Talking the talk in Room 101

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

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.

You won't catch teachers with their pants down

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.

iPen gets a pasting

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!

Smells like teen anthropology

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

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).

Normality

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

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.

Stop-Press: Socks Puts Magazine In It

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

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

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?

Revolting socks for peasants

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?

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.

Teacher puts downer on ecstasy plans

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.

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

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

Idea for would-be speed camera entrepreneur

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).

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

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

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

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.

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

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’