Ten years on and time for a rest.

It's now been about ten years since I started this blog. 

At the time the catalyst  was a twenty year university reunion. It is in the nature of such things that they prompt some stock-taking, and the blog was born out of that. Essentially I decided that a part of my brain was starting to atrophy and it was a way of turning that around. And it certainly helped do that. At some points when I was simultaneously stressed and bored out of my mind at work, I spent quite some time blogging.

Along with random rants and flights of intellectual curiosity,  the blog turned into something of a chronicle of my 40s. In the course of that decade, my mum died, I was made redundant, retrained,  started a new career, and even got married. But most of all I went through the cliche of a mid life crisis, and came out the other side

Today I came back from my thirty year university reunion.The stock-taking this  prompted led me to realise that I just don't find the need for either mental distraction or venting my spleen into cyberspace anymore. At the risk of sounding smug, life in the real world is now quite sufficient. 

As a result, blogging has become more of a duty than a pleasure. So I have decided to knock it on the head. For now at least.

Life is good

Blogging has been sparse for the past few weeks - largely due to the teacher's curse of end-of-term-exhaustion syndrome.

So just to reassure any readers that I am still here - and whilst I have been resting the world seems to have continued to move in a depressing direction: Much like Jack Jones  in the 1970s, Tspiras has led Syriza and the Greek masses to the precipice of revolution, had a peek over the edge and not fancied the look of what he saw. And back home, the Tories have started to introduce the most vicious anti-trade union legislation since Thatcher. And imposed a 1% cap on public sector pay rises whilst giving themselves a fat 10%. I take both of these things personally.

But this morning the sun is shining and life is good:

I woke up to the news that the Sun has got hold of some  old footage of the royal family in the 1930s having some jolly japes giving each other Nazi salutes led by unrepentant fascist fellow-traveller Edward VIII.

And most of all - to the surprise of many old friends who are gathering in North London, myself and Ms Journeyman are marking 30 years as a couple by actually getting married....

Glimpses from my new life ...

Every now and then something gives me a jolt to remind me of the massive differences between my old life working in the print and my new life as a teacher.

I might not exactly have been a captain of industry, but as a manager I did have some degree of autonomy. Nothing spectacular, but when a piece of machinery broke I'd arrange to get it fixed - or even occasionally buy a new one. Or  sometimes if we'd have a particularly long and shitty week I'd get in a crate of beer and a few pizzas 

But  now I am a 'professional' entrusted with the development of youth, I find my wings have been severely clipped: Like today,  when I tried  to sign for approximately  £5 worth of pink gel pens (yes you did read that correctly - their use is stipulated by a new marking policy). I was told that I didn't have the authority and I'd have to get my head of department's permission first. So much then  for the boxes of student's books awaiting marking - god forbid I should just do them in intimidating old-fashioned red ink.

Fortunately  I am not proud and I can see the funny side - but Jeeesus ...

Soho revisited.

Christmas is a time for nostalgia. And in that spirit I was back in my old haunts yesterday for a Soho pub crawl. The Dog & Duck, The Blue Posts, The Star & Garter, The Red Lion and finally The Clachan. 

In truth there are not many things or people  that I miss from my former life, but I do miss Soho. Or more precisely my memory of Soho rather than the hipster-theme park it increasingly resembles.

I've not been back there for almost a year but plus ca change. The place that used to sell artisan Cornish pasties now sells artisan hot dogs - and that restaurant that specialised in authentic Korean street food now specialises in authentic Cambodian street food. The same shops that still sell vinyl, the fixed wheel bike shops and of course some  more artisan coffee shops. A lot more fucking artisan coffee shops.

But there are still a few of the traditional Soho pubs. The pubs that played a central part in my working life when I was the production manager of an artwork studio.  Our clients were largely the ad agencies of Soho - and the pubs were where the deals were made, the briefs given out and the proofs taken for approval. Part Roman forum, part 18th Century coffee house. 

This is now a  lost world that disappeared rapidly with the introduction of mobile phones and the relaxation of the licensing laws. And life got more corporate, more superficially 'professional' - and ultimately much more joyless. 

In fact, come to think of it, the decline of the traditional pub pretty much parallels my prolonged disenchantment with life in the print. 

Telling tales out of school

I know many teachers make a point of teaching 'a safe distance' away from where they teach. They cringe at the prospect of being spotted in Lidl or falling out of the pub. But I teach only about two or three miles away from where I live - and I rather like it.

Maybe it's naivety. Or maybe it's a reaction to so many years of commuting into work for the previous 20-odd years, and as a result living two separate and disconnected lives at work and home. But nowadays kids in school tell me with delight that they have seen me on the picket lines or lobbying the council,  in the local paper, in the national papers and even on the TV (actually it was only Kurdish TV). Yesterday a few of them saw me on a stall in the shopping centre selling papers and campaigning for the minimum wage. 

Obviously this is the cause of much piss-taking - although funnily enough not as much as when they  see me out and about riding my bikes  - or when they get to hear about my martial arts activities. For the average teenager there's far more comedic material in 'Sir's a Hells Angel' or 'Sir's a Ninja' - than 'Sir's a socialist'.

But it's all good. Most kids have the idea that their teachers go to sleep at night in the stock cupboard and only emerge in the morning ready  to teach period 1. Perish the thought that we are actual people. Or even if we are actual people - teachers can seem like  a species from another hemisphere doing some sort of out-reach work. This is a view increasingly perpetuated by the Teach First scheme and their all too-often achingly middle class young zealots parachuted behind enemy lines into the inner cities to do good. 

Much better then to show that we are just people who are part of the same community as those we teach - with families, outside interests, opinions - and eccentricities. It's probably not exactly what the DfE mean by 'promoting British values'  - but it should be. And it's worth having to endure a bit of piss-taking n Monday morning.

Talking about his generation.

It was always dangerous to sing 'hope I die before I get old' - unless of course you actually do.

However rather than quietly retiring into the salon bar - or brilliantly reinventing himself in the manner of fellow rock-god Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey has chosen to vent his geriatric spleen in the Mail on Sunday (where else?) 

Apparently music is just not what it was in his day. He has told the readers of Middle England that  modern music lacks 'any sense of angst and purpose'. And just to tick off another tedious prejudice, he tells the paper the 'only movement that can be started nowadays is ISIS.'

What a wanker. The truth is modern music is of course  shit. And of course it is also utterly brilliant. Just as it was in the days when giants like The Who walked the earth. For every Led Zeppelin and Clash there was a David Cassidy and a Brotherhood of Man. And whilst we may have the X-Factor now, in the bad old days we had New Faces and a Eurovision contest that was actually taken seriously, and not a hilarious pieces of ironic camp kitsch.

Maybe Daltrey should heed his own lyrics and just f-fade away ...

Back to school

And to blogging. 

My first long Summer holiday as a proper teacher and I am just coming down from a general hiatus. 

Holidays are always a chance for a bit of stock-taking. This year more than most - it was our first holiday for 20years without the (now grown up) kids and having completed my NQT year it was the end of my three year 'journey' from my utterly different previous life.

And all this against what I see has been called the 'Summer of Hate' in Gazza, Syria, Iraq - and Missouri. There's nothing like events to put you in your place - or to paraphrase Rick in Casablanca - 'the problems of little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world'.

A sense of perspective reinforced when I took my usual historical road trip on the bike around East Anglia. I find staring in to the 3,000 year old preserved timbers of the causeway at Flag Fen does the same for me as staring at the stars does for some people. It  inevitably snaps you out of too much unhelathy  introspection. 

And so now back to work in every sense...

Gove wouldn't approve

I've got to that point in my first year of teaching where I am about to finish 'induction' - effectively my probationary period. 

For those outside of teaching it is an odd thing to explain - I am a qualified teacher but if I don't pass induction I won't be able to continue teaching in a local authority maintained school. If I don't pass - and you only get one chance to do it - then I am stuck in a kind of a limbo, a qualified teacher who can't actually work. Although thanks to Michael  Gove's bizarre policy acrobatics that permits him to reconcile raising professional standards with de-regulation and privatisation, this won't matter because you don't need to be a qualified teacher to work in an academy or a free school.

I am not unduly stressed -  at this point the hardest thing is a time-consuming evidence gathering exercise to fill up a folder to prove that I have satisfied the tick- boxes of the current 'teaching standards'. Although these standards are an exercise in truly tortuous semantics I do have to concede that they do at least relate (more or less) to good teaching practise.

Far more controversial is the sinister 'part two' of the standards which relates to personal an professional conduct of teachers - both  in and out of school. Some of this is common sense child protection stuff but some of it is downright sinister - such as

a) Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by:

•not undermining fundamental British values, including

•democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty & mutual respect, tolerance of those with different faiths & beliefs

•ensuring that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit pupils’ vulnerability or might lead them to break the law

I am not sure that I even meet these standards in the classroom when I teach kids about the peasants' revolt, the Levelers, the Chartists, the Suffragettes or the Civil Rights movement - certainly not when it comes to the 'rule of law'. And I am almost certain that outside of the classroom - my own and Gove's understanding of 'British values' are poles apart.

I spent a chunk of yesterday with NUT colleagues at a local festival - getting people to sign petitions and giving away 'stand up for education' balloons. Several of these people were my students and their parents. Not exactly revolutionary stuff,  but it did feel fantastic to be able to make some connection with what we were doing and what I have taught them about struggle and protest in history. 

And of course there was the knowledge that it is exactly the sort of thing that would piss off the likes of Michael Gove ...

Errors of judgment ...

I've made a few errors of judgment in my time, Some of them big, some of them small:

The other day I did a short journey on my bike - it was drizzling but I didn't bother with my waterproofs - and I ended up getting soaked. Or, I was depressed in my work for several years thinking it was too late to make a career change - then it was forced on me and now I regret not doing it earlier. Both these things were errors of judgement. That is to say I thought about what I was doing, made a decision and in good faith, got it wrong.

However I didn't send a series of misogyist emails (like Football boss Richard Scudamore) or recite a racist nursery rhyme on TV (like Jeremy Clarkson) or misuse public office for private gain (like my own local Labour mayor Sheila Peacock). And yet all these people within the past few days have claimed to make an 'error of judgment'.

Let's get it right. These people fucked up. They didn't have the misfortune to  make a wrong decision in good faith.  Their dark and deep-seated arsehole-ness was just publicly revealed for all to see .

They're all socilaists now

 

Ray is spot on in saying that it is not just  Middle England that is sinking  below flood waters of biblical proportions. Having grown up in Staines (before it was upon Thames) we lived in a house that was pretty close to the river and I remember nearby  flooding even back in the 70s. The truth is that ordinary working families are usually in the majority in every part of the country - and they are they ones who inevitably suffer most from any sort of setback - let alone the devastating floods we are seeing.

So I don't take any relish in seeing the suffering of people in areas that are undeniably considerably better off than us in  the inner cities. 

But I am enjoying the irony  of the Mail-reading classes rallying to the cause of 'something must be done'. They are coming out with some prettysocialist stuff; -rally around communities, organise for need not profit - and even send in the army as a civil defence force.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes - but maybe we can say there are no Tories in natural disasters.