Happy Birthday, World War One

You weren’t so bad after all.

Not everyone had a hard time.  The generals weren’t all idiots.  You weren’t simply a conspiracy between arms manufacturers and Europe’s elite at the expense of a duped and exploited working class.

The centenary of your birth need not highlight our problems with Army recruitment, which has been declining for years.  Young men need no longer worry about joining up. They need to join up, just not worry about it. 

Thanks to the British government, we now have a clearer understanding of what went on a hundred years ago.  It really was a Great War.

In 2013, we all nodded when the Education Secretary, Mr Gove, caned history teachers for using Mr Men to help teenagers follow World War Two.  This year he is criticising teachers again, this time for using Wilfred Owen’s poetry to illuminate World War One.  It turns out that generations of teachers have been gulled by a left-wing agenda.  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is not an ‘old Lie’ at all.  War can be fun, if history lessons can’t. 

Mr Men have been dismissed, but the yes-men are still lined up.  Like the poet, Ian McMillan. Not poet and historian, just poet.  In a BBC article, he asks whether ‘our focus on poems like Owen's distorted our view of the war…Although Dulce et Decorum Est is written from the poet’s point of view, it's important to remember it is a work of fiction.’  Don’t take the poems literally.  It wasn’t like that.  Owen was going over the top. 

Mr Gove was criticised recently for making political appointments to civil service roles, that is, for wanting a yes-man to head the schools inspectorate rather than the presumed no-woman he had just fired.  Sir David Bell says that he should listen more closely to contrary views: ‘The day-to-day grind of policy battles, firefighting and political ding-dong can start to cut you off from outside ideas and thinking.’ 

You don’t want to cut your ding-dong off.  Not in Conservative politics.  It really is No-Woman’s Land.  Nice imagery, though, the bit about battles.   Wilfred will approve, looking down from his grand trench in the sky, at least when he is going over the top.

Like his predecessors, Mr Gove is used to being vilified.  At this very minute, pinned to staffroom noticeboards across England and Wales, there is a teachers’ union poster showing a giant, grey image of his head, or most of it, with some extremities cropped.  It looks a little monstrous.  The text reads: This man wants your pay, your pension, even your holidays.  In one school I visited, Mr Anonymous had penned in: and your ears.

WW1, WW2….  We don’t have to wait for another one.  This country has already contributed to a large number of wars.  They were all fun – for some people, anyway – and all worth fighting, so we shall probably be hearing from the minister again.

Dulce et pudendum est pro patria gove.

There was no class called Uranus

You keep trying to upload an author image that is clearly not an image of the author. We will continue to flag and remove such drawings, but how about you please just stop breaking the rules, okay?

I got this message on a book club website.  It serves me right.  Why hide my face?  Just because every other website allows me to.  What’s my problem?  You’d think a teacher, even a substitute, would know about rules, what’s appropriate and what’s not.

In a job last week, one of the ten-year-olds asked me if I swore at home.  He hadn’t heard me swear, and couldn’t understand why.  I said yes.   

“I knew it!  You’ve got a swearer’s face.” 

Maybe I have a bad-mouth mug.  Maybe that’s why I don’t put it on the net.  

The internet is one of our newest democracies.  The book club volunteer felt that she could rap a stranger on the knuckles.  ‘Kindly refrain from choosing an illustration of the sun as an author image,’ or ‘Cut it out, dumb fuck.’  Or something in between.  In the end, she leant towards dumb fuck.  The ten-year-olds would like her.  Depending on her face.  I can’t find an image of it.

When I get a personal question in class, I often wonder what other teachers might do.  I sometimes think about the episode in Friends when Phoebe is pursued by children wanting ‘the lady who tells the truth.’  Then I do what is convenient.

The last time I swore in a classroom, at least one with other people in it, was during my second spell of teaching practice as a student in Australia, a long time ago.  The lesson was on Keats’ poetry. I lost my place in the little lecture which I was reading to the boys.  I said “Shit!”  The word is not in Keats.  I don’t know why the class teacher, who was observing me at the time, let it pass.  Things were more relaxed in those days, I suppose.  In the same school, the PE teacher told me a joke about aural sex, then described his recent holiday in Thailand, where a mother had sold him her fourteen-year-old daughter for a few hours and dollars.  They were saving up for a dowry.    

At school, PE teachers are no longer so trusting.  You need to watch what you say.  A misplaced phrase can get you the sack, or make people laugh.  Belle Nolan sent an email to the BBC describing the recent fires in Australia: ‘I live in Warrandyte in Victoria State with my fiance, Ryan - one of the worst affected areas.’

An ordinary name can also turn around and smack you in the face.  There is probably more than one South Park Primary School in London, but a few years back we nearly lost one of them.  Some parents agitated to change the name of the South Park where I was working.  The TV show with the same name was very popular at the time.

The agitation failed, but the goal remains – to avoid ridicule.  At the school where the ten-year-olds queried my abusive face, each class bears the name of a planet.  A senior management meeting would have taken place to choose the names.  Despite their distance out in space, Pluto and Neptune appeared warmer and more homely than 6S and 5C.   You have to be careful, though.  Remember, we are dealing with a world where the mere mention of ‘underpants’ will get a laugh.  There are more than a dozen classes in the school.  In order to cover them all, the senior team had to resort to names like Star, Galaxy and Supernova.  But they still left one planet out.

Executed by tireless:

I wrote poetry when I was sixteen.  It could have been worse.  The choice of pastime.  I could have taken up flower arrangement.  The poetry could have been better.

 

O Penis, Penis, Penis,

What has come between us?

When I laugh, why do you mope?

When I devil, why do you pope?

Publishers might go for this teenage poetasting.  A #0.5, a prequel, and a hormone sponge for my little book, which has been falling into the hands of white, male, North American sci-fi fans.  Unerringly.  Given the frequent, ironic references to planets and stars, I suppose it serves the little book right.  Sentence these fans to tireless:.  I can hear their whimpers.

“Cut off my biggest penis, but don’t make me read tireless:!” 

Huffing and puffing

It’s hard to know what to say when you get bad news.  In the local paper:

Omg it's very sad news thinking of her family and friends at this sad time :( r.i.p ur a angel now xxxx

Better say nothing.   

When your train does not come on time, there’s a platform announcement which always ends: ‘We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’  I like the any, as if a kind of traveller exists who is not inconvenienced by delay.  You can be lucky sometimes, down the line, if the flight you miss goes on to crash.  But this idea won’t cheer you up when you’re staring at empty rails, where the station rats are going about their business, undisturbed.  There’s nothing you can do.  You can’t even be rude to the officials.  That’s verbal abuse.  That’s against the law.  Better say nothing.    

Enter a sense of helplessness.  I overheard two old ladies in the launderette.  They were pining for the old days, when people were healthier, less greedy and more honest.  I assume they put themselves in the ‘old days’ basket. 

It’s not easy to change someone’s behaviour, or the way they are.  In a recent BBC report, we saw that tactics which have worked with smokers could be used on the obese.  People are smoking less due to advertising campaigns designed to frighten them. I suppose you could upset a fat person with some graphic images, but many of us eat for comfort.  While non-smokers are winning, thin people aren’t.    

Social pressure has also worked on smokers. 

‘Somewhere along the line, people said, “Would you please go outside and smoke,” or, “I've got an allergy to smoking.”’

To light a cigarette, smokers in the UK have to leave public buildings, but you can’t expect fat men and women to do the same just because they are fat.  You will also have trouble getting the potbellied out of your home.  If you say you’re going to sneeze, they won’t blame themselves.  Even if you do manage to cast out the corpulent, what then?  After a ten-minute break, smokers will finish their cigarette, but fat people will still be fat. 

It’s a wispy line, too, between shock tactics and revenge.  A teacher once locked a rebellious child in the toilet.  It was after school on Friday.  Detention was over.  Normal detention, I mean.  There was no one else around.  The school was closing for a two-week holiday.  Sir didn’t push the boy inside the toilet.  He just quietly turned the key while the little chap was going about his business.  The caretaker found him late that evening. 

At one school, the assistant explained to me why the children behaved so badly: “They have no god.”  Divine revenge is best.  A UKIP councillor has blamed destructive floods in Britain on the government’s decision to allow same-sex marriage.  The Prime Minister had acted “arrogantly against the Gospel.”  No man, however powerful, the councillor went on, "can mess with Almighty God with impunity," adding: “and get away with it.”

Better say nothing.  However, if God is Wolf, don’t build a house of sticks or straw.  Like the councillor, an Indonesian cleric blamed a devastating tsunami on the godlessness of the people. Losers.  We saw the proof on TV.  In the entire town, his mosque was the only building left standing.

It was also the only building made of bricks.

A review of My Father as Mariner - Seven Essays, by Christopher Wells

In the preface to his collection of exquisite essays, Wells wrote: I might catch a glimpse of the whole man. 

This we do, and while the past cannot return, his gracefully crafted prose admits no sentimentality about his father – a man whose own craft made impressions on the sea each time they sailed, and whose influence is still being felt today.  Alongside this shoal of memories, the author has set some atmospheric prints from his own wood engravings, poignant snatches of the coastline which his family loved so well.  After all, it is near the shore that most people’s understanding of the sea begins, and perhaps where other understanding begins as well.

A charming memoir, a boat built to last, instinct with humanity and, most of all, deep love.

Gifts

During a lesson, a small boy gave me a bookmark.  It didn’t look shop-bought.  He must have made it himself.   The delicate paper rectangle had been carefully coloured in.  He was very serious, as if handing over a piece of treasure.  It was one of those magical moments which teachers talk about.

             It turned out that he had stolen the bookmark from another child.

            You can steal ideas, too, and storylines from authors who are respected in the book clubs.  My next volume will have a touch of magic to spice things up, like a cinnamon-flavoured condom.  I see this panorama: an everyday object, mislaid decades earlier at the family home, is discovered by chance, leading a young woman on an emotive quest across oceans and cultures, particularly Asian ones, unlocking secrets which are centuries old and, where necessary, allowing her to travel back in time herself.  With this simple family treasure in her hand, she will find out the truth about her mother’s past, re-evaluate her own life, and appreciate the riches which have lain unnoticed in the world around her, in the people close to her, and – most importantly – inside herself.  The plot will reference historical genocide, caring for a relative who is terminally ill, and the American Civil War, but readers can absorb the bitter moments, and even condone the heroine’s incessant luck, if they value the power of family cohesion.  Not for this volume: vampires; erotica; space ships; a medical thriller.

          The young lady will, of course, also find romance.  My new book involves two lovers from different countries and different centuries. The time travel, remember?

don’t stay too long in Turkey

in the 18^th c. or on
that beach in old Siam

when someone gives you syphilis, you’ll need tablets

Champions will be needed

When Australia was hit by a series of natural disasters – earthquake, flood, fire, and hail – someone likened it to Armageddon.  Sydney was obliterated by a dust storm.  One resident, Tanya F., told a journalist, “It was like being on Mars.”  She did add, “I haven’t been there.” 

            It’s important to tell the truth.  It’s even more important to be on the winning side. I borrowed The Valley of Fear from a library in Essex.  Someone had written on the pages.  Names were highlighted, sentences underlined, and alert questions like Is McMurdo Douglas? were pencilled in the margin.  At the part where McMurdo says, “I am Birdy Edwards,” I found the words I knew it! 

Knowledge can be a hollow thing.  Luck is more important.  When I was teaching in India, on sports day a pupil was hit by a javelin.  Of all the children in the school, competing, watching or just idling about while javelins fell like toothpicks from the sky, he was the one who got speared. 

You need to be in the right place at the right time.  In Australia, at the age of ten, I joined a new school, but was sick at home for the first couple of days.  When I finally made it in, I sat next to David W.  I had no choice.  It was the only seat left.  The other boys had been clever.  With two to each small desk, the chairs were practically touching; metal chairs, grey and cold, even in the summer.  I was on David W’s left.  As soon as we had taken our seats, he began to pick his nose with his left index finger. After a few seconds, he wiped a large lump of snot onto the edge of my chair, just below my right trouser pocket.  It was more than just wiping.  It was sculpting in wet clay, carefully making sure the stuff would stick.  And he did it openly.  There was nowhere else for me to sit. 

I don’t remember much about that boy.  He was demoted to another class the following term, but at a camp several years later, we had to share the same tent.  When we were packing up at the end, he found a piece of cardboard the size of a bookmark.  He passed it over, saying, “You can comb your arse hairs with it.”  It was the last thing he said to me.  What are the last things I say to people?

There is an apricot tree in my back garden in East London.  It no longer bears fruit.  On a warm evening, the terrace house behind it burnt down – not the house on the left or the house on the right, the one exactly behind it.  I watched as orange flames picked out the ink lines of its empty branches.

A little way down the road there is a girls’ school run by Roman Catholic nuns. For most of the summer, a canvas banner hung on the wall, promoting the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries, “where champions are raised for end-time exploits.”  A logo put black mountain peaks in silhouette against orange flames.  The Ministries offer three-hour Sunday worship, Wednesday Revival Hour, when I guess you perk up after the rigours of Sunday, and Monthly Deliverance, ‘Strictly by Registration.’ I'd push straight for Deliverance.  I don’t know why the nuns let the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries advertise on their wall, but if the end of the world was near, I suppose the local girls’ school would be the first port of call for a lot of champions.