.

We now have one of those pull-down roller towels. But that, dear reader, will be another story.

*British slang for bathroom/washroom etc. This is an American-friendly website.

Questions I dare not ask

2008-09-29T14:04:00.008+01:00

A boy called Mekon warned the class today 'I tell you man, I will shoe anyone who sells me some lame goods, man'.

I'm unsure whether 'to shoe' a trader selling shoddy mechandise is a milder version of 'putting the boot in' or a reference to legal action, but aside from clarifying this, I do have to ask myself how Mekon came to share his name with an alien in a 1950s British comic.

Were his parents aware of the name's connotation in pop-culture?

Or did the writers of the Dan Dare stories choose the name 'Mekon' from a random foreign book, liking the sound of it and not expecting there would ever be real, live Mekons resident in the UK?

Or is it pure co-incidence?

At least I will have these questions to raise at parents' evening if conversation dries up.

Looking at my class list for this afternoon I see I'm also teaching Dalek and Klingon.* Still, I imagine there are comics and books in distant lands with aliens called Mr Socks, John, and so on.

*Made this bit up.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug #2

2008-09-28T19:05:00.007+01:00

We have seen how the mobile phone can be used more prudently to reduce expenditure in this cash-strapped climate. Now Wholesome Socks presents the second in our series suggesting ways to cut spending.

● Don’t come to school.

The World War 2 poster sums up my message: Is your journey really necessary?

I would venture that since a caveperson first scratched something on the cave wall about hunting techniques or how to make a fire, cavechildren will have been finding more enjoyable and less environmentally damaging things to do than travelling to that cave.

Whether you're on the staff or you're a pupil, if you’re serious about saving money then you'll want to follow the example of these truants and avoid frittering away your capital on travelling to school unless you absolutely must.

Even the costs of apparently free modes of transport such as walking and cycling mount up over time, with needless wear to shoes and tyres. Total abstinence from school is the only sure-fire way to save.

Examples of necessary journeys would be to attend induction days, public examinations, and school fundraising events.

With the advent of the internet and distance learning, many of the other services schools offer can already be delivered without students or staff leaving the home.

Many teachers are already following the examples of their more sophisticated non-attending pupils and are travelling to school only when unavoidable. Teachers co-operate as team members and are always happy to cover absent colleague's lessons, knowing they are helping to reduce costs and that the favour will be returned without the slightest resentment.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug part #1 and part #3 - please recycle them.

Revolting socks for peasants

2008-09-28T10:57:00.009+01:00

An army of bulldozers advanced from London and halted outside the local town.

Yellow-helmeted troops set up temporary wooden fortifications enclosing the finest land in the manor.

The townspeople came out to see the chipboard hoardings, taking furtive peeks through gaps in the fence, hoping to glimpse the mighty army that had descended on the municipality.

The townsdogs sought new territory in which to exercise.

Soon the yellow-helmet troops raised their coat-of-arms outside the camp. The coat-of-arms was taller than three of our sturdiest yeomen, and broader than the longest pikestaff.

I studied their shield’s design with growing disbelief.

The emblem of the invading army appeared to be an impressionistic etching of a house, not unlike the Manor House from which the local Lord carried out his executive duties.

This representation of a house appeared to be a mischievous and base fantasy, for despite the grandeur of the building’s façade, the coat-of-arms clearly depicted nothing less than uncouth peasants happily living within its iron gates.

As I stood with the other Aldermen of the town, pondering what this new development could mean for our centuries-old way of life, a filthy peasant – an illiterate and one of my former students – set his grubby paw on my arm, jabbed his other dirty finger at the coat-of-arms and asked me ‘What’s that say, Sir? What’s that say on coat-of-arms of invading army, Sir?’

There was indeed an inscription below the fantastical image of the world turned upside down.

‘It says …’ I paused to build the gravitas befitting one of the town’s few men of letters, using these moments to decide which lie I should tell to keep the peasant from realising the intentions of this yellow-helmet host. And then I resolved that it would be futile for me to hold the terrible truth from the stinking, rag-encrusted man.

‘It says, my dear peasant…that this army is planning to build “Executive Homes”… that means more homes for Lords of the Manor.’

The miserable peasant fixed his gaze on me, momentarily paralysed while his brain gave itself over to the interpretation of my words, and he attempted what I remembered from my experience of teaching the odious devil to be his equivalent of ‘thought’.

I took advantage of the peasant’s stupor to tug my cloak free of his grip and leave the encampment behind me, but as I paced back to the school I again felt my former student hanging on my sleeve.

‘But Sir, picture on coat-of-arms is like picture of me, it can’t be homes only for Lords of the Manor, Sir! Lord of Manor’s already got finest Manor House in the Manor, Sir! Why does army now come to build more for him and his sort? What about you that teaches little ‘uns and me that ploughs field? And those that guard town from villains when town sleeps, and those that tend townsfolk during times of plague and pestilence? And…’

I was taken aback by the peasant’s innovative and unprecedented grasp our town's socio-political circumstances.

‘I know!’ I lost my composure. ‘Stop reminding me!’

I returned to my teacher’s cottage where I scribed this account in the fervent hope of redress to our town's grievances.

To those who find this I am and remain - Your humble chronicler, William Sockkes Esq.

I've transcribed the above from some parchment I discovered, a yellowed scroll which had been hidden and forgotten long ago under a loose paving slab in my cottage. It's quite a co-incidence that it was a teacher living here all those centuries ago - perhaps an ancestor of mine!

He's got the whole world in his... frying pan? Huh?

2008-09-27T16:40:00.007+01:00

Those Evolution Nuts will stop at nothing.

Not content with claiming we all evolved from fish or something, scientists are saying the entire world was cooked like a fish – billions of years before God even created it!

‘Earth’s early battering revealed’

Video of creationists putting the world - and everything in it - to rights.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug #1

2008-09-27T15:17:00.007+01:00

It occurs to me that in these times of economic strife Wholesome Socks should ‘do our bit’ to help the nation – just as we did during the war, when our Public Information unit asked the country to ‘Put A Sock In The Squander Bug’ (historians might like to peruse our 1940s archives*).

Luckily the staff and students at school have already implemented a few smart money-saving tricks. I will be collecting and sharing their tips here as they come to my attention.

To start you off:

● If you have a mobile phone don’t charge its battery at home - the electricity could be billed to you or your parents. Just bring the phone charger with you to school and plug it into one of the many mobile-charging sockets generously provided by the school for your use. This technique has been put into practice by dozens of expert cash-saving students already.

● Although very few young people can survive without the life-support system that is the mobile phone, those able to wrench themselves away from this modern essential will discover that our friendly reception staff will allow pupils to use their free-telephone. The accepted form of request is ‘I have to ring home for a lift’ (or similar) and you will be able to chat away as long as you please – and it won’t cost you a dime.

I have just spied a penny laying across the street - please excuse me a moment.

Stamp Out The Squander Bug #2 and Stamp Out The Squander Bug #3

*Coming soon.

Cheering me up

2008-09-26T22:40:00.001+01:00

Mr Socks: We’re nearly ready for our class debate, but first, who knows what a chairman does? Erm… I mean chairperson. Or something.

Prize pupil: Yeah, it’s like a chairleader, isn’t it?

Mr Socks: Yes, that’s right. I have taught you well.

And the teacher saw that it was good.

Another Prize Pupil.

Don't call me, I'll call you (something rude, probably)

2008-09-26T21:53:00.004+01:00

The contact email on this site may soon be superfluous – your humble correspondent’s home address could be available to all! (News - CD with teachers' details goes missing - I'll be under ‘Socks, W’ if the disk happens to have fallen into your hands and you feel like popping round for tea).

This appears to be just another overzealous interpretation of ‘putting information in the public domain’. Maybe next week it will be MI5 employees’ personal details strewn from helicopters over suburbia.

I have just finished compiling the CD with names and addresses of senior staff at the General Teaching Council and Parcelforce, ready to be left in a convenient public place this week. I am sure a responsible member of the public will find and return it immediately.

(I assume MI5 will monitor this so can I just say hello, thank-you for your sterling work, and I am joking about the CD with the General Teaching Council and Parcelforce bosses' details. Thank-you again).

Teacher puts downer on ecstasy plans

2008-09-26T17:52:00.005+01:00

There may soon be a change in how the drug ‘ecstasy’ is classified in the UK.

(BBC News report).

Excluding for a moment the dealers and users of brain-altering substances, and the thousands of nurses, doctors, paramedics, EMTs, police officers, social workers, friends, families, teachers etc. who help ‘pick up the pieces’, the main groups concerned with the proposed change are:

● The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which is considering downgrading ecstasy from Class A (very dangerous) to Class B (rather dangerous).

● The Association of Chief Police Officers – they are warning that a downgrade would mislead people into thinking ecstasy is OK.

● The UK government, which has to decide to accept or reject the re-classification. (They recently moved cannabis up from Class C to Class B, against the Advisory Council’s wishes).

I believe I can offer a solution satisfying the police bosses, the government, and the drugs advisors (it will still, unfortunately, leave the dealers dealing and the users using, and the thousands of nurses, doctors, paramedics, EMTs, police officers, social workers, friends, families, teachers etc. picking up pieces, as before).

The people who decide how unhealthy each drug is just need to look at what was done with the grading of GCSE and A-level exams.

When it was realised that some candidates were simply too brilliant to only get an ‘A’ grade, they created the higher A* grade (spoken as 'A star') to mark out the sheer excellence of those students.

It appears from the Oxford Professor quoted in the BBC article that the issue at stake is "the relative damage associated with ecstasy compared with crack cocaine and heroin". In other words - ecstasy is bad for you, but heroin and crack cocaine are worse, so they can't all be Class A.

So, re-classify heroin and cocaine as A* drugs, and ecstasy can stay an ‘A'. That should:

● Satisfy the Chief Police Officers by emphasising the danger of the A* drugs, without making an ecstasy tablet look like a mug of cocoa at bedtime.

● Satisfy the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by showing how ectasy is bad but not as bad as the A* substances.

● And satisfy the UK government - they won't have to make any further decisions, and the status-quo won't have changed too much.

Anyone from the Home Office reading this? Anyone reading this, for that matter? It's all just ideas.

Storm in a teacup (stolen from the staffroom)

2008-09-24T19:30:00.005+01:00

What were the main points of the Treaty of Versailles? Brainstorm.

How does photosynthesis work? Brainstorm that.

How many countries can you think of? Brainstorm them!

Which Prime Ministers wore glasses? Brainstorm a few!

Class, how can you raise money for charity? Brainstorm a few ideas!

Staff, the school is going downhill and we need to fix it. How? Brainstorm!

Kids, remember your top 500 brainstorms from the last week? Well, start brainstorming!

I need ideas to keep you lot busy while I drink mugs of tea. Would you have a brainstorm?

Lots of pens! Huge sheets of paper! Clueless children! Action!

Brainstorms: A humane alternative to caning.

Next week: The Mind Map

Mr. Watson - don't come here - I don't want to see you

2008-09-22T18:56:00.002+01:00

Another demonstration of the legitimacy of delivering professional services over the telephone.

Freud's IQ

2008-09-22T14:01:00.005+01:00

More fun with pastoral form period activities: 15 year old boy shows me a crudely adapted bus pass and asks "Sir, can I buy alcohol with my false IQ?"

So that's more rubbish to be consigned to my desk drawer-archive of recrement, where it will never be seen again.

If people learn from their mistakes this chap should be a veritable oracle by now.

Even higher false IQ.

99 Flakes

2008-09-21T17:31:00.003+01:00

It was a sunny day in the Land of Socks. People swarmed into the parks. Ice cream vans sang out their siren song. Adults were enchanted like sailors crashing their vessels on unforgiving rocks. Children were enraptured as though following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

With these diversions I seized the opportunity to celebrate the 99th Wholesome Socks post by stealing* away with 99 Cadbury’s 99 Flake ice creams and eating them with the vigour of purpose you would only expect of a hapless drugs courier swallowing packages of cocaine**, sweating at the approach of the sniffer dog of destiny.

Please raise your ice cream with me in a toast to another 99 flaky posts.

*And I mean ‘stealing away’ in the sense of withdrawing covertly, not in the legal sense of theft.
** I have never done this, either.

Idea for would-be speed camera entrepreneur

2008-09-21T12:23:00.009+01:00

Speed-limit breaking drivers – slow down or you’ll miss this. I have a plan and I wanted to warn you - unless you’ve already got a gadget in your car that bleeps at you when I’m blogging (it wouldn’t surprise me).

Here is my modest proposal:

Drivers are allowed to have equipment to warn them when they approach a speed camera or radar gun, so they know where it’s OK to drive as fast as they like (collisions permitting).

So what about drivers who don’t break the speed limits? Aren’t they being left out by not having detection gadgets of their own?

But whatever could they be wanting to detect, if they have no need to look out for Gatso cameras or police officers with radar guns?

With so many people flouting the law, surely those drivers who somehow manage not to break the speed limits should have an opportunity to support the law.

To this end I propose the design, production and installation of cheap, easily operated, dashboard mounted speed cameras for recording and reporting your fellow motorists.

If we can make $100 laptops for Third World children, wind-up radios for villages without electricity, and bagless vacuum-cleaners, then I don’t imagine it beyond the capabilities of our finest inventors to invent a kind of mini-Gatso for public use.

(I'm calling it Grasso™ until I think of something better)

I’m happy to leave the technicalities of the project to others. I’m too busy working on my other proposed ‘speed trap’, which is basically a gigantic mousetrap I am building in my shed. It will be set in the road, and the powerful springs released to trap your car if you try driving over it too fast.

Original speeding post from The Magistrate's Blog.

Prequel to this post.

Sequel to this post, where I swap Tom and Jerry antics for Ben and Jerry's (or similar).

News FLASH! Gotcha.

2008-09-20T18:53:00.006+01:00

The Magistrate has expressed his displeasure at a website peddling law-evasion gadgets, namely a device which can allegedly warn speeding drivers of the whereabouts of mobile police speed cameras so they don’t get caught in the act. I share the Magistrate’s ire at speeders being helped to break the law (and generally make the roads less safe, not just for other motorists but also cyclists, your granny when she goes to the shops, and everyone else).

I’ve long marvelled at the situation in Holland, where at least one national radio station invites its listeners to phone in the positions of mobile police speed cameras, and broadcasts these as part of its news bullet-ins.

It appears this is perfectly legal in the Netherlands, but I fail to understand why… it’s like Radio 4 finishing the news with ‘… and the serial killer who is currently murdering random innocent people throughout the Home Counties would be best advised to keep a low profile in the *insert any road or area* tonight, where police murder squad officers have been spotted. Our thanks to the listener who phoned that in. And now the shipping forecast…’

Slow down, everyone! Please!

No credit for His Master's Voice

2008-09-19T21:45:00.005+01:00

If you are a young person, you are probably talking to someone on your mobile phone as you read this.

Young people love mobile phones. You love them more than your family. More than you love your country. More than you love the Queen, I’d venture.

(Say you’ll ring ‘em back, would you? You’ve got a long text message from me, OK?)

If it helps you to follow this post, we could make it into a ringtone for you. The ringtone will be to the tune of the British National Anthem and it’ll go like this:

I love my wondrous phone
More than I love the Queen
I love my phone
Liz, you’re also a marvel
We’ll chat, just give me a bell
When I’m a hundred
You’ll send me a text

Alright, I know that’s more of a ‘bad poem’ than a ‘ringtone’, but I am not in touch, you know. Never mind ‘having my finger on the pulse’, I hardly have a pulse.

In fact, you young people are so attached to your mobiles that during a recent ‘pastoral’ activity where you had to write down what you believed most important in life to make you happy, some of you girls wrote ‘my phone’ at the top of your list. Lads - move with the times, will you? Most of you are still writing ‘money’ at the top of your list. Money alone won’t make you happy, money's worth nothing unless you use it to buy the latest phone, is that clear?

It’s good that I know how to communicate with you, now. A lot of you won't get off your phones during lessons, so I’ve been asking your mates for your numbers, and now I won’t actually need to come to the classroom. I’ll just ring you up and try to teach you like that.

I believe the Universities and institutions of Higher Education do something similar to this, involving the internet and letters, and they like to call this ‘distance learning’.

What they don’t realise is that you kids have been innovating and perfecting methods of ‘distance learning’ since schools were invented. I have even been out at lunchtime with wire cutters to make a few holes in the fence and give you a head start.

Let’s create as much distance as possible. Then we might all find happiness.

University of Wholesome Socks - new term examinations

2008-09-19T16:37:00.002+01:00

“Jethro Tull has never been deformed, on the contrary, they are still performing after 40 years.”
(A 21 Year Old Female, September 2008).

Consider and compare this assertion with the 21 Year Old Female’s claim that ‘In 1980 Led Zeppelin was dismembered’.

(17 marks).

Will b l8 iv crst

2008-09-18T13:42:00.002+01:00

Driving makes texting on your mobile phone more hazardous than either alcohol or drug use, according to research by the RAC Foundation. The researchers haven't yet investigated the effects of fasting on the ability to read and send text messages safely, but I will be continuing my own observations.

Had a few things to eat this evening, have we? Blow into this, please, madam

2008-09-17T18:17:00.010+01:00

Quite recently at a place where your children are educated in a galaxy not so far away:

The staffroom. Teacher A (male, atheist) is sitting comfortably in a well-worn armchair, feasting on some fruit salad while awaiting the bell to signal ‘action-stations’.

Teacher M (female, muslim) stumbles into the staffroom looking dazed and sits down near Teacher A, accidentally knocking another chair over in the process.

Teacher A: What’s up? You look exhausted, not your usual self.

Teacher M: Damn this headache, I can’t concentrate on anything. I’m fasting, you know.

Teacher A: Oh, it’s Ramadan isn’t it, I forgot.

Teacher M: Yes, I can’t eat anything until it gets dark, that will be hours.

Teacher A: Can you take something for your headache?

Teacher M: No!

Teacher A: Oh dear, I’m sorry. But what about your blood sugar levels? They’re probably low, that’s probably why you can’t concentrate.

Teacher M: Yes, but I’m fasting.

Teacher M fumbles through her lesson plans, hopelessly unable to find what she's looking for, and dropping papers out of her folder.

Teacher A: You come to work by car don’t you? So you’ll be driving home?

Teacher M: Erm, yeah?

Teacher A: Well, that can’t be safe, can it? You can hardly walk in a straight line, you shouldn’t be driving in your state.

Teacher M looks aghast.

Teacher A: I go your way, I could drop you off.

Teacher M reflexively pulls her Hijab further over her forehead.

Teacher M: I said I’ve been fasting, not drinking. What’s your problem?

Teacher A: Nothing, I just don't want you having an accident, that's all. And I think you should eat something, actually.

Teacher M: Yeah, but I’m not going to have an accident, am I? And I'm fasting.

Not wishing to whip up religious strife, Teacher A retreats into his copy of The Times, and doesn't make any silent to prayer to any non-existent God, he just hopes Teacher M gets home without killing herself or anyone else.

In the beginning was the Word, and it was open to misinterpretation

2008-09-17T18:17:00.004+01:00

Professor Michael Reiss, who was recently reported as proposing that Creationism should be given air-time in school science lessons, has resigned from his post as director of education at the Royal Society. BBC News says he quit because the Royal Society believed the professor’s comments were “open to misinterpretation".

Well blow me, if everyone who got excited and then blurted out something unusual had to resign because such an ejaculation was "open to misinterpretation" then I don’t think many people would still be on the job.

Although I can think of a few teachers who come out with some ideas which wouldn’t be open to misinterpretation, but only because they defy all attempts at interpretation.

One of our uberteachers giving a PowerPoint presentation on the latest educational theories recently ambled through the pronouncement that follows. During this utterance she held her hands with palms towards the audience of teachers and nodded at a steady rate of 30 nods per minute, clearly indicating her extreme sincerity, openness, and perspicacity:

"I want us to stay where we are so we can find new directions and keep moving forwards".

Fear not, her job is safe.

Nihilistic about Creationists

2008-09-15T13:54:00.002+01:00

I declared a ceasefire in my personal battle against so-called 'Creationists' on Friday afternoon, but now it is Monday morning and the British Creationists have fired their opening salvo for the week.

The Creationists and Darwinists must make their peace and quickly, so humanity can move forwards to the real task they must accomplish to ensure its continued survival.

I have said it before and I will repeat it:

We must start making moves to repair the giant invisible VHS video cassette on which our world exists, or face not just extinction, but the erasure of the entire universe.

Theologians, scientists and technicians will have to work together.

Painting the town institutional creamy yellow

2008-09-14T21:04:00.004+01:00

Who paints the schools?

I don’t mean a modern-day Constable who comes and creates some beautiful landscapes featuring the best of our 1970s school architecture.

And don’t be glib and tell me ‘painters paint the schools, who else?’

I don’t believe for a moment that it can be painters, whether of the artistic or decorative variety. Psychopaths, yes. Painters, no.

I want to know who it is that actually comes and slaps the paint on school buildings when the staff aren’t there.

Because I’d really like to be able to open some windows.

They’ve had a go at a few of the doors, too.

Once I knew a teacher who apparently went into school at some point in the summer holidays to put up classroom displays.

We found him in his classroom on the first day of term, his body petrified like a citizen of ancient Pompeii, his arm for eternity reaching out to defend himself with the staple gun in his hand, but he had not been quick enough. He was moulded into the wall under several coats of the usual creamy yellow paint.

I haven’t been able to watch Goldfinger since, and I feel quite queasy when I see those street performers who paint themselves and pretend to be statues.

I hope the same cowboys don’t get the contract to paint Eurofighter jets. It would be terrible if one of the pilots needed to use the ejection seat and everyone could hear over the radio as he realised the window had been painted shut.

Apparently the computers in these modern warplanes can actually talk to the pilot, and I hope they're programmed with swearwords.

Neither King nor Country would be pleased.

The only thing I miss is Hema (when I'm throwing up everywhere)

2008-09-14T17:56:00.003+01:00

Holland’s biggest* department store is affectionately saluted in ‘The only thing I miss is Hema’** a book telling the stories of various Dutch expats around the world.

Now Hema (the Netherlands’ equivalent of Debenhams or Macy’s, I suppose) has introduced a system whereby employees who wish to report sick for duty must crawl from their beds, get their computer started up, log-in to a secure Hema website and answer up to 60 questions about their condition.

Apparently employee absence due to sickness has fallen by 50% since the poorly shop assistants were given the choice of undergoing this online operation or showing up to cough and wretch through their day at the cash register.

Although I shift uncomfortably in my chair at the thought of our beloved internet being used for extra control of people, as opposed to promoting their liberty, I predict certain useful applications of the Orwellian technology.

For example, Hema’s sickness questionnaire could be adapted into a Microsoft-style ‘help’ section. A little paper clip (wearing a white coat and with a stethoscope) could come tapping on the screen and say ‘It looks like you’re throwing up! Would you like some help?’

If NHS Direct could be brought into the partnership, and some powerful corporation found to sponsor the scheme (that is, put the workforce in a financial thumbscrew) we could have sick employees logging in and then being guided through medical procedures they need to perform on themselves to get fit for work and back to whatever coalface the economy needs them to be scraping at.

I am also developing some ideas for using the internet to help keeping track of our pupils. Our school is full of wonderful people and it hurts me personally if even one student or teacher cannot come into school.

* Or that might be Vroom en Dreesmann. Never mind.
**= ‘Ik mis alleen de Hema’

Casting light on the past and losing the way in a Routemaster

2008-09-13T19:34:00.005+01:00

Exploring my parent’s attic I found a number of old super-8 style cine films (or at any rate, some old film spools with square holes down the side) and it took me a while, but I finally got hold of the right type of projector and I had the chance to see what was locked up in these tin cans since an inch of dust had settled on them.

One night I took the phone off the hook, pulled the curtains tight, and fired up the old projector. The smell of something burning quickly filled the room as the projector reels started whirring, but I just banged a few windows open and decided to risk pressing on with the impromptu film screening. ‘At the first sign of flames I’ll just pull the plug, that should do it’, I muttered to myself. I mutter a lot when tinkering with machines. Pulling the plug when my computer has started burning has stood me in good stead over the years. Plug pulling is the computer nerd’s version of a fighter jet’s ejector seat.

As the projector’s light powered up from candle power to searchlight power the yellow beam revealed the pretty display of dancing dust that always hangs in the air, but usually invisible to the human eye.

Just a few small adjustments and the light was focussed on the living room wall, the film ready to premier. The wall became a bustling city centre scene. Judging from the car designs and clothes, it looked to be some time in the 19…well, I’ll just call it the year 19-when-I-were-young (the words ‘when I were young’ should be imagined with a Yorkshire accent, if you can).

At the centre of the wall I saw a double-decker Routemaster-style bus. The bus was stopped and passengers were getting on and off. Whoever was holding the camera was walking towards the bus (I don’t think the camera would have had a zoom function). The camera was then pointed upwards and I saw a boy looking down from an upstairs window of the bus. He looked down directly at the camera, looking at me from my living room wall.

I didn’t need to see any more of the film. The window was dirty and scratched and my shorts made of itchy material. We had just been to the London museum of big dinosaur skeletons and were on our way home. Or to meet up with my mother. Or was it my grandparents? I can’t remember.

The camera was held by an earnest looking man wearing a suit which must have been out of fashion at least a decade, even in 19-when-I-were-young. The wearer of the suit had not wanted to use the camera that day – no matter how big the dinosaurs had been - but now he had started shooting and pointed the lens firmly at me, as I sat, confused, there on the top deck of the bus.

‘You get on, I’ll get on in a moment,’ he had told me.

I had climbed aboard, hesitantly.

‘Upstairs!’ he snarled. I went up, my itchy shorts rubbing as I mounted each step.

Philip Larkin was right, they really do make you cross, your mum and dad.

And so it had come to be, that I was sitting there, looking at him filming me, down there.

The bus pulled off from the bus stop and drove off my wall. The camera nodded down to the pavement and the picture vanished.

A strange man started walking fast, having just recorded one of his bizarre attempts to get rid of his young son.

What schools and naughty scientists don't want your children to know

2008-09-12T18:09:00.010+01:00

Recently I wrote about how our world, life, the universe and all of existence could have come to an end as the result of a foolish scientific experiment in Switzerland.

With the failure of the world to end as predicted (that doesn’t actually happen until 2015, by the way – but more of that in a moment) all of this begs the question of Well, How Was The World Actually Created, Then?

I am privy to a great deal of arcane knowledge, and now I will share with the world the story of how it happened that the universe was brought into existence.

112 years ago, in 1896, a divine omnipotent film director used a 1980s Philips camcorder - which he had obviously transported back in time - to create the universe.

The divine film director did this by creating a metaphysical VHS video cassette (just like the ones you had before DVDs) and on this video cassette he recorded his creation – that is, the universe and everything we experience in it.

On the video cassette tape is recorded all the world’s history, every person who has ever lived, every idea that has ever been thought, every last thing that has ever happened in human experience.

Using his divine powers, the film director started this video playing, thus creating the universe from scratch in 1896.

(It should be noted that all years before 1896 are no more than an illusion stemming from human folly and hubris. An intelligent person will realise that it is impossible for the world to have existed longer than 112 years, because before that time there would have been no films to entertain people, so how could people have existed?).

The divine film director’s creation will continue until 2015, when the tape abruptly runs out, and the world will end (albeit only temporarily).

Then the video will be re-wound. The re-winding will last for 2 of our human years, and will take us back to the start of the universe in 1896. These 2 years of re-winding will be a time of great strife, ushering in the regression of humankind to late Victorian technological and social standards.

I can tell you that not only is this re-winding of the universe inevitable, but that it has already happened. In fact, it has happened millions of times already.

Of course a VHS video cassette cannot be played and re-wound millions of times without some damage and wear to the very fabric of the tape on which the universe is recorded.

As the creases, rips, and general damage to the video tape worsen, each incarnation of the universe is subject to increasingly severe natural disasters, wars and diseases. (This is obvious to anyone reviewing world history).

Where there is only slight damage to the tape, this results in social movements such as ‘retro looks’ in fashion, and the resurgence of musical styles which had previously fallen from public favour. This is due to some parts of the tape being ‘smudged’, and historical epochs merging with each other.

The divine film maker, previously omnipotent, has since lost some of his power, and is now, unfortunately, only a little bit omnipotent and semi-retired. It will be up to humans to find ways to repair the tape that is the foundation of their existence - or face oblivion.

I would now like to call for the Philips camcorder story to be discussed in school science lessons, because some children obviously have strong family-held beliefs in the divine film director. (Family-held beliefs, of course, take precedence over their own beliefs). It is imperative that science is not allowed to pollute these children's minds without them having the chance to learn alternative truths about the nature of reality.

Douglas Adams and Stanley Kubrick emerge from their graves

2008-09-12T13:57:00.009+01:00

BBC News Magazine discussed the effects on children of the Black Hole scare and the 'end of the world' hoo-har.

Educational psychologist Alex Griffiths, advising parents on how to assuage their child's angst during the closing moments of the universe's existence, compounded by anger at the possible waste of public funds, is quoted thus:

"Experimentation is a good thing."

I'm with him on that point. Experimentation keeps children occupied during science lessons. Experimentation is the only way I can find out how to do something on my computer when the 'Help' menu doesn't and the technicians are too busy. Experimentation is how the Wright Brothers got to fly. Experimentation is how people 'discover themselves' (I experiment and I suggest you do, too).

Experimentation is A Good Thing.

The educational psychologist continues, and I don't care if the Beeb 'phoned him while he was sleeping or took his words out of context:

"Government and scientists are not going to spend large amounts of money on something that could harm us. Lots of thought will have gone into it and what is likely to come out of it."

Cleaners keeping a cheap, harmless nuclear bomb spic and span.

No amnesty for teachers

2008-09-10T18:15:00.006+01:00

An ordinary classroom. The tables have been stacked up by the wall and the children are sitting in a big half circle. Facing them is a visitor from Amnesty International. He has come to speak to these 15 year olds about human rights issues in Britain and abroad.

Among the 15 year olds is a girl with long blonde hair in pigtails, bearing an uncanny resemblance to this poster which is reproduced in many books about the Nazi era, although the girl probably does not know this and almost certainly does not wish to associate herself with the Nazi movement.

She has at her feet a pink rucksack with a picture of My Little Pony (or some similarly girlish merchandise). Her school uniform is immaculate, in contrast to many of her classmates.

The human rights presentation has been running for 2 minutes and the kids are listening respectfully but with little real interest.

The representative from the human rights organisation is a softly spoken gentleman in his 40s who says he will be talking about torture, arms exports, political prisoners, freedom of expression.

He asks the class:

‘Right, who likes ice cream?’

I am sorry, he doesn’t ask if anyone likes ice cream, he says:

‘Right!’

He leans forward in his chair, signifying weighty words.

‘ Who here … supports having the death … penalty?’

The pigtailed girl shoots her arm into the air at an angle of about 45º, her hand grasping at the air.

She screeches:

‘Meee, meee!’

I am not sure if she looks more like someone in a montage by Nazi cinema propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, or an adoring concert goer standing by the stage where her favourite band is playing.

Lunchtime. I receive a message from His Headmastership requesting my presence in the hall.

The caretaker at our school is a wizard at carpentry. In just a few hours, the stage where generations of pupils have stood to receive awards, to perform plays, to give presentations, has been transformed forever.

‘Careful, that’s the trapdoor’, warns the caretaker as I tread across the boards. I look up at where the stage lighting had been mounted. In the shadows there now hangs a noose, woven in what looks to be the strongest hemp.

Standing in the wings is the pigtailed girl, her pink My Little Pony rucksack slung over her shoulder, the purest childish delight radiating from her face, and her small hands reached out before her, firmly clasping an enormous lever, similar to the kind of lever I believe was used on old steam railways to change the points.

‘Remind me what your name was’, I order her.

‘Albertyna’ the girl giggles.

‘Albertyna what?’ I demand with uncharacteristic impatience. Then I realise that, with a deftness of hand that only the finest craftsman can master, the caretaker has fastened the noose around my neck.

Pulling the lever with all her might, the last sound I hear is the girl's voice echoing around the old school hall, accompanied by the cruel cheering of a thousand unseen children.

‘My name… is Albertyna Pierrepoint!’

‘Oi, give it a rest! It’ll end up gory!’ Not Wilfred Owen

2008-09-10T13:37:00.011+01:00

I submit for your consideration this poem inspired by Wilfred Owen's anti-war verse Dulce Et Decorum Est and my own experiences of modern Yoof Culture (or: a poem about why I prefer a night at home wearing a cardigan and slippers to a night within 2 miles of practically any British town centre).

Drank doubles, us old slappers with big racks,
Bare-kneed, cussing like slags, we coughed up sludge,
Till on the boozing ground we turned our backs
And towards our distant beds we tried to nudge.
Birds danced asleep. Many had lost their shoes
But danced on, downed shots. All looked lame; all blind;
Pissed up on booze; deaf even to the woes
Of tired blokes on the pull that rubbed up behind.

Cab! Cab! Quick, girls! – No XTC, just running,
Catching the dirty taxi just in time;
But some bird still was screaming loud and stumbling,
And looking like a bird in shit and grime . . .
Dim, through the filthy panes and sodium light,
As under a neon sea, I saw her frowning.

In all my hangovers, I hear her chatting shite,
She lunges at me, muttering, choking, frowning.

If in some smothering hangover you too could face
The doors of the Police van they flung her in,
And watch the blood-shot eyes rolling in her face,
Her ugly face, like a haddock's, or something;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the crud
Come gargling from the fag-corrupted lungs,
(Probably got cancer) and the bitter sounding thud
Of vile, sweary words, or was she speaking in tongues?
Well mate, you would say, and not in jest
When you see kids who can’t hold their drink, usual story
Warn the deluded fools: ‘Oi, give it a rest!
It’ll end up gory!'

I am actually a bit of a Wilfred Owen fan, and I respect the stoicism of the soldiers who were tangled up in the mess of The Great War - I suspect 'Tommy Atkins' had a lot more mettle than the chavs I'm dedicating this poem to.

See also: Poems not by Philip Larkin and not by Siegfried Sassoon.

Battling against rotten behaviour since 1940

2008-09-07T19:09:00.009+01:00

The Dutch newspaper ‘Algemeen Dagblad’ reports:

“Brothers break into police station”

Rough translation follows:

“2 brothers aged 13 and 24 were arrested on Saturday evening when they were caught breaking into a police station in Rotterdam’s Maashavan district.

The police station was closed at the time.

According to the police, the 13 year old explained that his elder brother carried out the break-in because he didn’t agree with a fine.

The suspects have damaged an entry door, windows in other doors, and some pipes. The brothers have been detained and their father has been informed.”

I once read about a UK police officer who tried (unsuccessfully) to revoke his own speeding fine by some clandestine late night paperwork, and I think it would be quite a long shot for these lads to cancel the ticket by smashing up the nick.

I’m wondering if some of our pupils have been chatting online with these Dutch brothers and getting a few ideas about ‘the right to roam’. I know I’m getting old so of course I’m going to think everything is going downhill faster than Jill can tumble after Jack, but if I’m not completely senile then I’ll tell you there’s diminishing respect among pupils for the hallowed chamber that is The Staffroom.

The Staffroom is where we teachers sit, like Battle of Britain fighter pilots waiting for the bell signalling us to 'scramble' when lunchtime is over and battle rejoined. But it's a different type of bandit that's been intercepted recently.

Over the past year I’ve caught (and then released) a good two dozen kids who floated through the magic portal uninvited, and were unable to offer any good reason for their intrusion (well, to be fair, I didn’t ask for any excuses or listen to their protests - from the way some of them screamed and gesticulated as I assisted them on their way, well, anyone would think there had been some terrible accident or the building was on fire).

Next time I'm going to make it clear that the only acceptable reason for a child to enter the staffroom without permission is to report an emergency which urgently requires an adult’s presence. And while I'm at it, I'll tell them to stop getting bad influences from their online pals.

Excuse me now, I think my copy of The Times, my pipe, and my favourite moth-eaten armchair are waiting for me.

Enterprising Americans put the ‘vice’ into ‘Vice-Chancellor’

2008-09-06T17:11:00.004+01:00

I had barely finished delivering this cynical thesis – which includes a swipe at the value of someone’s qualification – when BBC News submitted an essay which I could very well put in my footnotes.

This time it’s the woeful tale of ~~suckers~~ victims who have paid good money for bad qualifications – a fake ‘St Regis’ university which was not based in Washington state has sold degrees which you could have made yourself on Photoshop, or even with some Pritt Stick and careful photocopying - including PhDs for £700.

The fraudsters (although I prefer to think of them as businesspeople who were exploiting a market niche) netted a total student debt of £4,000,000 from nearly 10,000 photocopy-alumni.

Most Uni students I’ve had the pleasure of knowing – being so cash-strapped and all – are too smart to squander such a large sum like the victims of this scam. Given £700 they would make a sound investment like buying 350 subsidised pints in the Union bar. You would not catch a real student frittering £700 away on such ephemera as degree certificates.

Of course I can't be sure just from reading the BBC article, but I have the impression that the former students who were 'totally unaware that the University of St Regis was not a legitimate academic body' have as little credibility as the 'University' itself.

Still, I'm sure a lot of the students at my school are fake, too - they put on these fancy uniforms with badges and ties and Latin mottos and call us 'Sir' or 'Miss' or 'prick', and they think that's enough to call themselves schoolboys and schoolgirls. One of our boys was arrested (not for fraud) and I later saw a social services form listing his occupation as 'schoolboy' - why not 'criminal'?

Well, I can’t sit around here all day giving you this one-to-one tuition - I’ve just had a new order come in – the school wants about 200 sets of GCSEs, A-Levels and SATs and I have to deliver them by next summer. I’d best get the photocopier warmed up. Next thing you know, teachers will be expected to do pupils' coursework for them.

Footnote: I have Googled ‘St Regis’ because I wondered if there actually is a Saint by that name. The closest I’ve found is a Saint John Francis Regis (patron saint of lace makers – thank goodness for him) but most alarmingly I am seeing hotels, a ski-resort, a ‘Mohawk tribe’ and a Catholic University in Colorado all going by the name ‘St Regis’. How will we ever be able to trust what we read on the internet again? Even if it says ‘BBC’ at the top? Even if it says ‘University of Wholesome Socks’?

Next week: serialisation of Hitler's dog's diary.

Wholesome Socks goes 'Walkabout'

2008-09-04T18:52:00.007+01:00

Harper Collins was grossly irresponsible to print a book aimed at girls and suggesting the fairer sex could learn to play the didgeridoo.

How could the writers not have realised that a girl can expect, at the least, to become infertile if she is so foolhardy as to even touch a didgeridoo?

Obviously traditional Aboriginal beliefs are the only reliable guide to survival in the present age, as we all know the so-called ‘evidence’ offered by modern science is shown to be false every single day.

Thank goodness for Dr Mark Rose of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Indigenous Education, who has alerted the world to the risks posed by the Australian edition of The Daring Book For Girls (well, at least it lived up to its name!)

I understand that the UK edition of this book recommends that adventure-seeking girls can easily stop trains with just one finger.

Because Dr Rose has a PhD we know we can trust what he says, and that such mischievous nonsense must never be printed again.

From now on I shall be telling my female students ONLY to play with razor blades, and possibly to inject drugs, and imploring them to never go anywhere near a didgeridoo, and that if they really MUST blow on something, then they should buy a Dog Annoyer™.

By the way, Dr Rose looks like a combination of Rolf Harris and Richard Griffiths.

Footnotes

Cat-Spider Annoyance

2008-09-04T17:46:00.006+01:00

I dreamed that I was awoken by a soot-black cat walking up my body and standing on my face, the cat then ascending to the ceiling by means of a web-like thread coming out of its back, exactly like a spider. The expression of the cat's face was of comical bemusement, as the winding mechanism could hoist it only very slowly, and I, recovering from my initial surprise at this innovation of a Cat-cum-Spider, found that with the gentlest of blowing I could cause the cat to rotate a full 360°, first clockwise, and then anti-clockwise.

This was to my immense satisfaction.

The feline intruder then fell and sprinted for the fireplace, presumably hoping to escape that way. The chimney had previously been bricked-up to deter unwanted visitors tempted to enter via that route.

I awoke (I believe, into 'reality', unless I am still asleep as I write this) basking in the warmth of the purest happiness.

The only meaningful symbolistic interpretation of this dream - so far as I can discern - is that it is high time I invented a Cat Annoyer™ to be sold as an accompaniment to Dog Annoyer™ and I must have it ready for Christmas.

Hate Christmas

2008-09-04T16:58:00.003+01:00

Do you hate Christmas? Think Xmas should be X-Rated? Dislike it a bit? Have ideas for improvment?

Or do you wonder how anyone could not love that Season of Goodwill and selfless giving?

Over at Hate Christmas you are invited to share any views on the subject.

hatechristmas@ymail.com is the address to send your comments.

Up to 10 thoughts about Tesco

2008-09-01T16:43:00.003+01:00

1. It doesn’t matter what Tesco puts on its signs. ‘Less than…’, ‘Fewer than…’, or ‘Up to 10 items’, they still haven’t done anything about this sign.

2. Tesco staff are trying to breed new customers just as a farmer breeds new livestock (probably to be slaughtered for Tesco).

3. Their automated checkout systems are better than the ones in Asda. (In Asda the machine tells you off if you twitch a muscle while using it).

4. Some Tesco car parks - like many such car parks – are sometimes invaded by ‘boy racer’ types for ritual inspection of their white Ford Fiestas and much screeching of tyres.

5. When I look at the line of identical checkouts stretching into the distance, each operated by some poor sod (or a happy sod), it reminds me of battery hens and I wonder why no-one has yet protested for free-range checkout workers (they would roam freely and you catch one to process your shopping. That would be much more fun for both employees and customers than this so-called civilised queuing).

6. Despite their treatment, the staff generally seem quite nice.

7. Some of my clothes are from Tesco Extra.

8. I knew someone who was a teacher for 20 years, then stopped being a teacher and took a job as a Tesco trolley-rounder-upper person (I don't know if that's the official job title, but that's what the job was).

9. One day, all the lost, stolen and abandoned Tesco trolleys in this country will come alive and arise from the canals and scrap heaps, and start making their way back to Tesco like invincible zombies. I've been writing a screenplay about it, in fact. (Hollywood screenwriters - hands off my idea! Offers of financial remuneration will be considered, of course).

10. Please push your trolley firmly at the end of the conveyor.

Cutty Sark is The World's Most Famous Ship - it's official

2008-08-30T22:45:00.004+01:00

See that 'crossed fingers' logo at the bottom of the sign? Those fingers aren't crossed for 'Heritage', those fingers are crossed for hoping to maintain the status of The World's Most Famous Ship.

I am sure that compared to Cutty Sark the Titanic is a tin can, HMS Hood a humble dinghy, the Mayflower a mere pedalo.

I shall be at the front of the queue early in 2010, flying the flag for Cutty Sark. It will be beautiful again.

For the cynics out there - well, they could hardly write 'the world's 276th (or some such figure) most famous ship', could they?

Sock puppet ruler

2008-08-29T17:34:00.005+01:00

I found this letter abandoned on my bedroom floor when I woke up early this morning. I can hardly believe the cheek of it. Reproduced for you below, word for word:

“My beloved, one and only Right Sock

I can’t tell you how much I’ve been missing you since we were separated in the wash last week. I miss your warm, silky fibres rubbing against mine when we snuggle up together in our drawer. I miss your musky scent in the morning, you holding me when we’re folded together.

It’s been hell, I tell you - yesterday he turned me inside out to wear me with another left sock! With a hole in it! And it wasn’t a hole in the place you’d expect to find one.

Tartan socks, for Scots that’s the biz
Schoolgirls like us up to the knee
Tintin tucks his trousers in his
But Fred, you’re the right sock for me

When we met on that Primark shelf
I’ll knew I’d never lose your thread
Wholesome in sickness or in health
You’re my sole sockish partner, Fred.

I do hope this letter will reach you somehow, wherever you may be - if I can just hop out to post it before he wakes up!

With love

Left Sock

It’s enough to make you wretch, isn’t it? The offender has been binned, and ‘Fred’ has had a good talking to. Pah! – ‘silky fibres’ indeed – they’re not even made of silk!

If it's not one thing, it's another!

2008-08-27T15:27:00.005+01:00

Whether you're pro- or anti-cannabis, I hope you can join me in a non-marijuana-fuelled giggle at this quote from a schizophrenic who attributes his condition to smoking weed:

"Cannabis has absolutely wrecked my life. I can't go out drinking or anything like that."

Yes, I do have a jaundiced view of people.

Gardening in Russia’s backyard

2008-08-26T22:55:00.006+01:00

It’s an expression that’s popping up all over the British* news media at the moment, and I think the most realistic definition of ‘Russia’s backyard’, if I understand what they’re talking about, is simply this:

Russia’s backyard
Noun
1. places within convenient bombing range of Russia

So technically, the entire planet is within Russia’s backyard to some degree. Now, I am aware Russia’s not the only country that does the odd bit of bombing to get what its government wants. But I think some journalists and politicians are starting to talk about Russia like it was just a grumpy landlord with inconsiderate tennants.

Let me tell you, I won’t be responding to any more of Russia's classified ads.

Grumpy old bear (dominant) WLTM submissive lady bear (for serious relationship only).

Willing to relocate (to your place?)

Has own ICBMs.

No, thank-you!

*And the Dutch media, perhaps because of the Netherlands’ horticultural expertise, says ‘Russia’s back garden’ (‘Rusland’s achtertuin’).

How we turn down job offers in the teaching game

2008-08-25T21:47:00.004+01:00

Dear Mr Socks,

I cannot disguise my annoyance at your decision to turn down our offer of employment at such short notice. It has caused our school a catalogue of intolerable inconvenience to find a suitable candidate for the post before the start of the autumn term. Needless to say no future applications from you will be entertained.

Yours sincerely,

Mr U.N.Real, B.Ed.
Head Teacher

Dear Mr Real,

Thank-you for your letter in which you responded to my decision to turn down your kind offer of employment with your school.

I am sorry you felt my explanatory letter was unsatisfactory.

Having given careful consideration to the points you made with regard to the intolerable inconvenience my withdrawal has caused I have decided the following:

I propose to present myself outside your school gates during your Prospective Parents’ Evening this school term. I shall be wearing a placard bearing the legend

‘I turned down a job at this wonderful school, I am so ashamed.’

Thereafter I will submit myself to public humiliation by you in a manner of your choosing. I am especially fearful of being licked by Dalmatians, but am also amenable to more conventional forms of physical retribution such as flagellation or being placed in stocks and pelted with rotten fruit.

Your staff, current pupils, and prospective parents are cordially invited to spectate, and as I say, there is no limit to the punishment I would be prepared to accept while expressing my apologies and gratitude for your offer of employment.

Yours ashamedly,

Mr W.Socks

Wearing a dressing gown and ready to take on an Abrams M1 main battle tank

2008-08-25T20:22:00.004+01:00

I don’t know what to write
But it’s like a fight
This urge to get something down
Not like my trousers
Or throwing off my dressing gown
Doing those things wouldn’t be hard
Although it might cause a frown
And give an old dear a fright
Leave her mentally scarred
So what was I on about?
Oh yeah, wishing I’d something to say
It usually is that way
But at the moment my head feels quite blank
If feeling blank is actually a feeling
Isn’t that an oxymoron ‘a blank feeling’?
Being driven over by a tank
That would hurt
A tank would leave me reeling

Love letter from bicycle to car

2008-08-25T18:04:00.003+01:00

Dear white Ford Fiesta (with big exhaust pipe),

Hello, you might not have noticed me but we met briefly this morning and after our encounter I felt I should write to you, even though we are only machines, you and I.

If it helps you remember me, I am a black framed road bike, and I was being pedalled by my owner, a large fellow who was wearing a distinctive luminous yellow jacket and brightly coloured helmet. You were carrying a group of four young men when you passed me as I was pedalled along the cycle path.

I thought you should know that one of your young men upset my owner a bit. It was something that happened when you slowed down as you passed me, and drove alongside me for a few seconds.

We would have no problem with that, my owner and I – in fact I thought you might just be a very friendly car. I thought maybe we were going to be friends. But I could sense through his grip on my handle bars that my owner felt a little tense when your front passenger window wound down.

I have to say I was pretty cheesed off by what the young man sitting in your front passenger seat did next. Did you notice what he did? He leaned his head out of your open window, his face as close to me as it could have been, then he opened his mouth and made a noise. The noise was a scream something like this: ‘Waaaah haaaa ya cunnn-tah! Waha ann kah!’

Then your window wound closed and you sped off, your big exhaust pipe burping louder than ever.

Do you know this chap? He’s about 20, perhaps older, and was wearing a baseball cap and a tracksuit of some kind. That’s all I could see from where I was. Oh, and he had a gold coloured chain around his neck. Did someone let him off his lead? Would you try to avoid carrying him again?

My owner seemed quite fed up at that moment, and I can’t say I understood what the young man was trying to say, either. I thought I would get a chance to find out, about a minute later. This was when I saw you, white Fiesta with big exhaust pipe, were stopped in a line of traffic waiting at a red light.

It’s nothing unusual for my owner to huff and puff a bit when he cycles me, but I felt he could barely contain how much he wanted to huff and puff as we stopped next to you. I wanted him to ask ‘what does this mean, young man, this “Waaaah haaaa ya cunnn-tah! Waha ann kah!” of which you speak?’ And I think he was actually going to ask. But the young man - he who was let off his gold coloured dog lead and allowed to ride in you – he was looking the other way, and would not look at my owner or me.

And I think it’s a shame, what happened that made my owner huff and puff and squeeze my handle bars and wobble a bit in my saddle. Because I think we could be good buddies, you and I. I must say how much I admire your spoiler. Does it make you go much faster? Perhaps I can persuade my owner to fit one on me. And the blue lights in your grill, they look so groovy! Your really thin tyres, your burp-burp exhaust pipe – it sounds a bit naughty but I love it! I know I’m just an old-style push bike, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me fancying cars as well, I’m happy to come out as being a bi-cycle, hee hee.

So I hope you’ll give me a toot the next time we pass and let’s hope you’ll be able to run over that silly young man if you get a chance.

Love from

Cyril Cycle

Who needs a car radio?

2008-08-24T21:29:00.003+01:00

An uneventful motorway journey caused my travelling companion and I to compose this ditty. There’s no particular fixed melody, but as a guideline I’d sing the first syllable of each line on a higher note, and stretch the last syllable of each line.

Here’s a singity song!
‘Cos we’re driving along!
So sing the song!
It won’t be long!
Singity singity song!

If ‘Happy Birthday To You’ can make $2 million a year then I’m sure we can find an impressario to sign us. Please send royalties c/o Wholesome Socks. I thank you.

News from our neighbours in the Netherlands

2008-08-23T19:35:00.003+01:00

De Volkskrant newspaper reports Dutch police think they may have caught a man who has been setting nasty traps in forest footpaths. These sharp metal spikes mounted in a concrete block have been concealed in at least 4 holes dug in public forests in the Dutch province of Limburg over that last few months. Luckily no one has been seriously injured so far.

I believe the Dutch are showing their engineering prowess in relying on the public to set their own traps. Here in the UK it is local councils who take responsibility for laying traps for unsuspecting pedestrians and cyclists in the form of well hidden holes on pavements and on roads, or the less covert but far more dangerous devices such as cycle paths designed to send unwary cyclists careering directly into sign posts or trees.

Exciting sign promising 'DINOSAURS'

2008-08-23T18:33:00.004+01:00

Fanatics, numerologists, paleontologists and those who are simply feeling a little racey, may like to note that this is post number '69' in the Wholesome Socks cannon.

Not Philip Larkin

2008-08-22T17:59:00.003+01:00

They make you cross, your mum and dad
They give you their old clothes, they do
They dress you with the garb they had
From Tesco-Extra, just for you

But they were made cross in their turn
So quit moaning, you thankless scroats
Who do you think you are? Now learn!
I’ll explain and you’ll take quick notes

Man hands on old clothing to man
Otherwise it’s left on the shelf
Nick the best stuff quick as you can
And don’t buy any clothes yourself

See also: Poems not by Wilfred Owen and not by Siegfried Sassoon.

Satirical poem about school

2008-08-17T16:38:00.005+01:00

If I were old, and bald, and sort of deaf
I’d still be teaching kids without much grace
Rapidly approaching my own brain death
You’d see me, not caring how much they lose face
Filling my pen from the old red inkwell
Reading some Exam Paper. “Load of crap,”
I’d say – “Tried to teach his father as well;
Yes, a lot of drivel on this last scrap.”
And when the tests are done and yoof unread
I’d drive myself back home and cry - ‘nuff said

Inspired by Siegfried Sassoon's 'Base Details'.

See also: Poems not by Philip Larkin and not by Wilfred Owen.

Pavlov's Room 101 Dalmatians

2008-08-17T12:07:00.008+01:00

I thought my patented Dog Annoyer™ was pretty harsh, but the fellow in this video takes Dog Annoying out of this world (at least, I think that's what he's trying to do). Anyway, he makes me look like Gandhi pleading with Genghis Khan.

Not suitable for viewing by younger puppies.

And if anyone heeds me: I DON'T approve of kicking any animals*, and if you watch the video carefully you'll see that no animal was harmed. Please be gentle with little me.

*Unless in self-defence, of course, although I understand that a better defence against large dogs is to yank their tail playfully, as they are conditioned to interpret this as 'cheekiness' on your part, and will merely lick you. Which reminds** me...

**...This is a common scenario of summer for me. I go and sit in the park, pondering what malevolant maladvice I can write next, or even reading a book. Then a huge domesticated wolf jumps on me, followed by a bloke who is swishing the air with a wolf lead, as though to tell the world 'Look how safe my dog is! Look at him go, doesn't even need to be connected to the end of this lead!' The hound then starts to eat my face, like those rats in Room 101. Then the dog owner comes nearer and I see it is Richard Burton. And Burton says 'Winston, imagine a dog licking a human face forever', or alternately 'Ha ha ha, she'll only lick you to death!' and as I frantically try to pull the animal's tail I scream back 'I know, that's exactly what's in my Room 101'. Then I wake up and I am still a teacher.

No longer foxed

2008-08-16T21:16:00.004+01:00

Now I’ve discovered what all the foxes have been doing since hunting was banned. They’ve been over to France to work as film extras with Kate Winslett. Which is more than I've achieved. I’m sure they’ll cross the channel again soon to serenade me with their wolvish song and dustbin orchestra outside my window at night.

Rotters

2008-08-16T19:09:00.007+01:00

Writers and journalists are not having a good week. Wholesome Socks has already noted this case of the news reporter becoming the story, and now, from the nation that gave the world Vermeer, Rembrandt, excellent water management, Edam cheese, Big Brother (well... some like it) - the list is interminable - our Dutch cousins now produce the 'throw a tomato at a writer’ festival in Rotterdam.

According to this event guide, the rotten tomatoes are charged at 25 euro cents a piece, but with a discount for missiles targeted at the Belgian writer.

I am now waiting to be called to the Olympics where I am required as an archery target.

Summary of previous post in verse

2008-08-16T18:43:00.002+01:00

I’m sick of this scheme
Of logic and routine
I say ‘what the heck!’
Run away with Shrek
The problem is ‘because’
Then I realised I was
Actually quite hungry
That made it time for tea

The Tyranny Of The Because

2008-08-16T16:58:00.003+01:00

Why oh why does this appear to exist?

This website is dedicated to my attempts to ‘patch thoughts together’, interpreting and making sense (or making an alternative version of ‘sense’) of my experiences and ideas, and things that other people have told me about, or I saw, or I read, or dreamt (dreamed? Never been sure of the spelling), and things which happened to me that I actually made up a little bit.

It is the bunker where I hide, like a fevered Jack in the Box, waiting for someone to open the lid so I explode into the room like a nuclear mushroom cloud. I will offer to grant wishes like an Arabian genie from the bottle, but then run away like the Gingerbread Man, leaping on my horse and hunting foxes with a pack of Gingerbread Hounds.

Not like that cute little tortured Gingerbread Man from the film ‘Shrek’.

This House of Wholesome Socks is resolutely opposed to ‘Common Sense’.

I believe that what is commonly known as ‘common sense’ is terribly overrated – ‘common sense’ is merely a euphemism for a big list of bad things that I can think of – here are just a few that I can think of at the moment:

‘Common Sense’ =

- Doing as you’re told, regardless of whether it actually serves any purpose.

- Accepting ‘authority’, regardless of the true character of that supposed authority.

- Accepting the 'view of the majority', whether or not they do represent more than 50% of people.

- Doing something ‘the way it’s always been done’, for no real reason.

- Not doing something, just because.

‘Common Sense’ is the manifestation of what I shall call:

‘The Tyranny of the Because’

‘Don’t do this because…’

‘You should always follow this convention… because…’

I’m sick of following this regimented scheme of logic and routine, but now I have to go and have dinner.

Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.3: Go off half-cocked

2008-08-15T18:55:00.003+01:00

We've considered sending free-prostitutes into warzones to distract soldiers from fighting and make a ceasefire necessary. We've looked at the idea of stopping soldiers from even reaching the battlefield, and sending them to mix with their erstwhile foes in holiday camps. Here is the final instalment of this 3-part essay looking at ideas to end or reduce war.

Précis: Wars could be fought as ‘simulations’ or in the same style as ‘historical re-enactments’, instead of proper battles with real, harmful violence.

This third idea for reducing war is rather harder for me to explain. This post is about me thinking out loud, and not seriously expecting to be understood. The idea is a work in progress, and this blog post is the workshop.

Part 1:

The first bit of background to my thinking is the claim that the Persian Gulf War did not ‘really happen’, as argued by French thinker Jean Baudrillard. He’s the philosopher who popularised (in so far as such an obscure idea can be called ‘popular’) the concept of ‘simulacra’. I’m not intending to say exactly what Baudrillard said, but I’m using some of his ideas to build my own. When I talk about the simulacra, what that word ‘simulacrum’ – or simulation, if you prefer - refers to is basically this concept:

We are surrounded by representations of things. All media is formed by representations of ‘real’ – or imagined - things, and there are also representations we’re so used to, that we don’t even think about the fact that they’re only representations of something else.

An example of a media representation would be an actor in a film portraying a real or imagined character. Another media representation is the caption a newspaper editor uses for a picture, which could define what the photo is showing. The choice of camera angle is a decision made by the photographer, leading to another particular representation of something. The colours, sounds, words – basically everything in any newspaper, magazine, book, website, film, radio or TV show, painting, or song – goes towards building some particular representation of something that exists or existed (whether in the physical world or in someone’s imagination).

Less obvious ‘representations’ are things like signs. For example, the little stick figures with or without a skirt on, to show the male and female toilets. Or to take it even further, something like an alarm is a representation. If you hear a siren you know it represents a police car or ambulance so you know to keep out of the way – so you feel ‘danger’ but the siren itself isn’t going to run you over. U2 in their song Sunday Bloody Sunday used a siren to help represent what they were singing about. That’s an example of a representation of a representation. And these words you’re reading are representations of the words I typed at my keyboard – but they’re not the exact same words I saw on my screen as I typed.

So in summary of the simulacrum, lots and lots of things are not exactly ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in themselves, they’re images of other things, but we accept them as our everyday ‘reality’. This is what Baudrillard was referring to when he said the Gulf War didn’t really happen – he interpreted the ‘war’ as the culmination of the media reporting of a ‘war’, compared to the mismatch of the coalition forces who were ostensibly ‘fighting’ the Iraqi army, but were mainly just dropping thousands of tons of bombs and bulldozing their defences.

Disney Land was used by Baudrillard as an example of how an entire ‘world’ can be composed of simulacra (and I suppose this applies to any ‘theme park’), and that people’s experiences of so-called ‘reality’ and ‘simulation’ can be very blurred. Baudrillard also suggested that the ‘simulacrum’ eventually became indistinguishable from - and sometimes preferable to - ‘reality’.

Now, the second thing I need to talk about to try explaining the idea.

I spoke with someone involved with historical war re-enactments who told me of a group dedicated to creating an historically accurate display of the Croatian army from the Yugoslavian war of the early 1990s. This group visits various historical shows at weekends to give the public an idea of how the Croatian forces looked at the particular moment of (quite recent) history. Most historical re-enactors (so far as I am aware) recreate more remote eras like the English Civil War or even World War 2, periods we can more readily accept as being ‘historical’ and sufficiently long ago to be thought of as historical (even if within living memory).

The battle re-enactments, undertaken for public education and entertainment, are simulacra in yet another guise. The living history groups are setting a good example for how war could be conducted relatively safely.

To make this idea complete, I just need to contrive a way of combining Sealed Knot-style historical displays with modern, ‘real’ warfare.

Take cover

2008-08-14T22:08:00.003+01:00

I hope no one starts sniping at me while I’m blogging.

Georgian TV reporter hit by bullet while on air (and puts on a bulletproof vest afterwards).

I think I must be a closet sadist or voyeur, when I saw the link to this clip I said 'oh yeah?', but I don't mean to be nasty.

The Schoolmaster vs. The Boy

2008-08-13T21:14:00.008+01:00

“Alright, chaps,
I’ve told all my stories for today,
does anyone else have a tale to tell
in these last minutes before the bell?”

“Yes, Sir, what I’d like to say…
Sir… don’t take this the wrong way,
but your lessons are… hell,
your tedious monologue saps
my will to live and…”

“…WELL!

I’ll stop you there, irksome child,
let it be known: I have been riled.
Your comments will go in my journal
and all we’ve said will be filed,

you’ll find it uncanny how I jot all
that makes me wild.

My lessons are the least of your fears,
I suggest you learn about life’s slog,
and then, give it 50 years,
you’ll write your own ‘blog’
and email my grave - ‘Sir, cheers!*’ ”

* ‘… and, Sir, your poems sucked.’

Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.2: Hoard of Whores

2008-08-11T22:32:00.003+01:00

Some people think ‘whore’ is an insult. If this idea works, to be called a whore will mean elevation to the highest ranks of heroism and a parade through the crowd lined streets of your capital city.

When the ancient Greek dramatist Astrophanes wrote (or etched) his sex-strike comedy ‘Lysistrata’ about Athenian women withholding sex in order to coerce their men folk into ending a long-running war with Sparta, he highlighted one of the key ways in which females can manipulate males.

I doubt such a sex strike would work in practice, however, unless depriving the political and military leaders themselves of sex. The men* deployed on the battlefield would scarcely have a chance to engage in sex anyway, so it would make very little difference what their sweethearts on the home front were saying.

So I feel Astrophanes got it the wrong way round. It is not through the withdrawal - but actually through the enforcement - of compulsory sexual activity that men (and perhaps women) can be forced to stop fighting and reduce war’s pervy grip on world affairs.

This is where the world’s women, in freshly recruited Sex Action Squads, would do more for world harmony than a legion of Nobel Peace Prize winners. I don’t have the financial acumen to calculate this in detail, but I imagine that the budget of something like a United Nations peacekeeping operation should buy the services of an overwhelming number of prostitutes – enough for a US Army style ‘surge’ into a warzone - especially if they were contracted en-masse and enticed by the opportunity of free travel to exotic parts of the world, soon to be freed from the scourge of conflict.

In decades to come, elderly ladies will have much to be proud of when their little ones – who, I admit, may be of uncertain paternity - ask them ‘Granny, what did you do in the war?’, and they tell the story of how they won the coveted War Whore medal.

For Hollywood it will be another 'based on a true story' movie. To the soldiers, it will be the difference between death and survival.

*For the sake of simplicity I am discounting homosexual and mixed-sex armies from this argument, and I will not be touching on the subject of battlefield rape, important though it is.

Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.1: Mutually Agreed Downsizing

2008-08-11T20:24:00.003+01:00

Imagine 2 opposing countries, Country A and Country B, about to launch into war against each other. For argument’s sake, suppose that both A and B have evenly matched numbers of individuals capable of military service – 100,000 a piece.

So, not counting potential civilian casualties, A and B stand to lose up to 100,000 people each. These people will either be killed in battle and lost forever, and in any case they’re temporarily of no economic value to the country, as they have had to leave their regular jobs to join the military.

Either way, there’s no benefit from these people being in the armed forces, other than to square up against their opposite numbers in the other country.

Now. The peace talks have broken down. The negotiations have come to nothing. 200,000 troops are set to clash. There is little for them to look forward to other than destruction, death and misery.

That is, unless they participate in Mutually Agreed Downsizing.

This is how I suggest it works. Each of the individuals serving in the military is scored with a ‘fighting factor’ on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being a soldier who might have trouble enlisting with Dad’s Army, and 10 for Herculean warriors who make the SAS look like sissies.

The scores of an individual’s fighting value could be decided by volunteers from a neutral country - It could even be done on the internet, with a 'HotOrNot' style website, where volunteers view the soldiers' photos and use those to rate their machismo and fighting power. 'ShootOrScoot.com'? Never mind.

With the volunteers' ratings published, the belligerent countries must then ‘down-size’ their armies, each expelling equal numbers of soldiers of comparable combat value. These de-mobbed soldiers are sent to internationally monitored camps – I’ll call them ‘Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones’ for the moment. Using the word ‘Zone’ should appease war-mongers because it sounds like military jargon, and the generals can pretend it’s all part of their strategic plan - while the name encapsulates what it basically is – a hide-away for retired cannon fodder.

Ex-soldiers from both sides would have to mix together in the Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones, so they serve as ‘human shields’ for each other, disincentivising either country from wishing to attack the N-CSZ.

Ideally the armies actually conducting combat operations could be reduced to a few dozen, allowing the war to be settled quickly and with minimal casualties. It would also be impossible for one country to occupy another’s territory with just a dozen or so troops. Invading armies would be ridiculed and probably battered by old men with pitchforks.

That is basically the idea.

Probably wouldn't work.

However, I believe Mutually Agreed Downsizing of armies would be a worthy avenue of diplomatic endeavour, alongside economic sanctions and that sort of thing.

3 Ideas To End War Or At Least Reduce How Much War There Is: Introduction

2008-08-11T19:20:00.003+01:00

The following few posts will form a mini-essay giving more or less what the title says.

During my time I’ve had several ingenious - or at least innovative* - ideas for ending or reducing the amount of war that takes place on this planet we call Earth. Remember that earth is also the name of the substance that people end up covered with if they pursue war through to its logical conclusion, which is death. While helping to 'kill ' the planet (figuratively) they are ironically offering themselves up as fertiliser at the same time. But do soldiers ever think about that before sacrificing their lives?

The Earth could aptly be renamed ‘Mars’, after the Roman warrior god, despite the confusion this may cause. The other planet currently called ‘Mars’ could also be re-named, but I see no real need for this.

In these modest proposals I have discounted ideas which may be impractical, such as sending all soldiers off into space to conduct warfare on our moon, or some other environment where they will cause no harm to non-warring parties. However, I believe such fantastical ideas have potential for future development.

What will end war? Some people promote peace talks. Some said ‘flower power’. Still others would form a noble League of Nations, debating world problems and finding solutions.

The deterrent value of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, facilitated by huge stocks of nuclear weapons, is believed to have helped keeping one half of the planet from trying to destroy the other half during the Cold War. MAD may have postponed war, but it certainly hasn’t made it impossible.

Then there have been the protesters – shouting and waving banners at politicians, sometimes making token actions such as smashing jet fighter aircraft before they leave the factory, or camping outside military bases. They have made their mark on the collective memory, but we can’t really quantify any real difference they’ve made.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and 3 ideas. The ideas follow in the next posts to this blog.

*Another way of saying I can't be sure that no one else already thought of these ideas, but I haven't found any evidence of that.

Stop Press - WAR

2008-08-10T16:58:00.003+01:00

The first Gulf War* came along at the same time that my elderly neighbour and reality decided to go their separate ways.

Having seen the latest TV pictures of the British hostages being held as Saddam Hussein’s human shields, my neighbour would come to the garden fence, shake his head incredulously and say something like ‘I can’t believe those chaps went out there to get involved with this. Why couldn’t they just mind their own affairs like everyone else?’

He apparently believed that the ex-pat hostages were some sort of feckless ‘war-tourists’ who’d decided to jet out and take the kids to Kuwait especially to witness the Iraqi invasion.

I can see why he may have had this misconception – after all, it was pretty much what he and several hundred thousand other Brits (minus the kids) had done in France, in khaki, 50 years earlier.

Then the time when I told the neighbour about cancelling my planned holiday in Yugoslavia.

‘But why? You told me you were looking forward to going!’ He was more incredulous than ever.

‘Oh, I’m just silly, you know. I hear there’s going to be a better war starting in Portugal in a couple of months so I’d rather hold on until then. Get some winter sun at the same time’.

The Foreign Office is now warning Britons to leave war torn Georgia. I wonder if I can get anything on lastminute.com?

* By which I mean the 1990/91 war, not the counting the Gulf War of the 1980s. I’m not sure why no one really counts that war – maybe because America wasn’t in it.

Gordon the Brown Engine

2008-08-07T20:23:00.002+01:00

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is recommending the Thomas the Tank Engine stories and the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales for today’s children.

I read all the stories of Thomas and his colleagues. The main thing I recall is the appalling behaviour of those ‘troublesome trucks’, who were always trying to cause a rail disaster for Thomas and the other engines, and it really contributed to my cynicism about teamwork.

Later on, around the age of 10, I came across those vicious vignettes of horror and mutilation known as Grimms Fairy Tales. I don’t think I ever felt so delightfully nauseated when reading something. Those stories helped make me the twisted, dark-minded individual I am today. I commend Mr Brown for his tastes.

Wholesome Socks especially recommends Grimms’ ‘A Tale of One Who Travelled to Learn What Shivering Meant’ as a bedtime story for children you are looking to psychologically scar, especially if the child is a second-born son.

Good night.

Boy Banned

2008-08-07T19:53:00.003+01:00

The BBC news website asks today ‘Is the world ready for a new wave of girl and boy bands?’ What are the criteria of readiness for new manufactured pop? I don't know. Does the world have a choice? I think the world is more ready for an asteroid strike.

Roobarb and Custard: Dog Annoyer

2008-08-06T22:58:00.006+01:00

Take one 3 litre Coke bottle (or similar).

Drink or otherwise dispose of contents.

Remove cap and blow across the top.

Make sure your blowing creates a beautifully modulated, deep, soulful, resonant, dirge-like sound.

Congratulations!

You now have your own environmentally friendly Dog Annoyer. The sound can be used to irritate dogs up to half a mile away, inciting a chorus of vengeful barking to warm the heart of even the most jaded of cats.

Health and Safety notice:

Your Dog Annoyer should not be used within attack range of a dog, and not used at all unless you have checked your catflap is lockable.

Younger cats should seek the help of an adult.

Wholesome Socks cannot accept reponsbility for any woe. I am totally irresponsible.

Roobarb and Custard.

Thick as a Brick

2008-08-06T19:41:00.005+01:00

After feeding ourselves like ravenous bears, there was only one thing left to do. A game had to be played. I reached for the chess set.

‘That’s no good, there are 3 of us,’ Zavile shot the idea down. (They’re Lithuanians, in case you didn’t read the previous bit).

‘Yeah, makes it more interesting with 3,’ I tried. ‘We’ve got some extra pieces from the other chess set, so we could set it up as all-against-all…’

The chess set was placed back on the shelf.

‘You’re Russian, you should be good at chess,’ I followed up.

‘Lithuanian!’

As an aside, I’m paraphrasing these conversations. I’m no longer allowed to take notes as they’re speaking, as this was getting on their nerves.

‘Hey, what about this?’ Sister had found something lurking in the darkest corner of the games cupboard. The bottom dropped out of the tattered old box, showering wooden bricks on the floor like a grain silo sabotaged by a hungry bear.

Jenga.

I hadn’t seen the Jenga for a while. Forgot it existed.

You build the wooden blocks into a tower, and the players take turns to gingerly remove blocks from the structure, and place them on the top, until it becomes a kind of Babylonian tower waiting for God to withdraw planning permission.

The player who demolishes the tower must do what the Jenga instructions call a ‘dare’, which is written on the last brick they tried to remove.

I looked at a couple of the ‘dares’.

‘Mime 3 things you do before going to bed.’

‘Have you ever left the house without underwear? Details!’

I stroked my chin thoughtfully. ‘We can do all these anyway, they’re so tame.’

‘Pretend to be a chicken.’ (My memory’s failing me, now).

‘Tie your shoelace with your foot on the ground, while putting your other foot on a chair, so you look silly.’

And so on.

‘But it sounds like fun!’ Zavile protested.

‘I’m sure it is fun, but why do we need to mess around with building towers and waiting until it falls over, we can just do all these dares anyway. What’s the point?’

I've learnt not to expect a point to most things. But in the meantime, I find it interesting to come across articles like this. The gentleman from the University of Minnesota posits a 'Jenga hypothesis' , supporting conspiracy theories to explain the collapse of the World Trade Center. Certainly an idea to mention if you are trying to distract someone who wants to play a board game.

The sprinkler sprinkled

2008-08-06T14:56:00.001+01:00

‘Lies are a social lubricant and I am a slippery customer.’ - Sockrates

I have a Lithuanian friend. Her sister came to visit. We went to buy some food for the evening.

I was getting the impression that the sister’s English was not as good as I’d been led to expect, when suddenly her face lit up as we were leaving the house.

‘You’ve got one of those!’ she pointed at the bunch of keys I’d just taken from the hook.

‘What, are Volvos the in thing in Lithuania?’

‘No, no, Tesco!’ she jiggled my Tesco clubcard key fob. It confounded me to think how someone who’d only been in the country for a few hours should have any idea of what Tesco was, or be excited by my clubcard loyalty (= sucker) card thingy.

‘Oh yeah, it’s just a … my… what, don’t you have one? But at the airport…you’re supposed to have been given one. It’s a government requirement!’

The innocent visitor looked at me with wide puppy eyes. I don’t know what she thought ‘Tesco’ was, but I thought she had the impression it was something pretty darned important. A secret police organisation, for example.

‘This is more important than your passport,’ I pressed on, ‘we’ll have to get you registered pretty soon.’

Then the puppy eyes narrowed. ‘Ahh ha. It’s true! It’s true!’

‘Well, of course it’s true.’

‘No!’ she went in for the kill, ‘It’s true, my sister told me - you are full of shit!’

Dutch kick up a stink after smoking ban

2008-08-04T22:34:00.004+01:00

Our friends across the North Sea will try anything to undermine their recent ban on smoking in bars. Now that the clouds of cigarette smoke have gone, customers in Dutch cafés are complaining of other unsavoury odours, such as sweaty feet, general body odour, and drink smells, which were previously absorbed and carried away by the tobacco smoke.

This is according to a report in De Volkskrant newspaper (and interpreted here for your delectation).

Some café owners are now apparently installing ‘smell machines’ which are programmed to pump out a scent of the landlord’s choosing – with strawberries, pineapple, and ‘Bounty Beach’ (!) being popular choices.

I smell a rat in the story, as I don’t recall any previously undetected whiffs revealing themselves when smokers were banished from British pubs, and I don’t believe that the Dutch are any smellier than us, probably the reverse, if anything (I, for one, have not washed for 3 days).

It seems rather dictatorial that only the café owner should have a say in which smells the clientele are bathed in. Now, if the patent for my toilet-bowl inspection light doesn’t come to fruition, I am sure my latest invention - a Juke-smell-box tailored to the British market – will be a hit.

Cycosomatic

2008-08-04T21:07:00.002+01:00

I wasn’t always Mr Toad of Toad Hall on a bike.

It was Piccadilly Circus without a single motor vehicle to be seen or heard. It should have been the perfect opportunity to freely cross the Queen’s Highway.

Surely that right is enshrined in the Magna Carta?

And with several thousand people present, protesting against reliance on cars, surely my right to cross the road was secured.

Traffic lights on red for road vehicles, green man for pedestrians.

Out I stepped into the road.

Back I stepped from the road.

‘Erm’ I said, apologetically, although none of the thousands of swarming cyclists was listening. ‘Look, the light’s on red for you, so we can cross now?’

Then one of them took a skid and I went ‘aaaaahhh’ like a malevolent child. Well, there’s no point in me lying here, now.

Cycopath

2008-08-04T17:14:00.006+01:00

A recent song called ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ by the duo ‘Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip’ states:

‘Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile… Some people are just nice.’

This is true, but it can also be that the male was riding a bike which collided with the child, who was running across the cycle path without looking, and the male is desperately trying to placate the 3 year old and hoping for some parent or responsible adult to turn up and take the child back and, to be honest, perhaps get them checked out at the hospital.

It happened to me in Holland, in front of a café terrace full of chillin’ tourists. From some of the looks I got, I thought I’d be nailed to a windmill and lynched. But luckily for me, they were far too chilled out to do that. And mum was too chilled to do anything, in fact.

After some long minutes a woman stood up from a table, and came and picked up the girl. It was when I was just starting to learn Dutch.

‘Sorry, your girl, she run, whack, sorry…’

‘Oh, she never looks where she’s going’.

I thought ‘well, surely she must be nearing the end of her nine lives by now?’ (or is that only cats?)

'But face, her face mark... Look'.

'Thank-you.' Thank-you? At this point I stop existing for her. 'Now let's go and get an ice cream...' were the last words I could make out. I was still thinking about x-rays but they say that 'mother knows best', and I think that's probably right.

Anyway, the AD newspaper reports today that Rotterdam is experiencing a backlash against racing cyclists who are allegedly forcing pedestrians, joggers and regular cyclists to take cover. A 74 year old Rotterdamer’s desired solution is ‘big speed bumps, so they fall off hard’.

A racing-cyclist has left a comment under the article replying ‘You have to brake every 500 metres or you get another dog in your front wheel.’ Another dog?

Lav nav

2008-08-03T22:31:00.005+01:00

Looking through kids’ class work from Design & Technology I was stunned to find one truly ingenious blueprint.

As my eyes took in the engineering proposal before me I consciously made the decision to throw all the other children’s work over my shoulder as far as I could, scattering a dozen perfectly laudable sketches for solar powered cars, ergonomically optimised chairs, space rockets and similarly practical, but otherwise trite, conceptions fluttering down like giant confetti.

For once, my luck was in, and there was no other member of staff standing there unbeknownst to me.

Then I made for home, intent on contacting the Patent Office to stake my claim to the toilet with a light mounted inside the bowl. The light is controlled by a switch on the side of the cistern, and just like an oven light, is intended to help the user – for whatever reason they may wish to do this – to inspect the contents of the toilet bowl.

Production starts this month.

(I've since discovered that someone's already invented a similar gadget, but nothing actually housed inside the toilet bowl itself).

Sign language

2008-08-03T20:22:00.007+01:00

I'm wondering if this sign at a Tesco supermarket is sexist in its representation of gender relationships (that is, assuming that it is intended to depict a male figure leading a female. Another interpretation could be that the female is trying to hold back the male, who is perhaps trying to avoid communication with her).

Husbandry

2008-08-03T17:46:00.003+01:00

Previously I’d found it only to be older men who referred to their spouses ominously as ‘the wife’, the words typically uttered while despondently studying the bottom of a pint glass, accompanied by what the casual listener may understand to be a complaint against their life-long companion, but on careful examination can only be interpreted as a spiritless appeal for emotional support in their day-to-day drudgery and inner emptiness.

Then I heard a 24 year old, with barely a whisker to his name, sighing ‘…the wife’, as though consciously realising for the first time that he was married, that he didn’t want to be, and that he had no viable option other than to knuckle down and see who died first.

With kids ‘growing up’ (= getting into trouble by themselves) so fast ‘these days’ (= since recorded history began) perhaps it is only justice that misery should also start younger.

A Blogger's Plea

2008-08-03T16:56:00.003+01:00

Any comments or questions?
Maybe constructive suggestions?
Though I like to jest
You are my guest
And I'd welcome friendly directions

Devil's brew advocated

2008-08-03T15:35:00.003+01:00

I heard recently that alcoholism is a disease, and has no connection with an individual deciding how much alcohol they drink.

While I appreciate that there are probably nuances to this idea which I haven’t delved into, my instinct says the concept of alcoholism as disease is best described thus:

‘…the idea is as a tramp in the gutter, serenading the bemused ambulance crew with a 19th century temperance ballad, while slurping whiskey from a bottle in a wet plastic carrier bag…’ - Sockrates

I once knew a man who, when someone joked about him having ‘a drinking problem’, would jokingly reply, ‘it’s not necessarily a problem, hic.’ He drank lots, died at 50 due to drinking lots, and while this may have prevented a few post-50 problems, I don’t think it was really the solution he was hoping for.

England's chances ruined by rain

2008-08-02T22:35:00.005+01:00

A steaming hot day in Tunbridge Wells was tempered by a brief and welcome shower.

A rather cute American visitor to this isle was so delighted she could not contain her exclamation.

‘Oh my gahd it’s raaaaaining,’ she announced, peering into the heavens, ‘but that’s just sooo English!’ she climaxed.

‘You’re quite right,’ I said, ‘it’s a traditional English ceremony, we’ve put on this rain especially.’

This is me trying to ‘reach out’. I do it sometimes.

Sometimes an expression of surprised joy and an expression of surprised disgust can be very similar. I make mistakes sometimes.

'Is the temperature OK for you?' I offered. 'I can get them to adjust it if you like’.

The babe looked suddenly nauseous and turned away from me, I thought to be sick. Now I saw she had one of these mobile phone tooth things that sits on your ear.

'Urgh, this guy, he just started talking to me, are you far away?'

You can't fight in here! This is... oh, never mind...

2008-08-02T21:09:00.003+01:00

Phone call done, time for me to pedal off my merry way (to safety).

But one of the youths broke off from the fight. He had other ideas.

‘Hey mate, why’d you call the police?’

‘Well, you lot are rolling around like dogs. Someone’s going to get hurt!’

‘Oh yeah, yeah. Safe!’ He gave a thumbs-up as he said this, and turned back to the melee – a busy man, lots of fighting to do – can’t stand around chatting, you know.

Ah, if only every situation was so easy to talk my way out of.

And how selfish of me to object to people beating each other and getting blood on my street.

The Lady’s not for turning (in her grave)

2008-08-02T18:01:00.003+01:00

The UK media is debating what should happen with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after her death.

The Guardian newspaper reports that ‘Lady Thatcher is expected to be granted the rare honour of a state funeral when she dies’.

I think it would be a greater and more useful honour for Thatcher if she were to be granted the state funeral while still alive. The former political leader would have the chance to appreciate the pageantry and outpouring of national gratitude for her service to the country.

My vision is of Thatcher being carried through the streets of London sitting up in an open coffin, taking the salute from massed ranks of soldiers and smiling serenely, as though at peace with the world.

Loo-ser

2008-08-01T16:19:00.004+01:00

If you’re on your way to a lesson and you pop to the loo, you don’t really want to take all your stuff into the cubicle or try holding all those papers under your arm while you stand at the urinal, you want somewhere to put those marked exam papers, lesson plans, or whatever it is you’re taking to the lesson – and when you go into the toilets where I work, you’re likely to have a thought like this:

‘Oh that’s handy, there’s a plastic table thingy right there’.

You will never have that thought again.

Where I work the bins are like Venus flytraps. They’re a new design and look harmless enough – waist height plastic rectangular buckets with the contents hidden by an attractive table-like lid. And that is the master stroke of these deviously designed receptacles, which are positioned all over the building in the classrooms, corridors, and toilets.

All looks well with the pile of kids’ exercise books and the lesson plan and your car keys sitting there on the table. Your trousers are undone and you’re at the point of no return and SWOOSH! Crunch! The hungry bin has struck again!

That table is just a trapdoor on a hinge, and it swings inwards, but not right away – if you place something on that trapdoor it holds steady for long enough that you feel safe to turn your back. That’s when it opens with the noise of you losing all your work, and I can tell you that’s a shocking noise when you’re standing there at a urinal.

So heed my warning and think about it the next time you’re relieving yourself before an important meeting (or before anything, for that matter) and when someone has a wet patch on their trousers.

Further toileting here.

The Great Firewall of China

2008-07-31T18:47:00.002+01:00

I would like to say a big hello to the Chinese people, anyone in China, and especially to any journalists, bloggers and webmasters working in China.

I’m wondering – if a whole load of blogs gang up for a big ‘say hello to China’ campaign, would we be blocked in China?

Hello China! Salutations! *smiley face*

A word from our sponsor (sponsor of madness…)

2008-07-30T10:05:00.002+01:00

One of my neighbours would like me to pass this message to you:

‘I HAVE JOLLY WELL HAD ENOUGH!’

(Dear Neighbour, you will appreciate I’ve had to make your message suitable for my fair readers).

He made this important announcement from outside his house at 5.28 this morning, rousing me – and many others, I suspect – from our slumber.

However, from the way this message was delivered to the world, I felt that my neighbour would wish for it to be spread as far as possible.