The Out of Towners

Should have Gone Fishin'

A few weeks ago my husband and I celebrated ten long, I mean, ten happy years of marriage. In honour of this momentous occasion (and given the amounts of folks barely making it through ten months of wedded bliss, I think we’re doing okay) we decided to treat ourselves to a wee city break, sans weans.

We duly set about organising the big event. Rainman had air miles to cash in – he reckoned that we had enough to get to either Paris or Chicago (although I’m pretty sure that one of those places is much closer than the other). We also swithered with having ourselves a wee Hebridean adventure…but No, there was one place – one place that filled me with a kind of longing I haven’t had a long time…LONDON, BABY. And yes, we did have enough air miles to get there (and back) for next to nowt. So, obviously husband was delighted. Free flights booked, Rainman reckoned he could get us a cheeky wee deal at a *nice* hotel – and one that was on the Piccadilly Line[1] so that we could go right there, from Heathrow without having to bother with that old Heathrow express nonsense. No, no, no – we were going to Tube it like real life Londoners do. Job done, we started to pack up our stuff. Obviously I’m taking some artistic licence with actual timelines here. We didn’t just decide to go and pack a case – we have three children to find babysitters for – people had to be cajoled, promises made and bribes accepted, but you don’t really need to hear about the three months of organisation that went into a three day trip.

Our flight to London was fairly uneventful – I’m quite an excited flyer as I don’t get to go to places out with a fifty mile radius of my house all that often, so I tend to get quite giddy at the thought of flying. Actually, the thought of the airport’s WH Smith and duty free is what really makes me giddy, that coupled with a whole hour of relatively uninterrupted reading in the middle of the day…My husband is a very seasoned traveller however, and he finds my constant questioning of airport etiquette and my need to be at the airport a good couple of hours before the flight departs really quite upsetting. So there I was – my London wardrobe all packed (I had to buy new clothes for going to London as I didn’t want to appear like a Hick from Hicksville in my usual dungarees and straw boater combo) – itinerary all planned (The Globe, Madame Tussaud’s, The Comedy Store, Covent Garden, The Tate Modern – all the high spots). And suddenly (well, not suddenly, we were flying from Aberdeen so it was about an hour, an hour and a quarter?) there it was – London; in all her glory. All metropolitan and huge and, well, just like you see on the telly – the Gherkin and the Houses of Parliament. For a Hick from Hicksville, it was all very, very exciting.

Our first stop was to be a trip to the Globe theatre and a visit to to the Tate Modern. Handily enough they’re quite close to each other and, handier still, they were quite close to our hotel. Rainman was delighted – only £2.50 off our Oyster cards! The Globe was splendid. It was “Sam’s Day” when we visited, so there were lots of free events on for visitors (once you had paid to get in, obviously – this is London, baby). The day is held in honour of Sam Wanamaker, the American actor who was inspired to set up the foundation that saw to the rebuilding of the Globe, but sadly died a few years before it actually opened. “Sam’s Day” involved lots of educational tours – that would have made great teaching material, but would have probably bored Rainman to the point of suicide and he had indulged me quite a lot by agreeing to go The Globe in the first place so I thought it best not to push my luck too much.

Our foray to The Globe was to be topped off by a trip to the Tate Modern. I was, I admit, a bit apprehensive. And after a few minutes in the building it became clear that I was right to be apprehensive. In fact, apprehension was quickly replaced by mild panic and fear. Has anyone ever been thrown out of the Tate Modern? Would Rainman be the first? You see, he might not know art – but he knows what he likes and there wasn’t much in the Tate Modern that he took for either art or stuff that he liked. Monet – he liked. Mark Rothko – hmmm, not so much.

Waterlillies – obviously.

Untitled – or leftover paint?

In fact, so enraged was he by the displays and installations on show that he challenged the positioning of the Rothko next to the Monet:

Rainman: Now, that (pointing furiously to the Monet) that is quite clearly quite a nice picture of a pond with lilies on it. That, I understand. That makes sense.

Me: But you have to admit that there is something really pleasing about the juxtaposition of colour in the Rothko (Aye right, more along the lines of – “shut up, shut up – you’re going to get us thrown out for being hicks…”)

Rainman: That… (pointing steadily at the Rothko and refusing to acknowledge the worried stares of real life Londoners and artistic types around us) That…is just leftover paint. Poor bugger probably only finished the first coat and some idiot came in and took it to a gallery before it was even finished.

Me: Let’s just go, people are staring.

Rainman: I want my £3 pound back. (The princely sum donated on entering).

To add insult to injury, he then discovered that whilst we had been inside pondering the wonders of Modern Art, the Red Arrows had been outside giving their annual Queenly flyover.

He’s always wanted to see the Red Arrows.

[1] It may have been the Piccadilly Line – it could have been the bloody Branston Pickle line for all I cared, navigating and map reading are not my strong point.

Two Stars and a Wish

This is just what life is like round ours.

There’s a commonly accepted rule in teaching that you can’t give a pupil negative feedback on their work unless you outweigh the negative with at least a couple of positives. For the most part this is easy enough to do especially in a subject where you have young people sharing with you not just the minutiae of their day, but some fairly momentous and, often tumultuous, events from their lives. Of course, that’s not to say that everything that pupils hand in has the same degree of emotional reflection to it, but by and large teachers are in a pretty privileged position when it comes to the stories and experiences that young people share with them. So this week was a big one for me, because my wee girl (actually the older of my two wee girls) brought home ALL of her P2 work. She’s 6 (and a half – never forget the half) and this is a big deal. We spent a good half hour (okay, it’s not that of a big deal – the “Wizards of Waverly Place” was on and obviously that took precedence) going through her work and looking at all the fantastic bits and bobs that reflect the sum of her school-based learning for the year. Now, Mini-Me is a genius. She has been a genius since the moment she pooped her first poop; cut her first tooth; spoke her first word…clearly, she is to be a future world leader, winner of many a Nobel Prize, do-er of good deeds and I shall live my life vicariously through her and her many successes – like all good parents do.

However, it appears that Mini-Me’s P2 teacher has failed to recognise the genius in her midst and instead saw fit to write the following comment several times: “Good work. Now give me more detail.” “Good work”? “Good work”? That’s not a positive – where is the high praise? The recognition of the talent she has before her? “Now give me more detail”? What does this woman want? For the record, Mini-Me had written about her weekend at Grama’s (yes, that’s not the right spelling but it’s how she spells it so it’s ok by me). And yes, the “story” did consist of two sentences: “I went to Grama’s. We had a sleepover.” But, to be fair, that was pretty much all that happened. We dropped them off just before bed-time; we picked them up in the morning, just after breakfast. So, Hemingway it isn’t - but it’s not bad for a summary of all that happened. More bloody detail indeed…

But here’s where I have to come clean.

I too have asked pupils to “give me more details”.

A colleague and I were discussing this the other day after marking some reflective essays. They were fine, just lacking well, detail…In order to pass, or jump through the hoop of Personal/Reflective writing, the pupils have to emote fully throughout the piece. One of the assessors for the Advanced Higher English course said that he felt the kindest thing that he could have done for his grandson, who had just started out on his AH course was for him to die (the assessor, not the grandson). At least it would give the boy a topic for his Advanced Higher writing. Reflecting on your past is not something that most adults are particularly good at and yet we expect our youngsters to not only do it, but also write about it – IN DETAIL?

Have we always needed to know every emotion that everyone else felt? My bezzie mate has a particular issue with this. She, as she would love to tell you (but as she is ideologically opposed to Blogging, Facebook, Twitter or, heaven forfend, Bebo, and therefore can’t) is fed up hearing about everybody else’s bloody emotions. Now this is not to suggest she is emotionally barren. Far from it. In the weeks following the birth of my middle child (Poorella – named that because she is the middle child and therefore never gets anything new) my bezzie answered the phone to hear only me sobbing. Not only did she know that it was me, despite my ability to make coherent sound, she also left work, stopped for fish and chips (which is the real cure for PND) and stayed until I was able to string together enough of a sentence to assure her that I wasn’t a danger to myself or others. So, not emotionally barren at all – just utterly fed up of feeling that she can’t escape the constant barrage of hearing about other people’s emotions or their reflections on their emotions. In fact, she was even opposed to me blogging lest I fall into a trap of thinking that my emotional ramblings were of any interest to anyone else…I assured her that I knew they wouldn’t be and we swept it under the carpet as we do all other potential areas for confrontation.

And I do wonder; if we get so used to hearing or reading about everything that happens in people’s lives and how it affects them will we get to a point where we reach an emotional overload – is there a capacity of emotion that we can reach? Are we going to end up emotionally desensitised by the volume of emotive ramblings out there for us? Or is it and I’m putting my money on this one, that we are capable of handling much more emotional baggage than we give ourselves credit for – it’s just a matter of being open enough to actually listen to what people are saying?

Is it really such a bad thing to always be looking for more detail?

Keeping it For Best and Other Reasons Why I Don't Write

A very dear friend of mine decided to challenge my list of reasons why, despite his frequent requests, I have never shown him anything that I have written. There are many reasons why I can’t show him anything, but it all boils down to one simple fact: I am afraid. Now, I’m not a Jessie – I’ve had three kids with only minimal pain relief (for the last two anyway, for the first way I was smacked out my skull on pethidine) and I even beat up the school bully in P6 when he had a go at my wee brother. But I do have an innate fear of writing something down and having either a person, or several people decry it as “utter shite”. So, I thought what better way to get out of his “You have to write the best thing that you’ve ever written in one week” challenge than to produce a list of reasons why I can’t.

1. Keeping it for Good:
I buy notepads. Since I first started getting pocket money I’ve been obsessed with buying stationery. Looking through the Whitemyres catalogue at work is akin to a spiritual experience for me. Seriously, I have the door closed and I commune with the masses of paperclips and staplers on offer. Paperchase is my Nirvana. But I have a problem with the notepads that I purchase. The more elaborate the notepad, and I have some seriously fabulous notepads hidden around my house, the less inclined I am to write in it. I prefer to keep the really nice ones “for good”. So much in the same way as when you were wee and your mum bought you a puffball skirt and diamonte top from Littlewoods in July for the school Christmas party, and you don’t try it on again until the morning of the party until to discover that you’ve outgrown the glory that was the nylon puffball extravaganza I buy notepads – hide them around the house so the kids won’t find them – then find them, realise I’ve since bought another couple of notepads and use my previous treasures for such wonderful bon mots as shopping lists, things to do lists and, horror of horrors, lists of calories consumed that day. That was until some lovely people I know bought me a notepad that I’ve always coveted and made me promise to them that I would actually write in it. Now these are people that I hope to inspire with the same love of reading and writing that I have always known, so I am in slowly being sucked into a vortex of enforced writing by people I don’t want to let down and then forced to share it…Sweet Jayfus.

2. I Don’t Have Time:
Now this is a genuine problem for anyone who is actually too scared to write and needs a good excuse to back that fear up. I have three young children, a part-time job, a full-time husband, a dog, a house, a garden, friends, books I haven’t read and need to , a new mixer I want to play with, weeds I need to pull out – you know, stuff I need to do. I concede that once the kids are down and the washing is done (which is an excuse I love to give – it is still acceptable amongst my friends to claim that we are busy “doing washing”. Now, last I checked we all have working washing machines so we are literally talking about a chore that takes about three minutes: sort out clothes, chuck in the machine with the detergent and switch it on. As far as I’m aware none of us in the Tri-State area are having to head to the local river with a mangle on our shoulders in order to “do their washing”. ) No, really, like most people I quite enjoy having the evenings to watch telly, surf the t’Internet and oooh, occasional Domestic Goddess alert – bake. Sometimes I even talk to my husband – but not too often as we’ve discovered that the secret to happy marriage is not to indulge in too much of that conversation nonsense. He just gets to thinking that he has opinions and stuff, and no good can come of that, let me tell you. Actually, as I write this we have a few hours of relative peace. Daughters one and two are off out and Number One Son is otherwise engaged. Even the dog is having a petit snoozette. Needless to say, rather than simply relax and enjoy the peace I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to guilt “The Boss”* into helping me to sweep and clean the floors. And when I say “help”, I do mean that he does it. But, it appears that even he is in on the act and I’ve been forced to once again sit and write. Et tu ye Brute, as they say.

3. I Have Nothing to Write About:
I lead a very normal life. I wouldn’t make a good candidate for Wife Swap. I’m not mental cleaning up woman (despite my earlier attempts to appear like a good housewifely type) and I’m not mentally untidy (or a “mink” as the local vernacular would have it). We have nice friends and family. We’re not the bloody Waltons – we have our fair share of dischord and dysfunction, but it’s all fairly civilised and everyone tends to get along. Rainman does have his foibles – loading the dishwasher is a personal favourite, especially when someone else loads the dishwasher. Our friends don’t load the dishwasher in our house anymore and he takes occasional offence at this “oversight”. Grumblings of “they could at least help to tidy up after they’ve eaten all our bloody food” are not uncommon. In fact, I have them all warned that when they do load it up he gets so frustrated by their “inefficient use of maximum dishwashing space” that he will, and has, waited until the leave, empty the dishwasher, reload it, and then call me through to marvel at how few dishes there are left to wash. Completely oblivious to the fact that whilst doing this he could have washed and dried the extra five plates that he managed to load and be sitting down with a nice cup of tea. Mentalist.

4. I have a pretty good idea what good writing is:
And I’m just not sure that I can deliver. I studied English at University. I teach English. I read books at a staggeringly expensive rate. And I’m just a bit worried that my inner writer might not be as shit hot as I’d like her to be. Plus, this whole task of “writing the best thing that you’ve ever written in one week” is a bit of killer. I mean, is it – “you have one week to write the best thing that you’ve ever written”? or “write the best thing that you are capable of writing in one week”? Either way, I’m not sure what I’m meant to do after – do I go all Salinger-esque in the aftermath?

On second thoughts, it might get me out of next week’s challenge – which was to write two blogs…

* “The Boss” was the nickname that he wanted to be given. His nickname, for the time being will be “Rainman” on account of what follows.