Mewlings

I'm leaving...

2010-07-22T11:50:00.002+01:00

...and moving here:

http://thaino.wordpress.com/

It's a non-anonymous blog about my adventures in China.

Thanks for all the comments, nudges and nonsensical conversations. See you on the other side (where I promise to write more often...)

BYE

Duke Fandango

Doctor, doctor...I'm a lazy bastard.

2010-05-04T20:05:00.006+01:00

As a completely untrained medical practitioner (although I do quite like Scrubs), I feel it is my prerogative, nay, my duty, to alert the general public of a new and destructive infection.

Sloped Shoulderitus.

'But how will I be able to accurately recognise this horrific condition?' I hear you wail like a stuck pig.

Welcome to the Dr Fandango medical advice line...

General Comments:

Sloped Shoulderitus is a condition found in any number of medium to large sized organisations. It often collects in the abdominal cavity of middle to senior management or anyone who has a modicum of responsibility but lacks the motivation, wherewithal or ability to perform what should be their job thereby forcing the unlucky surrounding workforce to do not only their own job, but pick up the slack from suffers. Basically, feckless cunts.

Symptoms:

The main symptom of Sloped Shoulderitus in sufferers, is a complete inability to take responsibility for what is ostensibly their job. When asked to give some vital information or work they will exhibit the primary symptoms - shoulders raised into the 'up' position, hands outspread and a roll of the eyes. This will often be followed by a 'tut', often used to imply that it isn't that person's job and they are 'extremely sorry mate, no it hasn't been done'. You are supposed to infer this as 'someone else has fucked up'. This will strike a non-sufferer as somewhat odd. Primarily because you will have irrefutable evidence that you are in fact asking exactly the right person. These symptoms will probably make a non-sufferer want to ram a ball point pen into the victim's pseudo-sympathetic right eye. This is a natural, evolutionary, reflex action created to prevent the spread of the disease.

Prognosis:

People infected with Sloped Shoulderitus will undoubtedly be seen by those in senior management as streamlined and efficient. This is because they spend the vast majority of their time picking fluff from their genital region, arranging Post-It notes into scale models of the Reichstag and downloading CCTV footage of attractive interviewees onto their hard drive, only shifting their pathologically lazy arses to do work given from above. They will ultimately be promoted, creating a cascade effect as the tasks given slide effortlessly off of their sloped shoulders. If we could harness the energy created by fast flowing work, we'd be off oil in a week.

Treatment:

There is no known cure for Sloped Shoulderitus. As such, preventing the spread to the disease is the only course of action. I recommend a double tap to the forehead. If circumstance prevents you having access to a firearm then do your best with a Sellotape dispenser or failing that, a paperclip.

Beaten, never broken.

2010-04-30T17:53:00.006+01:00

It was a hot day. The sun beat down on me as I walked across the hard, barely green, ground. My right hand was taped to support my weak fingers. I brought my forearm across my brow to sweep the sweat before it slipped into my eyes. My bare knees showed the cuts and scrapes of last time. My left ankle creaked as I walked. No matter; the pain would soon be replaced by adrenaline.

I looked over the field and took stock of what was about to happen. Fourteen men looked back - grim determination etched deep into their faces. I knew that this was going to be hell but my brothers in arms were there. They would sacrifice their bodies for me. I would do the same for every single one of them. As one we turned and looked at the enemy. Rage, aggression and fury took us. We would fail today - we all knew it - but by all that we were, all that we could be, we would fight until we could fight no more. We were determined to show that no matter the odds, no matter the outcome, we would be proud to call ourselves a team.

The ball went up. We chased. I pumped my legs to get there, to stop the play, to prevent an early shaming. I drew close and watched their receiver brought to the ground. I joined the pile of bodies that surrounded the break down, forcing my weight over the ball, feeling the rough embrace of my team bind on and drive. Every fibre of my being willing the opposition back. The smell of musk, dust and Deep-Heat filled my nostrils.

Later, there was a break by the terrible opposition. I ran, feeling the turf pound the soles of my feet, towards him barely considering his huge physical advantage. I flung my body towards the giant. My hope was that the contact would be good. I smashed my shoulder into his stomach and started to club my feet into the solid earth. He caved, dropping into touch as he went down. We won the ball.

A lineout. I leapt clear towards the hot sun, reaching for the most precious thing on the pitch. The lifters in front and behind held me suspended. I was in their trust. One wrong foot and they would let me crash back down, thudding my fragile body against the ground. I leaned, caught and passed, relieved that I had won the contest and that I wasn't lying mangled on the floor.

One of us tackled one of them. He dropped the ball forwards in the contact as he crumpled like a rag-doll. We scrummed down, sixteen men locked together in our own private battle. We didn't have the weight or power to compete. We lost the ball back to them. The ball was picked out and passed to their fly-half spinning gently through the air as it was caught. I detached myself from the scrum and ran as hard as I could. The ball carrier set his body into the curious half-sit, half-crouch position he adopted to kick. His kicking had been sound all day and we were growing weary of his ability to push us back deep into our own territory. I knew I was the only player chasing; knew that if I didn't get there fast enough we would be back the other side of our ten-metre line. His boot struck the ball as I leapt into the air, arms outstreatched, looking like a bedraggled Superman. The white flash of the ball struck my wrist and tumbled sideways into the awaiting arms of our full-back. Safety for now.

On our try line desperate not to concede any more points. Everyone knew that we were beaten. Hammered by try after try being scored against us, we had very little left to give and even less to play for, the result already decided. But yet, tackle after tackle went in. Bodies were given up to prevent another score. Nobody took a step back. Everybody fought.

This was my last match for the team. I was disapponted by the huge loss we took but proud to have represented the club. Proud to wear the black, gold and green.

Proud to be a man amongst men.

Duke, Stop Fucking Around and Pay Attention!

2010-04-24T10:01:00.004+01:00

I've never been diagnosed as having ADHD but working with a number of pupils who have I find myself coming to the conclusion that I show many of the symptoms.

It affects me in a variety of ways. I get bored quickly and often find myself being distracted by anything other than what I should actually be doing.

I have great plans for my blog. I think of running jokes or thematic posts that I feel would be hilarious. Look at the manifesto post. Sure, it's a bit overlong and somewhat wordy but I thought it was quite funny. I then thought I'd run a series of posts based on a fictional parliamentary candidate getting into all kinds of amusing scrapes. Once again, plenty of room for cringe-worthy humour. Then I got bored writing about it. After ONE post.

I've done it before. I wrote a political profile on Lord Mandelson which I thought would turn into a series of satirical pokes at major British politicians. Didn't do it. How about the teaching advice posts that you promised us, Duke? Meh, other stuff happened.

How about my grand scheme to report the news in the style of a 1920s old time imperialist ("Today in the colonies there was some shooting. No white people were hurt.")? Or my plan to use literary critical theories to deconstruct the lyrics of modern pop songs (a Marxist reading of 'Single Ladies [Put A Ring On It]' anyone?) None of it happened. None of it will happen. As such my blog drifts aimlessly between personal mewlings and social commentary without any form of overall structure.

And it's not just on my blog. I can pretty much get any class I teach to be absolutely silent and working away like happy little things. That's great. Some teachers can't. The trouble is that I get bored so quickly that I start to wind the kids up. Stealing their pencil cases and hiding them. Pulling faces. Singing a nice song (currently my number one choice is 'Free Nelson Mandela' - I know not why). The other day I made a shadow puppet of a dog on the projector screen and pretended that it was throwing up the words on the PowerPoint I was using (yes, with sound effects). The kids generally ignore it or tell me to go away. One pupil once told me to 'grow up man-child'. Fair play.

This mucking around can occasionally turn a peaceful classroom into something approaching Brixton circa 1981. I then have to battle to get them quiet again.

Why do I do this? What possible use could it serve?

And when I have to complete work on my own I procrastinate like a mother fucker. If I have an 'absolute-must-finish' job I will spend twenty minutes working for every forty-five minutes of fucking about. This could be checking my blog, walking to the other side of the school to tell someone something (rather than send an email), try to improve my juggling, researching technical rugby moves that I will never pull off or even just staring at the light reflecting off the white board onto my ceiling. Sure, it looks pretty but I don't need it in my life.

It means that I'm 'okay' at a number of things (playing guitar, cooking, writing) but don't have the attention span to learn properly. Most of the computer games I buy are half finished. I listen to a CD non-stop for a week then put it away for the next twelve months.

There are however, some advantages. For instance, I have a knowledge about a lot of things. You could ask me a question on Roman civilisation, Russian literature or science and I'm usually pretty good at giving a half-decent response. I know, for example, that light can function as both a particle and a wave, that it is based on probability and can be in two places at once. That sounds impressive but that is the limit for me. I can't draw the equation that shows this for two reasons - I suck at maths and if I sat down, determined to get better, I would get distracted by a bee or something.

Anyway, I'm getting bored writing this. I'm off to play in my last match of the season. Have I told you about rugby?

Oh man rugby's great! So are 'Tool'! Dude, you've gotta listen to 'Tool'. They rock! Oh, have you ever eaten scallops? What about proper homemade jam? Do you watch 'Lost'? Yeah, I got bored too. How about 'The Wire'? It's great!

Ooh, look. A bee.

Call the Election Off...Volcanic Death Cloud Wins By Default

2010-04-16T16:38:00.004+01:00

At least that's what the news would have you believe.

I was working the other day (that's right bitches, I work in my holidays) and had BBC News 24 on as I marked some work. During this time the whole of UK airspace was closed due to the eruptions of an Icelandic volcano and the subsequent ash cloud it created.

I have just recounted the entire story for you in one sentence.

What the BBC decided to do was devote and entire day's worth of coverage to this very simple item.

To this end, they sent every available member of their reporting staff to what seemed like every single airport up and down the land in a desperate attempt to squeeze some kind of newsworthiness out of the dead, swollen corpse of an idea it actually was.

From the studio we were flung hyperactively to Stansted airport where surely there would be some kind of riot in place as disgruntled passengers demanded the blood of whomsoever was in charge.

Quite the opposite - "well, it's a nuisance but it can't be helped" quoted the generally genial British public.

Clearly this wasn't dramatic enough for the hard-nosed editors. So we instantly cut to Glasgow where another reporter was desperately trying to think of something to say. I can understand their thinking. Glasgow, full of angry Scottish people who will probably blame the lack of flights on 'poofy Englishmen who won't fly through a bit of cloud'. Surely the good people of Glasgow would be enragedly throwing concrete bollards through plate glass windows to show their displeasure?

Nope. It was very quiet. No one around.

And that was the story for the entire country. We went from city airport to city airport looking at banks of empty check-in desks and silent terminals to prove the no one was able to fly. In fact the only sound to break the cloister-like silence was the noise of waxy-faced failed actors trying to make the cleaning lady walking past sound like groundbreaking stuff.

There is of course a sure fire way of milking a story like the fucking cash cow it isn't and that is the rolling out of a collection of experts.

One even brought some volcanic ash with him to show what it was like. We had to sit through a full fifteen minutes of the reporter rubbing it between forefinger and thumb next to the microphone just to give us poor non-volcanic ash owning plebeians a sense of just how abrasive it was.

"Can you hear the rasping?" she spluttered like she'd just discovered the female orgasm.

She then, for reasons best know to herself, smeared it over the sleeve of her coat and held it to the camera as if she'd managed to do a poo in her training potty. "Look I'm so fucking clever, I can defaecate like a grown up".

After that almost sexually exciting period of reporting the whole hideous cycle started again. No airport was left unseen. There must have been a competition to see how many different ways the journalists could say 'usually this airport is really busy but now there is no one around'. Well, no shit. All the flights have been canceled.

My favourite quote had to be "it's no longer an airport, more like a shopping centre that you aren't allowed to leave". What a simile! What imagery! What bollocks!

In any case it made me realise that rolling news is at best an amusing way of spending an afternoon if you have nothing more productive to do with your life.

I say this because watching highly paid telly types attempt to make 30 seconds of news last for twenty minutes was like watching The Office.

Cringing, uncomfortable but ultimately one of the funniest things you'll see.

Campaign Diary - Day 1

2010-04-14T15:59:00.005+01:00

To start my campaign to become the youngest (and I believe best) Prime Minister that this fine nation has ever seen I have decided to embark on a series of meet and greet opportunities that will allow me to get to know the great British public on a face-to-face basis. Over the next three weeks I will be keeping a diary of my experiences - I will share them with you via this blog.

Dear Diary,

Day one of this campaign starts in the key constituency of Upper Crotchdon. I've decided to avoid the standard overblown photo-op much loved by other parties to get on with some old fashioned door knocking. Up early to catch the fruits of my (non-political) labour.

Started the day in glorious sunshine. Just me, the open road and my entourage of thirty. There is nothing like the feeling of being on your own that compares with the sense of anticipation of that crisp morning air.

Knocked on the first house I came to. Spoke to a delightful old lady. Real salt of the earth type. I asked if she was planning to vote in the up coming election. She said yes and nipped inside and brought out a small wooden box. I asked what she was planning to show me - she smiled and with a twinkle in her eye opened the box and produced an Iron Cross, a Tottenkopft cap badge and a Luger.

Great! My first house of the day and it's a Nazi sympathiser. Still, these things are sent to test our resolve. It can't get worse.

Door two looked more promising. It had swings in the front garden and a number of toys scattered on the grass. Bingo! I thought, families are a key voting group in this election. I knocked and introduced myself to the two chaps who answered the door. I asked if they were happy with the government's policies on families. They both looked a little confused. I kindly explained that surely their children were their number one priority. They looked more puzzled - and then told me that they didn't have children. I looked round at the toys on the lawn, at the swing and back to them. It was at this point that I noticed the dog lead around one of the feller's necks and the strong smell of baby oil.

It turns out that 'Terry' and 'Bitch' hold gay-friendly BDSM parties at their place and both have 'Daddy and Daddy' fetishes. After chatting for a bit I turned down their offer of tea - 'busy, busy' I explained wanting to get away before the local press arrived.

The next few houses had nobody in. At least all sounds of conversation suddenly stopped when I knocked on the door. This must be how Jehovah Witnesses must feel!

At this point the weather started to turn. A cold wind brought a few smatterings of rain but come rain or shine, I would bloody well campaign. Not like Cameron who insists on set weather conditions before he leaves his regeneration unit.

My next successful house was a young woman in her mid-twenties. 'Young votes' said my internal swingometre. She even invited me in for a cup of tea and a chat. I walked through the hall way and noticed a conspicuous lack of Nazi memorabilia or sex aides. At last - someone in Upper Crotchdon who isn't a nutter. I sat down and asked if she had any idea on who she was going to vote for on May 6th. She said she was standing herself as an independent. Now, I've always encouraged the incorporation of a myriad of viewpoints in the party, as my alcoholic grandfather used to say 'alloys are stronger - now fek off you slimy little bugger' - what a man.

I asked the young woman what issues she was hoping to stand on - if there was a way we could work together to prevent splitting the vote.

She looked me straight in the eye and said "I believe that if we don't stop destroying the planet we will be forced to pay". I explained that we also were a party with green issues at heart "yes" she continued "we will be attacked by the Halthraxian Galactic Empire by June if we don't stop the torture of Mother Earth" I looked at her blankly "In fact Gethina, our High-Priestess believes that it is too late and the only way we can prevent our impending doom is to do the dance of placation".

I'll be honest I'm quite liberal minded but when the young woman removed all of her clothes and started gyrating in front of me I didn't know where to put my face. Of course this was the moment when the local press decided to arrive and started taking photo after photo. I felt like Princess Diana in a strip club. I can only hope that the Upper Crotchdon Echo doesn't run those photos tomorrow!

After hastily extricating myself I decided I needed a bit of lunch and a break. Luckily there was a local pub just on the corner of the street. I walked in, proud to support the fine tradition of the local pub and the vital community service it provides.

"Pint of your local brew, barkeep" I said to, what looked like, Quasimodo's ugly twin. "Why?" he/she/it responded "it tastes like shit". I accepted the proffered pint and took a large swig; "hummm..." I said as my face puckered up "that's quite sour". The bartender just muttered under his breath. I'm sure it was complementing me on my desire to be one of the locals.

I felt the hunger pangs start to rumble in my stomach and decided to order some food. "Do you have a menu, my good man?" He thrust a stumpy finger towards a blackboard which looked like it had been decorated by a blind man with Parkinson's. "That looks like it's been decorated by a blind man with Parkinson's" I said aloud, pleased at my witty simile.

At this very moment a local rouge clapped a hand on my shoulder turned me round and said gruffly "are you takin' the piss outta Gerald?" as he did so he jerked a thumb towards the corner where an elderly chap with dark glasses and a white cane was sat shaking gently. Next to him was a pile of coloured chalk.

I came round outside in the gutter.

As I sat on the kerbside watching the traffic and trying to ignore the dull throb at the base of my skull I pondered if campaigning was always this hard. If perhaps, just perhaps, the main parties did it their way for a reason. "No point dwelling on the negativity" as my Laudanum addicted grandmother used to say before jacking up.

As my head cleared I espied a group of youths hanging in at a local park. Surely I should have little difficulty dealing with the X-Station playing, Hippty-Hop listening, crack-headed youngsters. I mean their brains should be so addled with virtual reality and illicit substances that I should have no difficulty in winning them over.

"Hey guys" I said as I walked to them.
"Oh, look who it is" one of them responded "you're Duke Fandango, leader of the The Neo-Post-Anti-Pro-Social Liberal Party." I immediately felt uneasy. This wasn't the brain washed youth the media promised.
"Yeah" said another spotty teen as he casually flicked his cigarette butt at my feet "your manifesto is nothing short of a joke - you try to set yourself up as a new way in British politics but you insist on twisting the socialist teachings of Marx into a conformist centrist point of view in a cynical attempt to acquire more votes".

I felt sick.

"Well" another started "I would actually place him closer to a Lloyd-Georgian classical interpretation of Liberalism when it came to economic issues with a direct ripping of the Social Democratic Party's social doctrine rather than having any direct influence from Marx".

I slowly backed away from the group until I could no longer hear the teenage gestalt equivalent of Jeremy Paxman.

"One more house" I said to myself "then I'm leaving this town full of Nazis, sexual deviants, cults and jumped up youngsters - I can see why the Conservatives are likely to win here".

I selected a house at random. Walked to the door, took a breath and knocked. The door immediately opened and I was face to face with a copper. He took one look at me then battoned me to the floor, flipped me over and handcuffed me. "We've got the bastard sarge" he yelled up the stairs.

It turns out that due to an unfortunate coincidence I knocked on the door of a police sting operation. It turns out that I may have interrupted the capture of 'El Gecko' the most infamous people trafficker in Western Europe. I hardly think it's my fault that he looks like me but apparently I'm due in court on the 24th for perverting the course of justice.

It's been a tough day. Still, as my zooiphilic great-aunt used to say 'keep your pecker up' before mounting Henry, my family's African Bull Elephant.

I can only hope that tomorrow is easier...

Join the Party

2010-04-12T12:15:00.004+01:00

After too many years of being under the thumb of INGSOC we have an opportunity to change the face of Britain. Leader Bot Brown has finally called a general election and change is called for. We can change. Change, change, change.

With change.

However there is a problem. Change is hard to achieve with parties that are, in essence, identi-fit airfix models of one another. As a fully paid up member of the British democratic system I find this truly untenable.

Time has come my brothers and sisters (and hermaphrodites) to look to a new leader. One with drive, determination and stunning facial hair. One who can take this once great nation and turn it great again. Someone with an understanding of words and stuff. A humble person who desires nothing more than the betterment of the lot of the average family/cohabiting partners/individuals who live on their own (or possibly even in a flat share arrangement with a couple of friends - they may have a girlfriend/boyfriend but haven't taken the decision to move in with each other. That's cool too.)

'But Duke' I hear you cry 'who is this inspirational, sexy and hirsute leader that we have only just heard of'.

Well, it is I. I, Duke Fandango hereby announce the formation of a radical new force in the gambit of British Politics. The Neo-Post-Anti-Pro-Social Liberal Party

Unlike some political parties I could mention I have actually thought of some policies that I feel will help the average person in the street. And at home. And in their car. Even at work.

As such, here I will submit the party's manifesto for the upcoming election.

Healthcare

We believe that being healthy is important. As a consequence of this breakthrough in thinking we propose that there should be a cut off point for an individual's BMI. If that person goes over a set limit they will be forced to provide community service by becoming rickshaw drivers in our inner cities. This will have the double benefit of making fatties lose weight and will help reduce congestion as well as our carbon footprint. Win, win, win.

Doctors and Nurses do a great job however, there are times when they accidentally let people die for no good reason. To stop this from happening too often we will instigate a policy of having those in the medical profession followed by a camera crew 24 hours a day. Any fuck-up will be broadcast in high-definition on Five. The public will be able to vote out 'Killer Carers' once a week using the premium rate phone number. The money generated from this will be plowed back into the NHS.

Education

We believe that being educated is important. However, recent Government policy has led to a nation of barely literate cretins. I mean, the 'Three Rs' only includes one 'R'. It's this kind of woolly thinking that has destroyed pupil attainment in schools.

Radical changes that we would bring in include (but are not limited to):

Making sure kids can actually read and write by the age of 11. We would do this by...well...teaching them how to read and write. It's not fucking rocket science, is it now.

Parents also have to attend detentions with their kids. Yeah, Jimmy's constant fucking around in class isn't so funny now you have to take the afternoon off work.

OFSTED inspectors have to actually live the life of a pupil in the school they are inspecting. This will include staying up to 3am playing Call of Duty, listening to parental rows through thin chip-board walls and avoiding being 'shanked' by a rival gang. If the HMI can then perform to their best the day after then fair play. It may make them realise that social issues play a bigger part on a child's education than the current thinking allows.

We promise to stop fucking about with education like it's out electoral prison bitch. Rather than overload already harassed teaching staff with fifteen separate initiative a day we will give them a bit of respect. And a pay rise. And a person to give them a hug (two for NQTs - let's be fair, they need it more).

Foreign Policy

We believe that having a foreign policy is important. Other countries tend to laugh at you if you don't have one. A bit like wearing school uniform on a non-uniform day. You'd never live it down.

All conflicts will be fought using a new breed of fighting force. The over 65s. They constantly harp on about how great national service was - well, time to put your money where your mouth is gramps. I also believe that giving an elderly person a gun and telling them to kill foreigners is the best possible use for a generation of ingrained racists. Other benefits include taking the burden of looking after the elderly off of the shoulders of their families, they're almost dead anyway so will accept suicidal missions and the Army will ensure they have not only hot food but regular showers. This can only be a good thing.

However, we feel that force should only be used only as a last resort. So, before we commit our Elderly Elite Killer Battalions we would attempt to reach a peaceful conclusion to any international issues. To this end we would have a slumber party with the prospective belligerents where we would read magazines, do each other's hair and make-up and talk about boys. Hopefully by day break we would have bonded over a late night game of 'I have Never' and be BFFs forever.

This is not to say that Britain will become a soft-touch. We will advise our diplomats to use the phrase 'yer mum' in any difficult negotiations. If this fails to have the desired effect then screaming 'come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough' into the opponent's face, followed by the diplomat breaking a glass bottle on the edge of a table will be the recommended course of action.

Sports and Culture

We believe that sports and culture are really important. We've had enough of the international community looking on us as the fat kid that is always chosen last to take part in sports. No longer will the UK have to sit on the bench. Or be the referee because the PE teacher can't be arsed to take part.

As such there will a special test for all 4 year olds to see if they have any aptitude in throwing, catching and running. For those who do we propose setting up sports schools where pupils are only taught about sports. Once this new social class of Uber-Athletes (above the upper class, below aristocracy) have nobbed the rest of the world at every sporting event they will then become the trainers for the next generation. Once the retirement age of 65 arrives they will go on to provide the back-bone of the military. It's this kind of joined up thinking that separates us from the other political parties.

Culture seems to be doing okay. Although we propose to fire Tracey Emin into the heart of the sun. Nobody cares who you slept with you horse-faced abuser of tents. Fuck off.

Community Cohesion

We believe that the community and how cohesive it is is very important. This is because we all live in a community. Sometimes this community is dispersed. Whereas it should be cohesive. Like jam on toast. In recent years Britain has had issues with having a sticky group of people. We have two main policy areas that we believe will help us to become a bit more cohesive as a community.

Tickle a Total Stranger. This policy is designed to create goodwill amongst all people. At the hours of 11am and 5pm every member of the public will be forced to go outside, introduce themselves to a complete stranger then give them a tickle. This would help to break down barriers between different social groups as it's very difficult to hold a grudge against someone who who've had rolling on the floor crying 'stop it..hehehe...no...hehehe...arrrggghh...hehehe...'.

Together We Are Tremendously Strong. Or TWATS for short will be a programme where we encourage people to return to the blitz spirit. To this end we will be running bombing raids on major towns and cities throughout the night. People will bond in their hastily constructed Anderson shelters drinking ration tea and singing Lady Gaga a cappella in four-part harmony (T-Telephone...*BOOM*...T-T-T-Telephone...*CRASH*)

The Economy

We believe that the economy is really fucking important. Currently it is right up the shitter. We suggest the adoption of the Monopoly Trading system. When people drive their cars over a certain square they will be taxed £200, other squares will give people £200 in tax credits. There will also be system of chance cards delivered at random throughout the life of the government. These will cover things such as dental bills, beauty competitions and maintenance of houses and hotels.

All bankers will be forced to dress like Victorian business men. This will allow the general public to spot the money-grubbing bastards a mile off.

Law and Order

We believe that law and order is super-duper important. We want a return to bobbies on the beat and not even in a sexual way. Police will therefore be trained in how to be human statues, those women who give you a ticket outside of changing rooms in shops and charity collectors on the high street. With these three strategic areas covered crime will fall exponentially. This will also reduce the need for blanket CCTV coverage which will save loads of money that can be spent of other policies/my salary.

Parliamentary Reform

We believe that the reformation of parliament is so important that if we did nothing about it our eye balls would implode out of sheer incredulity. We believe in straight talking, no nonsense politicians. After years of dicked around by wax-work, PR trained, facsimiles of real people the country has had enough. We would pursue the adoption of the 'three strikes and you're out' method of asking a politician a question. If they haven't given a straight 'yes' or 'no' response to a simple question they have their patellas removed and turned into canastas before being forced to listen to a Flamenco version of 'Flight of the Bumblebee' played using their knee caps for 12 hours solid. Take that you slimy bastards.

With these crucial policies in place it can only be a matter of time before we knock this beleaguered country into shape. I reckon we can show Obama a thing or two about change.

All hail the revolution!

The Neo-Post-Anti-Pro-Social Liberal Party.

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If you think that you can help the NPAPSL Party win in your area, even if you aren't British, don't live in Britain or haven't even visited this fine nation, please get in contact - a comment is a sign of support.

I'd be a Terrible Parent...Thanks for Asking.

2010-04-10T15:25:00.006+01:00

Teenagers smell.

This may not come as a surprise to any of you but I have just had experience of sitting on a coach for 23 hours with 42 of the little treasures.

Currently, I've had two baths, shaved my entire body and double washed my clothes just to get the heady mix of body odor and Lynx Africa out of my system. My nostrils are saturated with the honk of feet and I doubt I'll be able to smell properly for the next three weeks. The coach was close to having a special committee formed at The Hague to see if it was in fact a basic yet effective form of biological weaponry. I'm surprised customs let us through (although I'm glad, from an animal welfare point of view, that a sniffer dog wasn't used - the poor bastard would have spontaneously combusted).

I didn't put myself into this situation for no reason. We were returning from Switzerland (home of Heidi, Chocolate and Nazi Gold) where we had taken the kids on the school ski trip. As one of the two trip leaders I was directly responsible for the well being of the kids.

For the first time in my life I felt what it was to be a parent. The kids even started calling me 'Papa Fandango'. I'll be honest with you - I hated it.

I have never been so emotionally, mentally and physically shattered in all my life. I've bandaged feet (urrghh), looked after sick kids, raced to accidents on skis (actually, that was quite fun), doled out encouragement and bollockings as required, made sure that kids were asleep on time, made sure they had all their things (what do you mean I need a hat on to go skiing on a glacier?), checked their rooms were tidy, sorted out squabbles and falling outs, cheered up grumpy kiddy-winks, dealt with homesickness, travel sickness, nut allergies and Hindu children being given veal for dinner (the hotelier said 'It's not beef, it's veal' and it took some time to convince them - in my piss poor French - that veal happens to be baby cows).

I realised that I'm okay doing this for a week. Maybe two. Possibly three, tops. Anymore and I think I'd either physically lash out when asked 'Do you know what's for dinner' for the eighteenth time or just start drinking at 11 in the morning letting the whole horrific experience wash over me in an alcoholic haze.

It has made me reach a conclusion. I'd be a rubbish parent. I like kids, a lot. Hell, I work with them on a daily basis. The crucial point however, is that I usually get to give the children back at the end of the day. I don't have to worry about where they are going or what time they will be back, who they are going with, are they being safe, are they taking drugs? God no, not drugs! It'll be a short hop from here to prostitution and then they'll be dead in a skip by the age of 23 riddled with bullet holes all because of an altercation with a dealer.

You see, I'm too emotionally immature to look after another human being. It's hard enough to look after myself. I can barely get ready in the mornings without asking the Duchess where at least three items are. My routine is like this:

It's six o'clock and you're listening to the Today Sh...

*Hit snooze*

It's ten past six...

*Hit snooze*

Time now is six twenty and the markets were fairly steady overnight with...

*Hit snooze*

...ix thirty and the headlines again. Politicians do dirty deeds done cheap...

'Fuck'

Arise slumber like from my duvet sarcophagus. Stumble sleepily to bathroom. Scratch balls. Run bath. Reach for shampoo.

'Hun, where is the shampoo?'
'On the side.'
'No it isn't.'
(under breath) 'Fucking retard' (aloud) 'yes it is, next to the shower gel'.
'Got it'.

twenty minutes later

'Have you seen my brown tie?'
'Is it on the tie rack?'
'Do you really think I'm that stupid that I didn't check the tie rack first?'
'Fine, I'll check. Oh look at that - it's on the tie rack.'
'I swear it wasn't there a minute ago.'
'Must be that tie delivering eagle that I recently invested in.'
'Woah! We have a tie delivering eagle now? Sweet!'
'Were you starved of oxygen at birth?'

ten minutes later

'For fuck's sake...'
'What is it now, Duke?'
'Where the fuck are my car keys?'
'In your hand.'
'Oh...shit'

Now add in having to look after a baby as well? No thanks. I'm sure I'd be the sort of parent that keeps social services on their toes. Not through malicious intent, just because of my lackadaisical approach to life. If I did have a kid the conversation would probably run like this.

'Where's Ryu?'
'For the last time Duke, the baby's name is James - I allowed you to put three names into the running and you chose 'Ryu', 'Sub-Zero' and 'Zool' none of which are real names for real people so were laughingly discounted out of hand.
'James is a gay name.'
'So is 'Ryu'.'
'Fine. Have it your way. Where is James?'
'You had him literally thirty seconds ago.'
'Yeah, I was teaching him how to do a Haiduken.'
'And where was this?'
'In the bathroom - I was using the toaster to create the special effects...'HAIDUKEN!'
'You wha...oh fuck!'

Maybe one day I'll grow up. Maybe one day I'll say 'I want to increase the population by a few'. Maybe one day I'll stop making aeroplane noises and reenacting the space battle scene from Return of the Jedi in the bath (I use the sponge as the Star Destroyer bridge and a bar of soap for the A-Wing 'Shields Up!' BOOM!)

Will I actually change? Probably not.

I don't care really. Being immature is far too much fun.

Social Pariah...Moi?

2010-03-26T17:22:00.003Z

It appears that I have become the scourge of society. Not me personally - I'm not currently living in a hollowed out volcano planning to unleash my super-mega death ray on an incredulous and totally deserving society. Not until I get that bank loan at any rate.

No, what makes me the social equivalent to a Pol Pot memorial awards dinner is that I'm a smoker.

The current societal view of a smoker is that we are nefarious outcasts bent on polluting the whole of society with our tobacco based addictions. Scuttling around in hastily constructed 'smoking areas' outside of pubs planning the overthrow of the Government. If there is a child in the surrounding area we will no doubt chain said child to the ground before forcing them to name every county in the country and laughing when they forget Rutland.

We are the new hate figures. Wreathed in the gray-blue smoke of pure, unadulterated evil.

This is clearly absurd. Yet smokers are increasingly penalised through this country's obsession with criminalising every possible sector of population.

This has come to a head this week with the proposal that smoking should be banned in every car. I could understand if this was for safety reasons. Using a mobile is rightly banned due to the distraction it creates. Eating is a bit of a gray area but I assume popping a sweet into your mouth when behind the wheel is kind of okay whereas consuming a roasted boar in the style of Astrix the Gaul would most likely end up in a humorous yet ultimately punitive court case. Likewise, playing squash, performing major heart surgery on a stoat, receiving oral sex, fishing, whittling, constructing Airfix models, dancing the Gay Gordon, watching cheap Dutch porn, and reading Dr Faustus are all banned when driving.

The thing is safety isn't the cited reason. No, it's to protect children from breathing in smoke.

Now this I don't really get. If this proposal ever becomes law (which I admit is unlikely) I will be banned from smoking in my car because I may cause a child to breath in second hand smoke. Ignoring for the moment the fact that I never drive children in my car, don't have children and don't plan on ever having any children I would be barred from making a personal choice in my own private space.

Er..what?

The justification for this was that police may not be able to see if there was a child in the car so it's best to just ban it all together.

Now I respect the police. They do a tough job and get a lot of stick. But what utter cretins must they be employing if they can't see a person in a car. I mean, are there only boss-eyed coppers on patrol now? Do they struggle to differentiate between a child and, oh I don't know, a seat with no one sat in it? Do they have to actually be certified blind to get called up to the force?

That's not to say that I don't think that children should be protected from the smoke of an adult. I do - I smoke as a choice, I don't have the right to inflict potential illness on another person, especially a child.

Likewise, I shouldn't be told where and when I can and can't consume a perfectly legal substance. It's just not cricket.

To this end I propose a radical rethink on this issue. Don't ban smoking in cars, ban children in cars.

Lets look at the pros and cons.

Pro - children are sticky and will infect your plush new car seats with a cocktail of snot, sweets, saliva, Farley's Rusks, milk, juice and extreme cases excrement.
Con - children have to get places to do children stuff.
Pro - children are really noisy and can distract even the best of drivers.
Con - people get funny about leaving their children by the side of the road.
Pro - you won't have to listen to 'are we there yet', 'I'm bored' or that fucking 'wheels on the bus' song again.
Con - no longer will you have an excuse for playing DVDs in the car.
Pro - fat children will be forced to walk their pudgy arses to school thereby loosing weight.
Con - car seat manufacturers will go bankrupt.
Pro - we will never have to see one of those self-indulgent 'Baby on Board' stickers again (yeah, well fucking done - you managed to procreate).
Con - ...nope, can't think of any more cons.
Pro - less inner city mums will feel compelled to drive what can only be described a scale version of the Challenger 2 main battle tank the 0.5 of a mile from their house to the school that their insufferable offspring attend.
Pro - I don't have to change my behaviour to conform to a frankly ridiculous and unenforceable law.

If smoking is this much of an issue just ban it. Totally. Make it a class A substance. Really. Force the whole of the nation to go cold turkey.

Can you imagine the consequences...

A whole nation shaking with withdrawal symptoms, licking the shelves in Boots for the trace remains of the nicotine replacement therapy patches. Perhaps we'll all make illicit trips to Amsterdam to smoke in cafes. Soon HM Revenue and Customs will be uncovering a Marlboro Mule trafficking system where large quantities of tobacco is smuggled into the country wrapped in condoms in an Eastern European's stomach.

Of course this is never going to happen. The Government makes far too much money on the duty from the sale of tobacco products.

But if they did bring in a total ban, everyone would know where they stand.

At the very least it won't be outside in the rain.

Oh Fuck STED

2010-03-20T10:38:00.006Z

On Monday we had the call. The call that strikes fear and untold panic into the hearts of every teacher in the land. The one that loosens bowels and compresses bladders.

OFSTED were coming in.

OFSTED is a portmanteau of Office for Standards in Education. They are the government's inspectors. They give you notice two days before they are due to arrive and then descend - in flash cars I might add - like a biblical plague.

They operate like the SS at the start of Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. They come in all smiles 'yes we're here to help you improve' before whipping out the MP42s and shooting at the floorboards.

No stone is left unturned. They will scour your school for any hint of something not quite right. This could be on any one of the 15 billion initiatives that have come into force over the last ten years. "What do you mean you haven't included a policy on creative development in lower school with a focus on community cohesion and its application across the Every Child Matters agenda? That is a 'Focus 12' priority and as such should have picto-implementation by now you twat" to someone who spluttering between sobs mummers "I just want to teach kids how to play hockey".

But that's an issue for the people with much larger pay-cheques than I. What I care about is when they just saunter casually into your classroom and stony faced ask for your 'Lesson plan, data sheets and motorcycle'.

I had this happen to me first period on Wednesday...

I was midway through my lesson. The kids were working well and I was circling the room checking the pupils' work. There was a thud on the steps leading to my classroom. I knew what was outside of the door. The handle slowly turned. The glass on the window was misted by the breath of the unspeakable horror that lay beyond it. The door opened with a sickening and somewhat cliched creak.

"Is this Year 9" the thing said, reptilian sibilance rasping in its voice.

"Er...yes. Yes it is." I stuttered with terror forcing my speech to quiver.

"Good...I will require a lesson plan and a data sheet". Its words inflicted primordial terror, my flight or fight response was coming into the fore. "Don't look into the eyes" I reminded myself aloud. She looked at me quizzically. "At the back" I squeaked, pointing to the chair I'd put everything on.

She sat. I had to do everything I could to be normal. I realised after three minutes that I had marched around my room thirteen times. I needed to calm down. A deep breath and a sip of water. Better.

The troll moved towards me.

"Lovely atmosphere in here"

"Well, I think that's unfair I jus...what!?"

"I said it's a lovely atmosphere in here - are you alright?"

"Yes - I've never had a compliment mid-lesson from an HMI before."

"Well, we're not monsters you know."

"*Ahem*...quite..."

And then it dawned on me. This wasn't a hideous creature sent from the bowels of hell to torture my yet still living soul. This was a middle aged lady in a skirt suit. Now there is one thing that I know I do better than anything else on this Earth...

Charming middle-aged ladies.

So I cracked a few jokes. Talked about what I was doing with the kids and why I was doing it. How the kids were being loyal and working so well because they knew I was being assessed. She smiled and made notes.

At the end of the lesson I dismissed my pupils and stood awaiting my fate.

"That was fantastic" she said "I'm grading you as '1s' across the board. As an English specialist myself I'm very impressed by the quality of the learning that took place in a class that is quite low ability. Well done."

She left me shaking with relief.

I've worked 18 hours a day for the majority of this week. I've lost sleep. I've panicked like nothing else. The Duchess has had to put up with a gibbering wreck of a man slumped over a laptop - something she did with aplomb and great kindness.

But to be officially graded as an 'Outstanding' teacher made it all worth it - there is no higher accolade in the profession.

Next week we'll be watching videos. Outstanding be damned - I'm exhausted.

I Say Gerald, This Shit Just Got Real...

2010-03-13T12:12:00.009Z

I'm really fucking excited!

I've just had through the accommodation spec for China.

How this may seem like a small thing to get worked up about. Some facts about how big the rooms are and how many bathrooms there are? This should be enough to send any sane person into a catatonic state only surfacing to take on some more ale.

What it does for me is make me put the hood of my hoodie over my head and run around the room like Superman.

It has been a week of excitement in this regard (not running around like Superman - that's next week) as my current job was advertised and has been filled.

BY TWO PEOPLE!

This means one of two things:

1) I'm like a messiah when it comes to the teaching profession and my Jedi-like understanding of pedagogy is so vast that the only way to compensate for my leaving is to get two people to do my job.

2) I've fucked up so much that the only way the school will be able to unravel the matted, unwashed and infested rug of my mistakes is to get two people working on it full time.

I'm going with number one (although I suspect I may be wrong).

It's a strange feeling being involved with the interview process for your own job. I have to say I was also frustrated by my workplace's lack of imagination when it came to possible interview techniques. None of my suggestions were taken up. These included:

§ Wrestling on the field (yes Seb, it was muddy and yes Seb, they were all female),

§ Asking the candidates to hum the Brazilian national anthem,

§ Getting the candidates to demonstrate how a cat would perform star jumps,

§ Holding up a red card and asking 'if this card wasn't red, what colour would it be?'

§ Requesting that the candidates say 'penile dysfunction' without giggling.

In the end though the people who got the (my) job are both fantastic teachers and they will do exceptionally well.

What all these little things do is make it all seem very real. I only have fifteen weeks of teaching before I bugger off on the biggest adventure of my life.

I do however foresee a problem with my current levels of excitement. In that I still have to do my job. I have to do it well. Or I'll be letting the school, the department and the kids down.

There are only so many times that I can be asked 'Duke, have you done this?' and I reply with:

'FUCK YOU MIDDLE AGED LINE MANAGER! I'M GOING TO CHINA'

I suspect once. On my last day.

There is another slightly more sobering side effect of this unbridled joy that I feel. The more excited I get about it the more 'real' (in a hippity-hop kind of way) it seems to the Duchess. The more I skip about singing 'I'm Going to China' to the tune of 'La Cucarachia' the more she realises that I'm feking off 8,000 miles away in a few months. That's not to say she isn't excited for me, or that she doesn't understand why I'm going but that she knows that it will be really hard for her to be alone. She is scared of the possibilities. The what ifs. The maybes.

So I have a bit of a dilemma. Either, I can be a proper boyfriend, go a bit low-key on the whole 'YIP-A-FUCK-A-DO' and acknowledge all the support that she has given me in getting this far in my career; or I get t-shirts made up with a photo of my face hovering over China and a massive shit-eating grin slapped on my chops.

Nah, I'm not that much of a cunt.

Open Letter To Women

2010-03-05T19:33:00.006Z

It has oft been said that communication between men and women is about as easy as playing tennis blindfolded. In a tar pit. With no legs. Under the sea. Whilst riding a dragon.

Or really fucking difficult.

Having had recent experience of this, I feel it's fitting that I add my rather profane views on the matter.

Open letter time!

Dear 50% of the population,

Why do you have to toy with our simple minds? Why do you feel compelled to confuse our basic jar-opening, heavy-stuff carrying, beer drinking, barbecuing, flat-pack making brains with your complex and frankly unnecessary mind twisting illogicality?

For example, if the Duchess is upset I will approach her with the logical reasoning that her situation is but a trifle in the grand scheme of things and that she should be happy with the good things in her life.

ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!!!

What you all actually want us to do is just nod, say 'it's going to be okay' and give you a hug.

Fine.

There is one small problem. We don't fucking think like that. When you say 'I hate it all, I'm going to decapitate everyone who crosses my path' we're on the phone to the police saying 'sorry to bother you but I've got a Grade-A nutter in my house...yeah, very excitable, incoherent really. If I'm honest, I'm concerned for my safety. Okay, see you in five.'

Obviously you don't really think the things you say but the only way you seem to be able to communicate your emotions is through a verbalised version of the enigma machine. The only way we can decipher this code would be through the employment of a team of highly trained scientists, the world's most powerful computer and the combined back catalogue of Sex In The City and Desperate Housewives on DVD.

However, I feel that there are a number of ways that we can work together to create a better, brighter, future:

§ When you are having a 'crisis' I will listen patiently to what you have to say without interjecting. At key points in your tear fueled tirade I will hold up a number of flash cards with 'True', 'False' and 'Fuck Off' written on them. Merely nod when the appropriate card is shown.

§ If your bad day coincides with your menstrual cycle you will push the emergency button that will sound the alarm 'WOAH, BODYFORM!. I will bring chocolate and tissues before hiding myself in the 'Man Zone Bunker' (otherwise known as the pub).

§ You will promise not to be angry through the use of text messages. I feel that getting yelled at for 10 pence a pop isn't cost effective and makes me feel like shit FOR SOMETHING I DIDN'T DO! Please wait until I see you so I can hold up my flash cards.

§ You look funny when you're crying (and kind of cute). Don't take my grin as a sign that I don't give a fuck. I do. But to be honest your mascara and snot has made a vision of the Virgin Mary appear on your face.

§ Please put on your special 'Anything I Say Should Be Taken As A Cruel Joke' stetson when you are about to unleash the spoken equivalent of the Waffen SS. Otherwise I will take what you say as literal truth (and notify the appropriate authorities).

§ Please don't compound the misery of feeling bad by feeling bad about making ME feel bad because you were feeling bad. It's too confusing and makes me want to cry. Which will then set you off again and the whole horrific cycle starts over.

§ If it's only a small issue, can we jump to the bit where you get horny because to be honest we'll both enjoy that more.

§ Please understand that everything I do is to try and make things better. It may be clumsy. It may not be what you want to hear right at that moment. It may well be like trying to put out a forest fire with Napalm. But it is sincere.

If we can do these things then I truly believe that everyone will be prepared for, and in a much better position to deal with, your pendulum-esque emotional states.

Yours Sincerely,

Duke Fandango

The End of Days

2010-03-03T18:47:00.008Z

Many people believe that the world will end fairly soon. There are a number of ways in which it is believed to happen.

Firstly, we could keep using Earth as our collective bitch, abusing her sweet ass until she gives up the ghost and then tips us all into a nightmarish maelstrom of ecological disaster that will throw the survivors back to the stone age.

Secondly, a rogue state (North Korea - I'm looking at you) goes 'ah, fuck it' and pushes the big shiny red button that delivers hell on toast.

Thirdly, bankers decide that they will take the combined economic output of the planet and put it all on red. When the ball of inevitability lands on black they will act surprised before downing another bottle of Hennessy, wiping the swan grease from their jowls and paying themselves a huge bonus. The rest of the world collapses into a fight for the last packet of Pringles which, due to inflation, now costs Thirteen Billion Pounds.

Finally, Jesus does actually come back and, to be fair, he's going to be pretty pissed off.

I have a different theory. I believe civilisation as we know it will cripple itself through over bureaucracy. We will come to a shuddering halt, unable to actually get anything done.

The reason?

Forms.

Forms are the bane of my existence. Everything I do in my life is dictated by a fucking form that I have to fill out. For every hour I teach I must spend around 20 minutes filling out paper work. That adds up over a week to be seven hours.

Seven soul-crushingly dull hours of writing neatly in little boxes so I can report on this or file that or access whatever.

To give you some idea of the amount of paper work that is involved. I have to, on a regular basis, complete:

Behaviour incident forms,
Continuing Professional Development Tracking Sheet,
Key Stage 3 Departmental Tracking,
Key Stage 3 School Central Tracking,
Key Stage 4 Departmental Tracking,
Key Stage 4 Follow Up Tracking,
ITT (Initial Teacher Training) Mentor Sheets,
NQT Observation Sheets,
NQT Evidence Tracking Sheets,
Teaching and Learning Audit,
Year 10 Pupil Mentoring Minutes,
Year 11 Pupil Mentoring Minutes,
Year 9 Choices Recommendation Forms,

Are these forms simple to complete? No, of course they sodding well aren't.

And that's just for your regular, run of the mill teacher. Woe betide anyone who wants to take a pupil off site!

However, it isn't just limited to my job. Oh no. The endless amount of forms consumes my life like Amy Winehouse consumes class-A drugs. From registering at the doctors to getting a fucking Tesco clubcard I have to spill my details in increasingly complex ways.

As such this is how I predict the 'End of Days' will actually happen:

Deep in the bowels of hell - just off the A33, near Basingstoke:

Beelzebub: At last, the forces of Heaven cannot stop me now!

Minion: Oh, master. What hast thou created?

Beelzebub: The most devilish (if I do say so myself) of bureaucratic nightmares! A change of address form for the DVLA - mwahahahahahahah...ha.

Three weeks later:

Jesus: For fuck's sake - why has it been returned this time?

Angel: I'll just check the supporting notes. Have you filled out the former address?

Jesus: Yes.

Angel: Have you put your mother's maiden name down.

Jesus: Yes.

Angel: In section 14 box Q did you cross reference the registration with the post code using the Fibonacci sequence.

Jesus: I thought I had to use Pi for that?

Angel: No, I think that's section 14 box R.

Jesus: I thought I only completed that if I'd had the car before 1987 or if I had ever been convicted of using a goat to lure killer whales onto the beach?

Angel: Er...hang on, I'm not sure if...

Gabriel: Er...chaps, has anyone checked on Earth recently?

Jesus: Fuck off Gabriel you wanker, I'm busy - did I sign in all five hundred and eight places?

Angel: I'm sure we checked that before...

Gabriel: I only ask because there are four tall lads on horses at the gates and they want a word. Apparently it's Armageddon?

Jesus: What? Oh, shithouse!

Angel: Ah! Got it - we didn't attach a colour photo of you in the car smoking a pipe and wearing a dearstalker.

Jesus: Twat.

======================================================================================

So there we go. It's not mankind's obsession with power or resources that will lead to our end. It'll be the fact that we can't seem to function as a society without block capitals, a black or blue ballpoint pen (NOT felt tip) and a series of small boxes on a page.

And that is a crying shame.

If you've enjoyed this, or any of my other posts please leave a comment by filling out the form...bollocks...

Duke Fandango: Better When Pressured.

2010-02-24T19:55:00.005Z

There are times when the pressure becomes almost too much. When my life seems to become a dizzying leap from one terrifying moment of 'must act or fail' to another. When everything else becomes a facsimile of importance. Things like a social life, or a girlfriend, or remembering to phone your mum on her birthday. Things that actually matter and will cause untold damage to your standing as person.

The terrible thing is, I live for those moments.

At the time I hate it. I moan lots. I swear more. I contemplate getting an office job. I have been known to flick idly through the jobs pages of the paper looking the the pay an office lackey gets and saying "£25,000 for looking at Facebook?! Score!" but something always holds me back.

I've decided that it is my intolerance of humanity, coupled with my mild ADHD that would prevent me from ever getting an office job. Can you imagine it:

Them: Hey, Duke - we need the report on the projected Austin account by twelve - you FYI'd on that?

Me: What the fuck is 'FYI'd' and why do I give a shit about the Austin account?

Them: Look, Dukey - mind if I call you Dukey?

Me: Say it again and I will hold a candle of hatred for you until the day I die.

Them: Great. Well Dukey, we need the Austin account to balance the TPF stock orders and without them we're back to the Tobin Spectrum of estimated recall. And that, Dukey, would be awful!

Me: I'm going strangle you with my mouse

Them: Dude, It's wireless.

Me: I know...

I need the absolute challenge of actually making choices that will have a genuine social effect. That will make the young people in my charge better individuals with better life chances so they can have the opportunity to actually do what they want to with their lives.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm making life or death decisions. I'm not a doctor or a nurse. I'm rarely found rushing with the ol' blues and twos to arrest a serial killer. If I'm honest I'd be rubbish at fighting fires because I spend far too much time pissing about with the hose:

Me: Hey, Frank!

Frank: Yeah?

SPOWOOOSSSSHHHHH

Frank: Muummphhh!!!

Me: Heh heh heh.

But what I do is to tell a group of young people that they are better, much better, than they ever thought they could be. I can teach them to respect others. To not judge. To be someone who stands up against the accepted wisdom and say 'this is wrong'. To have faith, both in themselves and in others around them. To be happy.

But to make them do these things I need to do my bit. To be pressured. To get the billion and one bits of paperwork completed. To basically, give a fuck.

And if I don't, I don't lose a faceless corporation money. I don't lose the respect of the general public. Hell, I probably won't lose my job.

I'd just lose the life chances of a group of teenagers for them.

And I'd never be able to live with that.

Ouch...again...

2010-02-21T08:58:00.005Z

I believe in Karma. No, really I do. I believe that a good person will have good things happen to them. Likewise a bad person will have horrible things happen to them.

But I'm at a loss to figure out what it is that I've done to piss Karma off so much.

Put simply, I've broken another finger playing rugby.

Some people make it through a good number of years of playing without any kind of break. I break two fingers three months apart.

At this rate my hands are going to be as effective as the Tiny Tim Long Jump team.

They will also look like the gnarled twistings of a Baobab tree as drawn my MC Escher after a heavy night on the mescalin.

At least I can do some kind of old school horror acting with my newly formed claw like mits. It'd be a laugh that. Living in a castle. Having a servant called Igor. Creeping up on virgins in the middle of the night...actually no, that'll get me fired and the Duchess will shout at me. Lots.

So I say 'fuck you' karma. I'd raise my fingers to you, but it hurts.

Beer? Motorway? Golf Buggy? Welshman?

2010-02-18T15:00:00.005Z

Last Saturday Andy Powell, Welsh international, celebrated his team's win by having a few beers. Obviously this would be the case for any half decent Rugby team. Also it is fairly true that these celebratory drinks can - at times - spiral out of hand.

We call them 'Beerventures'.

In Andy Powell's case his beerventure ended up with him being arrested on the M4 motorway driving a golf buggy absolutely pissed out of his taffy skull. What sequence of events led up to this point may well never be known (well, until he cynically produces an autobiography). The point is that in a moment of pure brilliance (or stupidity) Powell took the step from mindless drunken behaviour to beerventure.

You may well ask 'what constitutes a beerventure and how do I know I've had one?' Well fear not dear reader. I have produced a guide.

The Duke Fandango Guide to BEERVENTURES!

Every now and then whilst drinking, a number of complex factors balance each other out to create the optimum conditions for beerventures. This can be expressed using the equation:

Intoxication [times] Mates Egging You On [divided by] Basic Motor Skills = Beerventure.

Put simply you need to have the requisite amount of alcohol coursing through your body to completely remove your usual inhibitions and a group of mates yelling 'go on, it'll be fucking funny' whilst still retaining the ability to coordinate your limbs to operate things like ticket machines, steam trains, gates to fields, tin openers etc.

Beerventures usually happen in a state of semi-consciousness. When you wake up the next day you will most likely not remember much about it. There will however, be a number of clues to help you piece together what happened:

You wake up in a field.

You wake up in a field in another county.

You wake up in a field in Poland.

You wake up in a field in Poland with a Swastika tattooed on your forehead, an Ox heart in one hand and your trousers around your ankles.

You wake up in your bed...which is in a field.

You wake up on a cargo ship bound for the Philippines and everyone starts referring to you as Manuel.

You wake up on a roundabout stark-bollock-naked. On the A3. At around nine AM.

You wake up in what you assume to be a prison cell but through your blurry vision you notice the chains on the walls and the 25 inch pink dildo cemented to the floor. There is the strong smell of baby oil.

You wake up in hospital covered in jam and bee stings.

Once you shake yourself out of your alcohol induced catatonic state there are a series of steps you need to take to get your shit together.

Step 1: Finding out what happened.

Firstly check your phone. You may have texts/missed calls from your friends - this may give you a clue (especially if it says "Dude! Can't believe you stole that horse and rode it all the way to Exeter" or "You utter twat! Why did you sleep with my Gran/Sister/Girlfriend/Mum/Cuddly Toy I've had since childhood?") Also check the pictures. If you have a camera phone you may have photographic evidence of what happened. If these involve you stapling your nut sack to a giraffe then best get rid of them.

Step 2: Finding out where you are.

If the roadsigns are in a different language then you have had a monumental beerventure. Ask a local for directions to the nearest port. You will need to be wary of approaching just anyone as your beerventure could be the starting point for a small-scale diplomatic dispute. It is essential that you complete step 1 before any interactions with other people. If you jump headlong into conversation you could be asking someone for help whose fence you jumped last night, landed on their dog house and inadvertently killed 'Scruffles' the rare breed show dog that was the family's only source of income in these harsh economic times. They will probably want to kill you; you bastard.

Step 3: Getting Home.

You may be lucky and hitch a lift with a trucker. If this is the case you will only have to perform one act of oral sex. Be thankful that you can get that post-drinking taste out of your mouth. If not you may have to order a taxi/find a bus stop/buy a aeroplane ticket (depending on the extent of your beerventure).

Once you've done the above you will be able to look back in years to come and laugh about the events.

Unless you get arrested and sent to gaol. If this happens then you'll look back on your beerventure as the point your life started its downward spiral.

But when you decide to ride that golf buggy up on one of the nation's major roads you can say with pride in your heart and vodka in your stomach "I too am on a beerventure and I'm fucking a grapefruit!"

Andy Powell, you sir, are a legend.

I take it all back...there is a god!

2010-02-15T16:34:00.003Z

And that God has a fucking grade A sense of humour.

Point in case is the fact that the BNP has been forced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to change it's admissions policy to allow non-whites to join.

For those of you who don't follow British politics all that closely allow me to explain. The BNP (or British National Party for those of you with an aversion to TLAs [Three Letter Abbreviations]) is a far-right bunch of racists whose central policy is the forced repatriation of all non-white people to their countries of origin.

The BNP is led by the cycloptic charisma-void, toad-faced and all round twat, Nick Griffin (pictured) who is without doubt the single most reprehensible life form to be forcibly ejected from a uterus since Salome. And at least she could dance.

Nick Griffin used to be a holocaust denier arguing that the numbers were a bit on the unbelievable side. Well Nick - that's why it's the single greatest tragedy to face humanity. It's also why it's called the Holocaust. It's not the sort of thing that happens all the time. You don't get two elderly people in a Post Office muttering about how Maureen's 'feeling a bit under the weather because she's suffering from 'a bit of holocaust'.

I say used to be a holocaust denier because he's given up. He went on to the holocaust denier replacement treatment. Such as 'Jew-Hate' patches which give a steady dose of antisemitism over a 24 hour period to help reduce cravings. He's now completely off holocaust denying (although he still fancies it when he's got a beer in his hand).

Other BNP policies include the reintroduction of the death penalty and the use of judicial corporal punishment. Which, ignoring the giant step backwards in terms of human rights this would bring, would put us on a par with Saudi Arabia. A fundamentalist Islamic country. This is interesting because the BNP is constantly bemoaning the (frankly non-existent) 'Islamification' of Britain by radical clerics and the like whilst failing to see that they themselves are promoting an Anglicised version of Sharia law.

The reason that the BNP are a bit of a hot topic at the moment is that they managed to somehow get two of their members elected to the European Parliament. And yes I use 'members' as a synonym from 'penises'. What this does mean is that they actually have a modicum of power. They actually represent people from this country in Europe. They ACTUALLY have a say.

For a while this was a worry. Britain did a bit of collective soul searching to see if we'd all become a bit more racist. If perhaps this most cosmopolitan of nations had lost its tolerant outlook. Perhaps multi-cultural Britain was a pipe dream. One that could never exist for the differences that made us so vibrant, so interesting, so unique were the same that would ultimately tear us apart as cultural divisions became societal then finally political rifts.

No, what actually happened is that in true British style nobody could be arsed to vote in the elections. Indeed the BNP's ability to take power (however small that power may actually be) isn't because of a growing number of people who are drawn to the extreme-right but because they are being forced away from politics in general. Apathy, not ideology, gave the BNP their seats.

The beauty of the recent announcement from the Equality and Human Rights Commission is that it allows at least one of the following to happen:

§ Either, Islam4UK will have a whip-round and get all of their members to join the BNP. Ostensibly this will be to provoke some kind of mass media reaction to promote Islam4UK's saying they're going to do things then not doing them. For the rest of us it will be an opportunity to see the first artificially created black-hole as the enormous amounts of hate-loaded spittle reaches critical mass and rips a hole in the Space-Time Continuum. Take that CERN!

§ Or, the fundamentalist, hardcore, nutters who actually believe in the venom they espouse will realise that the party they had believed in so fervently has just well and truly shafted them by not actually having a spine and at least attempting to stand up for them. Put simply the BNP will lose members faster than the world's largest eunuch-factory (which is just outside Hamburg). It will quite quickly cease to be any form of threat to anyone. Like a bull with no balls - looks scary but runs away when you wave a stick in its face...not sure how this simile works...figure it out for yourself...

Either way I will now be standing for the BNP in the next elections. My policies will include the following especially designed to piss off the rest of the party:

The Duke Fandango BNP Policy

1) Gay men and Women MUST hold hands and kiss in public for every 30 metres they walk. If anyone objects within earshot every homosexual person in the area must dance around the offender in a lewd manner.

2) If Nick Griffin really believes in what he says then I would campaign for him to spread his good news; in central Brixton. I feel it's only fair.

3) I think that joining the Euro isn't liberal enough. We should suspend our entire economy and hand the reigns over to Brussels. At the very least we'll be knee deep in chocolate and fruit beers.

4) I believe that we should change the national anthem to include a verse in the following languages:

Arabic,
Polish,
Urdu,
Hindi,
Mandarin,
Farsi,
Portuguese,
French,
Tagalog,
Swahili,
Gallic,
Maasai,
Basque,
Klingon.

Admittedly it'll take about 45 mins to sing and sports coverage will be somewhat elongated but hey, if England can work their way through all that and win a match then fair play.

5) Whenever Nick Griffin is about to speak the theme tune from Bucky O'Hare plays to remind everyone that he looks like the toad bad-guys.

At the very least we can all have a fucking great laugh as this is the crucial moment where the party becomes its own parody.

This my friends is the holy grail of satire and the Equality and Human Rights Commission is our saviour. Let us pray...

Religion

2010-02-08T19:29:00.002Z

Now don't let it be said that I don't tackle the big issues. Sure, a lot of the time I'm just ranting about utter nonsense but I'd like to think that every now and again I go for some kind of apt social commentary.

As such, I would like to provide a definitive guide to the various religions that populate this world so that you, my loyal readers (all twelve of you) can make an informed decision if you decide to take up a religion.

Here it goes:

Atheism: Some would say not a real religion but if you're going to believe anything you might as well believe nothing. Atheists are generally found either 1) laughing at creationists, 2) make snide comments about religions in general, 3) creating shrines to Richard Dawkins. Bizarrely they see no contradiction in this.

Agnosticism: For those who like to behave immorally but occasionally have twinges of guilt about it. Generally persuaded by whomsoever is talking to them at that very moment but primarily so they can wing a free drink.

Anglicism: Like tea, hate putting anyone out. Constantly found apologising for the bad bits of the bible and offering pieces of cake to anyone who will listen to a sermon for more than a picto-second. Generally quite nice people.

Buddhism: Probably the gentlest religion going. Believe in the sanctity of all life...whilst training to kick someone's spleen out through their left nostril. Basically hardcore hippies.

Catholicism: Do you hate yourself? Great! Become a Catholic! Many times you will be afforded the opportunity to combine the mysticism of the ancients through the use of a long dead language whilst constantly being told that you, yes YOU, are at heart, evil. Good if you like wine. Best thought of as Anglicism with a spine.

Hinduism: Believe in about fourteen trillion gods, demi-gods, demons, devils, angels and monkey type thingies. Believe in the sanctity of cows and good at stretching. Dhalsim from Street Fighter II was a Hindu. He was awesome. Not sure anyone else can do 'Yoga Flame'.

Islam: Seemingly a peaceful religion that is full of hotheads. A bit like football in that respect. Best not to draw comics of Mohamed. Tend to get upset when people take the piss...um...Not big drinkers.

Judaism: Bit of a rocky road. Kind of a cross between Catholics and Muslims but with the ability to laugh at themselves. Have a heinous amount of rules so if you're a bit slack about working on your days off or eating bacon then probably not for you. Good range of beards.

Mormonism: Crazy Horses! Whaa, whaa. That's all I know. Oh, and they can have more than one wife. Will try and stop you in the street and convert you by reasoned logic despite the fact that their beliefs are based on a warped reading of a fictional text.

Neo-Paganism or Wicca: Believe in the transcendence of the human spirit to be able to float above the conscious plane which is basically utter shite. Primarily an excuse to go and dance in the woods with no clothes on. Which, lets be honest, you can do without believing in the healing properties of crystals.

Puritanism: YOU WILL NOT HAVE FUN! Tried to stop people having fun in England where they were told to 'bugger off'. Founded America. Killed natives. Like whitewash and wood. Thought mince pies were papist decadence. Banned Christmas. Not great at parties.

Rastafarianism: The only major religion in which dope is used for religious purposes. Presumably so are Doritos. Believes in the imminent overthrow of Babylon. Which turned into Constantinople. Then into Istanbul. It's nobodies' business but the Turks.

Scientology: Heh, heh, heh. The crazed rantings of a sci-fi writer where basically you give them all of your money and then you get a space on the space ship that will take you to...oh, fuck it...it's too mental to explain. Look at Tom Cruise. Do you want to end up like him? Didn't think so.

Shintoism: Everything has a spirit. Rocks. Trees. Sheep. Bags of Sherbet. Jam. Bits of old string. That fluff you get in your belly button, yep that's got a soul. It's a wonder that anyone gets anything done with all these chuffing spirits floating about. Although Samurais believed in it and they were double-hard bastards. Will make you good at fighting.

Sikhism: Turbans and blades. Never need to cut your hair again so you might save an absolute fortune at the barbers. Believe that God is the universe and that the universe is God. Quite an interesting idea when thought about properly.

I swear to God, gods or Dawkins that I should have been an R.E. teacher.

I am actually going to China

2010-02-03T18:44:00.003Z

Well I got the job.

It's been a bit crazy here and somewhat emotional but in August I will be heading to work in China. Thanks for all the comments and messages of support, they were greatly appreciated.

What it also means is that I will be able to give one hell of a farewell speech. Obviously it's early days but I've got a couple of initial ideas kicking around. Let me know what you think...

Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers. I'm off to work for much more money in a country where education is respected and there are no OFSTED inspections. I will be getting more holiday than you and I'll be able to travel and explore the whole of Asia.

I will most likely keep in contact with the few of you who I actually respect - if you don't hear from me within two weeks it means I think you're a cunt. I thank you for my leaving present of [insert name of object] but I can pretty much guarantee that it will go in the bin within five minutes of me getting home/be on EBAY faster than Michael Jackson's hair [delete according to value of gift].

For those of you who I have had to cover for due to your illness then I humbly ask you to write a cheque for one fifth of your salary. Either give it to me or a charity because quite frankly, you don't deserve it. Everyone else makes it in when they're feeling a bit under the weather why should you be different? Twat.

I would however, like to make a special mention to whomsoever uses my classroom last thing on a Thursday. Why do I have to clear up your shit? Also, why can't you control your kids enough to prevent them writing 'I fucked Jamie's mum in the butt' and 'Terry has a cunt face' on my wall before I have a parental meeting? Why do I have to apologise to Mrs Hysterical and Mr Greatly-Offended about other people's classes?

Anyway - thanks for the references.

Bye...

I know it needs some work here and there but I like the mixture of profanity and general finality it currently has about it.

Obviously suggestions would be welcome...

Look Ma! I'm on the interweb!

2010-02-03T18:09:00.002Z

Well obviously...

Jayka over at The Giant Typo is running a series of guest blog posts and my rather humble effort has been posted.

You can find it here:

http://heyjayka.blogspot.com/

Ta,

Duke

Bollocks to it all, I'm moving to China...

2010-01-24T15:52:00.003Z

Well almost. I have an interview tomorrow for a job working in a school in China, if it goes well then I'll be starting in August. Teaching. In China.

Yep, random and undermining change is the story of my life.

People ask 'Why?!', 'Why China?', 'Why so suddenly?' and 'Where are your trousers?'. All valid questions that need some kind of answer...

'Why?'

Realising that my life was marching on like the SS on speed was a bit of a shock. Here I am counting down the seconds of my life as they drain inexplicably away and I haven't done those things I thought I'd do when I was 18. Like lunge wildly at the Pope or be knighted for services to the tobacco industry. One of the things I have wanted to do for a long time was work abroad. To teach in another culture would be an unparalleled experience. And when, at the ripe old age of 37, as I lie on my death bed I want to say 'fuck you all, I worked abroad and it was awesome. Oh, and little brother...you're adopted'.

'Why China?'

Working in the West would be an incredible experience. But to go somewhere that is totally alien, that has its own identity rather than a scaled down version of America-Lite or Diet-Europe would be honestly the most exciting and terrifying thing I could do. China provides that. And also the food is great.

I've also always had a curious predilection towards Communism. Not as an ideology that I subscribe to but as something that I am fascinated by. Like an atheist reading the Bible or Tom Cruise watching videos of normal people.

'Why So Suddenly?'

Think of it as a quarter-life crisis if you will. Perhaps a sudden realisation of my own mortality and a lack of experience that I currently have of the world at large would be another possible explanation. I feel the real reason is that I am impulsive to the point of recklessness whereby I just decide. One day I wake up and say 'I will do this' and I do. In truth I have never regretted a decision made this way but it does make it a little difficult to plan ahead. It does also have major repercussions on The Duchess. She was not best pleased and more than a little hurt. Once I explained my reasons she was massively supportive and I know that even though I'm moving away for a long time a small part of my heart will remain here in Blighty, with her.

'Where are your trousers?'

I'm sorry officer. I thought it would be funny and I didn't realise that there was a parade of nuns going through town. Do you really think the handcuffs are necessary? Oh, ok then.

So I have to wait and see if I do ok in the interview. If I do, then I will have the opportunity of a lifetime. If not then I will be hugely disappointed but will carry on looking.

Its a long way to Beijing. A long way to go.

Bit of snow...chance to moan.

2010-01-07T19:43:00.002Z

Gotta love being British. The first bit of decent snow for almost 30 years and after the first .03 nanoseconds we're blaming everyone from the government to simple teaching folk like me. Here are some examples from the BBC website's 'Have Your Say' section in which people with the cranial capacity of a duck are (for reasons unknown) allowed to communicate with the general public rather than being locked away in cave with enough air for two days:

I am completely amused at the way people find any excuse to "work from home" but we really know most of them are at the pub or sleeping in! Have a thought for those who have made the effort to keep this country running! We deserve some recognition!

Jessica Doran, London

Well fucking done there Jessica. You made the choice to go to work, no doubt risking life and limb to 'keep this country running'. Whilst other people spent the day having a lie-in or going to the pub. I rather think, Jessica, that they are completely amused by you and your determination to slog away at an employer that doesn't give two shits about you or your idea of self-inflated worth whilst they casually (and in good company) down pint after pint of ale.

...I am in Florida and, although colder than normal, it still reaches 50 F in the day and it is sunny. Mainly I am laughing at the ridiculous notion of global warming. Wake up people, the massive environmental movement is being perpetuated by those that want to control you through taxes and legislation.

David, Tampa, FL USA

How the hell does that help us? Why are you posting? David you fucking twat, we can't all be in Florida with your smug 'I'm-alright-Jack' attitude. Unless you want 60 million of us turning up at Orlando airport without employment. Also, a week of snow doesn't mean global warming doesn't exist. It means cold weather. The government doesn't need to control me through tax and legislation based on carbon emissions. Terrorism does that just fine.

Warrington council have made no attempts at all to move the snow off any roads in my area. My council tax bill has risen by over 100% in 9 years - what do we pay this money for.

Dave S, Appleton

You pay council tax for Police, Fire, Refuse Collection, Education, Hospitals, Ambulance Services, Roads, Public transport, Adult and Children (Social) Services, Housing and the infrastructure to make sure it all works you bell end. Not just so your roads are clear the one time a year we have some snow.

Any teacher that fails to turn up for school should be sacked. You can get to school safely even if you have to walk and so can children. Teachers should be teaching a responsible attitude to children in their care. It's little wonder that children have no respect for anyone when the teachers have taught them that. In any business, the people that do turn in have to cover for those that don't usually at the expense of their own job. Your employer isn't responsible for the weather, get in to work

Hey Dude, north wales

Er...fuck you. I would actually quite like to be in school as I'm falling behind with vital work that I need to get done. Indeed I have GCSE coursework due which I need to mark. Fact is, my school is closed due to the massive amount of ice on site. I didn't make that call, my headteacher did. So I've spent the past two day doing prep and marking. Also whilst I play a huge part in how a child perceives the world you as a parent will have a much greater impact. So raise your own children. Prick.

I blame the Met Office for 'guessing'! the long range forecast. Their 'super' computers are a waste of money, it seems it's impossible to give a long range forecast. An amateur with basic equipment could do just as well. Also at fault are the climate change brigade convincing councils we won't ever get a cold winter again. Any normal person could guess that every 10 years or so we get a bad one. If councils stocked up a bit every year, they would have a HUGE STOCK PILE when it hits. Stupid!

Andy T, Devon, United Kingdom

You blame the Met Office? For snow? Were you dropped on your head as a child? Do you have a congenital mental illness? Are you, in short, a mong? Clearly yes. So despite the fact that the local authorities stocked up on much more salt and grit this winter but have been broadsided by the shear amount of cold weather we are experiencing you are blaming them. Also where the fuck are you planning to put this HUGE STOCK PILE? Well, one assumes if you remove your head from your own arse there will be plenty of room.

So basically Britain is full of retarded cunts who at the slightest sniff of any disruption to their monotonous and devout worship of the great god 'work' instantly go into an apoplectic fit.

There are some rays of light:

Who cares, its only snow, just get up, have fun, keep the schools closed and get on with it

Chris Ball, Bexleyheath

Couldn't agree with you more.

LOOK! IT'S SNOWING AND SHIT!!!!

2010-01-06T16:19:00.003Z

After complaining in my last post about being back at school I have been granted a heavenly gift.

A snow day.

Indeed so bad is the weather in my part of the world that I have also been given tomorrow off.

I live in the middle of nowhere so there is no possibility of me going and doing anything constructive (as I type my car is being buried by snow) and as such, there is very little I can do.

Basically it boils down to two options:

I could get on with lots of work like a real grown up. I could ensure that my planning is done, reports written and emails sent off in a diligent, professional sort of way.

Or I could go out in the snow, run around like a child with ADHD kicking snow drifts and throwing snowballs before heading down to the pub to start drinking at two in the afternoon.

I'm not going to lie to you, it was a tough choice.

It may be difficult for some of you who deal with lots of snow on an annual basis to truly appreciate how completely mental the British go when there is a bit of snow. To give you an idea it's like there is pure amphetamine being sprinkled from the sky and we, as a nation, go off our collective nut.

But alas, as with any illicit pleasure there is the inevitable comedown. We are so woefully unprepared for this type of weather that our roads look like ski runs, schools close (hooray...ahem...I mean...oh fuck it, hooray!), the emergency services tell you that they are only coming if there is a absolute certainty that you are going to die and the news suggests that leaving the house will result in you being killed in a pointless yet amusing fashion. Like slipping on ice, falling into a ravine and being eaten by a polar bear. A polar bear with swine flu. No, a gay polar bear with swine flu and a fucking machine gun. Yeah. That's right. Don't want that now do you. Stay inside and watch News 24 for updates on marauding homosexual polar bears with guns and who are actually the original source of swine flu. And now to sport.

I'd imagine this is how sub-Saharan Africa would feel if they had one of our summers.

Bak 2 Skool...or something

2010-01-04T18:17:00.003Z

Back in the zone? Ready to Teach? Prepared to make a difference to the lives of countless of children in a myriad of infinitesimal yet, ultimately, vital ways?

Oh, God No!

My first day back at school was like having a glass case stuffed with straw placed strategically around my head. Where once I was lucid I am now dense. Where I would have inspired moments of high speed action I now lumber around the room in a semi-catatonic state.

An example is in order.

I welcomed my class. They sat down and busied themselves by copying down the learning objective which I had written in a moment of unequaled energy before slumping back into my chair with my mug of coffee and a feeling of hollowness.

Then came that moment. The worst possible moment for a teacher.

Thirty pairs of eyes look at you quite silently, almost mockingly, as if to say 'go on then, teach me'.

I don't respond.

A pupil coughs politely.

I smile ruefully at them.

One looks pointedly at the clock and then raises their eyebrows.

I sip at the coffee.

One of them says 'Er...sir?'

I point languidly to the board over my shoulder and nod.

As one the class looks at the board and looks back, puzzled expressions on their faces.

A slight rustle of paper and the tick of the clock is all that can be heard.

There is a sniff of a slightly snotty nose followed by another cough. Time slips by in an academic slumber.

I finally cave, realising that despite my best efforts I will actually have to talk to the pupils in the lesson 'do the task I have written on the board' I say sarcastically.

After a long pause one of the pupils put their hand up.

'Yes? What?' I demand in a slightly overly aggressive and somewhat petulant tone.

'Er...what task?'

I look round and notice that the learning objective and date are both correct and, considering my handwriting, fairly legible. Indeed there is nothing wrong with these two pieces of information. Nothing at all. OFSTED would look at those bits of writing and find no fault. If I was observed on my ability to write a learning objective and date then tick me off the list, for I am akin to a god in these respects.

What OFSTED may have an issue with is the unbroken field of white that runs between the learning objective and the date. The bit where the work should be. The bit the kids have been silently and oh-so-politely waiting for.

Oh shitting fuck! I've been having a staring contest with thirty pupils for ten minutes trying some kind of non-verbal, new-age, Zen-teaching and they've been sat there thinking 'lazy cunt, why isn't he teaching us?' My assumption that I had actually written the work on the board was somewhat optimistic. Perhaps I had some thought that by merely thinking about the task there would be some kind of pedagogical voodoo in which, through some form of telekinesis, work would mysteriously appear on my white board.

I jumped, from my chair. Did a little about turn and flicked the cap off the pen in a nonchalant way, nodded to the kids and turned to the board.

Could remember the task I wanted to set? Of course I fucking couldn't. I stood, back to the class, desperately thinking of some kind of engaging and relevant task to set. I was there for five minutes.

During which time the spell of me sat at the front had broken and there was a small riot taking place behind me.

And I'll admit, head on board, brain like dough I gave up.

We did reading. It was nice.

Headlines

2009-12-19T13:29:00.002Z

Headlines are a bit boring at the mo.

Economy this, Expenses that, Jordan in between.

What I'd like to see are some slightly more esoteric headlines. Like these:

Short-sighted Pedophile Kicked to Death by Dwarf.

Osama bin-Laden to become America's Next Top Model.

Queen Attacks Sarcozy; Wins on points.

Jordan Promises To Stop Writing Books, Appearing on TV and Generally Being a Tit.

Apathy Sweeps the Nation; Nobody Cares.

Catholic Church Declares 'We Did It For The LOLZ'.

Thetans Discovered By Science; Tom Cruise Looks Smug.

Bear Baiting To Be Shown On T.V. Piers Morgan To Host.

Simon Cowell's Ego Collapses - Black Hole Formed.

I'm Feeling Poorly. Get Me Lemsip.

Nihilism New Religion And Th...

Brown Says Stuff - No One Gives a Monkeys.

Pope Says That The Whole Gay Thing Was An Error. Soz.

SOS To Be Replaced With OMFG!!!!!!!!!!11

God Makes Visit To Archbishop of Canterbury - He Looked Really Fucking Angry.

Feel free to add any others that spring to mind via the comment bit.

Christmassy post to come next time.

Tyger, Tyger Burning Brighter Than Downtown Baghdad

2009-12-13T13:36:00.004Z

What do you think constitutes the greater story:

a) Tony Blair admitting that he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq anyway and that he would have just 'changed the arguments' to ensure the disposition of Saddam Hussein took place regardless of public opinion and the massive loss of life that it led to;

Or;

b) Tiger Woods nobbing someone that wasn't his wife.

According to the papers, it's 'b'.

The thing is there are remarkable parallels between the U.S. led invasion of a sovereign nation and the infidelities of a much loved sportsman.

'What are these..?' I hear you not cry...

Well:

§ Golf at its core is dull. Dull to watch, dull to play and even duller to talk about. The same for international politics. Both Tiger Wood's sex life and the 'will they/won't they' pre-war aperitif we experienced in 2003 brought some much needed excitement to both fields.

§ There was much talk of a sexed-up dossier which provided the justification to go to war. Sounds like Tiger's pretty sexed-up without falsifying details.

§ The aim of Golf (insofar as I can make out) is to get a hole in one. The purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to find 'one in a hole'. Initially this was for WMDs but later it was just Saddam. Which we found. In a hole!*

§ Both stories have had car related themes. The intelligence for the '45-mins and we're all fucked' came from a cab driver who overheard a conversation whilst driving. Tiger's brief experiment with late night off-road/on-road/off-road/tree/hydrant driving was no doubt the result of an overheard conversation. Possibly with his wholesale lube importers.

§ Golf/Gulf - simple.

§ There has been much talk of equipment for the armed forces. Likewise there has been has been much talk of Tiger's equipment. I'm not sure which I'd rather go to war with.

§ In the invasion of Iraq it was common for Coalition troops to listen to heavy metal to psyche themselves up before battle. The same is true of Wood's pre-coital routine in which he listens to the second half of the first verse of Holy Diver by Dio for a full half hour.**

§ Both were the result of dodgy intelligence. The Iraq invasion justification was basically a list of things that could possibly be true if you momentarily suspended all rational and logical thought. Tiger's for thinking that his wife wouldn't mind

So there we go. On the face of it it might look like a story about someone famous having an affair was just trivial nonsense but now you know better.

Mission Accomplished...

*Yes I'm aware I could make a cheap 'but he got one in a hole' joke but didn't want to. I'm mainly writing this footnote for Seb.
**'Ride the tiger/you can see his stripes but you know he's clean/oh don't you see what I mean...'

Well, it was bound to happen...

2009-12-06T15:23:00.004Z

After my previous post enthusing about the joys of rugby I've been injured. In my second match. Woot.

Now it isn't a serious injury. All I have done is break my finger. Not really a big deal when compared to some of the mind-bendingly painful and dangerous things that can happen on the pitch.

But it is a bloody embuggerance. The following is a list of some of the daily activities that are now either hilariously difficult or require a serious amount of forward planning to achieve.

Writing:

I happen to be right handed. I have broken the middle finger of my right hand. My handwriting is not known for its lucidity at the best of times. Currently it looks like a half crazed widgitty grub has wallowed in ink and then, after getting smacked out of its head on a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs, has decided to dance the rumba to happy hardcore. With a mate.

Driving:

Everytime I turn the wheel I catch the splint which creates a rather amusing amount of pain to shoot across my hand. This is followed by a less amusing (although somewhat cathartic) number of expletives to pour forth from my mouth. Fun for all until you find yourself driving behind Derek the Lipreading Nutter who thinks that you have just called him a 'fucking cunting bastard'.

Moving across the school:

Those of you who read regularly know that I'm a teacher. As such I often have to move from one side of the site between lessons. Just at the point when a thousand pupils are doing the same. They all have backpacks of the size usually reserved for climbing Everest. All it needs is for someone to turn around quickly and *bang*, Mr Fandango is on the floor weeping in agony. I suspect they do it on purpose.

Cooking:

I love cooking ('cus I'm a new man and all that) but it is difficult to grasp anything (and patently dangerous when it's a knife) with a hand that doesn't work like it should. Of course being a resourceful type of chap I use my left hand. My left hand it transpires, is about as useful at chopping veg as using a chainsaw. On paper it should work, only it kind of doesn't.

Post fecal ablutions (or as we call it down my way 'wiping one's arse'):

I don't need to draw a diagram do I? All I'll say is that it is really difficult after 25 years of using the right hand to make a switch.

Using the computer:

I'm now like my Granddad using a computer (which in itself is a simple form of tragi-comedy). I do the 'one-finger-stab' style of typing. Using a track pad has become a battle of wills. You try to ctrl, alt, del with a finger that doesn't move. Bloody hard. I feel like a cross between Joseph Merrick and Bill Gates (without the obvious good looks or stack of cash) in that I know how to do it...I just can't.

Being a man:

We all know that men are crap when ill. Having this is worse because I feel fine. So I mope around, half-completing tasks that when fully digited I can complete in a matter of seconds. The Duchess (bless her for her patience) just rolls her eyes in pitying shame and takes over. I have been emasculated by a poxy broken finger! What has become of me?

In short having a broken finger is about as much fun as nailing your eyelids to a mountain goat during the mating season whilst simultaneously listening to Simon Cowell read the complete works of George Elliot. In Dutch.

But on the upshot I should be all better in a week so I can stop all this self-pitying nonsense and actually get on with my life.

I get the feeling I'm not the only person who'll be relieved when that happens...

Yes I am actually rubbish.

2009-11-20T20:09:00.004Z

I haven't posted anything for over a month. This has put a serious dent in my plan for blogger domination. Bollocks.

There are a myriad of reasons as to why I've so unbelievably slack. Primarily due to my quite frankly laughable workload. But there is another, more personal, slightly less rational reason.

I've joined a rugby team.

For those of you who are unaware of the game of rugby allow me to explain:

Rugby is a sport played by a team of fifteen where an oval ball is carried. The only way to stop an opposing player who has the ball is to bodily tackle him. Preferably as hard as physically possible.

Now allow me (if you will) to place this into context. I weigh 11 1/2 stone (161 lb for those in the Land of Yank). I am hitting monolithic monsters who have the edge on a fully grown African elephant. Their mates call them 'Ripper'. They eat steel and drink only diesel. They laugh when they stub their toe. They think dwarf tossing is an Olympic sport. Hell, they think that the 'Terminator' films are documentaries. The only time they felt fear was when their girlfriend had her first orgasm.

Put simply I'm way out of my league.

But has that stopped me? No. No it fucking hasn't.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, there is nothing that compares to being part of a team. Secondly, pain is merely an excuse to have a lie down. Thirdly, there is quite a lot to be said for absolutely nobbing a truck of a prop.

So despite my obvious lack of physical presence I am having a great time. If you've never played rugby and fancy it there is no doubt a team near you. Go along to a training session. Go on. You'll like it. I promise.

Blog Action Day - Climate Change

2009-10-15T18:33:00.003+01:00

I am not a hippie. I will not descend into the idea of the Earth as 'mother'. I will not personify the poor little creatures that are affected by the effects of climate change. I will not pretend that I look whistfully into the future and imagine a post-apocalyptic dystopia where my decendents scratch a living from the bare Earth and faces turned skywards scream 'why didn't you turn the heating down one fucking degree?'

Becuase I, like all other hairless apes, don't look beyond the temporal horizon that extends one week beyond our faces.

You see the problem with climate change is that it doesn't affect us directly. Not like fixing the toaster. Or terrorism. It is a nebulous idea. Scientific in explanation that seems a million miles away. We nod and agree and recycle before jumping in our cars to drive to heated houses before turning on the 55'' plasma T.V. and watching a four hour episode of 'Strictly Come Dancing', turning on all the lights, chucking the washing in the tumble dryer, leaving the fridge door open, roasting a 56kg whole pig for two, sitting down at a computer with wireless connection to spend 3 hours writing a blog about climate change.

You see the issue of climate change exposes us at our most degraded. It seems so far away so we don't really bother. Oh, we pay lipservice to it but when anything big is done about it we fail.

I'll give you an example. About a year ago the Government suggested that it would be a good idea to monitor the amount of waste that goes into our bins using a microchip. The ultimate goal was no doubt to start to charge people for the amount of waste people threw away.

Did the fine people of this great nation accept such a forward thinking and fair way of trying to reduce the amount of waste mindlessly chucked out?

Did they fuck!

Allusions were drawn from 1984 because it was an attack on the rights of every British person to have their own four acres of landfill without the intrusion of a Big Brother government.

This is from the country with the most CCTV cameras per capita in the world.

I wish that we could change. I wish that the soviet experiment showed that we can move beyond the self interested actions and do something alturistic. Not because of any form of vicarious motivation, nor because of the threat of mass flooding, starvation and death.

But because it is the right thing to do.

Dealing With Prejudice.

2009-10-10T11:55:00.004+01:00

One of the hardest things I have to do as a teacher is to deal with prejudice and challenge preconceptions. It sounds like a fairly easy thing to do. Pupil says something untoward, you calmly explain why that isn't acceptable, pupil becomes well adjusted member of society and goes on to challenge predjudicial behaviour at home and within their peer group.

Bollocks.

What actually happens is pupil says something unacceptable (in my place of work either mildly racist or homophobic), you are actually disgusted by the comment and erupt into a 45 minute lecture on the rights of man at great volume. You may or may not point out some of the pupil's obvious shortcomings such as lack of personal hygene, questionable parentage or, in extreme cases, their having the mental capcity of the common or garden snail. Once you have calmed down you will have to log the incident somehow and inform the parents.

The next day you will open up your emails and discover that the little scrote's parents have decided that the way you dealt with the incident was unacceptable and they have notified the headteacher of your actions. The first email you write in response is blocked by the school's filtering system as it contains 32 seperate examples of the word 'fuck'.

An hour later the headteacher calls you into their office for a 'chat'. They politely explain that we must remember to treat our pupils with 'diginity and respect' and, as such, refering to them as 'the bastard offspring of Hitler, Pol Pot and Gary the Racist Duck' isn't really acceptable. You want to explain that you didn't say 'duck' and this demonstrates the lack of attention the pupil pays in your lessons but realise that this will only make things worse.

You then come to the shocking self-revelation that the reason the pupil was being a racist twat was because the parents see nothing wrong in it. Indeed, the parents make those comments all the time. There may be some reason for it - perhaps they haven't got any work because Polish workers can do the same job cheaper, perhaps it is fear of the unknown or perhaps it is because they haven't left the village they were born in all their life and still think people with different coloured skin are somehow out to get them and their wife (who doubles up as sister and cousin) agrees.

I don't know the ultimate reason. What I do know is this conflict between my liberal ideals and the swathe of ignorance I see before me is very hard reconcile in a way which befits my supposed responsibilites as a rolemodel. What I find unaccptable they see no problem in. What makes my blood boil they see as funny. This is the point at which my professionalism falls down.

Perhaps I should be less prejudiced against rasicst, homophobic, stuttering idiots.

Perhaps not...

Smart Kid

2009-09-30T11:41:00.002+01:00

Quiet time from me due to work (I know, I know) so I shall post this vid as it made me laugh in a meeting. Yes I got into trouble.

Enjoy:

Hitching a ride on the gravy train.

2009-09-26T15:36:00.004+01:00

So long suckers!

That's what my words of adieu will be once I receive my cheque for loads-a-money. To cut a long story short, I've had an exciting piece of news via my email.

Apparently someone with the last name as me has died and a very nice lawyer has contacted me to say that I'm due US$ 17.5 Million.

I know, I couldn't believe it either...

Right, I can't maintain this insufferable idiotic outlook on email scams. I was going to try to keep it up all the way through but instead, you'll have to deal with me being a grumpy bastard.

Who the fuck does this work on? Who actually thinks that some distant relative they had no previous knowledge of would remember them in a will? This deserves a cut and paste exercise in being incredulous:

I am Vincent Tay (Tay &Partners),an attorney at law in Malaysia.

A good start, sounds respectable. I normally get worried when people in the law contact me for seemingly no reason so it grabs my attention. Note the lack of space after the comma.

A deceased client of mine, who shares the same last name as yours, died as the result of a heart-related condition on March 12th 2005.

So you don't actually use the name. I mean, I've got a pretty unusual last name but I imagine there are quite a lot of people in the world with it. What if it was a different person with the same last name as me? Wouldn't that be like stealing? Maybe you should ask some other people just in case. Or split the money. That would work.

His heart condition was due to the death of all then known members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake.

What do you mean? Were the rest of his family naturally producing an anti-oxidant aerosol which, him being deprived of has led to a major cardiac infarction? Why have you linked Wikipedia? You're offering me $17.5 million and you want me to do some reading? Or is it just in case I had forgotten about the biggest natural disaster of my lifetime? I am confused and bewildered by this.

I can be reached on (barrvincenttay@sify.com) for more information. My late Client has a deposit of Seventeen Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars (US$17.5 Million Dollars) left behind.

Surely your late client had a deposit? Unless he is undead. In which case he might not want me taking his money. I'll be honest, I'm not sure I want a zombie hunting me down even for US$17.5 Million.

Suffice to say I didn't take this offer up. Although I did surprise myself the first time I read it. You see, the first thing that went through my head was 'US$17.5 Million! Sweet!'

What the fuck was that about? I'm a relatively intelligent person I'm also naturally skeptical (I still debate the existence of badgers). But in this instance my incredulity was overridden by avarice. My brain is hardwired to make me go 'ooooh, lovely money'. I suppose that's how these things work but for a split second I was no different from those mumbling morons that respond to the 'nice Nigerian chap who's having a bit of a rough time'.

So in answer to my first question these scams (even if it is fleetingly) work on us all because at heart, we are all money grubbing bastards that would sell our own grandmothers if, in return, we got a shed load of cash. Either that or I'm a money grubbing bastard that would sell his own grandmother for a shed load of cash.

Neither of those options do I find appealing.

'Am I British?' An Identity crisis.

2009-09-25T19:26:00.003+01:00

The other day (whilst being a supernumerary in a Philosophy and Ethics class) I was asked if I was British. I said 'yes'. I was born here and have lived my entire life on these isles. But it got me thinking, am I really British?

My grandma is Portuguese (I've nicknamed her '4 and a half feet of pure Portuguese terror' as she is without doubt the scariest woman I have ever met. She could play a tight-head prop and give Vickery a run for his money) so I'm a quarter Portuguese.

My mum was born in Tanzania and lived in Brazil for the first stage of her life. Whilst not a genetic factor it has impacted on her view of the world and thus, through my upbringing, impacted upon mine.

My family is (if one goes back far enough) Norman. Which then leads to a Viking past. So I'm kind of Scandinavian (and a bit French).

I have relations in Canada, Australia, The USA and New Zealand. Or as we still refer to them 'the colonies'.

I feel that I have more affinity with Europe than Britain and a 'British culture' is something that is at best a joke. We are seemingly belligerent when abroad, snobbish, obsessed with ourselves, grumpy, superior, reserved, conservative and emotionally repressed.

But then, is this really what being British is? Or is this just how other nations view us?

Now for those who read this blog regularly (John, Kelvin and Amanda...yep, just you guys) you may think 'but you covered this in your post about the English' but you'd be wrong. Being English and being British is different. Ask a Scot if he is British and he might (might) say yes. Ask him if he is English and he'll smash your face in.

What I'd like would be for people to comment their perceptions of the British. I'd like to see how I'm, as a British person, viewed. From this I might be able to see if I fit the 'British mould'.

Hopefully you can help me to answer the question:

Am I British?

Swine Flu or as it should be called 'We're all going to die - '09'

2009-09-10T20:07:00.004+01:00

Yep. We're all fucked.

Not content with scaring the bejesus out of everyone with bird flu, SARs and concerns over the MMR vaccine the media are harping on about how we are all doomed to die of flu. This has been going on for a while and you're no doubt thinking 'well, you're a little late'.

The thing is, it really only hit me today. Reason being is that all of the staff in my school were called to an early morning meeting to run through the consequences of the likely event that staff are struck down. The outcome was that teaching staff were 'expendable'.

Ta...

Now what strikes me about this epidemic compared to others is the the Government response. Usually so reliable when it comes to hyping everything up to abject-terror-level-12 they have been relatively reserved. The current advice from Her Majesty's Government is to use a tissue and wash your hands.

WHAT KIND OF ADVICE IS THAT!

When I read the news I want to see Gordon Brown physically shaking with fear. I want to see a new T.V. channel set up to give figures of suspected cases and how far it is spreading. I want a multi-media viral (hehehe) campaign to constantly reaffirm how close we all are to an agonising death. This is the correct way for our government to behave.

Basically I want the following:

Government Information Leaflet: Swine Flu - Yep, you're dead.

Swine Flu is the most terrifying thing to happen to this nation since the Spanish Armada. The probability of you contracting swine flu and perishing is so dizzyingly high that if you manage to read all of this leaflet then you are probably immortal. Well done.

If you suspect that you may have swine flu related symptoms (sneezing, headaches, feeling a bit 'under the weather' etc.) then you should endeavour to take the following action:

1) Isolate yourself from society. We suggest using a number of black bags to construct a rudimentary 'solitude tent'.

2) Do not talk to your family - it is best that they get used to you not being around.

3) Use the government issued 'bolt-gun' to prevent the spread of the disease.

4) If you have not received your government issued 'bolt-gun' then please call 999 and ask for the 'Public Health Extermination Squad' quoting your name, address and shoe size.

5) If you suspect that you may have infected your neighbours then you may well be guilty of mass murder. You bastard. Call 999 and ask for RAF Brize Norton. You will need to provide exact GPS coordinates and request 'napalm strike; code 12'.

6) In the likely event that an entire city or major town is infected then you may see a large object being dropped from a plane. Do not panic. This is just a healthy dose of 'instant sunshine' to help make everyone feel better. If you survive the fallout, then please concentrate on killing cockroaches and mutants.

Once the pandemic has run its course we will all awake to a new world order.

All praise Lord Mandelson for he is our saviour.

Once More Unto the Breach Dear Friends, Once More...

2009-09-04T19:19:00.004+01:00

So we start a new year. It is a bizarre time of year for us teaching folk. We have the unusual feeling of being refreshed and slightly more prepared for our jobs than could be said for any other point in the year. However, as we all know this is a fleeting glimpse of normality before the freewheeling madness of teaching swallows us whole.

This is how I predict my year will go.

September - All seems normal. Lessons are planned properly and marking is kept up to date. The tutor group seem to have retained their well-adjusted outlook on life. There is still some sunshine to make one feel happy and I will drive to work happy in my heart singing along to some kind of jolly, undemanding pop-punk. All is well.

October - Workload is inexplicably rising despite hitherto unknown levels of organisation. I seem to be working later into the evening. However, there is nothing to worry about as all is being managed and I've really got to like some of my new classes. Working hard but happy.

November - Having decided that I could take on more responsibility I am now head of a new initiative called 'Calisthenics and Learning' where I run into classes at random and instigate a brief work out. I am not being paid anymore and all of my free periods are now fully booked. I have been told that this new responsibility will lead to promotion. In deference to my now super-healthy career, I am consuming far more in the way of tobacco and alcohol. Marking takes place between the hours of 8-9pm.

December - Must. Have. Christmas. But no - still much to do. Have worked out how 'Calisthenics and Learning' or 'CaL' can be mapped against Bloom's taxonomy. Have implemented a 'CaL Across the Curriculum' plan and given my soul to the adoption of 'CaL'. Older staff members think I'm a jumped up tit for telling them how to teach. I am bone tired. Marking is a wistful dream and lesson planning involves 'making it up as I go along'. I've hilariously agreed to take part in the school panto. Unfortunately the drama teacher who is in charge sits somewhat to the right of Hitler and I'm now having, per week, fourteen hours of singing lessons, a three hour 'method acting' class and two hours of stage combat instruction. I have two lines in the whole production.

January - I ate, drank and smoked too much over the holidays. The upshot is that despite promising, nay, swearing, to catch up on all the marking it hasn't been done. My lessons are a mixture of reading textbooks and comedic improv. I am now imbibing fourteen litres of coffee a day in an attempt to prevent me lapsing into a coma. 'CaL' has yet to lead to promotion and is taking up more of my time. Parents are starting to complain that their sprog's exercise book hasn't been marked in three months. I agree that this isn't acceptable and take in all exercise books to mark over the weekend.

February - The most miserable month of the year. All the shittyness of winter with no pagan festival to look forward too. I have finally been promoted. I have been given £12.50 a day to coordinate the entire 'CaL' initiative. Yay. My girlfriend suggests that working until three A.M. is madness for £12.50 extra a day. I agree but know that 'it'll look good on my C.V.'.

March - The exercise books I collected in January are still in the boot of my car. They have actually started to compost and I now have a number of rare orchids growing there. Whilst the botanical world marvel at my green-fingers, parents have actually started to picket the school asking for my resignation.

April - In a particularly nonchalant way OFSTED announce that they are coming to inspect. The school erupts into a fiesta of activity. I have to destroy the orchid garden in my car and actually mark the books. Unbeknown to me, the boot of my car was designated a 'Site of Specialist Scientific Interest' in early March. My actions have been noted by the UN and my trial for ecological destruction starts in late August. OFSTED observe my lesson and declare me a 'Satisfactory Teacher With Good Aspects' at which point I nod and agree as only an exhausted man can. At this point I am single handedly keeping the British tobacco industry alive.

May - General Election time. The Conservatives gain power and 'CaL' is seen as a ridiculous waste of time and resources. My pay is cut but as this happens inflation sky rockets. I am now, day-to-day, worse off than my paper boy. On the plus side, Year 11 have gone. I now have three extra free periods a week. All are taken up with pointless meetings on how to develop the Virtual Learning Environment. We are currently working through the knotty problem of which font to use.

June - The sun shines. I see none of it as I have been given the task of reconciling the 'Abadi Condensed MT' and the 'Ariel Black' camps. This involves countless Gandhi-esque meetings where I attempt to prevent all out warfare in the staffroom. The older teachers think I'm a jumped up tit for telling them how to argue. The pupils have decided that asking for feedback on written work is a lost cause and so begin to work out a plan for peace in the middle east. A new political party has been set up by concerned locals. The core tenant of their ideology is my resignation and more 'bobbies on the beat'.

July - I crawl to the end of the year like an alcoholic crawls to a pub. My lungs are now a rich source of fossil fuels due to the vast amount of tar that has condensed there (not surprising as I am now sponsored by Marlboro and consume the entire Virginian crop). I finally get those exercise books marked. The end of the year arrives and I sleep solidly for a week.

1st week of August - I'm bored...

So you wanna be a teacher?

2009-09-02T16:38:00.003+01:00

Many people I have met online (and a lot of my friends in 'real life') are becoming or thinking of becoming teachers. I'm a trainee teacher mentor (I got a certificate and everyfing) and people are always asking me for advice.

I will do so here in a way that is often criminally overlooked in the various teacher training course texts...with swearing and bad jokes. I'll also try to touch on some aspects of initial teacher training that are unlikely to arise on your course.

Welcome to the Duke Fandango Teacher Training College.

1) Learn names. Simple yet very effective. The quickest way to demotivate someone (child or adult) is to get their name wrong. I use seating plans to help me do this but another good idea are some name games in your first lesson.

2) Sarcasm is a double edged sword. Many text books will say that you should never be sarcastic to a child. Clearly whoever wrote these text books hasn't stepped foot in a classroom since 1805 because sarcasm is a great behaviour management tool. BUT, it must be used with caution and thought. Tearing into the anorexic kid who hasn't said anything all year is probably the quickest way to alienate them more (and they will not stop crying!) However, if Reginald 'Bullying Meat-Head' MacSweeny is giving you any lip then give him both barrels in return.

3) Never scream. If you have to raise your voice then make sure you are controlling it. It is worth learning how to project your voice (a la thespians) to help you to avoid nodules on your vocal cords. If you find yourself screaming 'shut up you little retards' then you have lost control. If you don't have control, your students will. Remember, more can be achieved with a theatrical look of the watch than bellowing like Brian Blessed having an orgasm ("It's Flash!"...gross).

4) Enthusiasm is infectious. Like herpes but without the scratching. If you are truly enthusiastic about your subject then your pupils will be. If you can't be arsed then neither will they. I remember running across the desks whilst reading Richard III in full Shakespearean actor mode. The kids loved it for two reasons. Firstly, they could tell that I was enjoying it so they felt that it was ok to like it too. Secondly, there was a real risk that I would hurt myself and kids love it when a teacher faceplants the floor yelling 'a horse, a horse. My kingdom for a horse'.

5) You have no right to be cynical...yet. Cynicism pervades schools like the smell of Pot Noodle and cheap lager pervades a student flat. However, the people who are cynical have been teaching for roughly 14 billion years (they were there shouting at the big bang for silence). You are supposed to be a fresh faced newcomer full of enthusiasm. Indeed, you have chosen this profession, not been drafted in. So act like it...

6) Be honest. If you can't or haven't done something then own up to it and apologise. The amount of ITTs who think that they have failed if they haven't got around to marking the exercise books and then lie about it is huge. It causes the class teacher many more problems down the road (normally when the ITT has buggered off on their second placement).

7) Don't be scared of fucking up. We all make monumental fuck ups (I aim for around three a week) it happens and that's it. The important bit is that you learn from your fuck up. It might not prevent you from making the same fuck up but at least you'll recognise it next time and perhaps guide the lesson towards being a mini-fuck up rather than a megaton-scale-universe-ending-lubricated-donkey-penis-in-the-face fuck up.

8) Laugh. You'll often be told 'don't smile 'till Christmas'. This is nonsense. You are not a robot and you should show the kids that you enjoy their company. If you laugh then say 'right, lets get on with some work now' you'll get a better response (and more work completed) than if you get grumpy.

9) Don't be afraid to apologise to a kid if you screw up. Imagine the scenario. You're tired. You've had a row with your loved one. You now realise that doing Jager-bombs until four in the morning was a bad move. You hate all. At that moment, little Jimmy passes a note to his friend Whitsable. You hit the roof:

'Jimmy you maggot! You half-formed lovechild of Stalin! Who the hell do you think you are, passing notes in my class like a Nazi quisling! You are detained for the rest of eternity, until the trumpet of heaven signals the collapse of civilisation and the arrival of the judgement where, if I were you, I'd be very, VERY CONCERNED!'

This is clearly an inappropriate response. Next lesson, take the pupil to one side and apologise. They will respect you a lot more if you have the balls to say you got it wrong.

Also, a good tip to dealing with letters is to confiscate them and pretend to read them aloud. I generally go for the 'I love Mr Fandango's lessons so much. He is well cool. Also, I heart Billy.'

10) Listen to your mentor. They might be an irritating tossmonger but they know their stuff. Ignoring them will make your life miserable. Also make them tea.

I hope this is helpful to those four people who actually read this blog, I'm aware that it is pretty limited but if you have any questions then comment away. Always remember that you are the becoming part of the finest profession in the world and that what you do everyday of your working life is an inspiration.

Best of luck,

Duke.

Results Day - '09

2009-08-28T10:44:00.003+01:00

Yesterday was results day for GCSEs. For me personally it was a nerve wrecking experience. In fact, I was more nervous for my pupils than I was when I picked up my results all those years ago.

You see, as a teacher in England you live or die (professionally of course, not literally; the death squads only operate in the NHS) on your results. If your pupils do well it; opens up opportunities for promotion, forces congratulations from management and gives you the warm feeling of having achieved something. If you do poorly - you are noted as a teacher of limited effectiveness.

Bad times.

Bearing in mind that these were my first results, it was a terrifying drive to school.

Luckily for me (and I suppose my pupils) my results were quite good. I got 77% A*-C. That's 11% higher than the national average. With a bottom and middle set. I was very happy.

However, after the results were published we had the yearly berating by the press that the exams are getting easier. They may well be right - I don't know as I haven't been teaching long enough to compare the papers from the past decade. What it does suggest to me is that perhaps the current exam process isn't rigorous or respected enough to truly assess how our young people have progressed from entering school to the minimum leaving age.

Perhaps therefore, it is time for a radical change. As such, I have drawn up a list of possible alternatives to the current system of examinations:

1) Grade or No Grade. 15 unmarked, red boxes are selected at random by a pupil. Each box contains a grade. The aim is to 'hold on' to the highest grade until the end. The pupil will be periodically phoned by the examiner who will offer a grade that can be accepted (thus ending the exam) or refused (forcing the exam to continue).

2) Stealth Examinations. Pupils have no set exam date or time. Instead, examiners dressed as ninjas will 'jump' the pupil at some point in their day to day lives (in Tesco for instance). After being wrestled to the ground the pupil will be asked a series of questions relating to their chosen subjects.

3) Subject 'rap battle'. Pupils are partnered with an examiner where they have to rap for 3 minutes on a particular subject. For instance 'The character of Lennie in 'Of Mice and Men' is considered to be weak by other characters in the novel. Bring it'. The cypher (or as it used to be known 'the exam board') award marks for originality and rhyme. A*s are only given out if the examiner leaves the stage in tears.

4) Practical exams. Pupils are given a 1972 Austin Maxi and a copy of a Heynes Manual for 2001 Renault Clio (mk 2) and have to fudge some repairs. Extra marks awarded for inwardly whistling between the teeth, shaking the head and saying 'it's gonna be a nightmare job my darlin'. You're lookin' at at least three-hundred quid, love'.

5) Drama. Pupils are forced to consume copious amounts of alcohol and then are dropped off at home. Grades are awarded based on the perceived severity of the punishment meted out by parents in a descending scale. To wit, a three week grounding will result in a C. An A* is awarded if the pupil escapes with no punishment - it would be felt that they had acted their way clear of parental retribution.

I believe that the above would actually help our pupils to develop the skills they need to get on in adult life. Namely: blind luck, quick thinking, analytical thought, problem solving and bullshitting your way out of impossible situations.

I will be recommending these changes to the government post-haste.

Not A Wonk...What A Wanker

2009-08-24T14:51:00.002+01:00

America. Home of the free and land of the brave (or whichever way round it is). I salute you. Not only do you invent some pretty nifty things but you also produce the top-notch Grade A nutters.

I give you example A: http://www.notawonk.com/

This is a right wing blog written by 'Patti' of Texas. You can tell it's right wing and American because it harps on endlessly about how democrats are socialists, how national healthcare is as bad as the Einsatzgruppen Commando Squads and endless tracts about God. God does she go on about God!

That's right folks, it's open letter time...

Dear Patti,

You don't know me personally (and I'm sure we're both thankful for this) but what I have to say will hopefully make you pause and think before you stab your digits vitriolically onto a keyboard. I promise to try to avoid any personal remarks and focus on your views and opinions. I'm sure at heart you're a really nice person. Slightly naive and a little misguided perhaps, but a nice person. As such, I'll try to maintain the pretense of respectability afforded to us by our respective democracies.

You are quite clearly an absolute fucking moron. Not only do you parrot the non-sensical dribblings of Fox News, you actually believe - deep in your soul - that what you are saying is true. It is a sad thing to see.

Look at your post on the current health care reforms. Utter tosh. The thing that gets my back up the most is:

'Then he berates those who oppose the plan by saying that we are neglecting the weakest among us. This is a little sneakier, because he takes you to task by invoking Jesus, yet doesn't come right out and say it, but it's there so you feel like you have failed and maybe his plan is good. Baloney. I give to many charities and I know you do to. I am taking care of my brothers and sisters. THIS IS NOT A GOVERNMENT ISSUE.'

You give to charities? Well fucking done. What do you want a medal? I mean, surely helping those who don't have the means to help themselves is a core tenant of any government's responsibilities. As such, IT IS A GOVERNMENT ISSUE.

Anyway, I'm a little confused over your apparent devotion to Christianity; a faith, insofar as I can make out, focused on helping your fellow man. What more help could be offered than the possibility of free health care to everyone? I don't want to labour the point (as I've already done that in a previous post) but I'm sure you can see my confusion.

You also discuss how Obama is a liar. I know what it's like to have a government that lies to its people. Our Labour (socialist) government lied to us so that we could support America in the Iraq invasion. They told us that there were weapons of mass destruction that could hit London. Do you remember that Patti? You were told the same. And in we went. The thing is the majority of the lies currently being said in the USA are from right wing commentators. Click on any of the links on the right hand side of your page and you'll see what I mean.

I like the story you post about the man carrying a gun near Obama when the president was in Arizona. I mean, you say he was exercising his rights to bear arms and had an absolute legal right to do so. Ignoring the fact that this is a legal anachronism do you not think it is a little bit silly to be handling a weapon around the most heavily protected man on Earth? Yes it is isn't it. So rather than saying this is good thing perhaps we should move this into the 'what not to when surrounded by secret service agents' pile (other examples include 'lunge wildly at the Pope', 'wear a Sex Pistols t-shirt when receiving an OBE' and my personal favourite 'goose-step across the Polish/German boarder whilst shouting "ve're back again mit zee tanks"').

Now, you may well be saying 'how can someone non-American comment on our politics'. Well for two reasons, you started it when you kept talking about England (it's Britain for fuck's sake, we don't say 'Ohio' to describe the whole of the USA). Also, American politics have huge repercussions for everyone around the world that we are entitled to an opinion. We can't do anything with that opinion other than moan, point the finger and laugh.

I could go on but your blog is for me the equivalent of a sweet shop to a four year old. There is so much on offer that I loose control and can only mumble 'wanna make fun' before my body shuts down with incredulity.

Adieu,

Duke

Things I know Now I Didn't Know This Time Last Week...(TIKNIDKTTLW?)

2009-08-21T16:06:00.002+01:00

Here is a list of things that I have learnt over the past seven days.

1) Henry Goddard is some kind of veg growing messiah for the Shepton Mallet area - I know not who he is but his leeks were enormous!
2) A show cow is judged on the texture of its udder. Some would describe it as 'lovely'.
3) The cross over section of scissors travel faster than the speed of light.
4) Drinking cider, beer and red wine is a surefire way of acquiring a hangover.
5) Champagne is actually an English invention (take that France!)
6) Tina Turner is much improved by cows (or as I like to call it 'The Mid-Somerset Show Remix' ['cus you're simply the best...moooooooooooooo/better than all the rest.....mooooooo]).
7) That England's bowlers are better than I had previously expected.
8) That wheel weights in cars make a lot of noise if they come loose.
9) My Grandpa once wallpapered my Grandma to the ceiling 'for a laugh'.

It has been an interesting week...

Things in my life that don't work (yet should)

2009-08-19T09:56:00.004+01:00

I say damn you advertising. Damn every lie that squirms insect like from your personified mouth. You bastard. You hate filled harridan of modern society. Why do you continue to inflict the mass populous with your money-orientated-grab-fest...what was that?...If I buy one, I get one free?...Sweet!

You see I (like every other shuffling sack of DNA we laughingly call humanity) am sucked in by the promises of those blokes on the telly. The ones who make it all sound like it's going to be ok if we just spend some money. You know, the ones that encouraged everyone to spend money they didn't have then send the bailiffs round when they couldn't afford the repayments.

After many years of going 'yeah, a T.V. the size of a small planet is what I need' I've decided that there is so much stuff in my life that doesn't work that I should stop consuming and start complaining.

Thinks that don't work like they should:

My Car: A French built car. Normally this would be enough to get people shaking their heads in pity however, this time I would like to go into a bit more detail. The French may be able to cook the finest food in the world, write some of the most beautiful prose and produce the most prestigious of wines but can they make a brake disc that lasts more than twenty-five minutes of gentle braking? No, they fucking can't.

Over the past year I have spent over £1000 on my car (that's $1638 US, 1160 Euros or 581,681 Zimbabwe Dollars - that's right I've spent over half a mil on my car in the last 12 months!) I could be lying on a beach in Guam for that money. Hell, I could have bought a T.V. the size of a small planet. That would be awesome. No wait....arrrggghhhh, they've done it again!

My deodorant: It promises me '3D Protection' that 'Fights perspiration, prevents odour' and has 'timed released freshness'. What it gives me is arm pits that smell like a dirty Viking's jock strap after I've completed five minutes of sitting quietly in a cool room. In fact I sweat more when I use this than when I used the old method of strapping two hamsters under my arms. Huh, progress isn't all it's cracked up to be.

My knowledge of HTML: Being part of the hip-computer savvy generation I assumed that HTML editing would be fairly easy to pick up and use. I'm sure in actual fact it is, but I'm lazy and feckless (at least that's what my first reference says). As such after cursory glance at the HTML code for this blogs template I gave up trying to sort out the niggle. Primarily, the buttons above these posts. Three link back to this page making them as useful as a water soluble condom and one takes you the twitter page of the people who made the template. I'm thankful for their hard work in creating this template but I'm not sure I want them at the top of my page.

My rugby team: Gloucester RFC. Always get to the final of nearly every major domestic tournament or league only to have a bout of collective apathy come the final. What causes some of the greatest Rugby players in the land to just give up? It's like they run on the pitch thinking 'have I left the gas on?'

My phone: A lovely looking touchscreen marvel of 'let's-copy-the-iPhone-but-make-it-cheaper'. The main difference I can discern between the iPhone and the LG Renoir is that the iPhone is good and the LG makes me so angry with it's shitness that I randomly lash out at passers by. It's text function is so clumsy that I text my mum 'you can't' and she received 'you cun't'. It called my mum a cunt! It will randomly unlock itself in my pocket and phone/text people in my address book. My boss received three blank texts from me. He thought I'd been injured and only had the ability to repeatedly press 'send' as a call for help (although he did bugger all about it). It takes four and a half years to connect to the internet and then proudly tells me that it can't display the webpage due to incompatibility. I hate it with a passion I usually reserve for the BNP and cats. And due to my contract I'M STUCK WITH IT FOR THE NEXT EIGHTEEN MONTHS. FUCK!

The Summer: We were promised a 'BBQ Summer' we got rain. I don't mind the weather per se, it's more the way that everyone (including me) went 'Yes! A hot summer at last' after the Met Office told everyone that it was going to be really hot and sunny. If the Met Office had said - 'it looks like a 65% chance of a really nice summer but we can't be sure because even with all this modern technology we're basically looking out the window and making it up as we go along' - then I'd be happy. But they didn't...grrrr.

Blur had it about right. Modern life is rubbish.

P.S. I'm sure people have others - let me know what doesn't work in your life so we can laugh at your misfortune.

New layout

2009-08-19T08:55:00.002+01:00

Everyone seems to have been changing their layouts recently and being a sheep I did the same.

Hope you like the new look - if not then tough. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions or the like.

Cheers...

The NHS...Back the Fuck Off

2009-08-14T20:19:00.004+01:00

Right. There has been a lot of words banded around by those who are against Obama's new health care proposals.

Fine. If you want to ignore the fact that 45 million people would benefit from the proposed health care reforms then that's your look out. If you think that those who can't afford health insurance should be left to get sick and then worry about money then go for it. It's your country and your politics. I'm in no position to comment.

What I will say is that the NHS isn't perfect. No, really it's not. It's hugely bureaucratic. It spends enormous amounts of money. It occasionally fails. And sometimes people die.

But it helps so many more than it hurts. It is free at the point of delivery. That means that any registered British citizen or those with an adequate visa have access to free health care. From the highest of lords to the lowest of beggars anyone can be helped. Those who cannot look after themselves, who cannot afford to look after themselves, will have some of the best health care in the world. FOR FREE.

Anyway the point is that we're sat over here with a feeling of bemused anger. On the one hand it's very annoying that our health system is coming under sustained attack (it is one of the very few things we can be truly proud of). On the other, the arguments put forward are so utterly nonsensical that we're pissing ourselves laughing:

Death Panels: Hahahaha. You actually think there is a group of people that decide on somebody's ability to contribute to society and if they don't we let them die? What sort of sci-fi-fascist nation do you think we are? Switzerland?

Someone who is 59 or over will not be given heart treatment: So you're suggesting the highly irrational elderly men who are of retirement age and therefore have loads of time on their hands are just meekly accepting this? Have you stood behind and old person at the Post Office when they're complaining? It's over something really trivial (like the stamp has gone up by a penny) but they will not stop shouting. Now imagine trying to take away their medicine. We'd be knee deep in silver haired rioters.

Evil and Orwellian: Er...how? No, really - how? How does a system intended to help millions qualify as evil? And as for Orwellian? Ah, you must be referring to the original opening of 1984 "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith had just been to the doctors because he was feeling a bit peaky...". Just realised, you can't be thinking of that as I made it up. Sorry but you're clearly an idiot.

Next one is a quote: "...I've heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems." - Ignoring the fact that this sounds like was said by someone with only a passing acquaintance with the English language, what this suggests is pretty damning. Shame then that it is without doubt one of the nastiest pieces of underhand right-wing propaganda that turns the suffering of a brain tumour patient into a horrific lie just to score political points.

To conclude, feel free to disagree on grounds of political opposition or even on the grounds of being a money-grubbing bastard. But don't make shit up about the NHS or we'll force feed you the food they serve. Then you'll wish for a death panel.

Political Profile No. 1

2009-08-14T12:17:00.007+01:00

Hello all,

In these uncertain times I feel it my duty, as a loyal subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to make it clear who the people running this nation actually are. This is so that when the election is called you fine people of internetland (well, those of you who are British citizens) can make informed choices about who to vote for.

Political Profile No. 1 - Lord Peter Mandelson.

There has been much said in recent weeks about Peter Mandelson. Some say he is the scariest man in British politics. I'd like to give some choice biographical information which will, hopefully, help people to put aside these ridiculous notions.

Lord Peter 'Sauron Jr.' Mandelson was forged in the fires of Mount Doom in 1962. He spent most of his childhood living as any proto-dark lord would. Playing in the fields, watching television and consuming the souls of virgins. It was for the most part a happy upbringing. Unfortunately this was all to change when two Young Tories crept into Mordor and burnt his ring.

Forced from his home at an early age he moved in with some distant relatives, Mr and Mrs Holmes of Walthamstow. He found the change difficult as his new guardians were very strict - insisting, for instance, that the young Peter should desist from bringing in dead birds as gifts. School was also a troubling time for him, he was outcast by his peers and routinely bullied by those around him. Interestingly enough his boyhood tormentors all passed away with puncture marks on the neck being the only visible injury.

After school Mandelson went to university where he finally 'found himself'. He made many friends and even played in a black metal band called 'The Deatheaters'. It was whilst at university that he took an interest in politics. He supported many issues from equal rights for the living-undead to the now famous 'Am I Not a Cannibal and a Brother' campaign.

It was a short leap from student to mainstream politics.

For many years Mandelson worked on the fringes of party politics, rarely making public (or daylight) appearances. This changed when The Party (or INGSOC) was catapulted to power. Mandelson was found to be a key player in the new government and set about establishing a firm power base.

Controversy struck only a few years later when Mandelson was embroiled in the Death Star incident. He immediately resigned, retiring to his holiday home on Jupiter to regenerate.

However, as the old saying goes 'you can't keep a good lord of the underworld down' and in a mere 18 months later Mandelson was back on his tentacles and back in the government. He worked diligently during this time, reforming policies on environmental issues and figuring out the crossing points of leylines.

It seemed that his position was now unshakable. Some even tipped him to be the next leader when Herr UberGruppenFurer Blair stood down. Alas, Mandelson was never far from controversy and his ill considered decision to burn Winchester Cathedral to the ground whilst sacrificing a goat led to his lampooning by the tabloid press. He once again resigned, taking full responsibility for the incident.

Whilst he was away from cabinet he worked tirelessly for his constituency relocating the abattoir to the school playing fields for 'convenience', turning the local church (St. Luke's) into a 'gay friendly' BDSM club and having five new stone circles built.

It was for these efforts that he was awarded a Peerage and became Lord Mandelson of Hades.

Soon after his elevation to the aristocracy, he was asked by LeaderBot bR01_1_1N to rejoin the front bench because, lets be honest, he couldn't do anything worse than what the others had already achieved.

There are now rumours that Mandelson will challenge LeaderBot bR01_1_1N after the next general election for control of INGSOC.

Facts in brief:

Mandelson is currently watching his figure and is only allowing himself to eat one baby a day.
He recently attacked a Vicar with an iron bar.
Mandelson has an abiding hatred for Hobbits.
Mandleson holidays in Norwich as it's 'as close to hell as you can get without death'.
Mandelson's favorite books are 'The Prince' by Machiavelli, 'The Necronomicon' and 'Polo' by Jilly Cooper.
He is keen participant in the sport of dwarf tossing and represented his house (Slytherin) whilst at school.

Why I became a Teacher...

2009-08-13T14:36:00.006+01:00

People often ask me what made me become a teacher and more specifically, an English teacher.

Well it's really very simple. I am rubbish at English. Kind of. Let me explain:

*Flashback music and wobbly screen effect*

When I was very young I went to a private school. I know you're thinking 'ooh, get you with the fancy education' but it was a crap private school. I hated it. They still employed corporal punishment as a discipline method when I was there. The memory of being struck by a teacher when I'd crossed a road after being told to cross the road by another teacher lingers with me still.

After being made thoroughly miserable for around two years and expressing my loathing for school in a way only a five year old can (hiding, pretending to be asleep, feigning illness, crying etc. etc.) my parents decided that perhaps I would be better off in state education.

So I moved schools - and that's where it all went a bit weird.

My private school taught me how to read whole words. The state school taught the kids to break words down into phonetic chunks. The private school hadn't started teaching us to spell. The state school had already done it.

Put simply, I was never taught how to spell words.

I was literally lost down the crack between the two sectors and it wasn't for a long time that I was picked up again.

You see, my teachers at school couldn't understand why someone who could read whole words, had a large vocabulary for his age and was clearly quite bright found spelling difficult. So they ignored it. For years. And it got worse.

In which time I was called a variety of names by teachers and fellow pupils alike. I felt like a reject. I was put into the bottom sets for most subjects because I couldn't get my ideas across on paper. I was clearly bored by the work being set and started to get into trouble.

One teacher saw what was happening and started to help me. She identified the problem and slowly I started to improve. I was placed in Special Educational Needs classes to give me the support I needed.

I then moved to upper school.

I went from a school of around 600 pupils to a school with approaching 2000. I was once again lost in the mire. I began to lose interest in school. But this time I was older and my naughty behaviour became slightly more extreme. I bullied teachers (I was a reason cited for two maths teachers leaving). I would leave lessons and go and smoke in the toilets. I'd set fire to stuff in science. Like people. I made another pupil go to hospital after forcing him to ingest a number of sheets of A4 paper. I killed the fish in my biology teacher's room. I encouraged a friend to snort copper sulfate powder not realising the exothermic properties of such a product. I started to steal from shops (something I am now deeply ashamed of).

In short, I was a cock.

Then a giant of an English teacher scared me into behaving and actually doing work. He encouraged me when I did well and bollocked me when I was lazy. I realised that I could do it if I actually pulled my finger out and did the work. In fact he did more than that. He allowed me to see the beauty of words. How they can be used to make people laugh or cry. That in the darkest of times words can be a comforting light. That nations have risen and fallen on the power of words. That Shakespeare was writing about things I could relate to and that poetry wasn't, as I'd previously insinuated, 'gay'.

I was predicted a 'D' for my GCSE English. I got a 'B'.

So I went on and took an A Level in English. I did ok. Better than I had thought I would. So I went on and took a degree in it. I did really well.

Looking back after my degree, I realised that if it wasn't for those two teachers I would have ended up doing something really stupid and getting into lots of trouble or joining the military like my friends (one of whom was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan last year). So I thought I'd pay it back and become a teacher.

In 12 years I have gone from the bottom group to standing in front of the class. In my last lesson observation my Headteacher graded me as 'outstanding'; the highest grade.

I am a little bit proud of how far I have come. I am more thankful to those who inspired and helped me. I make a special point of never giving up on a child and always giving any time I can to help them. Not because I'm God's gift to teaching, nor because I'm in anyway the best at what I do (there are many, many teachers better than I) but because that's what two people did for me.

And it stopped me falling through anymore cracks.

Next time, less sentimental mewlings, more angry ranting.

The True Meaning of Cretin

2009-08-12T13:50:00.006+01:00

Hello all,

Before you read this post I'd like you to have a quick skim read of this:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/goth.htm

Now prior to the following series of words, sentences and paragraphs that make up this post I would like to make it very clear that people can believe what they like. I'll react and I'll think that you're wrong. I may discuss with you the clear illogicality of your belief but that doesn't mean I'll think less of you as a person, just as I hope you won't think less of me for disagreeing with you.

If however, you string together a barely plausible series of random thoughts to put forward your crypto-fascist-religious nonsense then you have CROSSED THE FUCKING LINE...

If you follow the link and read the article you'll see what I mean. I would like to oppose some of the ideas put forward in the article. This will be the last open letter for a while, I promise.

Dear Mr David J Stewart,

I recently read your article entitled 'Goth Music will Destroy Your Child!' and I was instantly concerned. So concerned in fact, I haven't stopped laughing.

I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of the points you made and how I think you may have been in error.

Firstly, using a dictionary definition as a way of attacking a group of people is a little dangerous when you are a Christian. For example:

cre·tin (krēt'n)
n.

1. A person afflicted with cretinism.

2. Slang An idiot.

[French crétin, from French dialectal, deformed and mentally retarded person found in certain Alpine valleys, from Vulgar Latin*christiānus, Christian, human being, poor fellow, from LatinChrīstiānus, Christian; see Christian.]
cre'tin·oid' (-oid') adj., cre'tin·ous (-əs) adj.

The word cretin comes from the root of Christian. You'll no doubt say 'well that was years ago' or perhaps even 'can you base the comparison on its vulgar Latin origins when historically Christians were persecuted in Rome?' Both valid points, although those who weren't Roman were considered barbarians. Hence our word 'vandals' connoting someone who is uncouth. I'm not sure that the word 'goth' is used in this sense anymore as its meaning has been subsumed by the reference to popular culture.

Sorry David but it gets worse.

'"Goth" is just a word the media uses to group a certain type of people together. The Goth culture includes Emos/ punks/ Wiccan witches/ self-abusers/ thrashers/ grungers/ heavy metallers, et cetera.'

Now wait a minute. You started your argument by telling me the significance of the dictionary definition. Now you're saying it's 'just a word the media uses'. Which is it David, my poor secular brain can't cope. Also, emos and thrashers? Really? Have you been to rock gig? Clearly not because then the scary 'Satan music' would crawl into your head and kick your illogic-campus to death, making you see fucking sense.

Now on to the assertion that 'Goth causes teenage girls to become whores'. Wow! Really? You must have some pretty compelling evidence to back up this statement...oh, your evidence is 'Goth is of the devil'. Well, I'm not saying that I'm an academic but I'm fairly sure that wouldn't hold up in, say, a thesis. Or an essay. Written by four a year old. Sheep.

'Goth is a mental illness (Er...no it isn't. Bipolar disorder. That's a mental illness) mainly affecting teenagers in the same way as schizophrenia would, although to a greater extent. Its symptoms range from isolation and negativity to aggression and hate for humanity...' Parenthesis and emphasis mine.

So, you're saying teenagers feel isolated and negative? Some groundbreaking insight here. I suppose you'll be saying that they suffer from depression, violent outbursts, have low self-esteem and/or self-loathing.

'... depression, violent outbursts, low self esteem, self-loathing...'

Right. Have you ever spoken to a teenager David? No? Didn't think so.

You then go on to list a number of times when a Goth has been connected to some kind of horrific crime. I'd like to do the same but invert the focus:

1) 1098, Fall of Antioch: 100,000 Muslims massacred by Christian crusaders.

2) 1099, Fall of Jerusalem: 70,000 Muslims massacred by Christian crusaders.

3) Richard the Lionhearted executes 3,000 Muslim POWs

4) October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death at his home in Amherst, New York by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Dr. Slepian's murder after finally being apprehended in France in 2001. Kopp was a Catholic anti-abortion activist.

5) An estimated 40,000 to 100,000 people are executed on the pretence of being witches. By goths. Oh no, sorry...according to list Wiccan Witches are goths. Must have been by christians.

I could go on but I don't feel I need to.

The next argument you put forward is pseudo-scientific. You suggest that Retallack's research showed that plants exposed to rock music died. That's a lie. A barefaced and unsupported lie. Retallack played an F note continiously to one set of plants and intermittently to another. There was a control group that was in silence. No rock music. No 'religious' music. Just an F note. Anyway, your quote 'If rock music attacks and kills plants, what does it do to people?' makes little sense. If you force feed someone fertalizer they don't grow big and strong do they David? No David, they die don't they David.

You are correct in suggesting that gothic music is focused around negativity and the darker side of life. Although that is a little rich coming from a group of people who worship the death of someone who then rose again. There's a word for that David. They're called zombies.

You also lament the way in which television (or as you amusingly call it Devilvision...hahaha) is degrading people's moral compass. I'd like to agree with you as I hate television but you make it difficult when you suggest that Opera is 'demonic New Age (sic) indoctrination'. Unlike, The Bible which is strictly old skool. I mean like her or not she isn't demonic. Simon Cowell, now he's demonic.

I could go on but I grow weary David. You know how it is - so many sins, not enough time. I do have one, final request. Please don't write anymore of these articles. They make you look like a tit. And I think worse. They make all Christians seem like gibbering arseholes which, as we both know, is clearly not the case. In fact these actively prevent you from recruting people to the church. They'll be too busy running in the other direction screaming 'I ain't joining those nutters'.

Love to all,

Duke Fandango

Education - The Forecast is Bleak

2009-08-11T09:45:00.000+01:00

I'd like to talk about the Conservative Shadow Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb.

By all accounts this man is an unambiguous, thundering arse.

His idea for education is that pupils should sit in rows and learn facts. I'm assuming that these facts won't cover the £296 spent on hedge trimming in one month by Mr Gibb. I mean, almost three hundred pounds on trimming a hedge! What is he growing? Triffids?

The problem is that Gibbo here thinks that the past ten years in British education have been wasted. That the teaching of skills is a nonsense. That the only way to improve our chances as a nation is to regress by 50 years and teach like they did 'in my day'.

As such, here is an open letter to him. Seeing as he is likely to become the part of the new government I feel it is fair that we try to make him see the error of his ways:

Dear Mr Gibb,

I'm not sure if you've noticed Nicky (I can call you Nicky, right?) but the world has moved on somewhat in the past 50 years. Look at all the differences. The Internet, population, movement away from traditional industries in Western Europe, globalisation, multiculturalism, increasing freedoms for minorities, equality for all, class system all but broken down, sexual liberation, more secularism. I could go on but you know all of this. You're an intelligent man. You have a law degree and everything.

What I'm finding difficult to understand is how you think an education system, based on what is essentially a Victorian model fits into this new society? No seriously, that's what you are proposing. A process of education children that was formalised when Britain was the most powerful nation on Earth both economically and militarily. When bright people were educated in grammar schools and everyone else was left to the secondary system.

Indeed, the point of grammar schools was to train people for the clerical roles in the heavy industries, creaming off the most able with the 11+. The bog-standard secondary schools were to educate the masses that would work in the factories. Why then, in a time when Britain has almost no heavy industry, do you feel this is an efficient way of preparing teenagers for life after school?

I'm also confused as to why you haven't listened to employers who are sick of school leavers coming through the system with a fantastic knowledge of the Periodic Table and Rastafarian Religious Holidays but can't spell, present their ideas or work as part of a team?

Those are skills Mr Gibb. Real, we-need-them-to-get-on-in-life skills.

I also question your qualification to be making these kind of decisions. As they will have monumental repercussions for years to come I feel people who perhaps have been, you know, teachers, might be better informed to make these kind of statements. I'm sure the aforementioned law degree and years of working in accountancy have given you many experiences (I'm assuming most of which involved adding up numbers and...er...adding up some more numbers) but knowing how teenagers learn isn't one of them.

I know it would be politically difficult for you to make the u-turn but, hell, what your proposing will actively prevent our young people from being competitive with other nations.

And then Nicko, we'll be well and truly fucked.

Hope this finds you in good health.

Yours Sincerely,

Duke Fandango

The Life of a Teacher

2009-08-10T12:16:00.000+01:00

I wake up at 6 (ish) in the morning. I get washed and drink coffee in a bid to wake myself up enough to be able to drive. I count on a 50/50 success rate.

I get to school for between 7.15 and 7.30. I work until 8.30 when I have a meeting. After that I will teach for up to five hours solid. My lunch and break times are often taken up with dealing with pupils.

During that time I may have to break up fights, deal with late work, deal with parental issues, liaise with other members of staff, fill out paper work, mark work, plan, resource, coordinate my area of responsibility and take care of any pastoral issues that have arisen. Oh, and teach. The actual teaching bit is exhausting. You can't expect 30 kids to engage with Shakespeare if you sit at your desk and read it to them. So it's all about jumping around, doing voices, acting out scenes, being enthusiastic (because enthusiasm is infectious). Sounds like a laugh. And it is. One great exhausting laugh.

I then 'finish' with the pupils at 3.15. At this point I will sit at my desk and work until 6 pm. I then drive home and will work until 8 or 9 pm.

I do this Monday - Friday.

At the weekend I will generally do 3 or 4 hours work.

So the next person that says that teaching is a doss is likely to get fucked up.

Actually, I have a better idea.

Any half-witted cretin that decides that all teachers are somehow having an easy ride should be plucked from whatever job they currently do, given a fifteen minute 'orientation' talk and put in the classroom with a full teaching timetable.

Imagine the scenario as Dave Watkins, a corpulent and hirsute middle-manager from a consultancy firm is dropped in front of bottom set Year 10. See the terror sweep across his face as thirty pairs of teenage eyes glare hungrily at the fresh meat placed in their view. There will be that moment of silence where they gauge this 'new teacher'.

'OK guys' Dave says with the wobble of fear straining his now squeaky - almost pig like - voice. The pupils smile to each other as they note the scent of abject horror flowing unhindered from Dave's rotund body.

55 minutes later...

Dave crawls from the classroom in tears. He's covered in post-it notes all with profanities written on them. His shoelaces have been tied together. His tie has been covered in Lynx and set alight. He has a Pritt Stick inserted into his rectum. Someone has scrawled 'twat' into his forehead with a compass. Bizarrely, he is now wearing mascara and lipstick. An interactive board pen and sellotape have been used to make a rudimentary ball gag. There is a collection of Polaroid photos pinned to the lapel of his blazer showing him being spanked by a metre rule. It looks like the kids have been charging each other to 'Pwn the Prof'. The jokers.

Now imagine that Dave has been asked to do this four more times today and then work late into the night to get ready for the same again tomorrow.

Not such a doss now is it Davey my lad?

You see, I love my job (not too many can say that) but it is hard, hard work. The sooner people realise that teachers do an incredible job for essentially bugger all pay the sooner society will show them the respect they deserve.

Until that happy day teaching will be looked down on as a profession. Shame really because I really rather like it.

The English Perspective

2009-08-07T11:11:00.000+01:00

"I'm English and, as such, I crave disappointment" once said the mighty Bill Bailey. He may well be right.

Everything about being English is, well, a bit rubbish. We moan about everything. We're decidedly mediocre at the sports we invented. We have no real national identity. We are apathetic towards politics. Our weather is crap. We are the second most loathed country in the world (we used to be first - nice one America). Our national dance is Morris Dancing. Our food (traditionally) is used as biological weapons in other countries. We are xenophobic of people we don't personally know.

If there was a country that deserved the most abject and pitying glances from the global community then it would be us.

And we bloody love it.

We love the fact that we're lower-middle of the table on everything. We revel in the fact that we're awful at most, if not all things; that we are a country made up of odds and sods. That we get laughed at behind our backs by France and Germany. That we are ruled by Scots. That when Europe asks us to do something really useful, something that will aid millions of people around the globe we jam our metaphorical fingers into our ears and go 'ner ner ner - can't hear you - ner ner ner'.

The reason is that deep within our cores, smothered under decades of imperialistic guilt, lies an untainted and irresistible belief that we are a little bit better than other people.

Take Australians. Yes they're better at sport, outgoing, better looking, laid back, more fun and less repressed. But whenever we meet them we subconsciously think 'criminal colonist'.

I'd like to call this 'The English Perspective'. The mad thing is that 'The English Perspective' isn't genetic; it's viral.

Any immigrant (family or individual) will eventually develop this way of looking at the world. Will start to moan. Will become bloody minded. Will act superior when dealing with others. My Grandma is Portuguese and has lived here for over 50 years. She is all of those things. The other day she was muttering to herself about those 'blooming immigrants' whilst completely forgetting that she is an immigrant.

Which leads to our greatest redeeming feature. We take in everything (food, language, people, music, literature, etc.) from everywhere (Asia to America and everywhere in between) and we make them our own. We break down the original in the process and some would say that by doing this we destroy it a little bit. But we've been doing this for centuries and it doesn't look like we're stopping anytime soon.

Anyway, we can't help it; we're English.

Stupid People

2009-07-30T08:21:00.000+01:00

How incredibly irksome are stupid people? I mean really. No, stop going all 'well everyone is equal' or 'you can't say that' and look deep within yourself and you'll see a small glowing ember of 'I can't believe some people are that thick!'

Unfortunately they are. For every person who invents some wonder jigitt, there are five million going 'ooh, I love Jordan, she's, like, enpowdering (sic) women'.

Well I say enough. No longer. People of relative intelligence I say unto you cast off thy shackles and fetch up thy hitty sticks. The revolution is here. We need only to hunt down those who will not fit into our new world order (er...this is getting slightly more fascistic then I'd intended, oh well).

To aid with the revolutionary acts (or as I will be calling it Thick-Hunt '09 - say it five times quick...heh heh heh) I have put together a list of behaviour to be on the look out for:

1) People from Hampshire who talk as if they are from California. This is mainly found in late teen girls who came from the same Jack Wills/Holister/Abercrombie and Fitch cloning plant. Symptoms include saying 'you know' or 'like' with upward inflection, making every single thing they say sound like a question and doing that 'rolling eyes saying "sooooo"' thing.

2) People who appear on any of those daytime TV shows like wasp faced Jeremy Kyle or Trisha. Why do they go there? Why do people watch it? It's the modern equivalent of bear baiting without the cute little bears.

3) Anyone who openly wept when Jade Goody died. Did you know her? No? Then grow up fucknuckle.

4) Those who feel compelled to talk about Big Brother like it was actual-better-than-real-news.

5) Anyone who votes BNP (more on this in another post methinks).

6) Any adult who fails to capitalise their name.

7) Those people who go 'oh no, I don't like it' when they haven't even tried it. How the fuck do you know? Are you somehow gifted with prescient thoughts? 'No, I had a psychic vision in which I tasted oysters and I found them disagreeable.' Fools.

It's not hard to see why these people should perhaps be removed from the gene pool. What I want to know is where have all these people sprouted from? What festering rock did they crawl out from under?

I have a theory. It's a half-arsed, unsupported and totally speculative theory, but it's a theory nonetheless. Or perhaps a musing. Maybe even just a rant. Yeah, I have a rant.

I don't think that many people are as plain stupid as they make out.

We have in our society an enormous mistrust of anyone who is intellectual. In everyday life people feel intimidated by intelligence. That intimidation is somehow turned into passive hostility. If one is perhaps slightly verbose, one is remonstrated for 'using big words'. If someone wishes to discuss politics at any level above what appears in Page 3's 'The News in Briefs' that person is often met with blank stares, cursory shakes of the head or rolled eyes.

There is therefore only one recourse for such a person and that is to start to conform. Start watching Wok Gan (or whatever his chuffing name is). Initially it will be an ironic attempt to 'see what all the fuss is about'. Before long our hapless example is nodding and grinning to every guff-formed utterance that flops fully scripted from the infantile gobshites that litter our televisions.

To fit in (oh, pitiful creatures that we are) we actively try to hide our clever side. Because we fear to be sidelined, fear that the people we work with will talk about us behind our backs, fear that we are somehow worse for being able to demonstrate more than a passing knowledge of English vocabulary.

Running concurrently with this has been the media's obsession with reality (or at least a partially staged, over hyped, film-it-if-it-moves-and-pass-it-off-as-groundbreaking version of reality). These programmes focus on what is no doubt called for demographic purposes 'real people'. Unfortunately these 'real people' tend to be gibbering imbiciels. Thus making them as far from reality as a talking hedgehog called Lawrence. Anyone with an IQ higher than the common or garden snail is seen as boring.

Look at that Tickle chap from Big Brother.

Ok, he is actually really boring but he's my only point of reference. See. What I said above was true.

People must therefore watch bumbling twattery on T.V. and think (perhaps on a subconsious level) that the way to be accepted is to be a facsimile of said bumbling twattery.

I'd like to think that one day we'll stop all of this nonsense and actually embrace those who are slightly clever. In the meantime a friend has just sent me a link of a monkey doing a poo on youtube. Awesome.

Hitting Kids (Megalolz)

2009-07-28T09:14:00.000+01:00

A few months ago there was a survey completed asking if teachers should be able to inflict corporal punishment on pupils who were misbehaving. A large section of the population said 'yes - hit the buggers'.

Why?

Since 1987 it has been illegal for a teacher to hit a pupil and rightly so. I cannot think of a more degrading, demeaning and unnecessary act. Imagine little Timmy has talked out of turn one time too many, he gets a smack. People may think 'fair enough'. Timmy is child, the teacher is full grown adult.

Also there can be no check or balance. We all have days where we're a little bit ratty. Where all you want to do is hit someone. You didn't sleep well, or you're hungover, or you've had a row with someone you love, or someone has broken your coffee mug and the bastards will pay. We all have those moments but because we're well adjusted adults who are aware of the rules and boundaries of society we take a deep breath, smoke a cigarette and/or try to keep our cool.

Now care to imagine what it would be like if you were told that it was not only acceptable for you to hit someone who had annoyed you but actively encouraged because 'it's the only way they'll learn'. I can foresee some sort of nightmarish society where at the slightest provocation everyone ends up in a huge Beano-esque fist fight.

Or like Portsmouth on a Friday night.

However, the idea of corporal punishment in schools is an extension of a perceived wider problem. For some reason we have become obsessed with the idea that teenagers are somehow 'much more disrespectful than when I was young'. What? Teenagers disrespectful to those who are older than them? That's what they're fucking for. And the idea that teenagers are somehow becoming more disrespectful is a nonsense. How do you measure that? Are there scientists in lab coats putting teens into MRI scanners and muttering to themselves about how there has been a 4.7 % decrease per annum?

No, of course not. That would suggest the NHS has some MRI machines rather than a highly trained sniffer dog called 'Mr I'.

Throughout time people have complained about the young; like incontinence or dying of hypothermia in the winter it's what old people do. But due to the growing power of the 'silver vote' we now are in a position where peoples' fears of the young are actually influencing the policy makers.

It's why we have ASBOs and why this ugly issue of corporal punishment raises its head from time to time.

Hello

2009-07-28T09:08:00.000+01:00

Hi there.

Having watched the world with growing incredulity I've decided to vent my spleen online. I hope you enjoy the abusive, left-wing mewlings that I casually inflict on a largely unresponsive world.

Ta,

DukeFandango