Tuesday, May 18, 2004
So, to anyone out there still checking in, oops, sorry, guess it's been a while... Life has a funny habit of overtaking at the moment. Well, okay, not "life" exactly, but certainly heavy work crap that keeps wiping the smile right off me boat race. Yikes, that's a mixed metaphor if ever there was one, and one that has left me feeling distinctly queasy...
But, natch, I digress. And what I wanted to talk about was something that not only had me smiling, but had the entire clientele in the garden of the Eight Bells wondering what I was on and whether or not they could get some too, so long and lusty was my laughter.
You see, there we were, me, my best friend from when I was nine, and my cousin from round the corner - oh and a nasty son of a hangover - and somehow, lord only knows how, the conversation turned to porn. Well, actually, I do know how...
You see, I was in the post office that morning, idly waiting twelve hours to get served while a tiny blind old lady tried to explain that modern technological advances in banking were of no help to her whatsoever and asking if they really wanted her to resort to keeping her pension in used fivers under the mattress. Seemed a fair enough question, so I hummed a merry tune, read all the leaflets and birthday cards, and - oh! - before I knew it, found myself staring at the top shelf.
Now come on! I live in Old Town! I'm dead posh, me! So, imagine my shock to find a top shelf running right round the whole newsagents, stuffed full of porn! Magazines, videos, the lot. I cocked my head to one side and started reading the titles - all absolutely fascinating as a source for an A Level English Language research project! "Porno Housewives" was my favourite (linguistically speaking), though "In the office" made me laugh and hope none of the boys I share mine with have such fantasies about our swivel chairs!
And that was it - my little anecdote over a half of shandy and a packet of crisps in the pub on a sunny Saturday lunchtime. End of. Or maybe not, cos in weighs my best friend from when I was nine with the tale of her porn-loving neighbour who regularly offers her husband choice items of televisual entertainment.
"Oh yes", she mutters, "you should see some of that stuff...."
I titter, vaguely imagining "Porno Housewives II", and then in she weighs again.
"Oh yeah, he's really into dwarves..."
And that is me out for the count, in paroxysms of absolutely uncontrollable laughter as I try my very very best to imagine what on earth "Porno Dwarves" is like!! I nearly choke to death trying to ask whether that is dwarf on dwarf action, or dwarf on non-dwarf, and all the time I am desperately well aware that I should not be calling anyone a dwarf in this day and age. But I can't stop, and thinking about Snow White only makes it far far worse...
So that's it. I've been found out. For all my worldly streets of Peckham airs, there really are more things in heaven and earth than I have dreamed of, Horatio, and porno-dwarves is one of them things!
But, natch, I digress. And what I wanted to talk about was something that not only had me smiling, but had the entire clientele in the garden of the Eight Bells wondering what I was on and whether or not they could get some too, so long and lusty was my laughter.
You see, there we were, me, my best friend from when I was nine, and my cousin from round the corner - oh and a nasty son of a hangover - and somehow, lord only knows how, the conversation turned to porn. Well, actually, I do know how...
You see, I was in the post office that morning, idly waiting twelve hours to get served while a tiny blind old lady tried to explain that modern technological advances in banking were of no help to her whatsoever and asking if they really wanted her to resort to keeping her pension in used fivers under the mattress. Seemed a fair enough question, so I hummed a merry tune, read all the leaflets and birthday cards, and - oh! - before I knew it, found myself staring at the top shelf.
Now come on! I live in Old Town! I'm dead posh, me! So, imagine my shock to find a top shelf running right round the whole newsagents, stuffed full of porn! Magazines, videos, the lot. I cocked my head to one side and started reading the titles - all absolutely fascinating as a source for an A Level English Language research project! "Porno Housewives" was my favourite (linguistically speaking), though "In the office" made me laugh and hope none of the boys I share mine with have such fantasies about our swivel chairs!
And that was it - my little anecdote over a half of shandy and a packet of crisps in the pub on a sunny Saturday lunchtime. End of. Or maybe not, cos in weighs my best friend from when I was nine with the tale of her porn-loving neighbour who regularly offers her husband choice items of televisual entertainment.
"Oh yes", she mutters, "you should see some of that stuff...."
I titter, vaguely imagining "Porno Housewives II", and then in she weighs again.
"Oh yeah, he's really into dwarves..."
And that is me out for the count, in paroxysms of absolutely uncontrollable laughter as I try my very very best to imagine what on earth "Porno Dwarves" is like!! I nearly choke to death trying to ask whether that is dwarf on dwarf action, or dwarf on non-dwarf, and all the time I am desperately well aware that I should not be calling anyone a dwarf in this day and age. But I can't stop, and thinking about Snow White only makes it far far worse...
So that's it. I've been found out. For all my worldly streets of Peckham airs, there really are more things in heaven and earth than I have dreamed of, Horatio, and porno-dwarves is one of them things!
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Later with Jools?
So, Teacher's TV, the new digital channel to sit alongside TV Warehouse and God 2 (there's a sequel? no-one told me there was a sequel!), is busy piloting ready to go live in the Autumn. Old news, sure, but I hadn't appreciated its full comedy value until one break time recently.
Our lovely fresh-faced English NQT has observed me a couple of times already this year. We have a nice cup of tea afterwards and I put my head on one side and nod sagely as I ask, "so what did you learn today that you could apply to your own practice?"
"Weeeeeeellllllllll", she says, trying desperately hard to show due respect to her elders. There is a pause and an evil glint in her eye, and then she cannot contain it any longer. She has to laugh. And before I know where I am in this conversation, I'm rolling my eyeballs in disbelief, begging for an explanation of What I've Done This Time. There really is nothing better for your teaching than an NQT!
You see, I'd been at it again. Daytime TV teaching. Yes, I always knew I was a flagrant populist, and, yes, I know in the past I have perhaps tended to rely a little heavily on entertaining my students into reading the book for homework rather than actually doing any work in the classroom. But Daytime TV?
"Yes", she says deadpan, "American DaytimeTV. You've definitely got a streak of Oprah. You're all 'feel the love' and 'reach for the stars'".
My bottom lip wobbles. Isn't this discussion supposed to be going the other way round?...
"But look on the bright side", she says, "you could get a job on Teachers' TV. You'd be fantastic!"
We finish our tea and go about our business, and I forget all about this conversation for a few months - until, that is, she has me videoed teaching. We're sharing an AS English Language class and she's wondering how to tackle language and power in the classroom. Fortunately, Clare Short has very kindly just showed the nation how not to do it, but wouldn't it be jolly if we could compare and contrast with a teacher who does have classroom control?
"Hmmm", I said foolishly, "teachers are not generally keen on being videoed. You can tape me."
Oh how the mighty are fallen. It was a good lesson. A2 English Literature. The structure of Chaucer's General Prologue. With home-made resources and meaningful group work that resulted in some pretty good essays. But watching myself on TV, with Dolby digital surround sound, there was only one thought in my head: "My, what big hands you've got, grandmama!!"
I have lived all these long years without anyone telling me I have the handspan of a concert pianist! And that I am physically incapable of saying anything at all, not "have you got a pen", not "yes you can go to your car to get your book", without waving them wildly like I'm teaching in semaphore. If I didn't know my culturally impoverished genealogy better, I'd swear there was Mediterranean blood in me somewhere....
And I also know about teachers' techniques for getting quiet because it's something that always makes me chuckle quietly in the corner when I'm doing lesson observations. I know that mine is saying "thankyou" in an assertive voice, because I always tell each new class I have that this actually means "shut up immediately and listen to me, it's my turn, I want a go". But I had no idea that I also hold one finger up like a reception class infant desperate for permission to go to the toilet!
As I regaled the staffroom in horror about this experience, my lovely fresh-faced NQT sat quietly looking on.
"Julie", she said in a polite, respectful, composed manner, before a dangerous pause as the morning sun glinted on her evil eye, "can I be your agent?"
"Uh?" And I realise just that tiny fraction too late that I have once more walked straight into it.
"I've got it all worked out! Teachers' TV. You simply have to become a presenter. It's going to be called Later With Jools." (Didn't somebody already take that title?...)
"Daytime TV format with a studio audience. And merchandising for the viewer at home. And everyone in the studio audience will have those foam hands with a big pointy finger that they have at American-style sports events. Whenever you're doing 'feel the love' in the studio they'll wave their crazy hands like they don't care!"
That was it. Howling in the staffroom as all the NQTs I have ever mentored joined in with further ideas for my show.
"Yeah, yeah, and she's gotta do a Blue Peter section on 20 top teaching ideas that involve using velcro".
Okay, so I admit it, I have advocated for the use of velcro in the classroom....
"And a Jackanory bit, where Jools tells one of her completely unbelievable apocryphal stories about teaching that she swears are true".
Okay, okay, so I value a teensy bit of exaggeration as a narrative device. It doesn't make me a bad person, does it?...
If we had a bell, it would eventually have rung and freed me from my torment, but as we haven't I did the only thing that ever works to dampen the hysterical excitement of people who are supposed to be learning something from me: I set those pesky wannabes an essay! Is a teaching style based on British Children's TV from the 1970s better or worse than contemporary American Daytime? Discuss. 1000 words by Monday.
So, that's it. As I stare into the gaping chasm of a Sophie's Choice management restructuring, it's nice to know I have other career options. If the DfES would like to call, I'm available for screen tests and wardrobe consultations on Wednesday afternoons. Now, with me, wave your hands like you just don't care!
So, Teacher's TV, the new digital channel to sit alongside TV Warehouse and God 2 (there's a sequel? no-one told me there was a sequel!), is busy piloting ready to go live in the Autumn. Old news, sure, but I hadn't appreciated its full comedy value until one break time recently.
Our lovely fresh-faced English NQT has observed me a couple of times already this year. We have a nice cup of tea afterwards and I put my head on one side and nod sagely as I ask, "so what did you learn today that you could apply to your own practice?"
"Weeeeeeellllllllll", she says, trying desperately hard to show due respect to her elders. There is a pause and an evil glint in her eye, and then she cannot contain it any longer. She has to laugh. And before I know where I am in this conversation, I'm rolling my eyeballs in disbelief, begging for an explanation of What I've Done This Time. There really is nothing better for your teaching than an NQT!
You see, I'd been at it again. Daytime TV teaching. Yes, I always knew I was a flagrant populist, and, yes, I know in the past I have perhaps tended to rely a little heavily on entertaining my students into reading the book for homework rather than actually doing any work in the classroom. But Daytime TV?
"Yes", she says deadpan, "American DaytimeTV. You've definitely got a streak of Oprah. You're all 'feel the love' and 'reach for the stars'".
My bottom lip wobbles. Isn't this discussion supposed to be going the other way round?...
"But look on the bright side", she says, "you could get a job on Teachers' TV. You'd be fantastic!"
We finish our tea and go about our business, and I forget all about this conversation for a few months - until, that is, she has me videoed teaching. We're sharing an AS English Language class and she's wondering how to tackle language and power in the classroom. Fortunately, Clare Short has very kindly just showed the nation how not to do it, but wouldn't it be jolly if we could compare and contrast with a teacher who does have classroom control?
"Hmmm", I said foolishly, "teachers are not generally keen on being videoed. You can tape me."
Oh how the mighty are fallen. It was a good lesson. A2 English Literature. The structure of Chaucer's General Prologue. With home-made resources and meaningful group work that resulted in some pretty good essays. But watching myself on TV, with Dolby digital surround sound, there was only one thought in my head: "My, what big hands you've got, grandmama!!"
I have lived all these long years without anyone telling me I have the handspan of a concert pianist! And that I am physically incapable of saying anything at all, not "have you got a pen", not "yes you can go to your car to get your book", without waving them wildly like I'm teaching in semaphore. If I didn't know my culturally impoverished genealogy better, I'd swear there was Mediterranean blood in me somewhere....
And I also know about teachers' techniques for getting quiet because it's something that always makes me chuckle quietly in the corner when I'm doing lesson observations. I know that mine is saying "thankyou" in an assertive voice, because I always tell each new class I have that this actually means "shut up immediately and listen to me, it's my turn, I want a go". But I had no idea that I also hold one finger up like a reception class infant desperate for permission to go to the toilet!
As I regaled the staffroom in horror about this experience, my lovely fresh-faced NQT sat quietly looking on.
"Julie", she said in a polite, respectful, composed manner, before a dangerous pause as the morning sun glinted on her evil eye, "can I be your agent?"
"Uh?" And I realise just that tiny fraction too late that I have once more walked straight into it.
"I've got it all worked out! Teachers' TV. You simply have to become a presenter. It's going to be called Later With Jools." (Didn't somebody already take that title?...)
"Daytime TV format with a studio audience. And merchandising for the viewer at home. And everyone in the studio audience will have those foam hands with a big pointy finger that they have at American-style sports events. Whenever you're doing 'feel the love' in the studio they'll wave their crazy hands like they don't care!"
That was it. Howling in the staffroom as all the NQTs I have ever mentored joined in with further ideas for my show.
"Yeah, yeah, and she's gotta do a Blue Peter section on 20 top teaching ideas that involve using velcro".
Okay, so I admit it, I have advocated for the use of velcro in the classroom....
"And a Jackanory bit, where Jools tells one of her completely unbelievable apocryphal stories about teaching that she swears are true".
Okay, okay, so I value a teensy bit of exaggeration as a narrative device. It doesn't make me a bad person, does it?...
If we had a bell, it would eventually have rung and freed me from my torment, but as we haven't I did the only thing that ever works to dampen the hysterical excitement of people who are supposed to be learning something from me: I set those pesky wannabes an essay! Is a teaching style based on British Children's TV from the 1970s better or worse than contemporary American Daytime? Discuss. 1000 words by Monday.
So, that's it. As I stare into the gaping chasm of a Sophie's Choice management restructuring, it's nice to know I have other career options. If the DfES would like to call, I'm available for screen tests and wardrobe consultations on Wednesday afternoons. Now, with me, wave your hands like you just don't care!
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
Well, that's what I learned many years ago at my grandmother's knee, along with a large number of idiomatic expressions that my students recently delighted in providing well researched linguistic evidence to show were incontrovertible evidence of my rapidly advancing age/senility. So young and so untender...
But I digress already. So, there's me and three guys sharing an office at work. Every Monday morning for the whole of the last academic year, I'm in a 40 minute exclusion zone while they log on and check their updated fantasy football league position. It's all talk of who's sustained a groin injury and which goalie has kept a clean sheet, and whilst I count myself amongst those who can at least attempt an explanation of the offside rule, I'm left guessing that all this talk of groins and clean sheets is not meaning quite the same to my colleagues as it is to me.
I try to take an interest, honest I do, but they're playing a game that I wasn't invited to join and in that situation I have the moral sensibility of a scabby-kneed 5 year old. So, I try teasing these decent, culturally sensitive, liberal minded men about their bare-knuckled competitiveness and their decidedly anoracky ability to evaluate in 37.38 seconds the relative merits of any 4-4-2 combination you throw at them. Impervious to my teasing, I try huffing and harumphing, with a "can't you guys see I'm trying to do some work here?" kind of a strop, but they just laugh at me. They just don't care!
The academic year/football season, it comes and it goes, and before you've had nearly enough quality time with your favourite sunlounger, it's all kicking off again. But this time I took my grandmother's hard-won wisdom and I signed straight up for the Park College Fantasy League of Death II. Did I know anything about football beyond the general principle of kicking a ball into the back of a net? Did I know anything at all about the Premiership? Did I know the first thing about playing fantasy variations upon a general theme? Did I hell?! But oh, I do so love playing games, and I so so love winning them, especially when my three office-buddies laugh long and hard at my appearance on the league table. "Hahaha", they chortled affectionately, "you're a girl and you'll never win!"
So, guess who's been winning all year?! Well, okay, to tell the truth, it's only nearly been me.... I've been top of the table once, been second nearly all year, and have only occasionally slipped outside the top 4. And to my way of thinking, Chelsea/Man United is pretty fine form for a complete novice!
The trouble is that I am now ten times more anoracky than the guys have ever been, and my bare-knuckledness has reached a desperate level. You see, the person who is winning is another woman, a fact I delight in pointing out every Monday morning when the points are updated and she's still there, our very own staffroom Arsenal. But, she's an EX member of staff, and that rankles - she may be a winning woman, but she's not one of ours! I really don't mind telling you that it's been a big test of my moral fibre - do you go for hard-won feminist solidarity, or do you trade it all for staffroom loyalty?
Reader, I traded it. And now I am gambling everything for the win with a high risk strategy. All my slow steady accumulation of points week in week out from the likes of Dodd and Bridge is behind me now, as I play with the cheapest feasible defence in order to afford a gun-toting midfield. And, more importantly, with players that SHE hasn't got. So far? Disastrous!! But it ain't over til the fat lady sings and if nothing else, I shall go down in a blaze of foolish heroism to save my staffroom honour!
Just a shame no-one will know it's a deliberate strategy!...
Well, that's what I learned many years ago at my grandmother's knee, along with a large number of idiomatic expressions that my students recently delighted in providing well researched linguistic evidence to show were incontrovertible evidence of my rapidly advancing age/senility. So young and so untender...
But I digress already. So, there's me and three guys sharing an office at work. Every Monday morning for the whole of the last academic year, I'm in a 40 minute exclusion zone while they log on and check their updated fantasy football league position. It's all talk of who's sustained a groin injury and which goalie has kept a clean sheet, and whilst I count myself amongst those who can at least attempt an explanation of the offside rule, I'm left guessing that all this talk of groins and clean sheets is not meaning quite the same to my colleagues as it is to me.
I try to take an interest, honest I do, but they're playing a game that I wasn't invited to join and in that situation I have the moral sensibility of a scabby-kneed 5 year old. So, I try teasing these decent, culturally sensitive, liberal minded men about their bare-knuckled competitiveness and their decidedly anoracky ability to evaluate in 37.38 seconds the relative merits of any 4-4-2 combination you throw at them. Impervious to my teasing, I try huffing and harumphing, with a "can't you guys see I'm trying to do some work here?" kind of a strop, but they just laugh at me. They just don't care!
The academic year/football season, it comes and it goes, and before you've had nearly enough quality time with your favourite sunlounger, it's all kicking off again. But this time I took my grandmother's hard-won wisdom and I signed straight up for the Park College Fantasy League of Death II. Did I know anything about football beyond the general principle of kicking a ball into the back of a net? Did I know anything at all about the Premiership? Did I know the first thing about playing fantasy variations upon a general theme? Did I hell?! But oh, I do so love playing games, and I so so love winning them, especially when my three office-buddies laugh long and hard at my appearance on the league table. "Hahaha", they chortled affectionately, "you're a girl and you'll never win!"
So, guess who's been winning all year?! Well, okay, to tell the truth, it's only nearly been me.... I've been top of the table once, been second nearly all year, and have only occasionally slipped outside the top 4. And to my way of thinking, Chelsea/Man United is pretty fine form for a complete novice!
The trouble is that I am now ten times more anoracky than the guys have ever been, and my bare-knuckledness has reached a desperate level. You see, the person who is winning is another woman, a fact I delight in pointing out every Monday morning when the points are updated and she's still there, our very own staffroom Arsenal. But, she's an EX member of staff, and that rankles - she may be a winning woman, but she's not one of ours! I really don't mind telling you that it's been a big test of my moral fibre - do you go for hard-won feminist solidarity, or do you trade it all for staffroom loyalty?
Reader, I traded it. And now I am gambling everything for the win with a high risk strategy. All my slow steady accumulation of points week in week out from the likes of Dodd and Bridge is behind me now, as I play with the cheapest feasible defence in order to afford a gun-toting midfield. And, more importantly, with players that SHE hasn't got. So far? Disastrous!! But it ain't over til the fat lady sings and if nothing else, I shall go down in a blaze of foolish heroism to save my staffroom honour!
Just a shame no-one will know it's a deliberate strategy!...
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Who am I?
It's all been a bit long dark night of the soul lately. Well, let's be honest, here, a lot long dark night of the soul... I mean, hell, I've been listening to The Smiths to cheer me up - that, and I went to see Sylvia at the flicks. Trust me, there's something deeply reassuring about watching someone else sticking their head in the gas oven, and once you've spent a couple of hours in a darkened room vicariously experiencing their tormented soul, all you really wanna do is go home and have a nice cup of tea and a jammie dodger. Which is all a damn sight better for you than a Prozac smile.
And I'm fine now, really I am. But confronted by the dark forces of the Evil Empire at work, my painstakingly constructed identity as a talented professional with a glittering career got dusted with one swipe of Darth's light sabre. Then I had a punch-up with my class about the nature of gender identity - if they hadn't insisted that girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, then I really honestly wouldn't have inflicted postmodern theories about identity construction upon any of us. Because as always, I came off far worse from the encounter. One minute, there I was, made of flesh and bones, with a coherent personality based on my life experiences, genetic heritage, astrological composition and temperamental humours, and the next I'm just one big tabula rasa of chosen behaviours. Sure it gives you a blissfully heady rush of free will and endless possibility, but this is followed immediately and inevitably by the stomach churning plummet as you face up to the logical corollary that you and your life are crap because you always make rubbish choices.
And just when I was reeling from all that, gorgeous lovely tattoo-man went and left me. Okay, so on the surface he was just my tennis coach and a sensible rational adult knows that we would all eat our own heads with boredom if life stayed the same, but oh, god, I'm gonna miss him! Yes, there was the weekly shoulder rub, the kiss and the squeeze if I hit the perfect forehand drive down the line after only 27,000,000 attempts. But actually, in addition to sorting out my grip and my footwork, he also made huge inroads on my psychological tactics. He said I was the weirdest person he'd ever coached because every time I stepped on court I behaved mentally as though I'd never hit a ball before - no self-belief, just a sense of always starting right over again from scratch. "Fix that", I laughed long and hard, "and you'll fix my whole life". He taught me shedloads of mental strategies that have improved my game no end, but the job's not bloody well finished, you bastard!!!
So, there I was, one night when functional human beings had long been tucked up in their cosy beds, and I got to thinking that maybe I didn't really exist at all. The amount of physical contact I've had lately with living breathing organic species, I was beginning to wonder whether I was actually living in some Matrix-like cyber-reality in which my bodily form was social etiquette rather than practical necessity. And from there it was but a short stroll down the path to wondering whether I even existed in cyberspace. "Ah, I know", I thought with an Einsteinian flash of insight, "I'll check".
Plumbing the very depths of my despair with a kind of out-of-body objective curiosity, I asked Mr Google if I existed. What an utterly fascinating experience that was, one that I would entirely recommend as an intriguing parlour game for a wet Sunday afternoon...
My first hit tells me I'm a character in someone's novel, a detective specialising in computer crime - how cool am I, eh?! Well, except that a reviewer points out that she wears "control-top panty-hose" which is an item this version of me wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. I have nice wit, though, and am an expert in virtual reality and code breaking. On balance, the panty-hose aside, I like this me.
Hit number 2's good too. I'm one of a group of 1960s radical activists, "smarter, more competent, more ethical, more democratic, more sensitive to important issues, less racist, and better educated than their parents, their university administrators, and their representatives in Washington". Okay, so I'm having a small identity crisis about being American, but as my social network diagram connects me to the unutterably cool Joan Baez, I'm very happy and she can pop round with her guitar any time.
I'm also a talented graphic designer whose "boundless enthusiasm and old-school work ethic constantly astound clients and co-workers". That's nice... Another me is "the type of friend you stay up all night giggling with", which makes me sound like a right twat and not fun at all, though she has "ventured deep into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica" which is mildly redeeming. I'm a civil and commercial litigator with appalling dress sense; I won joint 4th prize for "control of gaits" in some horse riding thing; and I just got elected treasurer of the Arizona Environmental Education Association. All of these mes I can chuckle heartily about.
And these mes help me to define this me, if you know what I mean. That laughter is recognition of the differences between us, things I'm just not and could never be however much my free will decided to try and get me on the back of a horse! And if there are differences then I must logically exist as a separate entity.
Jolly good, that's that sorted then. Well, no, not really, because a number of hits are spookily like this me! Another me and some guy have won a tennis doubles knockout tournament three years on the trot. What have I just spent the last couple of weeks doing but playing with some guy in a tennis doubles knockout tournament?.. Mr Google tells me I'm a "lifetime letterwinner" member of a sports club for my prowess at basketball. This me is also an honorary lifetime member of the Hull University Basketball Club. Is there something in the name?......
And then I found this me in cyberspace. Total surprise. There I was. About hit number 47,000,003. No photo. No career profile. No glowing list of personal qualities and achievements compiled by adoring friends, family or work colleagues. And that's cool, because I'd be mortified if they did. Just my name and some numbers in a table: my ranking of 1679 and my rating of 80 in the Association of British Scrabble Players. I didn't even know I had been ranked or rated, and I have no idea what these rankings and ratings are out of, but there I am. This is me. A fiercely competitive game-player and a lover of obscure words. It's not the identity I imagined, but it's fine. It's one I can live with.
And if ever reason were needed to explain why I've never used illicit drugs, this post is it. If you can get like this on Earl Grey tea, why bother?...
It's all been a bit long dark night of the soul lately. Well, let's be honest, here, a lot long dark night of the soul... I mean, hell, I've been listening to The Smiths to cheer me up - that, and I went to see Sylvia at the flicks. Trust me, there's something deeply reassuring about watching someone else sticking their head in the gas oven, and once you've spent a couple of hours in a darkened room vicariously experiencing their tormented soul, all you really wanna do is go home and have a nice cup of tea and a jammie dodger. Which is all a damn sight better for you than a Prozac smile.
And I'm fine now, really I am. But confronted by the dark forces of the Evil Empire at work, my painstakingly constructed identity as a talented professional with a glittering career got dusted with one swipe of Darth's light sabre. Then I had a punch-up with my class about the nature of gender identity - if they hadn't insisted that girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, then I really honestly wouldn't have inflicted postmodern theories about identity construction upon any of us. Because as always, I came off far worse from the encounter. One minute, there I was, made of flesh and bones, with a coherent personality based on my life experiences, genetic heritage, astrological composition and temperamental humours, and the next I'm just one big tabula rasa of chosen behaviours. Sure it gives you a blissfully heady rush of free will and endless possibility, but this is followed immediately and inevitably by the stomach churning plummet as you face up to the logical corollary that you and your life are crap because you always make rubbish choices.
And just when I was reeling from all that, gorgeous lovely tattoo-man went and left me. Okay, so on the surface he was just my tennis coach and a sensible rational adult knows that we would all eat our own heads with boredom if life stayed the same, but oh, god, I'm gonna miss him! Yes, there was the weekly shoulder rub, the kiss and the squeeze if I hit the perfect forehand drive down the line after only 27,000,000 attempts. But actually, in addition to sorting out my grip and my footwork, he also made huge inroads on my psychological tactics. He said I was the weirdest person he'd ever coached because every time I stepped on court I behaved mentally as though I'd never hit a ball before - no self-belief, just a sense of always starting right over again from scratch. "Fix that", I laughed long and hard, "and you'll fix my whole life". He taught me shedloads of mental strategies that have improved my game no end, but the job's not bloody well finished, you bastard!!!
So, there I was, one night when functional human beings had long been tucked up in their cosy beds, and I got to thinking that maybe I didn't really exist at all. The amount of physical contact I've had lately with living breathing organic species, I was beginning to wonder whether I was actually living in some Matrix-like cyber-reality in which my bodily form was social etiquette rather than practical necessity. And from there it was but a short stroll down the path to wondering whether I even existed in cyberspace. "Ah, I know", I thought with an Einsteinian flash of insight, "I'll check".
Plumbing the very depths of my despair with a kind of out-of-body objective curiosity, I asked Mr Google if I existed. What an utterly fascinating experience that was, one that I would entirely recommend as an intriguing parlour game for a wet Sunday afternoon...
My first hit tells me I'm a character in someone's novel, a detective specialising in computer crime - how cool am I, eh?! Well, except that a reviewer points out that she wears "control-top panty-hose" which is an item this version of me wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. I have nice wit, though, and am an expert in virtual reality and code breaking. On balance, the panty-hose aside, I like this me.
Hit number 2's good too. I'm one of a group of 1960s radical activists, "smarter, more competent, more ethical, more democratic, more sensitive to important issues, less racist, and better educated than their parents, their university administrators, and their representatives in Washington". Okay, so I'm having a small identity crisis about being American, but as my social network diagram connects me to the unutterably cool Joan Baez, I'm very happy and she can pop round with her guitar any time.
I'm also a talented graphic designer whose "boundless enthusiasm and old-school work ethic constantly astound clients and co-workers". That's nice... Another me is "the type of friend you stay up all night giggling with", which makes me sound like a right twat and not fun at all, though she has "ventured deep into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica" which is mildly redeeming. I'm a civil and commercial litigator with appalling dress sense; I won joint 4th prize for "control of gaits" in some horse riding thing; and I just got elected treasurer of the Arizona Environmental Education Association. All of these mes I can chuckle heartily about.
And these mes help me to define this me, if you know what I mean. That laughter is recognition of the differences between us, things I'm just not and could never be however much my free will decided to try and get me on the back of a horse! And if there are differences then I must logically exist as a separate entity.
Jolly good, that's that sorted then. Well, no, not really, because a number of hits are spookily like this me! Another me and some guy have won a tennis doubles knockout tournament three years on the trot. What have I just spent the last couple of weeks doing but playing with some guy in a tennis doubles knockout tournament?.. Mr Google tells me I'm a "lifetime letterwinner" member of a sports club for my prowess at basketball. This me is also an honorary lifetime member of the Hull University Basketball Club. Is there something in the name?......
And then I found this me in cyberspace. Total surprise. There I was. About hit number 47,000,003. No photo. No career profile. No glowing list of personal qualities and achievements compiled by adoring friends, family or work colleagues. And that's cool, because I'd be mortified if they did. Just my name and some numbers in a table: my ranking of 1679 and my rating of 80 in the Association of British Scrabble Players. I didn't even know I had been ranked or rated, and I have no idea what these rankings and ratings are out of, but there I am. This is me. A fiercely competitive game-player and a lover of obscure words. It's not the identity I imagined, but it's fine. It's one I can live with.
And if ever reason were needed to explain why I've never used illicit drugs, this post is it. If you can get like this on Earl Grey tea, why bother?...
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Festival flunkeys
Okay, I'm just gonna come right out and say it how it is: the Brighton Festival is a load of toss.
I've made a similar complaint for some years now, but by scouring the programme twelve times with a fine tooth-comb, I've always managed to find one event to go to. It is not that I am a neanderthal with no aesthetic judgement. On the contrary, I am eclectic in my musical taste, literary by education and profession, and a passionate advocate of the value of the arts to the individual and society. I love more or less all forms of live entertainment, and most of all, I have been out the grand total of twice in the last three months and could do with a bloody decent night out, thank you very much!
But this year, the expat North London mafia luvvies who seem to run the town have produced a programme that defies belief. There is nothing - I repeat NOTHING - that I will attend. It takes all the problems with the past few years' programmes and magnifies them. The largest of these is the kind of stick-up-its-arse political correctness that makes the activities of Lambeth Council in the 1980s look tame.
At least Lambeth Council had the guts to slap a huge dayglo sticker on everything saying, "hey, look what we're doing. This is about what we think will make the world a better place". They gave money to minority groups of all sorts, and yes, quite a bit of it was barking mad, but it was an act of political faith - an idealistic attempt to give some kind of cultural power to people who didn't have any of it.
So what about the Brighton Festival, I hear you ask. No blind Jewish lesbians being promoted here, because this is about "Real Art" and "Leading Innovators", but you certainly don't stand much chance of getting your brilliant new play into the main programme unless it is "international". The Seven Dials fritterati are already squeezing into their frocks, crooning into teensy mobiles, "Dahling, no can do - off to see some divine little Chinese piece with those cutesy Russian subtitles. Can't understand a bloody thing but everyone's mad for it!"
Read on in the programme and all you see is "Diversity" writ large. I'm a great big cheering fan of diversity as a personal and political principle, but this makes me want to gag. It's like one of those oh-so-not-very-funny-at-all t-shirts young travellers wear with all the countries listed on the back and ticked off. It squeaks, "Oooh, oooh, someone from Zimbabwe, get them in". The programme has no unifying soul, nothing to make it a process of understanding rather than a bought-the-t-shirt tick-list.
But what about the Festival's commitment to Family and Cum-yoon-ity, I hear you ask? Bollocks is what I say, and bollocks is what I shall say again. Yep, lucky ol' Jemima and James get to see the Lyric's production of Oliver Twist, and jolly good luck to 'em, though it'll never beat the book I'm afraid, kids... What about Kayleigh and Kyle on Whitehawk? Well, at twenty one quid a ticket, I'm guessing they're not getting a look-in. But, hey, that's okay, because the Festival organisers are lovely right-on people and they're taking the festival to Whitehawk. Hurrah!! A gutsy streetwise production of Romeo and Juliet for all the kids doing it for Key Stage 3? A feisty urban music festival? A great big show for all the family? Nah, they get papier mache figures in a pseudo-carnival, cos that's what poor illiterate people the world over like, right? And don't criticise because we've got Cum-yoon-ity groups involved, right? Well, here's a radical idea, how about putting on shows that people actually want to see at a price they can afford, instead of the pile of pretentious shite the fritterati can afford to piss off back to London and watch anyway.
Ever a constructive critic, I don't, however, simply write to damn the fact that it'll be another three months before I get a decent night out. No, in the spirit of selfless community service, I have put together for the panel's consideration a Fantasy Festival programme. No tickets over ten quid. If they can do it at the National, it can be done here.
Dance
I'm like Bart Simpson telling Mel Gibson how to make a decent movie here - I don't know what you call it, but I definitely want to see some action. I don't wanna go on a "dreamy journey to a different state of mind" - I want big percussion, big music, acrobatics, and blokes in those leggings male gymnasts wear.
Theatre
The Al-Hamlet play just to show that I'm not prejudiced at all about subtitles. And a thumping good production of Hamlet alongside it, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and a newly commissioned play based on Margaret Atwood's retelling from Gertrude's point of view. All with really cool actors in.
International workshops
Fuck-off with your erotic glove removal workshops for professionals - spend the money on real people. I'm thinking "Rock School" - for kids, for hormonal teenagers, one for dads, and definitely one for Suzi Quattro wannabe mums. As Jack Black so rightly says, it's about sticking it to the man.
Classical
All right, you can have some of that and I'll let you choose, but 3 gigs tops, cos I'm spending the money on real music.
New Music
Just listen to yerselves, will ya? And then try walking into a pub and saying "a Taiwanese village meets a classical aesthetic; contemporary composition embraces installation art; and ensemble innovation encounters free jazz invention"! You're a walking stand-up comedy routine! And you're all fired. You don't mind, do you?... Think of it as liberation of your creativity...
Lunchtime
Lunchtime? Haven't you sodding people got jobs to go to? How you can even think of putting Jolie Holland anywhere other than top of a damn fine bill of Americana, for a festival-stopping show of real talent, I will never know. She's playing the Dome, in the evening, with Laura Cantrell, and The Mickeys. In fact, give them a prime-time gig each and I'll go to the lot.
Exhibitions
Here come the jokes, be warned, comparing this lot to watching paint dry. I want to see really cool portrait photography or recent newsjournalism - with hands on digital workshops for people who want to get a go with state of the art kit; I want to see that exhibition they did at the National a few years ago for kids, with Quentin Blake drawings on the walls; and I wanna see album covers, only really massive and with listening posts and sofas next to them.
Music
Okay, so we've already got Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, and the Mickeys, and that's a fine start. You can keep the Leonard Cohen thing in. Then I want a Johnny Cash tribute night; and a series of 'illustrated' lectures on specific themes in the history of popular music, but not academic at all and with albums and a live 'studio band' band playing examples; and Pop Idol in all the schools and colleges with a grand finale at the Brighton Centre. And street karaoke.
Books
Almost all of this is nothing more than mutual masturbation, as pleasurable as that may be for the participants. However, Rageh Omaar can come and do whatever he wants; Mark Haddon's in; and William Dalrymple gets moved up to a prime time slot and dinner at my place. I also want to see Christopher Hampton's play based on White Moghuls premiered at the Festival. Lynne Truss can come as long as she teaches punctuation workshops to frustrated adults rather than entertaining the fritterati with her "witty howlers" at other people's less well-educated expense. The rest can stay at home, while we hold a real fuck-off brilliant conference of English teachers and A-list writers. Why? Because English teachers are Brighton residents too and why should they always have to shell out their own cash going to these events, when they are really essential staff training in the creative inspiration department that Ofsted are so keen to see. And I want street poetry Olympics.
Family Friendly and Outdoor Events
Ceilidh - yawn, yawn, yawn... Let's have a massive line dancing thing for families - like all the way down the seafront! And some more free film screenings on the beach of family classics. And fireworks with a couple of rock bands playing along really loudly. And instead of just having loads of jugglers wandering round the streets, let's round 'em all up and have a massive circus skills tournament with the audience voting 'em off when they drop their flaming firebrands or fall off the trapeze. And how about a Gladiators' show in a big top with chariot racing and stuff? That'd be really cool.
But I do like the cover of the 2004 Festival programme and I look forward to organising the inaugural International Powerball tournament just as soon as I'm done with all that Arts stuff.
Okay, I'm just gonna come right out and say it how it is: the Brighton Festival is a load of toss.
I've made a similar complaint for some years now, but by scouring the programme twelve times with a fine tooth-comb, I've always managed to find one event to go to. It is not that I am a neanderthal with no aesthetic judgement. On the contrary, I am eclectic in my musical taste, literary by education and profession, and a passionate advocate of the value of the arts to the individual and society. I love more or less all forms of live entertainment, and most of all, I have been out the grand total of twice in the last three months and could do with a bloody decent night out, thank you very much!
But this year, the expat North London mafia luvvies who seem to run the town have produced a programme that defies belief. There is nothing - I repeat NOTHING - that I will attend. It takes all the problems with the past few years' programmes and magnifies them. The largest of these is the kind of stick-up-its-arse political correctness that makes the activities of Lambeth Council in the 1980s look tame.
At least Lambeth Council had the guts to slap a huge dayglo sticker on everything saying, "hey, look what we're doing. This is about what we think will make the world a better place". They gave money to minority groups of all sorts, and yes, quite a bit of it was barking mad, but it was an act of political faith - an idealistic attempt to give some kind of cultural power to people who didn't have any of it.
So what about the Brighton Festival, I hear you ask. No blind Jewish lesbians being promoted here, because this is about "Real Art" and "Leading Innovators", but you certainly don't stand much chance of getting your brilliant new play into the main programme unless it is "international". The Seven Dials fritterati are already squeezing into their frocks, crooning into teensy mobiles, "Dahling, no can do - off to see some divine little Chinese piece with those cutesy Russian subtitles. Can't understand a bloody thing but everyone's mad for it!"
Read on in the programme and all you see is "Diversity" writ large. I'm a great big cheering fan of diversity as a personal and political principle, but this makes me want to gag. It's like one of those oh-so-not-very-funny-at-all t-shirts young travellers wear with all the countries listed on the back and ticked off. It squeaks, "Oooh, oooh, someone from Zimbabwe, get them in". The programme has no unifying soul, nothing to make it a process of understanding rather than a bought-the-t-shirt tick-list.
But what about the Festival's commitment to Family and Cum-yoon-ity, I hear you ask? Bollocks is what I say, and bollocks is what I shall say again. Yep, lucky ol' Jemima and James get to see the Lyric's production of Oliver Twist, and jolly good luck to 'em, though it'll never beat the book I'm afraid, kids... What about Kayleigh and Kyle on Whitehawk? Well, at twenty one quid a ticket, I'm guessing they're not getting a look-in. But, hey, that's okay, because the Festival organisers are lovely right-on people and they're taking the festival to Whitehawk. Hurrah!! A gutsy streetwise production of Romeo and Juliet for all the kids doing it for Key Stage 3? A feisty urban music festival? A great big show for all the family? Nah, they get papier mache figures in a pseudo-carnival, cos that's what poor illiterate people the world over like, right? And don't criticise because we've got Cum-yoon-ity groups involved, right? Well, here's a radical idea, how about putting on shows that people actually want to see at a price they can afford, instead of the pile of pretentious shite the fritterati can afford to piss off back to London and watch anyway.
Ever a constructive critic, I don't, however, simply write to damn the fact that it'll be another three months before I get a decent night out. No, in the spirit of selfless community service, I have put together for the panel's consideration a Fantasy Festival programme. No tickets over ten quid. If they can do it at the National, it can be done here.
Dance
I'm like Bart Simpson telling Mel Gibson how to make a decent movie here - I don't know what you call it, but I definitely want to see some action. I don't wanna go on a "dreamy journey to a different state of mind" - I want big percussion, big music, acrobatics, and blokes in those leggings male gymnasts wear.
Theatre
The Al-Hamlet play just to show that I'm not prejudiced at all about subtitles. And a thumping good production of Hamlet alongside it, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and a newly commissioned play based on Margaret Atwood's retelling from Gertrude's point of view. All with really cool actors in.
International workshops
Fuck-off with your erotic glove removal workshops for professionals - spend the money on real people. I'm thinking "Rock School" - for kids, for hormonal teenagers, one for dads, and definitely one for Suzi Quattro wannabe mums. As Jack Black so rightly says, it's about sticking it to the man.
Classical
All right, you can have some of that and I'll let you choose, but 3 gigs tops, cos I'm spending the money on real music.
New Music
Just listen to yerselves, will ya? And then try walking into a pub and saying "a Taiwanese village meets a classical aesthetic; contemporary composition embraces installation art; and ensemble innovation encounters free jazz invention"! You're a walking stand-up comedy routine! And you're all fired. You don't mind, do you?... Think of it as liberation of your creativity...
Lunchtime
Lunchtime? Haven't you sodding people got jobs to go to? How you can even think of putting Jolie Holland anywhere other than top of a damn fine bill of Americana, for a festival-stopping show of real talent, I will never know. She's playing the Dome, in the evening, with Laura Cantrell, and The Mickeys. In fact, give them a prime-time gig each and I'll go to the lot.
Exhibitions
Here come the jokes, be warned, comparing this lot to watching paint dry. I want to see really cool portrait photography or recent newsjournalism - with hands on digital workshops for people who want to get a go with state of the art kit; I want to see that exhibition they did at the National a few years ago for kids, with Quentin Blake drawings on the walls; and I wanna see album covers, only really massive and with listening posts and sofas next to them.
Music
Okay, so we've already got Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, and the Mickeys, and that's a fine start. You can keep the Leonard Cohen thing in. Then I want a Johnny Cash tribute night; and a series of 'illustrated' lectures on specific themes in the history of popular music, but not academic at all and with albums and a live 'studio band' band playing examples; and Pop Idol in all the schools and colleges with a grand finale at the Brighton Centre. And street karaoke.
Books
Almost all of this is nothing more than mutual masturbation, as pleasurable as that may be for the participants. However, Rageh Omaar can come and do whatever he wants; Mark Haddon's in; and William Dalrymple gets moved up to a prime time slot and dinner at my place. I also want to see Christopher Hampton's play based on White Moghuls premiered at the Festival. Lynne Truss can come as long as she teaches punctuation workshops to frustrated adults rather than entertaining the fritterati with her "witty howlers" at other people's less well-educated expense. The rest can stay at home, while we hold a real fuck-off brilliant conference of English teachers and A-list writers. Why? Because English teachers are Brighton residents too and why should they always have to shell out their own cash going to these events, when they are really essential staff training in the creative inspiration department that Ofsted are so keen to see. And I want street poetry Olympics.
Family Friendly and Outdoor Events
Ceilidh - yawn, yawn, yawn... Let's have a massive line dancing thing for families - like all the way down the seafront! And some more free film screenings on the beach of family classics. And fireworks with a couple of rock bands playing along really loudly. And instead of just having loads of jugglers wandering round the streets, let's round 'em all up and have a massive circus skills tournament with the audience voting 'em off when they drop their flaming firebrands or fall off the trapeze. And how about a Gladiators' show in a big top with chariot racing and stuff? That'd be really cool.
But I do like the cover of the 2004 Festival programme and I look forward to organising the inaugural International Powerball tournament just as soon as I'm done with all that Arts stuff.
Saturday, February 14, 2004
Peaches and Herb
So, Valentine's Day and the best thing to be said about it is, "at least I'm not teaching". Trust me, facing a class full of 16 year olds first period on Valentine's Day is an educational disaster zone of titanic proportions. Half the class are mooning and drooling, and insisting for the first time all year that you give way in favour of their ten minute Level 3 Key Skills Communication presentation (without notes) on the subject of "what my boyfriend/girlfriend gave me this morning" with multimedia visual support in the form of padded cards that play a ringtone Stevie Wonder warbling "I just called to say I love you". What with that and the back catalogue reissue of Lionel Richie's oeuvre on every ad break, it's no wonder the suicide rate doubles in February. And that's about the state the rest of the class are in, and no amount of wheedling, stropping or cajoling will turn anybody's head to the finer points of Chaucer's poetic technique.
But I digress... Well, actually, only slightly, as today the legendary Peaches and Herb (who?....) classic "Reunited" is the soundtrack to my thoughts, and such schmaltzy gag-inducing muzak serves exceedingly well to make the point that organised romance has about the same capacity to enlighten the human race as organised religion. I'm thinking about the whole juggernauting phenomenon of The Reunion.
Where the past is concerned I am an ardent proponent of the Edith Piaf "Je Ne Regrette Rien" school of philosophy. (Hmm, Edith Piaf and Peaches and Herb on stage together? - that's a deliciously surreal thought...) Keep going forwards cos whether you like it or not you can't go backwards. I like to think of it as moral pragmatism, a sound basis for keeping one's feet on the ground and one's head squarely upon one's shoulders. If you don't look down, you won't fall off the tightrope.
And so it was that the minute I found myself clutching my A Level results in my hot sticky hands, I burned rubber out of the arse end of the universe, never looking back, never going back. I kept in touch with just one person, my former PE teacher and basketball coach, who a hundred and fifty semi-disastrous life choices later asked me the innocuous enough question "so have you been on Friends Reunited yet?"
I scoffed and I scorned in an Edith Piaf kind of way, but before I knew it, one night when the sky was dark and the streets were quiet, I found myself strolling in the FR cyber-hood. I hadn't meant to click that way. It just happened.
To start with, there was a kind of dark furtive pleasure to be had, checking out the profiles of school friends without any of them knowing, fingering the details of their lives electronically - and wondering how on earth we all got so old and sad.
It genuinely shocked me how many feisty young people, hell bent on living fast and destined to die young and beautiful, seemed just to have got stuck, set in the slowly drying cement of a denuded working class culture of zero expectations and fuck-all chances. The ice-rink boot-boy I secretly admired all the way through A Level Geography says he is fat, balding and lives alone with his cats. I thought maybe this was a witty post-modern ironic comment on the nature of our perception of identity, and my former PE teacher says "call him" every time I see her, but I couldn't go back. What if he wasn't laughing?....
There was some good stuff though. The girl who shacked up with her policeman boyfriend while the rest of us (well, okay, maybe it was just me...) were still having the rude bits in Keats explained to us by a blushing English teacher, and in whose pressure cooker I once notoriously vomited while under the influence of a Merrydown-Cinzano cocktail (recipe - half a bottle of each, shared with a bloke with a rockabilly quiff sitting on the bonnet of a Ford Escort), well, she was there. And coolly cynical - describing herself in relation to a number of tempestuous divorces, and now gladly relieved of the burden of any domestic relationship more demanding than putting out cat food for her favourite mogs. In fact, cats became a bit of a theme....
But it wasn't all depressing. I got back in touch with my old buddy, Andy, and we catch up with each other once in a while, competing hotly for the "who has the most dysfunctional life/relationships/family" title while congratulating each other richly for continuing to live the dream of not dying of terminal boredom in the London Borough of Hounslow. It's good to have him back around.
But that is as far as I've got so far with the whole Reunion concept, and it's quite far enough for my liking! What I hadn't realised, though, is just how obsessed the rest of the world is with coming face to face with its own immediate past, and especially the people who once populated it.
First, Andy shows me pictures of the informal reunion of our year group that happened a couple of years ago, and to which I thankfully wasn't invited as I had so successfully managed to conceal my tracks in the intervening 20 years that noone had a clue how to find me! Now he tells me another one is planned and this time I'm going if he has to drag me there - which won't actually be at all difficult as I'm a 5'4" lightweight and he's 6'6" and 20 stone of muscle!
But it doesn't end there... The 2nd Bedfont Guides are after me now, for a 50th anniversary reunion next Sunday! Being well versed in the traditional arts of hunting and tracking (badge #436), they found my lair far more quickly than any of my old school chums. Well, actually, they just asked my mum... And what does she go and do, after all I've done for her (hmm... which is what, exactly?...) but give them a flamin' photo of me aged 16?! Cruelty itself! I should be taken into care immediately!
I politely declined the invitation, but after my mother's charming betrayal I have had to up the ante and offer them a "what Guiding did for me" article, in order to have an opportunity to present myself in the way I want to be seen, not as dumpy dark girl with so few friends that she just sits at home sewing badges on her sleeve.
And therein lies my whole problem with reunions, photograph albums and the past. It is another country and we definitely did do things differently there. Going back, people say "you're exactly the same" with a sadistically delighted grin on their faces. Well, I'm tellin' ya now, that's a god damned lie! You might be, but I'm not - and I sure as hell ain't finished travelling yet. Death will be soon enough for this reunion lark.
So, Valentine's Day and the best thing to be said about it is, "at least I'm not teaching". Trust me, facing a class full of 16 year olds first period on Valentine's Day is an educational disaster zone of titanic proportions. Half the class are mooning and drooling, and insisting for the first time all year that you give way in favour of their ten minute Level 3 Key Skills Communication presentation (without notes) on the subject of "what my boyfriend/girlfriend gave me this morning" with multimedia visual support in the form of padded cards that play a ringtone Stevie Wonder warbling "I just called to say I love you". What with that and the back catalogue reissue of Lionel Richie's oeuvre on every ad break, it's no wonder the suicide rate doubles in February. And that's about the state the rest of the class are in, and no amount of wheedling, stropping or cajoling will turn anybody's head to the finer points of Chaucer's poetic technique.
But I digress... Well, actually, only slightly, as today the legendary Peaches and Herb (who?....) classic "Reunited" is the soundtrack to my thoughts, and such schmaltzy gag-inducing muzak serves exceedingly well to make the point that organised romance has about the same capacity to enlighten the human race as organised religion. I'm thinking about the whole juggernauting phenomenon of The Reunion.
Where the past is concerned I am an ardent proponent of the Edith Piaf "Je Ne Regrette Rien" school of philosophy. (Hmm, Edith Piaf and Peaches and Herb on stage together? - that's a deliciously surreal thought...) Keep going forwards cos whether you like it or not you can't go backwards. I like to think of it as moral pragmatism, a sound basis for keeping one's feet on the ground and one's head squarely upon one's shoulders. If you don't look down, you won't fall off the tightrope.
And so it was that the minute I found myself clutching my A Level results in my hot sticky hands, I burned rubber out of the arse end of the universe, never looking back, never going back. I kept in touch with just one person, my former PE teacher and basketball coach, who a hundred and fifty semi-disastrous life choices later asked me the innocuous enough question "so have you been on Friends Reunited yet?"
I scoffed and I scorned in an Edith Piaf kind of way, but before I knew it, one night when the sky was dark and the streets were quiet, I found myself strolling in the FR cyber-hood. I hadn't meant to click that way. It just happened.
To start with, there was a kind of dark furtive pleasure to be had, checking out the profiles of school friends without any of them knowing, fingering the details of their lives electronically - and wondering how on earth we all got so old and sad.
It genuinely shocked me how many feisty young people, hell bent on living fast and destined to die young and beautiful, seemed just to have got stuck, set in the slowly drying cement of a denuded working class culture of zero expectations and fuck-all chances. The ice-rink boot-boy I secretly admired all the way through A Level Geography says he is fat, balding and lives alone with his cats. I thought maybe this was a witty post-modern ironic comment on the nature of our perception of identity, and my former PE teacher says "call him" every time I see her, but I couldn't go back. What if he wasn't laughing?....
There was some good stuff though. The girl who shacked up with her policeman boyfriend while the rest of us (well, okay, maybe it was just me...) were still having the rude bits in Keats explained to us by a blushing English teacher, and in whose pressure cooker I once notoriously vomited while under the influence of a Merrydown-Cinzano cocktail (recipe - half a bottle of each, shared with a bloke with a rockabilly quiff sitting on the bonnet of a Ford Escort), well, she was there. And coolly cynical - describing herself in relation to a number of tempestuous divorces, and now gladly relieved of the burden of any domestic relationship more demanding than putting out cat food for her favourite mogs. In fact, cats became a bit of a theme....
But it wasn't all depressing. I got back in touch with my old buddy, Andy, and we catch up with each other once in a while, competing hotly for the "who has the most dysfunctional life/relationships/family" title while congratulating each other richly for continuing to live the dream of not dying of terminal boredom in the London Borough of Hounslow. It's good to have him back around.
But that is as far as I've got so far with the whole Reunion concept, and it's quite far enough for my liking! What I hadn't realised, though, is just how obsessed the rest of the world is with coming face to face with its own immediate past, and especially the people who once populated it.
First, Andy shows me pictures of the informal reunion of our year group that happened a couple of years ago, and to which I thankfully wasn't invited as I had so successfully managed to conceal my tracks in the intervening 20 years that noone had a clue how to find me! Now he tells me another one is planned and this time I'm going if he has to drag me there - which won't actually be at all difficult as I'm a 5'4" lightweight and he's 6'6" and 20 stone of muscle!
But it doesn't end there... The 2nd Bedfont Guides are after me now, for a 50th anniversary reunion next Sunday! Being well versed in the traditional arts of hunting and tracking (badge #436), they found my lair far more quickly than any of my old school chums. Well, actually, they just asked my mum... And what does she go and do, after all I've done for her (hmm... which is what, exactly?...) but give them a flamin' photo of me aged 16?! Cruelty itself! I should be taken into care immediately!
I politely declined the invitation, but after my mother's charming betrayal I have had to up the ante and offer them a "what Guiding did for me" article, in order to have an opportunity to present myself in the way I want to be seen, not as dumpy dark girl with so few friends that she just sits at home sewing badges on her sleeve.
And therein lies my whole problem with reunions, photograph albums and the past. It is another country and we definitely did do things differently there. Going back, people say "you're exactly the same" with a sadistically delighted grin on their faces. Well, I'm tellin' ya now, that's a god damned lie! You might be, but I'm not - and I sure as hell ain't finished travelling yet. Death will be soon enough for this reunion lark.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Terror TV
I spend a lot of time at work. Most of it, to be honest - except for the summer holidays when I spend six weeks wandering around in shorts and bare feet vaguely wondering where my friends went all of a sudden. But at work, I make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems - large ones, small ones, big fat juicy ones, enough some days to make you want to go and eat worms. And in a sick and very twisted kind of "I just can't get enough" way, for my leisure and recreation I love to watch films and TV shows about people who make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems. In fact, nothing soothes me more than watching people with far more stressful and demanding jobs than my own struggling to do what is right in completely intolerable circumstances. I kick back and relax, and go, "hey, at least I didn't kill anyone when I screwed up today".
I love ER. Well, okay, so I have to hide behind a cushion at the really gory bits, but I floated languidly across a millpond of tranquillity when the new med student killed her first patient last week.
24? Jack's just doing his job, and I'm grateful every Sunday night for six whole months at a time that when I'm doing mine I don't have to cope with my daughter alternately being held hostage and turning into a gun-toting nutter; my partner going and getting her dumb cardigan-brained skull murdered and my luscious lover mutating into a Balkan terrorist with a terrible accent; or being killed and resuscitated and having to climb off the life support machine to save the universe from imminent destruction.
Then there's The West Wing and I have endless re-runs and mini-seasons at home with my first season box set. Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! People who work even longer hours than I do, who make far more difficult decisions, and still manage to be beautiful, intelligent and phenomenally witty! I spend happy hours deliberating over what I wish for most - to join the cast or write the script? Tough call, but either way I die and go to heaven.
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out The Dead - very, very reassuring. I may think I'm being driven insane by my job, but hey, look, actually I must be okay cos I ain't rolling ambulances for kicks!!
But oh joy of rapturous joys, what did I find for my televisual delectation tonight but The Bunker: Crisis Command - Could You Run The Country? Won't win any prizes for snappy titles, but what a concept! Shove tonight's pilot and get on with making the whole series, because it was just too good to be true... Missed it? Well, here's how it goes...
You get 3 middle class punters who fancy themselves as competent and authoritative decision makers, the kind of people who think they could definitely run the country better than the hard-working morally upstanding politicians of our day. They get put in a studio (this is 10p TV...) with a couple of expert advisers, and they have to manage the country during a simulated crisis. As a viewer you get to turn into the secret rabid dictator you know you really are, shouting "shoot the bastards down now" and "for Christ's sake get the poor fuckers out of there" at your telly, your neighbours wondering all the time whether or not to call social services. You get to know which of their decisions are right, and you get to howl with contemptuous laughter as once again they get it wrong. No "press the red button now" yet - this is only a pilot - but oh, it's already interactive TV at its best!
Getting it wrong tonight involved 500 people getting crushed to death as the Thames crashed through an Underground tunnel after a couple of bomb explosions at Waterloo station; also failing to shoot a terrorist controlled plane down (in order to save 100 American oil worker passengers - well, durrr, that was so obviously a dumb choice....) and letting it plough into Big Ben in a 9-11 style attack. Cool or what?!! You just should've seen their faces when the presenter told them their namby-pamby limp-wristed decision-making had just cost an unknown number of privately educated lives, 52 billion quid, and a grade 1 listed building!!
The people in the hot seat were entirely compelling. One chap who definitely used to hang out with the Young Farmers doing unspeakable things; one frightfully right-on young woman who looked like she might vomit when she found out how many deaths she'd personally caused (hello in there, it's only pretend!!!), and one tosser of the highest order, who in the Weakest Link style talking head bit as the credits rolled had the temerity to say "well, this experience has made me think I could be a politician - I've got what it takes". Remind me not to move into his constituency any time soon...
And that Weakest Link connection is only the beginning. On the one hand the pretence to middle class high-mindedness is a whole new game show concept; on the other, it's mercilessly ripping off every other game show in recent years that has hoiked in the viewers. Critical? I'm excited!! The 4 bullet pointed options for crisis management - straight off Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (New title - "Who Wants To Be A Minister of State"?...) This week middle class twats, maybe next week it'll be Test The Nation and we'll have magicians in the studio dealing with Al Qaeda - now we're talking!! Attempt to negotiate a hostage transfer, or put the problematic passenger aircraft into a hat, say abracadabra and make it disappear?!! And then there are the wheelclampers and the beauticians in episodes to come. Oh, sweet sweet sick and terrible joy - this could bring a whole new range of creative thought processes to government, and a reason finally, for all those of you who needed one, to shell out on a TV licence...
You have done us proud, oh the British Broadcasting Commission. And whilst you may be in a tiny tad of disarray after the sacking of all your Chief Executives, please, please, will someone in there get straight on to selling the rights to the US of A! Another tough call, but my pick for first in the studio is George Bush, Homer Simpson, and Niles Crane.
Reality? What's that again?.....
I spend a lot of time at work. Most of it, to be honest - except for the summer holidays when I spend six weeks wandering around in shorts and bare feet vaguely wondering where my friends went all of a sudden. But at work, I make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems - large ones, small ones, big fat juicy ones, enough some days to make you want to go and eat worms. And in a sick and very twisted kind of "I just can't get enough" way, for my leisure and recreation I love to watch films and TV shows about people who make a lot of decisions and deal with a lot of problems. In fact, nothing soothes me more than watching people with far more stressful and demanding jobs than my own struggling to do what is right in completely intolerable circumstances. I kick back and relax, and go, "hey, at least I didn't kill anyone when I screwed up today".
I love ER. Well, okay, so I have to hide behind a cushion at the really gory bits, but I floated languidly across a millpond of tranquillity when the new med student killed her first patient last week.
24? Jack's just doing his job, and I'm grateful every Sunday night for six whole months at a time that when I'm doing mine I don't have to cope with my daughter alternately being held hostage and turning into a gun-toting nutter; my partner going and getting her dumb cardigan-brained skull murdered and my luscious lover mutating into a Balkan terrorist with a terrible accent; or being killed and resuscitated and having to climb off the life support machine to save the universe from imminent destruction.
Then there's The West Wing and I have endless re-runs and mini-seasons at home with my first season box set. Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! People who work even longer hours than I do, who make far more difficult decisions, and still manage to be beautiful, intelligent and phenomenally witty! I spend happy hours deliberating over what I wish for most - to join the cast or write the script? Tough call, but either way I die and go to heaven.
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out The Dead - very, very reassuring. I may think I'm being driven insane by my job, but hey, look, actually I must be okay cos I ain't rolling ambulances for kicks!!
But oh joy of rapturous joys, what did I find for my televisual delectation tonight but The Bunker: Crisis Command - Could You Run The Country? Won't win any prizes for snappy titles, but what a concept! Shove tonight's pilot and get on with making the whole series, because it was just too good to be true... Missed it? Well, here's how it goes...
You get 3 middle class punters who fancy themselves as competent and authoritative decision makers, the kind of people who think they could definitely run the country better than the hard-working morally upstanding politicians of our day. They get put in a studio (this is 10p TV...) with a couple of expert advisers, and they have to manage the country during a simulated crisis. As a viewer you get to turn into the secret rabid dictator you know you really are, shouting "shoot the bastards down now" and "for Christ's sake get the poor fuckers out of there" at your telly, your neighbours wondering all the time whether or not to call social services. You get to know which of their decisions are right, and you get to howl with contemptuous laughter as once again they get it wrong. No "press the red button now" yet - this is only a pilot - but oh, it's already interactive TV at its best!
Getting it wrong tonight involved 500 people getting crushed to death as the Thames crashed through an Underground tunnel after a couple of bomb explosions at Waterloo station; also failing to shoot a terrorist controlled plane down (in order to save 100 American oil worker passengers - well, durrr, that was so obviously a dumb choice....) and letting it plough into Big Ben in a 9-11 style attack. Cool or what?!! You just should've seen their faces when the presenter told them their namby-pamby limp-wristed decision-making had just cost an unknown number of privately educated lives, 52 billion quid, and a grade 1 listed building!!
The people in the hot seat were entirely compelling. One chap who definitely used to hang out with the Young Farmers doing unspeakable things; one frightfully right-on young woman who looked like she might vomit when she found out how many deaths she'd personally caused (hello in there, it's only pretend!!!), and one tosser of the highest order, who in the Weakest Link style talking head bit as the credits rolled had the temerity to say "well, this experience has made me think I could be a politician - I've got what it takes". Remind me not to move into his constituency any time soon...
And that Weakest Link connection is only the beginning. On the one hand the pretence to middle class high-mindedness is a whole new game show concept; on the other, it's mercilessly ripping off every other game show in recent years that has hoiked in the viewers. Critical? I'm excited!! The 4 bullet pointed options for crisis management - straight off Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (New title - "Who Wants To Be A Minister of State"?...) This week middle class twats, maybe next week it'll be Test The Nation and we'll have magicians in the studio dealing with Al Qaeda - now we're talking!! Attempt to negotiate a hostage transfer, or put the problematic passenger aircraft into a hat, say abracadabra and make it disappear?!! And then there are the wheelclampers and the beauticians in episodes to come. Oh, sweet sweet sick and terrible joy - this could bring a whole new range of creative thought processes to government, and a reason finally, for all those of you who needed one, to shell out on a TV licence...
You have done us proud, oh the British Broadcasting Commission. And whilst you may be in a tiny tad of disarray after the sacking of all your Chief Executives, please, please, will someone in there get straight on to selling the rights to the US of A! Another tough call, but my pick for first in the studio is George Bush, Homer Simpson, and Niles Crane.
Reality? What's that again?.....
