Slaminsky, schlaminsky

You know what? I've been doing this since 2005, and I think it's about time to shoot it in the head and put it out of its misery. (Or send it out to pasture, if you prefer.)

Thanks for reading my friends. Bon chance.

Not down with the kids

Marking the SATS writing tests, some of the little boys have choosen to write about football in their short writing task. I've now come across several references about having to 'skill up' other people. Excuse my footballing ignorance, but what does this mean? Is it a technical term?

One of my favourites in my group, answering the question 'Why do you like this game?' has written in regard to football 'Because I was born'. Bless his heart. I think he means, if you are alive at all, you must love it.

BTW, for anyone who remotely gave a shit about the Asians in Football, seems there is some activism out there. Phew. (Also there's apparently a footballer of Bangladeshi descent who plays for Fulham. I intend to stalk him.)

Which tattoo?

Clearly, I am having a midlife crisis. Rather than getting involved with inappropriate men (bad) or getting a red Ferrari (can't drive anyway) I thought I'd get a tattoo on my next birthday. In the past I've gone along for moral support with no less than 5 friends, always thinking secretly "Hahaha! You'll never get me under the needle!" as they groaned their way through it.

Anyway, what should it be? And where?

Meeting of Styles

Last weekend was the world-wide Meeting of Styles, the London one was in Bacon Street, off Brick Lane. Most of it is not really my cup of tea, but it was amazing to watch all these artists out in force with their spraycans, and you have to marvel at their skill. I wish I could take the kids to see it, but clearly SATS SATS SATS and TESTS TESTS TESTS are more important than seeing live street art from artists all over the world in their local area...

Check out some more on Flickr.

More witty and intelligent content

Right, I cannot put it off any longer. The agent's coming around tomorrow and I must do some hoovering. I think I last hoovered in November. I think the carpet might be cream. As Quentin Crisp said about housework, after the first 6 years the dust doesn't get any worse. (The great thing about living alone is that you can be a total lazy slut and no one can nag you about it.) It's also a good excuse not to crack on with the reports.

Good music to hoover to?

Twitter

What I made when I should have been writing 34 end of year reports. God, I'm bored.

Asian footballers

There, that surprised you, didn't it? She's all about the clothes and the shoes, you thought.

Why are there no Asian footballers?

I asked K, our PE co-ordinator, who is brilliant and gets the little inner-city kids fencing and learning judo and cricket and rugby (famous rugby player visited us, the male and female teachers were goggling in awe for widely different reasons) and competing in stuff all over East London, in the face of extreme parental indifference to any sport or exercise. Thank god for him.

He was talking about one of our kids with natural talent, who pretty much was a one man team in a game against another school with players in the West Ham junior club... Why don't our kids play for the junior clubs, I ask? How do scouts spot them? They don't come to the schools to talent spot, he said, they will go to tournaments... but this kid is pretty much too old now, they start between 6 and 9 and he's past it at 11. And the parents don't know or don't care about the junior clubs.

I'm spitting feathers. 'So the clubs don't go out there... and the parents aren't interested... And all these kids' talents and skills are going to waste... Why doesn't the FA do something about it? Some positive discrimination?'

'It's a cultural thing' chips in someone. They don't want them to be footballers. They're not interested... in the 70s all the black kids wanted to be footballers, because they saw the few black players out there and said 'I'm going to be like him...' They don't think they can do it, because they don't see it. If the parents could see someone succeeding, it might make them consider it for their children.

It's a vicious circle isn't it? K said things were getting better. But think of this... they've been in the UK since the 70s. That's 40 odd years of wasted talent. It's a tragedy.

Corset

This is what I want for my birthday. I think being unable to breathe would be a small price to pay for it.

Guilty liberals

I'm walking near Brick Lane when a man stops me. He has no front teeth and looks, well, rough.
'Sorry to stop you love' he's not quite looking at me 'I need 70p, I'm trying to get money to get a cab to Homerton Hospital, I came off my bike...' he rolls up his sleeve and holy shit, there is a chunk, a complete chunk of flesh been taken out of his forearm, and blood is running down his hand. 'Oh God' I say involuntarily. He rubs his leg as I find my wallet and give him a couple of quid. We part without saying anything to each other. I'm thinking about it. It had the feel of a sting, a scam, (why get a cab? You could get a bus from Hackney Road straight there, or call an ambulance? And why 70p?) and I'm left feeling like I've been scammed, but anyone desperate enough to damage themselves like that in order to beg needs the money more than me, surely?

I stopped giving money to people a few years ago. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there's so many people begging now. Something to do with it not changing the status quo. Something to do with feeling angry, then feeling guilty about feeling angry when I'm so lucky. Guilt's the price you pay for feeling privileged and lucky, I guess it's a small price but there is no way to live without shame.

Guilty liberals. In a play we saw the other night, England People Very Nice, which lampoons every group that's moved through the east end, from Huguenots, to Irish, to Jews, to Bangladeshis and finally Yuppies, one character chides another for being a liberal. 'Only a liberal would blame themselves for being mugged.' I asked a friend more radical than me, a girl who had worked in sexual health clinics in Nairobi and did Development Studies, why liberal was a dirty word. Didn't liberal people have good intentions? 'They don't look at causes, they just want to paper over the cracks. They don't go far enough. They're not interested in cause and effect.'

She was bang on, describing me. I wanted to help, and I didn't want to get involved, he was counting on that when he rolled up his bloody sleeve. No interfering and no questions asked...

One for the girls

Okay, which shoes with the dress?

Does this mean they want to eat you?

"Researchers set up four situations to see what men find hot; two variables made the guys feel financially insecure while the other two variables tested them when they were physically hungry. The men who felt financially insecure chose women who were about two pounds heavier than those chosen by men who felt financially stable. And hungry guys tended to go for women who were about three pounds heavier than those chosen by men who were full."

Further musings on the recession. Click here for the full story

hahaha! Excellent! I've no idea how they set up these 'variables', but anything that increases my chances of pulling is jolly good.

Buy less live longer

Buy less live longer, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

How are you coping with the recession?

Not now, Bernard

I've been thinking about children's books, specifically about making a children's book (nothing fancy, just a rhyming counting book) and you know, it's really not as easy as it looks. In fact good children's books are much harder than writing an adult novel, where you have the luxury of banging on at your leisure for a few hundred pages.

For example, some children's books have to be read and enjoyed by adults as well as kids, especially if your kid takes a fancy to it and wants to be read the same book 80 thousand times over for a couple of months. ('You read it again' commanded 3 year old Orli every time I finished a story when in New York. There's just no way you can say no to her, especially with such a cute little New York accent.) Simple enough to read, condensed, but at the same time engaging. It's only then, when you see what he does with a limited vocabulary of words like cat, sat and mat you realise what an utter genius is Dr Seuss.

But I was reading Not Now, Bernard with one of my struggling readers the other day, and it's definitely in the top 10 of greatest children's books ever. By the god-like David McKee (also the creator of Mr Ben - 'As if by magic, the shop-keeper appeared...' and Elmer the psychedelic patchwork elephant who knows what it's like to be DIFFERENT and stand out from all the other grey elephants.)

I'm trying to analyse exactly what makes it such an evergreen book, and came up with this:

Tragi-comic. For those who don't know the story, Bernard keeps trying to get his mum and dad's attention, but they keep saying 'Not now, Bernard.' Eventually he gets eaten up by a monster in the garden. Parental neglect, but somehow hilarious funny.

Boldness. Most grownup books wouldn't dare to kill their heros off in the first couple of pages.

World turned upside down. The monster is baffled when they send him up to bed after TV and supper.

Fantastic 70s style illustrations, complete with psychedelic wallpaper and Japanese paper lantern decor.

Right, it's something to aspire to...

LV

Louis Vuitton birthday cake, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

just a heads up. My birthday's in July, btw.

(see in Dalston.)

Swines

"The companies [like GlaxoSmithKlein] will do 'well' out of this" says a cheery pharmaceutical analyst on Radio 4 "so in a way, we need something like this to happen, to keep them doing research into diseases like swine flu..."

There's something diabolical, uniquely 21st century wrong about this, it's just too early for me to think about what it is.

Pastures new

Dalston or Leytonstone?

Can't quite believe I'm on the move again.

New York street art

Stencil, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

I had a street art fest in New York, the range and variety was pretty mind-blowing. Dragged poor Jan all around SoHo in the pouring rain, with her kindly holding my umbrella while I snapped, visited insalubrious industrial estate type places in Brooklyn, managed to find the galleries in Chelsea on a Monday when they were closed -doh!

It's clear the war of the graffitti writers upon the 'art fags' is just as fierce as it is here. Lots of beautiful wheatpastes had been torn down and defaced. Can't we all just get along...?

Fans of teh street art can view the slideshow on Flickr here. Look out for the Obama wall (which was left untouched.)

Stood up

Oh well, I didn't like you anyway - d'you hear?

Dogtired

Someone asked me recently why I did this, and gave me cause to doubt (again) the wisdom of putting all your personal shit out there on the internet. It's just attention seeking egotistical bollocks. Believe me, I ask myself the same thing.

Then I find myself in a situation like now, & remember why it's a good thing sometimes. Here it is, 3.00 am. lying awake, tired tired tired, but can't sleep, having been woken up AGAIN (by the upstairs neighbours this time), they stomp in after their night out, walk across my bedroom ceiling in what sounds like lead boots, start talking at the top of their voices, bang goes the TV on. I'm too wired to concentrate on a book, nothing on TV, Radio 4 is failing to block out their noise, too late to phone or email anyone to have a moan - I know, I'll spill it all on the blog! Thank god.

Here is the state of play, for anyone who's been following the whole sorry saga: Finally, after I've threatened them with getting lawyers on them, the Housing Association creak into motion and decide to take downstairs neighbour (with the dogs, keep up now) to court and get an injunction against him to remove his dogs. (After 8 months of flannelling me and denying all knowledge, they confessed that it was in fact they themselves who had taken him to court before over noise pollution and taken away his dogs - but after a ban of two years he asked if he could keep dogs in the flat again - and they agreed to let him. !!!)

I don't have to go to court but I have to sign a witness statement. I asked if I could see a draft, which their lawyers are supposedly writing, but that was 3 weeks ago and have had nothing from them.

Meantime, I've put the flat on the market. It's not the best timing in the world, I admit, but I really, truly can't stay here.

A few people have seen the place - apparently the first people liked the flat, but not the block. Good call, I can't fault their judgement. The dogs appear to be gone, but the upstairs neighbours, who I think have recently moved in, are keeping up the proud tradition of being noisy selfish, selfish noisy cunts - why don't I go up and talk to them? To tell the truth, all the fight's gone out of me. It's been a job getting this far, let me tell you. Like Tina Turner, I don't really want to fight no more.

I was trying to turn it into a positive - maybe I could rent the place out, and go back to a house-share, I could save money and maybe even quit my job and go travelling, or retrain for something I find less morally objectionable than teaching in state schools. I don't know what to do in the meantime, keep going around and around in circles. It's amazing how sleep deprivation can fuck up logical thinking.

Be careful what you wish for, people. Good counsel welcome.

the Clement Freud Memorial blogmeet

It's a rainy night in Soho. A man accosts 5 bloggers outside the French House, asking for change. He is, maybe, Scottish, and well refreshed.
'I'll be honest' he says. 'I want a drink.'
Such a good sales pitch, we all give him change.
He insists on kissing the ladies, and leaves.
OyeBilly: 'He's such a liar, I bet he'll buy a cup of tea with that.'

For alternative accounts, click here and here.

Ooh, it's just like Rashomon!

Postcard

Bailout, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Having a lovely time. Wish you were here.
x

Fear of flying

I don't like it I don't like it I don't like it. Why am I going on a plane again?
Oh yes, to see Other Places.

See you all in a week. Be good.

Free associating

Jacqui Smith on the Today programme, on signing off her husband's porn rental on parliamentary expenses:

'I wish someone had brought it to my attention earlier...'

Usually John Humphries gets on my nerves, but he's right on it like a lion on a wildebeest. 'YOU signed it off!' he points out, and suggests that it's enough for her to resign. But Jacqui, the very model of a modern politician, would not resign unless she was caught redhanded pistol-whipping the Queen. And the powers that be like her, so she can mess up and mess up with impunity.

Politicians, I don't like them because they only care about politics, not people. It's in their nature, otherwise why would they do this job? (They don't do anything useful, or real, they don't sweep the streets, they don't make anything we need or provide anything entertaining, they just come out of public school then business school and boss everyone else around, without ever having experienced life as it is for most people. )

This lot make the Tories look altruistic and saintly, though. My latest brainwave is that they should be made to ride on buses. Buses keep you in touch with real people.

Here is my latest bus journey -

I'm waiting for the bus in Dalston. It doesn't come, and doesn't come, and eventually there's a little crowd on the pavement. One of the crowd nips through the back doors as they open to let people off. The driver turns off the engine.
'There's a queue! Get off the bus! These people were waiting first!'
'I was waiting with the people! I was!' He refuses to get off, the bus driver refuses to start the engine. It's a Mexican standoff. Everyone on the bus weighs in, some shouting at the man to get off, others shouting at the bus driver to start the bus. Everyone has something to say, and it looks like we could be there for a while. I get off and walk to Stoke Newington.

But I'm glad I did because I got to see Ridley Road market on the way. It's a wonder and a marvel - you can get everything there, every type of fish, 8 apples for £1.00, African fabric, Haile Selassie pictures printed on silk, Ghanaian cornmeal, the bits of a cow that they don't sell in Tesco, hairweaves, cheap shoes... Of course, it's in danger of being closed down by developers, so catch it while you can.

Dinosaurs

I want to go and take photos of the anatomically incorrect dinosaurs in Crystal Palace before they fall to pieces altogether. Have never been to Crystal Palace before. Who's with me?

Dumb and happy, or clever and miserable

Which is better?

Mail Me Art

Goddamit, I wish I'd thought of this. Though I ar not artist, & probably people would not want to send me their art. (But if you ARE, & willing to send me your art, email me immediately!). Also, if you are an artist, you can submit for the second Mail Me Art coming up soon.

Exhibition on in Brixton this very weekend.

Must. Get. Out.

Update: If I'd realised so many people would visit from Annie Rhiannon, I'd have put up a more cheery post... I'm not always this grumpy! Do stop by again!

Today we had our fortnightly progress meeting, at which I always end up ranting like a nutter and regretting it. Made a resolution to bite my lip, but despite the calming happy pills I didn't manage it. AND ANOTHER THING that makes me furious is that fact that I come across as a ranting nutter - not only do they want you to just shut up and get on with it, we're not even allowed to talk about it any more. Dissent is frowned upon, as new iniatives from the borough ( ie the government) are now treated like they've been served up piping hot from God Almighty. The teachers are expected to be passive and unquestioning, and so are the poor kids. Poor little buggers. We're giving them an utterly miserable childhood and training them up for a lifetime of wage slavery.

Anyhoo - the final straw was when our admin-crazy mgmt delivered some spreadsheets recording Incidents of Behaviour. One of the little boys in my group (one of my favourites, not that I have favourites oh no) I saw had offended. For, I quote, "throwing snow". There it was, logged on the spreadsheet, a 7 year old's record of shame. HOW DARE 7 YEAR OLD BOY THROW SNOW! No doubt this record will be compiled and end up somewhere in the LEA's statistics.

Must. Get. Out.

Look who came to stay

Annie, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Only Annie Rhiannon!

Yaaaay!!

Yes, it's a coded message

And my favourite PE tune:

Karma Coma

Feelings, seriously, who needs them? Since my doctor prescribed happy pills for the losing-of-the-plot-from-the-bark-bark-barking, have been untroubled by feeling much of anything. Situations where I should feel, I don't know, enraged, sad, happy, frustrated, excited, disappointed, I'm observing calmly... it's like watching fish swimming about underneath a layer of ice at the bottom of a lake. Or something. May just triple the dose and float off into the stratosphere. (though I suspect it doesn't really work like that.) Modern science, isn't it wonderful? I was thinking I'd stay on it for only a few months, but maybe this glacial calm would be worth pursuing forever and ever?

It reminds me of Brave New World. Didn't really get it at 16, I must re-read it, it would make much more sense now - I wish I had it in front of me. At one point, the Savage, an unreconstructed human rescued from the wilds, brought into this world of technology and soma* and hedonism, makes this great speech when someone asks him if it's really a bad thing to have eliminated pain and disease and misery from the world, if he would really have them back again, and he claims them all.

I was on his side when I first read it, never realising as an adult I might be on the side of the Brave New World.






* "There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle."

Jealousy

People who can run fast
People who are rich
Redheads
People who can calculate fast in their heads
Musicians
People who love their jobs
Cats (eating, sleeping, fucking, getting praise for being selfish lazy little attention whores because they're cute - pretty much the ideal life)
People with a talent
People with quiet neighbours
People who are sporty
Slim people
Good looking people
Contented people

You?

Ada Lovelace Day

Celebrating women and technology - I'm pinching this video from the fantastic TED on Aimee Mullins

Paranoid, much?

This is what you see when you apply for a visa waiver for the States. Was trying to get to it from my home computer. Think I'll try it from work, instead.

Are all artists selfish bastards?

And is being talented any excuse?

Apparently Graham Greene said that writers need a chip of ice in their heart. (I can't find where he said it, does anyone know?)

I was watching a documentary of John Martyn, who died in January. Came across him when a teenager, when I thought he was an old hippy and didn’t really listen – later got hooked on Solid Air, and started really properly listening to his voice, which is a voice in a million. I have no words to describe it, but when you hear him you’ve no doubt some people are just born with a gift, when you hear him sing his voice somehow expresses the whole range of what it is to be human. He was a proper musician, the antithesis of all those technically good but soulless talent show winners on the X Factor.

He reminds me of Bob Dylan too – there’s such understanding when he sings, this is someone who’s lived through everything and has great empathy with people’s experiences - yet he seems at the same time to have been an angry, aggressive, incredibly selfish human being (he took over his first wife’s record deal, knocked her up so her career was effectively finished, then buggered off on tour leaving her to bring up the 3 kids alone.) All the while making this beautiful, spiritual, achingly sad music.

I couldn’t get my head around the contrast between the music and its effect on me, and how he lived his private life.

What are they doing to London?

Gloooooom

Things in London that are closing down - the world is changing and I don't like it one bit - it's all getting homogenised, glossy and corporate, bland and boring. Stop selling our city out to developers who don't care about it! Say no say no!

RIP the New Piccadilly.

RIP the allotments on the Olympic site.

RIP Greenwich Market

RIP Ridley Road Market (probably)

RIP proper pubs with 1 old man with no teeth and his dog.

RIP Camden Passage

RIP greasy spoons that aren't repackaged and retro

RIP the Streatham ABC, art deco cinema turned into flats.

Anything you'd like to add whilst I'm in this mood of mourning?

Gentrify this, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Postcard from Berlin

In the misty mists of time, I found the blog of lovely Broke In Berlin. So I when I dragged Rae (not a blogger) to Berlin, we met the lovely BiB, and it was like we'd always known each other, and Rae conceded there might be something in this blogging lark. And I liked it so much I met Em (not a blogger) there another time, and she met BiB.

Then she and Bad Sarah (also not a blogger) went to Berlin, and they met up with BiB. And sent me a postcard.

Aw...

Fuck shopping, let's make art

Anybody want to come and see a play in West One Shopping Centre with me?

Here tis:
Staff of a Private Military Company are passing through Amman en route to Baghdad when one of their number goes missing in Amman. His oldest friend defies protocol to stay and look for him.

It's a promenade play - I understand this to mean that you walk around the actors. It comes highly recommended. ( And after sitting down for TWO AND HALF HOURS through 'He's Just Not That Into You' recently my butt protests at any more sedentary entertainment. )

Shops going bust left right and centre, so they're turning them into theatres & galleries - bring it on!

(I saw an installation in a laundrette by the magnificent Dr D recently, just happened to be wandering past when I saw Brainwash on Bethnal Green High Street - more on Dr D's subversion - and better photos - here. It seems to be the thing at the moment. )

Gran Torino

Have you ever been to the Electric Cinema? OH MY LORD. Massive comfortable chairs, lots of space, little footstalls to put your feet up, a bar, a sidetable for your drink, a beautiful renovated 30s picture house...

Oh, the film. It was good, and gripping, and old Clint does his grizzled old flinty-eyed thing superbly, but my, what a bleak view of race relations in America today.

The Korean immigrants have all become assimilated beautifully into the local culture - they wear the clothes, they talk the talk, they're all driving around in gangs beating people up and shooting them.

'You should go out with your own kind' Clint says to his Korean next-door-neighbour, when he sees her with a white boy. She has just been harrassed by black boys angry when they see her and a white boy walking together through their neighbourhood.

But it's okay, Clint arrives in his truck (which replaces his horse) and his gun saves the day. Firepower is just as important in this movie as it ever was in Spaghetti Westerns. Is this the way they're going to solve their problems, shoot their way out of it? Whoever has the biggest gun wins? Is that the best we can hope for? I won't write a spoiler, but if you see it, do note Clint's final pose and what it tells you. Individualism alive and well in the American cinema - too bad people somehow have to get along together.

Girl in a tree

photoprint, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

by popular demand

Someone talks sense about education, Slaminsky in shock

The Cambridge Primary Review 'identified problems are serious and the required changes are substantial...'

Thank you thank you thank you thank you, Cambridge University.

The fact that this comes from Cambridge University gives it more clout than, you know, mere staff who work in schools, but I'm still grateful.

Here's my favourite bit:

The report finds: children’s statutory entitlement to a broad and balanced primary curriculum compromised by the national tests and strategies; particular pressures at the start (reception) and end (year 6) of primary schooling; acute anxiety about the fate of the arts and humanities and, increasingly, science in primary schools; erosion of both entitlement overall and standardsin ‘the basics’ by a policy-led belief that breadth and standards are incompatible, when the evidenceconsistently shows the opposite – that one requires the other and the best schools achieve both; a curriculum which is two-tier not just in its distribution of time but also, as a result of the relative neglect of the non-core curriculum in teacher training and inspection, in terms of quality; excessive micro-management by government and the national agencies; the dislocation of mathematics and, especially, English by the national strategies for numeracy and literacy; a muddled, reductive and damaging discourse about subjects...

*weeps in gratitude*

World Book Week

Say you had to dress up as a character from a children's book (thus making an arse of yourself in front of your colleagues and children who formerly thought of you as a figure of authority)
who would you choose?

(At the moment I'm thinking Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Now where can I get a wolf suit?)

Reginald Perrin

Ever had a desire to leave your clothes on the beach and bunk off out of your own life? I'm having one of those right now.

Sticking up for wankers

It has been brought to my attention recently that this is mundane, worthless, egotistical, navel-gazing wank, and I should be out doing something productive with real people. (not that you're not real, dear reader, but you know what I mean.) I didn't stick up for blogs very well, because really, it's a fair point, but it did get me thinking (yet again) about the whys and wherefores of blogging.

And this is what I came up with - if my job has taught me anything, it's that human beings have a great need for play, (whether that's fulfilled through blogging, making pictures, making music, playing computer games, doodling or roleplay or constructing the Sistine Chapel out of matchsticks or trainspotting or building ships in bottles or...) And they need to tell stories to make sense of the world. That's what it is.

Do you have a better defence? Let's hear it.

Vote

for your favourite, please.

I tried to number them but Blogger driving me mad. You'll just have to describe it.

Political graffitti

Alive and well on Hackney Road.




PS: I did not write this.

The internet: not just for porn

Things I must do:

Pay my electricity bill.
Pay my credit card.
Clean my flat.
Food shop.
Phone two friends who are long owed a phone call.
Post a parcel.
Go for a bracing walk in the outside world.

Things I have been doing:
Footling around on Flickr.
Watching The Turntable Kitteh.

Oh God, I make an absolutely rubbish grownup. There is no hope for me ever achieving anything now they've invented the internet. How much time is too much time at the computer, do you reckon? What is the longest time you've ever spent in one go?

How can I live without him?

Carlos, in his 'tempting you to tickle my furry belly before I bite your hand off' pose.

I can't work out if he's exceptionally dim or an evil genius. After all, if you had the choice, you would just eat and sleep* all day whilst the stoopid hoomans run around making money to feed you, wouldn't you? (* shagging no longer a possibility for poor Carlos, which is why he's in a state of arrested development.)

Another brick in the wall

My feelings have become increasingly uneasy the more I do this job. Before I started training, I thought, how hard can it be? Then I saw how hard it can be. Sure it’s a demanding job, but the increasing bureaucracy, an insistence on vast quantities of paperwork, on assessments and testing and more assessments and more testing and statistics and targets and more and more and more pressure, on the kids, on the staff, on the parents, seems antithetical to the very idea of what education is or should be...

And the fact that every time you think you’ve got a handle on what you should be doing, they throw it out and insist on new strategies, new schemes of work, new demands on the curriculum (not worked out, not thought through, unresourced, unfocused…) I spent 3 years teaching the same age group, but never got to use the same plans twice.

Who’s running this? Surely they can’t believe it’s a good idea to run things like this… your bottom line has always got to be, is it helping the kids? Is the amount of time we spend tapping data into the computer the best use of our time, or would it be better spent with the children?

But now I’m getting really really cynical. Because it’s so clearly stupid, and a waste of everyone’s time… every day, reinventing the wheel, on the behalf of people who have no clear knowledge or beliefs regarding how children learn the best; a case of ignoring basic common sense, and years of people saying til they’re blue in the face, that we need a creative,child-centred approach...

It’s not that they don’t trust to do our jobs as professionals, as I once thought - now I’m thinking, that they don’t WANT education to educate. They WANT to tie us up in paperwork, to get us so hung up on keeping on top of the mountains of changing legislation, that we’re baffled at what we’re doing.

You’re so busy trying to keep up with the shitwork that you have no time, or indeed energy, to question it. To make it creative, which encourages the kids to be creative; to encourage them to solve problems, to become bright,questioning, thinking, independent human beings.

Because really, truly, they don’t want that. They want passive little worker drones, used to jumping through hoops, passingtheir little tests, leaving school to go on to get shit, poorly paid McJobs with no future.

They’re at the bottom of society already, what hope have they got? At least in the 60s with the secondary moderns, it was more honest about the difference in children’s prospects according to their class, and you might even get taught a trade along the way... Why not squash every spark of interest and curiosity and individuality in the name of SATs? Let the private school kids (at the private schools which don’t have to answer to the LEAs) go on to further education and get the good jobs. Let’s face it, there’s not enough interesting well-paid work to go around.

I don’t want to be a part of that system any more.

My ideal man

On second thoughts, maybe I shouldn't get a cat, I can tell I'd turn into a Great Cat Bore.

Last blog about Carlos, I promise.

Carlos is like my ideal man - greeneyed, redheaded, beautiful, dumb and affectionate. And he makes me laugh - he's jealous of the laptop and has just jumped up on my lap and keeps nudging my hand away from the mouse with his little cold nose.

I like the way he miaows whenever I enter the room, the way he's always pleased to see me, the way he purrs insanely when you stroke him, the way he gazes into your eyes like he's thinking deep thoughts about Being and Nothingness, the way he narrows his eyes in ecstasy and then sinks his claws into your stomach - OUCH OUCH OUCH!

Total aubergine

So, Valentine's Day. Picked up the keys to my friends' house, the cat was happy to see me as he's a big soft dopey ginger lovebug who purrs like a jet engine whenever he has some company. (He exudes a Buddha-like contentment which would be infuriatingly smug in a human being but is strangely calming in a cat. Being around him is chilling me out. That and the amazing silence of my friends' house. Hear that? That sound of silence? They're playing my tune... )

Went for breakfast at the Lemon Monkey (my, Stokey is posh these days) served by lovely flirty French waiter, ended up blowing lots of money in Church Street secondhand bookshops (book on Matisse & old Penguins) and, er, a Very Expensive Dress. Oh well, I'm doing my bit to keep the economy afloat.

It wasn't my fault. There used to be a shop selling doors and bits of wood which is now a vintage clothes shop, it was so amazing in there that I felt like I'd dreamed the place up and almost had to rub my eyes and pinch myself to believe it was real - stacked full of beautiful old clothes by Dior, 40s and 50s dresses in great condition, all at pretty good prices. I wanted everything. (It's called Strutt, visit it if you're ever in Church Street, ladies, and fashion-forward gentlemen.)

So I now own a sparkly aubergine dress by Missoni, which sounds revolting but I think it's beautiful. I feel guilty, but I love it.

And it's actually a SAVING, because the Sony noise-cancelling headphones I'd ordered from Amazon failed to arrive, something went wrong with the order, and they were more expensive than the dress! Trust me, this is female logic.

Anyway, as Bowleserised posted recently as decreed by French Elle magazine, "jamais de total-look aubergine" so what colour shoes and what colour tights with an aubergine dress? (will post a photo when I get home.)

Acqui esta...

Kitteh love

I want a cat. I do. In the meantime, I'm cat-sitting Carlos for the week, and I want one just like him, because he's totally soft in the head, and absurdly fluffy. (another little cat comes in the house to steal his food out of his bowl, and he just looks at you with this piteous 'What can I do?' expression...) But apart from the fact that I can't while the beasts are still downstairs, and I'd rather not have an indoor cat if it can be helped, I've never got a cat before because you know they will die before you do, and you'll get all attached to them and then they snuff it and you're devastated.

There's something not quite right about this thinking, I'm just not sure what it is.

Pub quiz

It's February, the grimmest least fun month in the whole year. So what I'm thinking, is that we need to fight it, people. Here are my plans:

1. Publish Magic G, which my good friend the Curve reminded me recently has never seen the light of day.
Now, anyone know a good online hosting service where I can put the PDFs so you all can download and print your own EXCLUSIVE fanzine, featuring the work of such blogging luminaries as 'Foxy' Tim Footman, Oye Billy, the Mother of all things Rock, the poetry of Geoff, the gig reviews of Delrico Bandito and Istvanski, the stories of Dick Headley, the street art photography of East London by yours truly... all that good stuff.

2. Right then. Speed-dating is hideous, internet dating a chore, but who doesn't love a pub quiz?
What if I was to organise a pub quiz type event? You could send your single mates my way. Everyone has to sit on a team with new people, to break the ice. No lock&key findyourpartner type pressure, just fun, and if you don't fancy anyone then you've just had a good evening in the pub with friendly people.

What do you reckon? What could I call it?

Fantasy football

7 months = £15 million payoff.

I know nothing about football, but am highly experienced at motivating stroppy, spoiled, underachieving, immature individuals. They should make ME manager of Chelsea. Then sack me after 7 months, I'm sure the results would be identical to old Felipe.

National I Hate Everyone Day

is coming up.

In 37 years, I've never been sent a Valentine's card.

Just saying, like.

Anyway, on Saturday I will be drowning my sorrows with some Bennys (thanks, LC) as a change from crying into my beer, and hopefully will come up smiling on Sunday.

How will you be spending Valentine's Day then? (Special prizes will be awarded for the most miserable entry.)






Card from Etsy

Slaminsky's Guide To Drugs

Massive caveat in case anybody from work is reading: Drugs are Bad. Do as I say, not as I did. Don't do them, kids. etc, etc.

Marijuana: Fairly sociable, in one sense, in that you pass it around. Unsociable in that in makes you giggle like a moron at unfunny things and then go into a stupor. Did it for years until I realised that it was only the smoking bit I liked, otherwise it just gave me paranoia and a feeling as though someone was inflating a balloon in my chest, and switched to normal cigarettes instead of 'funny' cigarettes. Quite good for listening to music, though.

Speed: God this party's great, isn't it? So many interesting people to talk to, I could talk all night, it's amazing when you first meet people and you think they're really boring with nothing to say for themselves but then you get talking and you find that everyone's got something to say and everyone's got their own little thing going on, you know, their own little story - sorry, did you say something?
NB: Speed tastes FOUL.

Ecstasy: Lovely, everything's cool, like floating on fluffy pink clouds. Calm calm calm. Is it really hot in here? Must open a window. Hold on, now I'm shivering. Which is weird, I don't feel cold. Hilarious! I feel like I really know you now - like we have this deep connection. Wait - listen to this bit, it'll really make you rush...

Amyl Nitrate:
'So, how do you take this?'
She mimes inhaling over the bottle like it's a Vicks inhaler. A moment later and I feel as if my heart is about to burst out of my chest like the creature from Alien. People do this for fun?

LSD: Will turn your consciousness inside out like a sock in a spin dryer. Seriously, this is one scary drug. I've never understood why it's the cheapest when it's the most instantly powerful and long lasting (8 hours a trip, anyone?) Had amazing times and shit times on it, glad I did it but never again.

Magic Mushrooms: The same, but more, er, organic. We drove into the Norfolk countryside, crashed the car, lay down in the pitch dark on a country road to look at the stars, climbed over barbed wire fences to get into Sheringham park, climbed the observation tower and watched shooting stars, got chased off by guard dogs, all after mushroom tea. Good times.

Cocaine: I have never discovered the effects of this drug, apart from the fact that it makes you a) keep on wanting to do it and b) an arsehole.

Insufficient grit

Was interested to read this in the Daily Scum:

'Well I'm absolutely fuming' said Mrs A Taxpayer. 'I don't pay my hard-earned taxes just to have these teachers sit around watching porn and eating biscuits in bed. This health and safety business is political correctness gone mad! And they're missing such crucial, vital time in their learning. I don't know why they couldn't do what they did in my day, and spend the time colouring pictures together in the hall.

'Not only did I have to take time off work, losing my company literally billions in the two days I was out, but I had to look after my own children for two whole days! These teachers have no idea how tedious and inconvenient entertaining small children can be.'

Mayor Boris Johnson appeared to back frustrated parents.
'It's not an excuse to skive, you know' he was quoted as saying, shortly before lunch at the Dorchester with some visiting Chinese dignitaries.

Interview with GSE

Update - the elegant and sophisticated GSE has consented to an interview. I reserve the right to heckle her answers on my blog though.

What was the last excuse you made, and why did you need to make it?
I regularly use the same excuse for not doing things well or properly or indeed at all - I've got health problems. That would have been totally valid 15 years ago. Less so now. Yeah, but I've still got health problems...

Complete this sentence: I wonder why _________________.
why anyone thinks that sticking a vibrating mascara wand near one your most delicate organs is a good idea?
Like most vibrating items marketed for women, possibly it will be used on an area not indicated in the advertising - cf the Magic Wand.

What did you look like when you were a teenager?
Nerdy and hideous. So not much change then.
Oh pish posh woman. You are gorgeous and you know it.

What is the best thing you've ever bought?
The monsters - although they were more of a present really. But they weren't cheap.

Do you like or dislike change?
I dislike it on the whole. But it depends. For example I prefer the same breakfast every day. But I change my underwear every day too.

* * *

Never managed to trick someone into guest-posting here, maybe this will work. It's a meme, and here's how it works -

Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will email you five questions.
3. Update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When someone comments asking to be interviewed, ask them five questions.

Snowbound

6.00 am text from head teacher: School is closed today.

I think I've dreamed it. Then I look out the window...





Been watching Scrubs in bed with toast & coffee. Bit bored now. You?

Paging Dr Freud

I'm walking in town. Everywhere there are tiny, perfect little sculptures of animals on the ground, so many you have step over them to avoid treading on them – tigers, rabbits, hedgehogs… they're beautiful, but all surrounded by clouds of buzzing flies.

Then I remember I'd read about this in the paper, the sculptures are actually filled with the corpses of dead animals, it's a protest action by conservation and animal rights groups. The idea is that they will lie there rotting until the clouds of flies attract people's attention to the issue of extinction. It gets harder and harder to walk without stepping on them, the hedgehogs in particular are quite prickly.

Then I wake up. It's 5 in the morning and I can hear techno coming from downstairs, faint enough but it's vibrating through the mattress and pillow. I have to be up in an hour.

What does it all mean?



(Yes, you know you've hit blogging rock bottom when you start posting your dreams. Any you want to share?)

Fact v fiction

"Miss," says one of my bright sparks, "all stories have happy endings don't they, and the goodies always win over the baddies..."

I think about it. The stories they know all have happy endings. To all intents and purposes, stories to them are defined by happy endings, even when arrived at quite violently. The 3 little pigs defeat the wolf, he runs away with his [burnt] tail between his legs; Hansel and Gretel destroy the witch, and never go hungry again; Cinderella marries the prince; even Goldilocks, that thieving, house-breaking little trollop, escapes the house of the bears; in the juniors, St George kills the dragon and marries the princess.

They are thrown for a loop by the story of Boudica though. They can't get enough of this story (the edited version which doesn't mention that she and the children were raped). The tragedy, that she's a heroine, and brave and strong, and protecting her children, and a queen, and that she fights well, but she still loses. And kills herself in the end. We go round and round in circles. 'But why did she die? Why did she lose? What happened to her children?' Most of all 'Why did she drink poison and die?'
'Why do you think?'
One of my shy unconfident ones pipes up
'She didn't want the Romans to kill her first.'

Fairy stories are full of violence, they are warning tales and contain lessons about etiquette - don't trust strangers in the woods, don't treat your poor relations like dirt, they might end up as royalty - and they're fun, but it's the real life stories that hook them, a gateway into adult complexity and ambiguity. Sometimes the goodies don't win over the baddies. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. Or the story doesn't even have an end.

Manly Kiss

Some of you may have seen this before, but for those who haven't, have some fun here with the Anagram Server.

Yours,

Lanky Miss

Only connect

So, I arose from my sickbed & went to rent some videos & buy a scart lead but it's not working IT'S NOT WORKING IT'S NOT WORKING! Why does all electronica hate me?

The scart lead's connected to the TV...
The scart lead's connected to the DVD
The TV's connected to the mains socket...

I know I'm only a simple non-mechanical soul but it's not rocket science. What am I doing wrong??

I now have one Pineapple Express & one Buddha of Suburbia DVD which I cannot watch. And I had to pay a fine from last summer. Bah.


PS Good, happy yet cool songs to play at a wedding. Let's have 'em.

Truanting

I am Unwell, at home. Given up trying to do anything useful & work related. Feel too guilty to go outside. I'm stuck inside with daytime TV & Radio 4, which is currently broadcasting a depressing play about a kid going missing.

Entertain me, I beg you. Tell me what you're having for lunch. Tell me what you saw on TV last night. Tell me a joke. Tell me your favourite line from a film (and let us guess which film.) Ask me a question. Anything. The floor is yours.

The Evil Poor

Do you think they're closing in on rich people with off-shore bank accounts and dodgy accountants who look for tax loopholes? No?

Hmmm... Thought not...

Where to stay in NY?

Now then. Are any Americans or ex-pats reading? Or well travelled people? Over here, a B&B is a cheap institution for people who can't afford hotels. Usually in the region of £35 a night. (though the one we stayed in in St Ives, was dead posh, posher than some hotels I've stayed in, it had Phillipe Starck bedlamps, a huge ensuite bathroom with marble tiling and an enormous flatscreen TV.) Over there, it appears that they are in the region of $125 a night, (and some are up to $275 in low season ) which is a lot. Where do you stay if you want somewhere cheap?

Saul Steinberg

at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Go, go, go! I've never seen so many pictures I've lusted after & wanted to own so fiercely, all in one exhibition. (He was a famous illustrator for the New Yorker for years, mates with the Abstract Expressionists, born in Romania, escaped Fascist Italy whilst an architecture student by the skin of his teeth,wound up in Manhattan.) There is something very bracing, very restful in looking at a perfectly drawn line, at someone who can really, really draw. It's not just aesthetically pleasing though, there's real wit and intelligence, some weighty ideas behind this stuff. I refer you here to find out more.

Other illustrators that have given us pleasure over the years:

Quentin Blake. Of course. The Maestro. (He is setting up a Museum of Illustration in Kings Cross, where I would sell my soul to get a job.) When I was a kid, I didn't like them so much, I preferred drawings that were a bit more pretty and decorative, it's only as a grownup that I can appreciate the brilliance, the humour and joie de vivre and beauty of his work.

Gerald Scarfe. Wicked imagination. And wickedly cruel. I remember seeing him on some programme where he was for some reason being a consultant on a Disney film. One of the Disney artists was saying how she had drawn an animal to look cute. He looked utterly baffled and dismayed. 'Why does it always have to look cute?' He started drawing when ill as a child - you know that line in Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, 'When I was a child, I had a fever, my hands felt like two balloons'? That came from Gerald Scarfe, that did.

Andy Warhol - He was a great graphic artist, before he became a bona fide artist (though that's still a contentious idea.) Great colour, sense of humour too.
Posy Simmonds - skewers the middle classes brilliantly, draws like a genius. I wish she'd start her strip in the Guardian again, most broadsheet cartoonists are pants and can't write for toffee.

Ralph Steadman - I love that hallucinatory, satirical style. I went to see an exhibition of his pictures for Alice in Wonderland years ago, it was a perfect fit of style and subject matter.

And of course, our own blogging Lucy Pepper. Words can not express how much I love her style. And it's not just drawing, her recent paintings of Devon are so ridiculously beautiful. Bah. Some of us were born to be artists, some of us art appreciators, I guess.

Foxy

I've seen 3 urban foxes in the last two days - one trotting out of Victoria Park at 6.30am, one slinking past the fire station in Bethnal Green at 6.45pm, one at 10.30 pm running through the estate.

What does it mean?

Foxy, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

I know it's over

I'm in the kind of fragile state of mind where an Andrex puppy ad might make me a bit misty. I've gone to see Slumdog Millionaire, wanting to be distracted, uplifted, lost in someone else's story for a couple of hours - but they're playing The Smiths before the film comes on (it's the Curzon Soho). I Know It's Over - 'Love is natural and real, but not for the likes of you and I, my love...'

I do love them (though I could do without them at the moment) - the sheer, hand-to-the-forehead melodrama and over the topness of Morrissey, and the fact that he sends himself up at the same time as articulating real pain and isolation, kind of taboo subjects for rock n roll.

When you think of American rock and pop, it was all that Chuck Berry/Beach Boys idea of cars and girls and sexual success (never mind that Brian Wilson was a lot more interestingly leftfield and complex than songs like Fun Fun Fun implied). The Smiths were the first band to really champion songs about sexual failure and loss, to put losers and misfits at the centre. And a generation of geek boy (and girls) worshipped them for it. That was even before the geeks inherited the earth.

The girl and boy bands around now are more like the shiny, superficial haircut bands that were around in the 80s. Where are this generation's Smiths? (Though in fact, at the moment I can't really bear to listen to them, it's too raw and close to the bone. I can only listen to them when I'm feeling chirpy. In times of doubt, I reach for Stevie Wonder or Sly and the Family Stone.)


Slumdog Millionaire, the short review - first third with their childhood, fab. Last two thirds, pure Bollywood. And the gameshow framework slowed it down too much.

My secret weapon

Just bought me five minutes of peace

Reasons to be cheerful

Head state v bad, as Bridget Jones would say. Apart from my own private personal hellish circumstances, let's look at the evidence:

Gaza
Zimbabwe
Congo
World recession and
It's fucking freezing.

Tell me something good, something cheerful, I beg you.

(incidentally, my New Year's Resolution is to stop swearing on my blog. Look at this:

Created by OnePlusYou )

Waiting for Godot

Please someone come with me please please please please?

(I just checked, tickets in the stalls are now £51.00. Good grief! But still! Ian McKellen! Jean Luc Pickard! Samuel Beckett...)

Things I learned in 2008

Pinched from the lovely Patroclus. Thank god for memes, I'm brain-dead.

1. Not to buy a flat sandwiched between two other noisy bastard flats shortly before a recession which sees house prices tumbling.

2. You can email the mayor of Hackney and he has to respond.

3. My crush has a long-term girlfriend, (which explains blowing hot&coldness.)

4. Parisians are more friendly than they used to be.

5.Apparently I'm bootylicious. Like the Jewish J-Lo. Or the honky Beyonce. Only not.

6. Changing things to how you want them to be is about as easy as levitating.*

7. Weddings in Cornwall are more debauched than weddings elsewhere in the country.

8. No matter what history you share, you still have a bond with your family.

9. Beneath my amiable, fluffy exterior is a will of iron. Don’t fuck with me.

10. * But not, you know, totally impossible. However much you think you’ve seen it all, you can still be surprised. There's always room for hope.

Dear Neighbour, you are not invited to my party...

The problem I have with the note is not that he was having a party and didn't invite me, it was that he selected a vibrant background of balloons, effectively stating that his party was going to be vibrant and possibly have balloons and that I couldn't come.

Seriously funny prankster-ism from David. Thanks to P for this.