It’s six o’clock, I wanna go home

This year my heart was properly warmed at the sight of year 11s collecting their exam results, all dressed in their Reading festival gear. God bless them! All excited they were, and so they should be. For most of them this is the most anticipated event on their calendar since last year’s Sheep Fair*. I expect many of them interpreted my indulgent smile as containing a little wistfulness, perhaps even a little envy.

Hmm, not quite.

As I waved those starry-eyed teenagers off, the main emotion I felt was not envy but relief. Relief that I am now far too old for anyone to suggest camping at a festival and all that entails. But not too old that I forgotten what the experience is like.

It goes something like this.

Friday morning

You leave home with a giddy sense of excitement, and yet a niggling feeling that you have forgotten something. Your father slips you a tenner and gives you a quick demonstration of the recovery position using the sleeping dog as a model. Your mother gives you a toilet roll and a bag of apples, and says ‘don’t invite anyone back to your tent that you don’t know, unless they are from a nice school.’ When you slide your rucksack into the boot of your friend’s car, you feel a little lurch of dread – your friend has brought his ukelele.

 

Friday afternoon

You spend hour and a half trying to put up tent in light drizzle. Realise bag of poles is still in shed. Have first argument with companions about who was supposed to bring poles. Attempt to prop up tent using guy ropes and some bandages from the first aid kit and the warning triangle from the car. Have second argument with a member of your party who is doing Physics A Level, during which you accuse him of ‘having learned nothing at all about the laws of physics, otherwise you would know how to make this tent stay up.’ Look enviously at large teepee next door, but comfort yourself with the idea that those teepee losers are a bunch of show offs and not really into the festival experience.

 

Friday evening

You have your third argument of the weekend, about which band you are going to see. You lose this argument (a pattern is emerging in this respect); you end up standing at the back of the field watching some try-hard public school boys pretending to be gangstas, at the same time trying to strain to hear your childhood heroes playing in the other field.

 

Saturday morning

The sun is shining and your mood is improved. You think about having a shower but you can see the snaking queue and make do with a quick squirt of deodorant instead. Your tent now looks like someone has sat on it, but you refuse to be downhearted. It is sunny! You are young! This is going to be great!

 

Saturday afternoon

You spend the day wandering aimlessly from stage to stage, normally just arriving in time for the encore. Every time you sit down, you realise you are sitting on a main thoroughfare as many wellie-clad stinking types almost tread on you. It is a mark of the quality of the musical experience that the highlight of your day is watching Rolf Harris singing Two Little Boys. You start to cry. Your macho friend laughs at you. You have your fourth argument of the festival.

 

Saturday evening

You spend about two hours trying to find your tent in the pitch black, because the only friend with a torch is the one you rowed with earlier about the laws of physics and he has gone back without you. You finally find it, entirely by accident, and slide into your sleeping bag to find that it stinks of mould because you put it away damp after last year’s Reading Festival. You have a little cry, and wish you were at home in your own nice warm bed.

 

Sunday morning

Yesterday’s sunny weather is just a memory. It has been raining all night and you realise your denim shorts and sandals are not hugely practical. You also realise that your hopes of a festival romance are now vanishingly small, as you are both sunburnt and coated in a layer of black mud. You really really want to go home, but somehow your friends seem to be having a good time. You loathe them all. Especially that one who knows how to play about 5 songs on the ukelele. But only the opening bars. And keeps playing them in rotation. You think about donking him on the head with the warning triangle but then the tent would fall down. In fact you can’t remember what you ever saw in any of your friends. What you can remember, though, is what that niggling feeling was. Oh yeah. You hate festivals. You really really cannot stand them.

 

The next year – Easter

While sitting in the park in the spring sunshine, you reminisce with your friends about what an amazing time you had at last year’s festival, and the great performances you saw. And yeah, sure you’re up for it this year. In fact, let’s book it right now! Great idea!

 

So God Bless you, year 11, and I hope you have a lovely time. And, for your information, if you are thinking of starting a festival fire, ukeleles burn really really well.

 

*This is not an exaggeration, by the way. Round here they are genuinely excited about the Sheep Fair. ‘Are you going to the Sheep Fair, miss?’ they ask, breathlessly. ‘It’s really good fun!’ ‘Just wait, children,’ I say. ‘Just wait until you get to the city.’

2011 Reading Festival Environment Agency opens weirs to help drain waterlogged festival campsite

Read all about the Sheep Fair

 

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Don’t make me use my teacher voice

I have been a secondary school teacher now for two years. And if I thought I knew what it was to be universally loathed when I was a lawyer, well, that was just a walk in the park really.

I even used to join in the lawyer-loathing a little bit. Some of the jokes are pretty funny. What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start! Etc etc. Of course much of the humour there is based on the pretty key misunderstanding that lawyers are all overpaid ambulance-chasing shysters with no moral fibre. Of course that’s a massive generalisation. Only 95% are like that. Boom, tish!

No, seriously, most lawyers are certainly no more overpaid or amoral than most professionals in my experience. But being a lawyer did at least attract a certain amount of status and (somewhat grudging) respect. Teaching attracts neither. Like Millwall supporters, no-one likes us. Unlike Millwall supporters, we do care. A little bit.

The problem is this: those who criticise lawyers are pretty much just thrashing about in the dark. Most people have only the vaguest idea what lawyers do (including most lawyers, to be honest). But anyone who’s ever been to school, and particularly anyone who has or has had a child in school (i.e. everyone) thinks that they are qualified to comment on the job teachers do.

If you want to know what the general public REALLY thinks about teachers, especially parents, then a good place to start is Mumsnet. I know I’m always going on about Mumsnet, but I honestly think a few hours on Mumsnet is, in terms of insight, roughly equivalent to about six years of real life. The online environment encourages a certain brutal honesty. People say stuff on there that they would never ever say if they were face to face with you. They lose their inhibitions. It can be extremely enlightening. Sometimes the level of honesty can be invigorating and helpful. Should I wear cropped trousers? No, they will make your bum look enormous. Sometimes it can all end in tears, particularly over sensitive subjects like breastfeeding or ‘natural’ birth.

But every few days, more or less, there is a discussion that starts something like this: ‘My child’s teacher made a spelling mistake on the school report/ shouted at my son / was a bit crotchety this morning. Shall I go into school and bop her on the nose, or am I overreacting?’ The responses to these threads are more or less predictable; it goes like this:

Yes, go and bop her on the nose. Teachers are very very stupid. My son’s teacher made a mistake last year and therefore all teachers are very very stupid. QED.

No. Don’t bop her on the nose, because all teachers are superhuman and amazing. Children are feral and ungovernable and teachers deserve to be sainted.

OH come on! Everyone KNOWS that all teachers work from 9-3 every day and have 38 weeks holiday and anyway it’s a terrifically easy job and even a trained monkey can do it although a trained monkey could probably spell better!!!!*

And sooner or later someone will say, ‘you know what they say: those who can, do; those who can’t, TEACH!’

But even away from the anonymity of the keyboard, many people feel no inhibitions about making generalised criticisms of teachers to my face, including repeating that wildly irritating ‘those who can…’ cliché.

So, as the school holidays lurch to an end, spare a thought for the poor old teachers. Bak 2 skule, with only the joy of a whole new set of stationery to sustain us.** I’m not suggesting it’s the hardest job in the world, but it can be a bit of a slog. Being a teacher requires a great deal of energy, patience and very high levels of tolerance. Of course there are good teachers and there are bad teachers and everything in between. But the vast majority are professional, doing the best job they can, day after day, often in pretty trying circumstances. If some people are a little quick to put them down, then maybe that says something about the value those people, or – more generally – our culture, places on education, and indeed on children. One thing that I have learned from my fairly short time in the education profession is this – the vast majority of teachers are in the game to do the best possible job for the children.

And, just for the record, it is just as meaningless to say ‘all teachers are lazy’ as it is to say ‘all bakers have chilblains,’ so lay off the generalisations, eh?

It makes you look a bit dim. And maybe it’s time for you, too, to go bak 2 skule.

• for some reason, the most contentious threads are always about spelling. If it’s one thing that unites the disparate forces of Mumsnet, it’s the idea that flogging should be introduced for poor spellers. Death penalty for persistent offenders. That’ll learn ‘em.

** actually, it’s my contention that most teachers are, in fact, only in for the stationery. Most teachers are pretty much obsessed with laminating, and get extremely excited with a wall-stapler in their hands.

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England our England

Next to the beach where we are staying in Wales is a little shop, full of all manner of stuff proclaiming The Joys of Being Welsh. Welsh flags to go on your sandcastles. Beach towels with proud red dragons. Books on how to learn Welsh and Welsh jokes and Welsh recipes and Welsh songs and Welsh poetry.

And in pride of place, right at the front of the shop there is a plaque that reads ‘To be born Welsh is to be born privileged, for it is to have a song in your heart and poetry in your soul.’

Take a minute to imagine a similar shop in England. Lots of items bearing the St George Cross, red roses and busts of Shakespeare. Racks of books to read all about English national pride. Sheet music of nationalistic songs. A big plaque at the front saying ‘Proud to be English – the most privileged nation on Earth’.

Squirming yet?

It’s not difficult to understand our collective discomfort at this idea. However much we may hate it or even rail against it, English pride is often connected in our culture with intolerant nationalism, jingoism and even racism.

So far, so blah. We all know that expressions of national pride are really only socially acceptable when England is competing in some sort of international sporting competition and only then on the understanding that we are going to play very very badly and get knocked out pretty darned quick.

I honestly don’t think that in England we have more or less extreme nationalists than in other countries. I just think that, because the average decent English person is too embarrassed to express any kind of national pride, the very idea of English nationalism gets left, by default, to the extremists. In other words, we let it happen, collectively.

And we all know the reasons why, too. A fair amount of (justified) collective guilt at our recent history, especially the history of the British Empire. But that can’t be the whole answer. We aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, the only nation with a less-than-spotless past. And there are plenty of Empire-building nations, past and present, that can still manage to fly their national flag without blushing or being associated with racism. Possibly there is just something in our national culture that shies away from what we might see as showing off. Especially if it looks like we are celebrating being the oppressors.

It’s hard to be proud, I’ll grant you, when you are portrayed as the oppressors and not the oppressed. Our great heroes, King Arthur and Robin Hood have this in common – they owe their semi-mythical status to their role as symbols of struggle against oppression. The Welsh national story is one of a fight for independence, a struggle for freedom, which is clearly a narrative that is arguably much easier to take pride in.

But I don’t think we should leave the English Defence League in possession of the St George’s flag. I’d like it back, please, because I think that there are many great and positive things about our past and our present that we should be able to celebrate, without the kind of embarrassment that we are so horribly allergic to.

As the plaque in the beach shop suggests, at the centre of Welsh nationalism is a sense of pride in their culture, and nothing could be more justified. Poetry and song and dance are at the heart of what it means to be Welsh. If you have never been to an Eisteddfod, a local one or the national one, then you have missed something exceptional and amazing. All ages, men and women, participating together, making music and bringing their communities together in a common cause.

But if the Welsh have a song in their heart and poetry in their souls well, so have the English, right? Since the beginning of the twentieth century, many dedicated people have been preserving the folk song and dance traditions of this country. And it’s amazing. Go to any folk festival up and down the country all through the year – and there are many many of them to choose from – and see the extraordinary musicianship on display.

If you don’t think that English folk dancing or singing can be energetic, then check out some of the links below. The incredible Time Gentleman Please. The sublime Seth Lakeman. Of course, although there are many wonderfully talented English performers, the English folk tradition isn’t a museum piece.  There is, at he beginning of the 21st century, a wonderful synergy between many of the folk traditions – and musicians – of the countries of the UK and Europe as well as with the rest of the world. Nothing is preserved in aspic.

Neither is the idea of celebrating English folk songs somehow to be construed as excluding other cultures, with no relevance for 21st century life. The folk tradition centres on the experiences of the common people, and those have a remarkable continuity across time and geography: falling in love, losing a loved one, the fight for freedom, jealousy, revenge, grief, sorrow, pain, death.  Someone is always buggering off to war, or running off with another man’s wife. Of course there are also a great number of songs about herring, but I think we will all just have to live with that.

I am not saying that our inhibitions against expressing English national pride can be cured by Morris dancing. I don’t go in for that sort of sweeping statement, and nor will I until I get a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph*. I’m just saying – let’s give it a go. Traditional singing and dancing back on the school curriculum. Encouraged by grants in local communities. A national scheme of competitions like the Eisteddfodds. Subsidised stepping and clog dancing classes. A revival of traditional instruments. And you – yes, you – going and listening to some traditional music or watching it on Youtube and then giving it a go yourself.

It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Then we’ll show the Welsh who’s really got a song in their hearts and poetry in their souls.

 

Time Gentleman Please – maverick English folk

The Demon Barbers

Seth Lakeman

Kate Rusby

*NB am open to offers

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Speed, Speed 2, Charlie, Brown, Peanuts

I have a toothache.

That’s it, really.

I have a toothache. It’s really really bad.

Honestly I’m not exaggerating.

It started, predictably enough, the day before I came away on holiday. Christmas Eve, Good Friday, the day before a week long vacation in the backside-of-nowhere – classic days to develop a painful affliction requiring immediate medical attention.

Unfortunately I was too distracted by the fact that I had lost my sandals (again!) to give the toothache the proper attention it deserved. (This it the third pair of sandals I have lost this year, for the record. How can one woman lose three pairs of sandals in one year? I have absolutely no idea.) I was so distracted, in fact, that I just took a couple of pills and thought, oh well it’s bound to pass. And got in the car and carried on driving west until I ran out of Wales.

So here I am, a ridiculously long way from a dentist, in the company of lots of lively children and cuddling a very big pile of painkillers. My long-suffering family are being as patient as they can be, given that I spend the majority of the day lying on the sofa with a face like a smacked bottom and interspersing a low, persistent moaning with occasional outbursts of ‘I am in PAIN! Don’t you all realise I am in PAIN!!!!!’

Then the pain stops for a bit, and the relief is so great, that I run skipping around the holiday home, laughing hysterically while tweeting birds land on my outstretched fingers. And then I kiss the little birdies on the beak and POW! It’s off again, and I am back on the sofa with the moaning and the writhing in pain.*

I like to think that I had a high tolerance for pain. I pride myself on never taking any painkillers. I used to consider this to be a matter of moral strength on my part. I spurn your Lemsip! I will FIGHT this pain with sheer force of will and steely determination! I am IRON WOMAN!

I realise now, as I’m sure everyone else knew all along, that I have been deluding myself. The reason why I don’t take painkillers is that, well, I don’t really experience pain. I am extremely healthy. This is sheer luck on my part, and good genetics. (It’s definitely not a healthy lifestyle, I’ll tell you that. The only fruit I eat in the average week comes soaked in Pimms, and the last time I had to run for the last train home I had to lie down on the seat until we got to Slough and I still couldn’t get my breath back.) I come from a long line, several lines really, of subsistence peasants. Any feeble genes, any possible weaknesses have long since been bred out.

Apart from the teeth. You don’t die of bad teeth. Although this week, death would be a blessed relief. For the rest of my family, if not for me. As I lie on the sofa, thrashing wildly in pain, and counting the minutes to my next Nurofen hit, I give up thanks that I wasn’t born in previous centuries, when I would have had to deal with toothache with only my inner sense of calm and mental resilience to help me. Yeah, good luck with that, Medieval Me. Of course, Medieval Me would have been long dead by now. Starvation, unmedicated childbirth and/or some sort of pus-ridden plague would have finished her off before she had to worry about bad teeth. The lucky cow.

And the other thing I have learned about myself this week is this: I like drugs. Drugs don’t usually play much of a part in my life. Not too many opportunities for drug-fuelled orgies in The Village. Unless you count camomile tea. The average PTA social doesn’t involve too much in the way of pill-popping. Not that I am complaining about this, in the normal course of things. I am high on life. Fresh air and the smell of manure is enough for me. Ha. If anyone had ever tried to push drugs on me, as per those dire warnings from my childhood (some hope) – I would have known exactly what to say. I saw it all on Grange Hill. No! Just. Say. No.

In the last few days though, since the start of the Terrible Pain, I have started to feel quite differently. If some dealer had turned up in the middle of the Welsh countryside, where even the sheep are bored and I have to drive to the other side of the valley to get one measly bar on my mobile phone – well.

Sorry Zammo. Just. Say. Yes, please.**

But no such luck. I do however have a little tip for you. If you are ever stuck in the middle of nowhere and in need of some mind-altering substances, I would like to recommend a couple of hours of ‘Celebrity’ Big Brother in the company of the phenomenon that is ‘Jedward’.

That really IS trippy, man.

*This part may be a little bit painkiller related. Sorry.

**Don’t worry. This bit is definitely a joke. Really. Don’t worry Zammo, I really WAS paying attention.

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Trout Doubt

I consider myself to be pretty much plugged into the zeitgeist. I am down with the kids. I am a hep and happening cat. I know what’s cool. I am even getting a pretty good idea about how Twitter works, especially now that I have found the # key. Look, there it is.

But there are some things – many things, if I’m honest – that I find completely and utterly inexplicable. For example, Barbra Streisand.

Barbra Streisand is a very beautiful and talented woman. Today I saw the cover of her new album. And she looked completely utterly bizarre. Now why has she spent what is clearly a massive amount of money so that she can stop looking like a very beautiful woman but instead look like a Siamese cat wearing a wig?

Plastic surgery – I just don’t get the point of it. I understand that people might not be altogether thrilled about looking older. My personal solution to this is to 1. stand further away from people (a minimum of six feet should do it) and 2. distract people from the state of my face with a constant stream of mindless optimistic chat like a female George Formby (but more annoying).

But plastic surgery doesn’t make you look younger, as far as I can see. A facelift makes you look WEIRD and a bit pained, like someone is pulling your hair from behind, quite hard. Having stuff put in your lips doesn’t make you look sexy, it makes you look like you’re kissing a window. Or like a wasp has stung you on the lips. (I know this because this happened to GothicDaughter today on the beach, and suddenly she was a dead ringer for Leslie Ash.) And as for those cheek implant things that Madonna sports these days, it looks to me like she’s keeping a couple of macaroons up there in case she gets peckish later, like some publicity-hungry hamster. And I’m pretty sure that’s not the look she’s going for.

And don’t get me started on Russell Brand’s forehead.

But that’s not the only thing I find inexplicable. For example, why does iTunes think ABBA belongs in every single genre of music including ADULT ALTERNATIVE? Alternative to WHAT exactly? And why, if we can put a man on the moon (or at least do a damn fine job of faking it in a quarry in Arizona), can’t we make a toaster toasts on both sides equally without burning it?*

Oh and sitting on the beach today I thought of another: tattoos on your feet. OWOWOWOWOWOW. Why? Why do this? The only reason I can imagine is to give a warning to any potential kidnappers, to demonstrate that you are immune to torture. No amount of pain is going to make you crack, so don’t even bother.

Also, arachnophobia. I know this is all terrifically normal and I try not to snort too much about it, and adopt an appropriately sympathetic expression.  But it’s bonkers, yes? One of my friends, an otherwise seemingly-normal person, phoned me up about ten pm one evening. He told me this sad tale. As he was hurriedly closing his bedroom curtains to hide a spider on the window-sill, another spider had LEAPT on him from the folds of the curtains. He described this incident as ‘the spiders ganging up on him’ and required me to drive an hour down the motorway to clear the room of them, so that he could go to sleep. I will draw a veil over whether I did so** but I did take the time to ask, WHY why would you be scared of something so very very small? I mean if the thing is bothering you so much, just whack it with a newspaper, right? Snakes, scorpions, death, Peter Stringfellow – yes, all of these are legitimately scary. But spiders? The best explanation that he could come up with was ‘they move really fast’, which is surely only a valid explanation if you were running a race against them (the loser of which race must DIE or something), rather than sharing a bedroom with them.

Actually, hold on, there is one more: Why do you always get a toothache the day before going on holiday? Is it a conspiracy? Do my teeth hate me, like the rest of my body? More of this tomorrow, when I get back from the emergency dentist.

Now that really IS something to be scared about.

*I know, you’re going to tell me that I have to buy some swanky model for £100 or something. And I say to you NO, not when I have a grill.

** I didn’t. I told him to get a grip. I am from the school of Tough Love.

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