Ode to English Lessons

When I was about 14 I was fortunate enough to move from a thriving, forward thinking and dynamic school full of talented and creative people in Essex, to a school a in surprisingly hostile and less surprisingly parochial, reasonably repressed market town in Norfolk.

Interestingly, I moved also from a school where English was taught by people who loved it and went on to become writers and directors and indeed created the very same, to a school where it was taught by people who thought that it didn’t matter that you wrote as long as you used a nibbed pen.

I know this to be true because our teacher in Norfolk made us read a Nevil Shute novel about stress testing metal. He said that it was we who were boring, not the book. He loved being an educator, clearly.

He also had a passion for marking every essay “average” or more precisely C+/-. It didn’t matter what you’d written (as long as you’d used a “nibbed pen” of course – that was a straight  D – no questions asked).

This seeming lack of interest in us as individuals or our progress angered many of us. One chap once wrote an essay and included a couple of paragraphs explaining that he believed it didn’t matter what he’d written as he was confident of a C+/- regardless.

The teacher read it out in class in an attempt to embarrass the pupil. It back fired. Guess what mark he’d give in it?…

Anyway, so it was about this time of year, Autumn, and we were set the standard requirement to write a poem about what we saw and felt at this time of year.

I truly hope English language teaching has moved past what is evidently predictable drudgery for both parties.

As you can imagine there was likely to be no end of, “As the sun fades and summer sun dies, the oranges and greens and late evening skies”..,.type thing.

I wasn’t having any of it. I decided to combine my anger at the lack of the teacher’s interest with my own desire to work for only 10 minutes of the hour’s lesson.

So I penned (with a nib obviously) the following:

I hate red pencil cases

It’s such a boring colour.

I’d rather have a tartan one,

and be just like my brother.

It took less than ten minutes and I spent a happy 50+ minutes looking studious but resting inside!

I thought it was at least witty.

 My work received no special mention, no praise for standing out from all the “Autumn Hues” and you can guess the mark it got too!

C+/- of course!

Here’s to Stephen Tucker and Mrs Dale and David Proudlock and all the other great inspiring English teachers out there who did give a monkey’s and as a result have produced great people who love English and understand how to use it…. like Jo Rees (www.mumwritesbooks.com).

And to Mr C+/- ……………..Up Yours…. with a really big Nibbed Pen…!

Gobble Bags and Fist Gloves

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away lived two elves with unusual names….. While it’s tempting to continue along that theme, I think it’s probably best I told you the real story. This year we spent a lot of time in France. As you know, I am now a swimming god and so perhaps not surprisingly to entertain our two daughters, we spent a lot of time at the local swimming pool complex. This place is actually worthy of a post in its own right. It’s probably the earthly equivalent of purgatory. Set on the shores of Lake Geneva, this open air complex makes pretty much every other swimming pool complex you’ll ever come across look like a boating lake in the local park. The problem is that everyone who goes there is a perfect human specimen. So on the one hand, it’s a fantastic place to sit and watch the world go by. On the other than, it won’t fail to make you feel hugely inadequate. Anyway, since becoming a swimming god, I’ve needed to carry my goggles, fist gloves and lubricant (look, it’s a swimming thing and it says more about you than it does me) around with me and I use a small green wash bag. That’s it. Nothing to it. It just means that when we go swimming, the very last thing to balance precariously on top of, or hang from the already well loaded buggy is my small green bag. There are turnstiles at the gates to the swimming complex. They are set up for people who weigh less than 81/2 stone. So, you can imagine wedging a buggy which is now buried in inflatables, bags, food and the odd child through these very “French” gates, takes some negotiation. Incidentally , it’s interesting that while taking the buggy through customs is a massive pain in the proverbials, it does become a means of carrying absolutely everything we own out with us when we go anywhere. It’s amazing what we can balance, hook or pack onto it. It’s alike the old Jackaroo game…. I hate to think how we’re going to cope when there’s no need to take our means of lugging all our stuff about. On our numerous trips to the swimming pool, the unloading of all the “important stuff”, loading up of the buggy and the management of the kids took nearly as long as we actually spent at the pool. The very last thing to find and “load” each time was my small green bag. I call it my goggle bag, because I keep my goggles in it. Elodie couldn’t say goggles. She could manage Gobbles. So she, and now Alexa call it the Gobble Bag. As they too are now aspiring “swimming godlets” my bag now carries four pairs of Gobbles. Being the last thing to leave the car, The Gobble Bag quickly became the thing to argue over and very definitely “the thing” to be seen with for any fashion conscious 18 month to 5 year old. So they each wanted to carry it. Initially the argument as to who would get to be seen carrying the gobble bag, would start as we loaded the buggy, but as the three weeks (yes, we’re that posh/tired) went on, both Elodie and Alexa had begun lobbying earlier and earlier in the day and in the end were even “negotiating” loudly and at length the evening before. As you can imagine, with a full three weeks ahead of us, the prospect of this debate lasting for the full period was starting to become a cause for concern. We had a few “objectives” for our holiday. One was for Elodie to swim a width unaided and to eat a full plate of food at meal times in less than 48 hours and for Alexa to eat a meal without sharing it with everyone in a 1 mile radius. Each of these things proved challenging. Add to that the now predictable escalation of the “who carries the gobble bag tomorrow” argument and you can form a picture of how meal times were becoming. One and a half weeks in it was reaching a level that even very large gins couldn’t drown out (and we did try). One night I am ashamed to admit, I snapped. I went from mild mannered, easy going, happy-go-lucky dad on holiday, to an NLP Ninja, ruthlessly focussed solely on achieving peace and tranquility, whatever the cost. I mustered every ounce of “four kids dad experience”, some “hello magazine” psychology and a “holiday” size glass of wine and announced a new competition. This time the stakes were high and failure would not be an option. Each night, at dinner time, I would announce the winner of the competition. There would be no rules save that I would make the decision who the day’s winner was and that there would be no debate. The only sure way to ensure you were in with a chance….to be good. The prize. The winner… Had the right to carry the Gobble Bag the following day. Would be able to have the Gobble Bag in their own room overnight. Would have their photo taken with the Gobble Bag. It was remarkable. The arguments stopped immediately. Both girls were extremely focussed on eating their dinner, neither mentioned the “bag” and for the remainder of the holiday behaviour was almost too perfect. When I can find it I will post a photo of Elodie (the winner on the first day) with the Gobble Bag and a winner’s crown. Alas Alexa still flung her dinner far and wide, but she did eat most of it and Elodie still took an average working day to com Winner of the Gobble Bag Competitionplete a meal, but the arguments stopped. Elodie did swim her width, unaided and “celebrated” with one of the loudest swimming burps I’ve ever heard. She got a round of applause from everyone in the pool….but we’re still not sure if it was for her swimming or her form of celebration…this was France after all! .