Odious ads and Radio Balm

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                I always consider we are lucky, here in the UK, to have a commercial free broadcaster. Yes, I know that the BBC has had to take some stick for transgressions lately, both current and historic, -but during periods of travel, when we have had to digest news alongside adverts, I’ve found the TV almost impossible to watch. You get one, aggressively hyper story, delivered in a full-on, excitable manner, followed by what seems like half an hour of fragrant persuasion on the subject of Durex condoms or haemorrhoid cream. The adverts are always much louder than the programme itself, which to me is a most annoying, cynical and patronising ruse.

                Though I seldom watch commercial channels, when I do I am able to appreciate the artistry, irony or wit of the entertaining advert. Many, such as the Cadbury’s Smash ads for instant mashed potato in the 70s, or the Guinness ads of the 90s belong to a kind of commercials ‘hall of fame’. Many, like the Meerkats ‘Simples’ begin by being entertaining and become increasingly tiresome as time goes by.

                One thing I find hard to understand is how advertising can possibly work. I cannot think of one single commodity that I’ve bought as a result of watching a TV commercial. I can see how children become ensnared by their wiles, but fully functioning adults should be able to resist, surely? Or are we all prey to some underlying, subconscious thread that works away when we are unaware or asleep?

                Then there are all the annoying, animated ads that dot the screen when we’re attempting to undertake a serious Scrabble move, share what we are cooking for dinner on FB, look at a news website, forward a funny email or put in a bid on Ebay. They are there, flickering and buzzing away off to the side or on top. Sometimes a little delicate scrolling can put them out of sight, or there is a chance to ‘hide’ them, but mostly they continue to blemish the screen. Heaven knows what any of them are for-I certainly don’t look and I don’t know anyone who does.

                Most of all I’m a fan of talk radio. I can get my regular dose of a ‘soap’, news updates, documentaries, comedy, comment and debate, magazine programmes, consumer programmes, quality plays and literature without any kind of interruption from anyone trying to sell me anything. And all of this can be delivered while I’m occupied, undertaking the sort of menial tasks that might otherwise be quite tedious, such as ironing, washing the floor or peeling potatoes. The visual image, I feel is overrated, just as books, for me are generally superior to their film versions. I expect it’s a generational thing, setting me, as usual, amongst the dinosaurs of the world!

Where the Wild Things Are.

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                I can imagine, within a couple of generations, how society will be. In my mind’s eye society is a kind of dystopian techno nightmare like Paul Theroux’s ‘Ozone’, or Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, where everyone stays inside except for helicopter visits outside to see anything green, natural or wild. Or perhaps going ‘outside’ will involve some sort of virtual travel using screens, 3D and surround sound.

                An enduring memory from my children’s early childhood is of settling my daughter, aged about three, outside the back door of the house with some paint, water, brushes and paper, only to return to check on her and find she had ignored the paper and employed the paint and brushes in a project to enhance the appearance of the diminutive woodlice as they went about their business around her feet. This embellishment seemed to have no effect at all on the insects, although it may have transformed them into easily tracked, tasty titbits for predators.

                As a tot she loved the garden creatures, making baths for earthworms from flowerpot drip-trays, cradling long suffering frogs and making pets of snails. One such snail was a favourite, nurtured, fed tasty leaves and given regular baths. One day, in a fit of sibling rivalry her brother threw the beloved snail over the fence into the unkempt jungle of next door’s garden, prompting his sister to howl in inconsolable misery at the loss.

                “Don’t worry!” I reassured her. “I can get it back for you.” I ventured into the tangled maze next door, waist high in grass and weeds. The property of an elderly brother and sister, it had languished untended for many years, visited only by the many stray cats they’d acquired. I did not have to wade too far to find a snail, since the entire plot was a gastropod’s paradise. I returned, triumphant with the replacement. Her face was still contorted with rage and wails continued to issue from it.

                I proffered the captured snail, which had wisely shrunk back into its shell as if it had some premonition of the specialised treatment in store. There was a small moment of silence as she scrutinised the creature on the palm of my hand, before she yelled an ear-splitting shriek.

                “Waaah! That’s not the one!”

                Apparently, children today play outside half as much as their parents did, which strikes me as a depressing fact. Even now I far prefer the outside to the inside. As children we were outside all the time unless it was pouring with rain or we had to do homework [or Dr Who was on, in which case we’d have had our ‘tea’ anyway]. We were never supervised, but were always occupied. Quite a lot of the time, I seem to remember was spent on ‘digging for treasure’.

                The more our outside green space shrinks, the more we should be in it-protecting and appreciating it; and no one more so than our children, otherwise those works of fiction could become scarily real.

For Better or Worse

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                Change is inevitable; that much is a given. In industry and in any establishment ‘change’ is an issue that must be managed, trained for, discussed, prepared for and implemented. Why must all this effort go into dealing with change? Because most of us, the worker bees, the minions, the ignorant-we won’t like it. And we won’t like it because it won’t be in our interests. It will be in the interests of those making the change; they may be bosses, government ministers, directors or anyone who might benefit from alterations.

                One change that hit the national headline news this week was the move, after 40 years, of Ford’s van factory from Southampton, here on the South coast of England, to Turkey. The reason given is lower cost. I’m guessing this means lower wages. Of course the move is great news for Turkey, who, I believe is still aiming to belong to the European Union, having begun negotiations in 2005, but less good for those workers who had believed, not expecting anything to change, that their jobs were there until retirement. No doubt Ford’s will also have less in the way of employment regulations to follow-that is-if and when Turkey gets its membership in Europe.

                As the stirrings of unrest boil away under the surface in Turkey, I’ll be interested to see how Ford’s venture of moving there progresses. The turkey may come home to roost, as it were.

                Closer to home, the shockwaves are still settling after our little writing club was sacked from the ‘community’ arts centre where we always met. As a non profit-making club, apparently we do not generate enough revenue; hence we are no longer welcome. For now we will meet in our homes until such time as we find another venue. We have to adapt to the change.

                It may be unfashionable to adhere to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t mend it’ mantra, but all change is not necessarily going to be better for all people. In my previous life as a real working person [ie one who earned a salary] I was happy enough for things to be changed if the benefits were pointed out. Being of a somewhat cynical nature, however, I tended towards the view that there is nothing new under the sun, therefore a proposed change would be a system or a scheme or an idea that we had implemented before under a different name and in a different guise. And here’s the thing-often more than once. On the occasions when, in my innocence, I was rash enough to point this out, the outcome was never happy, or indeed favourable. I became a sort of cynical ‘Mr Pooter’  figure, labelled as an idiotic buffoon-or worse.

                Nowadays for me, change is gradual and unavoidable, although strangely, not always altogether unwelcome, without authority to rail against. Who is there to blame for wrinkles, unwanted weight deposits or grey hair? It’s all in the scheme of things, just as it should be.

                

Hello? OK-can we Take a Break now?

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                In my semi-conscious, post celebratory state I felt I must be hallucinating. Each time I turned on a screen to attempt to catch up on current affairs, the same, confusing, surreal images and words flooded the waves, hour in, hour out in a relentless deluge. Babies. Crowds. Photographers. The news was…no news. She was in labour. She was still in labour. She went into labour on Monday morning. There was still no news. Would it be a girl? Would it be something else?

                After what seemed like days [no doubt the Duchess herself felt it to be so], the announcement of the baby’s arrival was made, taking up hours more of the news broadcasts. Then there was more speculation-when would she be leaving the hospital? The massed ranks of reporters and photographers were in a frenzy of feverish speculation and excitement. Clearly nothing else had occurred in the world since Kate went in to pop out a sprog. I presume the loyalist, ‘Hello’ reading nation took a day off, stayed indoors, drew the curtains and glued themselves to their screen while they waited, breath baited for the thrilling moment when the Cambridges would emerge with their offspring.

                At long last, and I’m guessing after having been groomed, styled, primped, made up and dressed by a post-partum designer, the Duchess and husband appeared with their wrapped bundle of baby-a tiny, screwed up face in a swathe of blankets. There were a few, bland remarks about parenthood-then they were off in their swanky Range Rover [or something], driven by someone.

                The next round of intense build-up concerned the name [much exploited by the turf accountants of this world]. Charles was favourite-then James-then…

                Then all was quiet, except, perhaps in the Cambridge household.

                I suppose the Royals must generate an amount of tourist income. Other than that there seems little purpose, especially for the periphery-the ‘hangers on’; the likes of Charles and Camilla, Andrew [who, under his designation of ‘trade ambassador’ appears to do little except to play in a middle Eastern playboys’ playground involving some unsavoury entertainment with young girls]. In the meantime, we, the proletariat fund it all through tax. If this sounds mean spirited, I make no excuse-I feel mean about it.

                I am sure the Queen herself feels she has served the nation, and in her own way she has. And yes, a lot of people feel affection for her and her batty, eccentric husband. Perhaps it is all part of their appeal. But their upkeep is all monstrously expensive. I wonder if the return justifies the expense? Answers on a postcard please…or in the comments?

 

 

London Heatwave

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                The underground train is a stifling capsule of wilting passengers, staring mute into the clammy air.

                A slim, elegant woman in a long, floaty dress, large, ugly feet restrained by thin, strappy sandals. Her big toe gross, like a giant’s thumb-

                Stepping out on to the platform; a surge of cool air pursues us through the rounded tunnels.

                Heedless, purposeful travellers walk between us, barge into us or stand in the way, intent on their tiny screens.

                Throngs on the shady side of Bond Street-a forest of smooth, bare legs in the shortest of buttock-skimming denim shorts.

                I grimace when I spot my baggy knees reflected in the mirrors of the hotel lobby as I await the lift.

                We are the ‘Out of Towners’-Jack Lemmon and his wife-I am a tourist in a city where I lived for years-aeons ago-

                The restaurant terrace overhung by subway tracks-trains squealing by overhead, their wheels grinding as they round the bend, counteracting conversation; the waiter beams and his lips form a question, soundless in the train’s passing hubbub.

                Shoppers clutching bags-Dolce e Gabbana, Liberty’s, Reiss-

                The gift stalls crammed with a million items no one could want-Union Jack mugs, fridge magnets, Tee shirts, metal models of Big Ben, Buck House in a snowstorm.

                I fall exhausted on to the soft, white sheets in the air conditioned room-am asleep in seconds.

                When I wake I am sixty years of age…

A Retrospective Indulgence

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So Long Marianne

[Part 2]

            When, in the second year I was forced out into a depressing bed-sit with a repressive landlady I missed her so much I spent regular nights propped up at the end of her bed eating cheese and pickles, envying her for having the foresight to claim ill health and keep her room at the halls of residence.

            Once it was clear I’d have to undertake some work if I was to gain a qualification that would lead to employment I began to knuckle down, completing mediocre essays, attending lacklustre lectures, keeping appointments with disapproving tutors and applying myself to placements. As the lucky recipient of a modest income from some shares, Marianne did not feel the pressure to strive for academic success and continued to maintain a hectic social life, made all the more pleasurable by the acquisition of a small car. She continued to live in her tiny room, spend her days shopping in ‘Chelsea Girl’ or ‘Top Shop’, date hapless men and leave a string of lovelorn boyfriends in her wake. Her health issues, a useful weapon in the defence against obligation or duty, morphed slowly into hypochondria and each time we met she regaled me with some new symptoms she’d noticed, or tests or treatment she’d been undergoing, difficulties that prevented her from completing the course.

            With no other option than to join the grown up world, at the end of the three years I became a career woman with a flat and a boyfriend I’d picked up along the way. I still met up with Marianne, though less often. She’d found another tiny room, a bedsit in a shared house that eked out the modest income she still had. She spent her days attending hospital appointments, researching alternative therapies and taking courses in obscure, esoteric fields. Our lives began to diverge. I was promoted to a new and better job, split with the boyfriend, moved to a different, leafier part of town. She took a course as a ‘holistic’ healer and did freelance astrology readings in between courses of treatment for various ailments. She moved to a small flat, subsisting on benefits to augment her income, inconsistent now that the shares had crashed.

            In another ten years I’d married, moved away to the coast, taken a career break and had two children. We corresponded, letters documenting lives that seemed to be led on separate planets. I was mired in the minutiae of domestic triviality; she was taking to the stage in her debut as an exotic dancer whilst continuing in her quest to find the perfect man, though available men were becoming scarcer and more selective.

            I resumed my career, became single again and sought to rekindle friendships that had foundered in the wake of my marriage. When I began a long distance relationship with a London man I contacted her and arranged to visit her at her Streatham flat during one of my metropolis weekends.

 

I got to her road. I stood on the pavement opposite her house and gazed up at her window; but I didn’t cross over, didn’t ring the bell. I turned back and made the long trek back to Hampstead. She rang me, later.

            “Where were you?” she said.

            “I rang the bell and no one answered” I lied. She was angry. I felt tearful. There would never be another chance.

            I continued to send letters and cards for a couple more years with no response. I look at the photos she sent me of herself posing in a leopard print bikini against a background of tropical plants on a night club stage and I wonder what she is doing now, but the clock is set firm in the present; no going back. Here’s to you, Marianne. So Long!

 

A few weeks after I finished the story a spooky thing happened. She sent me a card-the first communication for some years. She’d penned some brief, ambiguous notes: ‘the flat is falling down around me’, ‘I must get my act together’. In a fever of excited enthusiasm I wrote back, careful to use longhand, careful not to say too much about my life now. There has been no reply.

You’re never too old for Rock and Roll

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                One of the many aspects of ageing that intrigues me is what I will be listening to [always providing I am able to hear anything] when I am installed in my care or nursing home as a result of having been firmly placed there by my sprogs. They will have done this following lengthy and frequent exhortation by me and having researched widely [I hope!].

                I imagine that such ‘entertainment’ provided by institutions for the elderly consists, if it is adequate, of some kind of sing-along sessions, as well as gentle exercise to music? What, then, will that music be? Because it would have to be derived from popular songs of the inmates’ era, would it not? And what will the songs be?

                Well certainly not ‘Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover’, or ‘Pack up your Troubles in your Old Kit Bag’. These belong to a bygone era. No, the popular music we babyboomers will be jigging in our orthopaedic chairs to will have to consist of hit parade favourites or sixties underground classics or punk. How about sing-along-a ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles, or Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, or The Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’?

                I like to think there is less of a generation gap in musical tastes as there used to be when I was a teenager, though I fear I am deluded, since I would be at a loss right now to be able to name any tune in the charts today.

Festivals, however are attended by a wide age range, and of course, especially this year, frequently feature vintage bands such as The Rolling Stones headlining act at Glastonbury, pilloried by that most erudite rag, The Daily Mail, with the headline ‘Night of the Living Dead’. Yes, Mailites, the Stones are oldish. They are all pushing seventy. They are wrinkly and craggy looking. Some [Keith] are too arthritic to play their instrument. But here’s a thing-a vast number of people of all ages loved it, including me. Why? Well for me it is generational. They are of my era, playing the songs that define my youth [mostly written by Keith, who merited his place on the stage for having produced such classics as ‘Gimme Shelter’ whether he played or not. The Stones, geriatric though they may be, can play on into their wheelchair years as far as I’m concerned.

And as our little, local music festival draws to a close today I look around at the substantial audience and see revellers of all ages from days old, to old and infirm and from all walks of life, sharing and enjoying the same music and best of all, the acts live on stage. So maybe in real music, unmanufactured by the likes of Simon Cowell etc there is no generation gap after all? And I can look forward to afternoon tea, Bingo and ‘I can’t get no Satisfaction’ when I wind up in sunset hotel. 

School is nearly out

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“Michael Gove axes six-week summer holidays for schools

The education secretary is warned a ‘free for all’ could emerge after headteachers get the freedom to set their own term dates”

 

                Little Govey, I suspect is one of the ‘teachers’ have too easy a life’ brigade. Once upon a time, when I was a key stage one school teacher I was, along with everyone else I knew in teaching, subjected to those old chestnut phrases long beloved of non teachers:

  • Nine to three job
  • Lovely! All those long holidays
  • What, another holiday?
  • Easy life!

                In time I learned a retort which was to silence the barbed, jealous swipes people made about my job. I’d simply say-“Why aren’t you doing it, then?”

                There are still numerous myths surrounding teaching as a job. Firstly, the ‘long, six week, summer holiday’ no longer exists [in the state sector]. It just about struggles to five weeks, for children. Take another two weeks off for the teachers. That’s the minimum time it takes to clear up from one class and prepare for the next. A primary phase teacher will have to organise a [probably new to her] classroom, label everything, cover display boards [like wallpapering an enormous room], put up initial displays covering aspects of reward systems etc, organise the students into different ability groups for at least two curriculum areas and prepare curriculum long term, medium term and lesson plans for each of those groups in each curriculum area, besides preparing the accompanying resources and making individual provision for anyone with individual needs. After the first year of teaching there will also be at least one curriculum area to manage, including an ‘action plan’ and the ordering and organisation of resources.

                How, I wonder does the education secretary imagine that all this is to be done if holidays are taken at random?

                For children nowadays it is more important than ever not to miss out parts of the term. The curriculum is carefully constructed in steps, with each next step built on the progress made in the last. To miss two weeks would be like watching the first part of a TV thriller followed by the last. You would be unlikely to understand what was going on without the middle section.

                Once the term begins, a teacher will be in place long before the bell rings for registration, getting out all the resources, loading up the computer with all the pre-planned teaching aids and preparing the classroom for the morning onslaught-then the same frantic activity at ‘lunchtime’ ready for the afternoon. Once the pupils have left there is sorting out, marking, assessment, adjustment of plans, meetings, training sessions, report writing, etc-on top of a demanding day with small children. More often than not, there will be more work to take home for the evening.

                There will also be stressful observations [both internal and with the dreaded ‘OFSTED’] to undergo. Manifestations of disruptive behaviour or low ability during observations are deemed to be the fault of the teacher, always.

                So, little Mr Gove, understand that such holidays as there are exist as a lifeline for beleaguered teachers.

                Oh…and parents…your children don’t go to school to be babysat…a school holiday is an opportunity for you to share experiences and fun as a family, not a time to be carped about as a nuisance. OK?

                Here endeth the lecture!

 

               

               

 

               

           

 

Not Just a Machine, Monsieur Corbusier!

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                After a tortured, traffic ridden crawl of ten hours from bonny Scotland, where we’d disembarked from the Larne-Stranraer ferry, we arrived back at home-that is to say-the place where we live when we don’t live in our miniature, wheeled home.

                I’d be lying if I said homecomings are no different from the time when I was a proper working person. I no longer get that plummeting sensation as the first working Monday looms; that attempt to cling to every last moment; those delaying tactics at bed time. The return journey from any trip these days provides me with an opportunity to speculate on what may have happened in my absence and what may need to be done in order to mitigate these happenings, and also to appreciate the comforts and conveniences that a house offers.

                We near our street. I experience a frisson of surprise like the Narnia children’s experience of coming back through the wardrobe when I see that nothing has changed. Opening the front door and stepping into the hall feels new. There is a pile of [mostly junk] mail teetering on the hall chair, clamouring for the recycling bin. Of the mail that remains, one is a reminder to renew my car tax, one is a bank statement, one is yet another publishing agent’s rejection of my novel. Lovely.

                Even if it is dark I am always compelled to go first to the garden, where there tends to be good news- and bad. A lot of things have survived or even thrived in my absence [=good]. A lot of things that have thrived are weeds [=bad] and snails [=bad]. The lawn is not waist high [=good]. The lawn consists of weeds, moss, brown patches and ants’ nests [=bad].

                During the three weeks we’ve not been here the doorbell has made use of the time to take one of its intermittent sabbaticals, the carpets have acquired a layer of particles, the windows have taken on a smoked glass look, the fridge is empty of all but a tube of tomato puree, a few wrinkly cloves of garlic and half a jar of marmalade. Next day, after a stuffy and restless night in the luxury [post camper] that is bed, as I launch into laundering the sixteen tons of dirty washing we’ve created, the garden washing line decides, during the pegging of the last load, to make a statement by collapsing.

                But it’s not all bad. The sun is out. I spend my first sockless day for three weeks-[and not just because there are no clean socks in the drawer]. A passable duo at the local pub makes a refreshing, timely change from Irish folk ditties. And there is something to watch on the box…Glastonbury!

                So, as in the immortal lines of Frank Sinatra’s ‘It’s Nice to go Traveling’-it is quite nice to be home. Now, where shall we go next?