Stud. Muffin.

When you were at school, did you give your teachers nicknames? Yeah, of course you did. I did. We all did. Even the ones we liked. Even the lovely History teacher who was a little, shall we say, on the cuddly side? Once we found out her name was Carol it was an inevitably short step to Carol the Barrel. And from then to the sotto voce singing of her theme tune whenever her cheesecloth clad form came into the room. She took it all in good part, of course, as all decent teachers would.

She probably took it as something of a compliment. At least we had formed some sort of opinion of her. We even took the trouble to find out her first name, a perennial subject of delight for children.

At my school that game is made somewhat easier by the fact that we all wear name badges with our first and last name printed on them. Well you would think it would be easier but of course that presumes that the children are even glancing in your direction from time to time.

 

Not so long ago I said to one of my Y11 classes, a group that I had taught three times a week for two years, ‘oh and my mum said to me, don’t be ridiculous VeryCommonMiddleAgedWoman’sName!’

 

The classroom was in uproar immediately. ‘VeryCommonMiddleAged Woman’sName haha! That’s your name! That’s my mum’s name! That’s my aunty’s name!’ (Inevitably it is their mum’s name or their aunty’s name, as approximately 50% of all 40ish women share my name. It is common as muck, frankly. ‘Er yeah, that’s my name, it SAYS IT HERE?!’ I replied in a mystified tone, pointing to the 3 inch square shiny purple badge attached to my lapel. But the moment had passed and their gaze and attention had wandered back to the terrible fate of Curley’s Wife. (Not really; they probably went back on Facebook to post ‘just found out my teechers called VeryCommonMiddleAgedWoman’sName! LOL! Jk!)

 

But there is a difference between finding out what your nickname is, like lovely cuddly Carol, and actively seeking out that information. This, as most teachers will tell you, will not end well. Yet the temptation is sometimes too much to resist.

 

Let’s take one of the teachers at my school. He is an experienced teacher and a smart man all round. Let’s call him Mr Cliff. (That’s not his name by the way.) Well during a open evening recently I witnessed him stroll up to the reception desk near where I was sitting and start a conversation with a sixth former about a recent school trip.

 

‘So tell me,’ I heard him say, ‘What DO you lot call me these days? Is it Cliffy, or the Cliffster?’

 

This was such a shockingly schoolboy error I was almost tempted to throw myself in front of him in a heroic gesture, to save him from himself. Unfortunately for his dignity, I was at that moment in the middle of stopping two other pupils from looking up rude words in the dictionary and then repeating them in a sniggering tone to each other (“Archimedean screw!”)  , and that kind of thing is fine in the classroom but not appropriate for open evening I think.

 

The sardonic sixth former gave The Cliffster a slightly wide-eyed and disbelieving look.

 

‘Er no Sir. It’s NEITHER of those….’

 

Poor Cliffy. Luckily he didn’t compound his error by pursuing the matter any further, although I do think I saw him later in his office with the lights turned off with his forehead resting gently on an open volume of Stupid Teacher Mistakes Not to Make.

 

But who am I to judge, because as I was tidying away the dictionaries and shooing away the rude word brigade (“Stud! Muffin!”) I heard myself say in an extremely casual tone, ‘So do I have a nickname?’

 

Sardonic sixth former turned to me with a look of ‘Really? These people are supposed to be teaching us something? REALLY?” and said, “Yeah.  Do you really want to know?’

 

SAVE ME! SOMEONE SAVE ME!

 

‘Yes,’ I laughed nervously. ‘I mean, how bad can it be?’

 

The eyebrows of the Sardonic Sixth Former shot up so far into her hair that they were almost touching her collar.

 

‘Er OK. It’s The Sharer.’

 

I laughed nervously at this. And then later turned it over in my mind. Well it’s not as bad as it could be I guess. On balance. I do talk to my students about all sorts of things, about life, and about adulthood and the vagaries of the world. I do this without compromising for a moment the tight requirements of the National Curriculum, of  course. But for example, in the middle of a scene with Beatrice and Benedict from Much Ado, one of my students yelled out in a tone of some distress LOOK DOES HE LOVE HER OR WHAT?? So we stopped for a moment, just to talk about how you can tell if some loves you. I think that’s a pretty useful thing to talk about, in between the crucial memorisation of some iambic pentameter.

 

In fact I would stick my neck out and go as far as to say that it was pretty much the most useful thing they had learned that day. Because the longer I spend in the education system the less convinced I am that we are preparing our children in any substantially useful way for the adult world.

 

More on this subject tomorrow, when I will also ponder the question of whether I should ask the Sardonic Sixth Former exactly what she meant by her parting shot:

 

‘Well. That’s ONE of them anyway…..’

 

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Nobody’s perfect

At work these last couple of weeks we have been experiencing the self-flagellation ritual of the annual review; that appallingly traumatic half-an-hour when your flaws and inadequacies are dragged out into the light so that your immediate superior can give them a bit of a poke with a sharp stick. And then, while you’re still smarting from that poking of your wasps’-nest of flaws, you collude to set some pointless targets to stick in a cupboard for another twelve months until the whole merry-go-round swings past again.

The 21st century norm is that we are all supposed to strive to get better and better, every day in every way. We are supposed to set ourselves targets and measure our progress against them This is supposed to give us all a sense of achievement and moving forward improving, always improving.

Ha. Haha. Ha ha ha.

Does it? Are you? I think it’s this kind of thinking that leads to an awful lot of grumpiness and general discontent. We’ve all been led to believe that things will get better, that we will have happier, richer, more fulfilled lives than our parents’ generation. And it’s just not true. The truth is, we all have to get used to the idea that our lives are probably going to stay the same at best, but in all likelihood get a fair old bit worse.

And in our personal lives I think the striving for continuous improvement leads to great big chunks of unhappiness and misery. Many of us have been sold the idea of finding total contentment in our marriages. Our partners must ‘make us happy’, must provide all the emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual fulfilment we need – and  if we find ourselves looking to other relationships and friendships for any of this, or if our partner falls short, then there is something wrong in the marriage, we’re told. We should move on, find something better. Someone perfect.

But if the weaknesses of others make us angry and frustrated, then that’s as nothing compared to how our own weaknesses can make us feel.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that there are always about ten times as many people around to point out your faults than to acknowledge your good points. The modern tendency for self-reflection makes this all ten times worse. Surely if we can identify our own flaws, flag them up in one of those quizzes (‘Are you a control freak, or another sort of loony?’) or if we can select the right self help book from Amazon – well, then surely we can just stop behaving in such ridiculous ways? If we can recognise our mistakes, we can stop making them, for once and for all?

Except we know that’s not how human beings work. Once we know our own flaws, it doesn’t really help. In fact it can make it worse. Because recognition isn’t the same as finding a solution. Mostly our faults run so deep that we could no sooner change them than we could change our own heads. Mostly we behave the ways we do because we are programmed, emotionally, in a particular way, and there is no greater hiding to nothing that trying to subject our emotions to logical analysis.

My own flaws are pretty well known to me. If you know me, or even if you’ve been reading this blog, then I bet they’re pretty well known to you too. I am, it’s true, conspicuously untidy. A bit loud, a bit over-enthusiastic and over-emotional and pathologically unable to take anything seriously. I appreciate these things are a bit annoying. Well, more than a bit. It has been mentioned. But, really, what can I do?

Now this piece isn’t intended as an apology for really inexcusably bad behaviour. I am not suggesting that if your particular fault is, say, a tendency to set fire to things, that you should just accept that and move on. And perhaps start saving up for a fancy new sprinkler system. If your faults, whatever they are, spill out and hurt others – well, we all have a responsibility to limit that as much as we can, and apologise unreservedly when we screw up.

But rather than spend our lives in pointless pursuit of meaningless perfection, well, there is another way. We could try and accept that we are all ‘works in progress’. We could try and enjoy the little quirks and differences as much as we can. Find them entertaining and endearing if possible.

And if you can’t quite bring yourself to ‘like’ my flaws, or your own, with a little thumbs up (or two) then at least you could put them in a proper perspective. My house is a terrible tip, I know, but I am a rather genial and welcoming host. It balances out, I think.

We don’t have to be perfect, none of us. And maybe if we all started to just be a bit kinder to each other then we could even be a bit kinder to ourselves. Because here’s the thing: if I like you, I probably like your flaws as part of the package. Like the fact that – just to pluck an example from the air – that you’re so vain that you will check out your reflection in anything, even a spoon, despite the fact the concave surface is really far too distorted to be helpful.  No, you don’t have to be embarrassed because, if I like you already, then that story is kind of adorable. Really.

And I’ve put a little pocket mirror on your Christmas list.

As a general rule, once I know what your faults are, that means you have opened up to me and I have seen beneath the surface and I almost certainly like you more than I did before, back when you kept your annoying habits under wraps and pretended to be perfect. Once I know you’re riddled with flaws then I can show you mine. And we can start relating to each other as human beings rather than as facades, or projections.

And wouldn’t that be kind of, well, perfect?

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Too schooled for cool

A little while ago my friend was moaning on about how difficult it was to stop smoking and how lucky I was that I had never started. ‘Anyway, even if I do manage to stop, I’ll just find something to replace it. I have an addictive personality!’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘that’s probably why I never started, because I don’t have an addictive personality.’

She gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘You didn’t start smoking because you just aren’t cool enough.’

Well after I had flushed her fags down the loo in retaliation at this cutting remark, I did start to think that she may have a point.

When do most people start smoking? In their teens and twenties. And why? Because their friends do. Because it makes the cool kids look even cooler, and it makes the kids who are DESPERATE to be cool, look just a BIT cooler. When you’re hanging out in the park showing off your rad threads, the casually cradled fag* is the perfect accessory. In fact the only mystery is why don’t more people do it.

Well yeah, when you put it like that, my failure to pick the habit up makes perfect sense. I have never been cool.  I would barely have been able to recognise the school cool crowd in a police line up. I had no cool friends then; I still don’t. (Sorry guys, but you know it’s true.) They didn’t smoke, so I didn’t smoke. It would not really have occurred to us. The places we hung out – the library, the labs, each other’s houses – well, a dangling Gauloise would have looked somewhat amiss. The nearest I got to addictive habits in the 80s was fighting over the controller for the Atari.

The idea of being ‘cool’ is a very persistent one, and a word that’s survived, undated and unrumpled, from the 1950s to today. It’s a retro word, but the quality it describes is still desirably vintage. Compare with the other ‘en vogue’ word of my generation – trendy. Describe an outfit worn by a 2011 teenager as ‘trendy’ and they would probably, in their hyperbolic teenage way, LITERALLY DIE of horror. In fact I might just try it tomorrow, as an experiment.

Of course the cultural norm about being cool is that it is a highly desirable quality. We ALL want to be cool, don’t we? That the world is made up of a hierarchy – the cool set are at the top, looking studiously casual and indifferent and flicking ther fag ash on the rest of us, who are staring up at them admiringly. Wishing we could look like them, or be them.

Yeah, sorry cool guys. Sorry to break this to you, but it’s just not true.

I can’t claim to speak for every one of the great woolly-jumpered masses of the uncool. Some of the uncool might well be frantically nicking Lambert and Butlers from their mum’s handbag and trying to inhale without vomiting. Well, we all need an ambition in life and if yours is to blow the perfect smoke ring, best of luck.

But most of us, the massive rump of the uncool, well we aren’t really aren’t losing sleep about our lack of cool. We don’t really look admiringly and enviously and longingly at the cool, because we don’t really look at them at all. We are looking at our own stuff. Stuff that uncool people like. We’re practising the piano, or maybe even some sort of terminally uncool brass instrument. We’re reading books in which orcs get slaughtered by heroes with massive swords, and trying not to dwell too much on the obvious symbolism. We’re fiddling around with interesting software, or reading about quantum field theory, or the history of the Co-operative Movement, or watching Dr Who, or mastering a really tricky crochet stitch.

This week I went through a sticky legal problem with a teenager who is thinking about applying to study law. It took about 45 minutes to work through all the little nuggetty details. At the end of it she leaned back in her chair and gave a delighted laugh. ‘That was FUN!’ she said, but then a cloud passed over her brow and she leaned forward again. ‘Is that SAD?’

No, legal-nerd-in-waiting. It’s not sad. It’s not sad to be passionate about something. To enjoy something. To get excited and interested. Of course, being *too* interested in something is the absolute epitome of uncool. Cool is about studied indifference – and there is, in my opinion, absolutely nothing more dull in this world than indifference. And no one more interesting that someone who is passionate about something.

Which brings me onto Mr Steve Jobs. Mr Jobs was the geek that inherited the earth, not by being good-looking or slick but by working very hard, being very smart and – most of all, in the words of perhaps his most famous speech – not being afraid to stay hungry and foolish. So RIP Mr Jobs, thanks for all my lovely Mac stuff. No I mean, really: thanks. You were a great role model for the uncool.

Because if you stop worrying about looking all cool and indifferent, and wear your passion and hunger on your sleeve, and don’t care about looking foolish – you can even change the world.

And that’s what I call cool.

 

* the only time I was tempted to start smoking was when I was in the US, so I could legitimately ask if I could bum a fag.

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It’s oh so quiet

I am currently experiencing a bit of a lull.

You know, a lull. When you have been busy for weeks and weeks, dashing around looking terribly popular and busy with a full diary and an empty fridge and then

… nothing.

Suddenly, you are invited nowhere. The phone stops ringing and buzzing. No matter how many times you refresh Facebook, no new invitation appears.

I. Do. Not. Like. It.

I am a girl who likes a bit of action. A bit of to and fro. A LOT of coming and going. The old cut and thrust. Well as much cut and thrust as you can get in the countryside – sort of more, dab and poke I guess.

So this lull – well, I don’t mind telling you, it’s killing me.

A lull: it’s like ‘dull’, only a noun. You see, that’s how bored I am. I am making bad puns and one should never be bored enough to make puns, not even in the country.

When you are busy, you see, you have plenty of excuses for not doing the tedious chores you don’t really want to do. But when your calendar clears, there are no more excuses for not doing the washing up. Dealing with that big pile of unanswered post. Maybe even writing those thank you letter for last year’s Christmas presents? It’s never too late to say thank you, after all.

This weekend, the lull was so very very dull that I was even reduced to tidying up the kitchen. By tidying up I mean, of course, picking up all the stuff hanging about in the kitchen and shoving it into already-full-to-bursting cupboards, before shutting the door very quickly and firmly. And, when all the cupboards were full, sticking the rest under the bed and behind the sofa. This is an unconventional method, I would admit, but one that has worked well for me for many years, or at least until the Enviromental Health caught up with me that time.

And then when you have faced the sheer horror of the realisation that you have left undone those things which you ought to have done, and there is no health in you….

Well, then comes the guilt. The sudden remembrance of dear friends, horribly neglected. Old Ladies unvisited. Somewhat regrettable conversations that ended abruptly some months ago and never quite resolved. The half-read book-group book by the bed (and book-group looming, always looming).

(The other day I had to come out of my local branch of Waterstones because I was starting to hyperventilate at the sight of all the books I had not read, and surely would NEVER have time to read BEFORE I DIED. BOOK PANIC – a new low even for me.)

The truth is, my life is just a series of dangling threads and frayed edges, like a badly cast off piece of knitting.

I am very much hoping that I am describing a common, if not quite a universal experience here. I am hoping that you all have a to-do list that run into several volumes. Post it notes, curling at the edges, scattered about the house, palely trying to catch your attention with their key bits of information.

I am hoping that it isn’t just me that can’t quite keep up with the pace of modern life.  Not just me that lives life with a permanent, nagging feeling that she has just missed something VERY crucial. That a deadline has just whizzed past with Terrible Consequences. That Important Emails are sitting in that overloaded inbox, and I can’t see them because some days even thinking about my spilling email inbox(es) can result in the need for a lie down under a blanket in a dark room for a bit.

So, usually, rather than try and keep up with all the things I OUGHT to do, I distract myself. I do the bare minimum to keep my head above water, then reward myself by lying down somewhere I can’t see the mess and reading for a couple of hours. (Not the book-group book, of course. Another one entirely.)

But LO! I have a new tactic, for getting through this lull and avoiding the Leaning Tower of Post-and-Ironing until Something Interesting Happens to distract me.

Yes! I can blog! The fact that nothing at all is happening, that my life is so crashingly dull that I even read the parish magazine today – well that won’t deter me. Not when there’s a real risk that I might otherwise have to do some housework.

So, this is an apology I guess, to all those who have to put up with my twitchiness until this Lull passes. For all those who are still waiting for those thank you letters (they’re in the post and honestly, it’s a lovely present! I may be slack, but I am grateful, really.)

Seriously, find me something to do.

And make it soon. Because right now I am contemplating joining the Flower Rota. And we all know that won’t end well.

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Bad at games

Earlier this week I blogged about all the positive things about getting older, but omitted one crucial benefit to being 42 – when you’re 42 no one ever ever makes you play hockey in the rain. Or netball. Or makes you run for miles across the frozen countryside until you think you might throw up. Or die.

And by ‘no one’ I mean PE teachers. TicTacGirl DID try and make me join in a football match a little while ago, but I was able to ignore her and loll around on the grass reading the Guardian, which is a sport I can REALLY throw my heart and soul into. She did try and make me feel bad about my refusal to join in this game later by writing a very cutting poem about it but it takes more that a few rhyming couplets to get me to play in goal.

There are a lot of wild claims made about team sports and the positive effects that they have on Character and Fitness. I don’t think that many of these claims really stand up to close scrutiny. For example, the idea that team games are the key to reducing obesity and increasing fitness. To encouraging young people and adults to be more active.

Hmmm. Really? If anything, the way PE was taught at school was – to a very great extent – responsible for a very strong aversion to exercise that lasted for many many years after school had ended.

I hated school PE. Truly loathed it. And I know I am not alone. I was once on a Mumsnet conversation thread, started by a woman who confessed to writing her daughter a note excusing her from Cross Country because of a non-existent injury. Far from receiving the kind of vicious kicking she expected for this act of dishonesty, and for which Mumsnet is famed, countless people weighed in with their support, saying the same thing: school PE was hideous, I had a miserable time and learned that sport isn’t for me.

The key here, I think, is the conflation of team sport, or at least competitive sport, and exercise. If you aren’t talented on the sports field then, to be honest, PE can be a soul-destroying experience. The narrative of being picked last for games – it’s a cliché because it’s true. The horror of that shivers down the decades.

And it isn’t just about the wildly untalented and unfit, and what a miserable time they have. Although they do. I was, in fact, not without a little aptitude in some areas. I was a very strong swimmer for example. I used to love swimming, improving my strength and endurance. I loved swimming for long distances. And so I was looking forward to going to a secondary school with a swimming pool on site – pretty unusual back then.

But all my joy in this was pretty much kicked out of me by the insistence on RACING. No more swimming for fitness and fun – we must race to WIN. And, for most of the hour, sit shivering on the side and watching the long minutes tick by while other people raced each other.

If the purpose of forcing students to do PE is to teach them about how to stay fit, then why is the emphasis so much on winning, on the talented? If it’s really about fitness and participation for all,  then why aren’t there zumba classes, yoga, pilates, Step? Maybe, I don’t know, country dancing, which certainly can build up a sweat?

So what about the notion that all children MUST play team games otherwise they will never learn to be competitive, never get that crucial killer instinct and will never succeed in life?

Well, I am not sure about that one either. Competitive sport is only a viable option for learning the killer instinct if you win, or at least have winning within your sights at some point. If you are untalented, or playing with people more talented than you, the killer instinct can start to wear a little thin after a while.

For some reason, allowing children to suffer humiliating defeat at the hands of the more talented is only considered desirable in PE. Well, if it’s character building to have a little competitiveness in school, then why confine this to sports’ day? Why don’t we have Spelling Day, when all the students have to spell increasingly difficult words in elimination rounds until only the best spellers are left and get a big medal. This obviously has to be in public, perhaps broadcast on big screens so we can celebrate spelling success, and of course have a good hard look at the less talented and their fumbling, humiliating attempts to spell ‘menagerie’.

Then the same for Calculus. Or a bit of descriptive writing? Yeah, let’s see your smudged attempts at algebra, in public. In front of the class, in front of the school. Then have a little tootle of Frere Jacques on your recorder, next to this girl with Grade 7 violin.

It will be Good For You.

In our culture, in our schools, if you’re good at sport we all get to hear about it. Celebrating talent and team work – nothing wrong with that. But if you are a very talented writer, or scientist, or musician, or artist – I would like the opportunity to give you a big round of applause too. And let you have your day of glory, with the medal round your neck, and all of the other people who AREN’T as good as you, and never will be, clapping you.

You think that person, that excellent mathematician for example, won’t want the glory? The applause? S/he’ll be embarrassed by being the best? That’s a cultural assumption you’re making. If that’s the case – if the culture says we can applaud the best footballer and not the best at sums – then it’s the culture needs changing. Both require a combination of talent and hard work; they’re equivalent, so let’s celebrate them in an equivalent way.

And actually, when the circumstances are right, people who are good at things DO like to have them recognised. They are, even the geeky ones, spurred on by a little edgy competition.

This week I took part in a Poetry Slam at school, when some amazingly talented writers read out their work to an audience of other poets and others there just to listen. The atmosphere in that room was incredible – an amazing combination of competitive and supportive. They cared about the words, but they cared about the scores, too. It inspired a level of creativity that was breathtaking, magical.

So, how about we supplement the annual sports day with an annual Poetry Slam? I’ll make the medals and bring the half time oranges. TicTacGirl, you can read that poem about me being lazy and useless at football.

And no, put away that note from your mother. You all have to come, and watch, and applaud.

And, if it rains, at least we can all stay indoors.

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