Golden balls

It would be cruel, immature and deeply unsupportive as well as profoundly unprofessional to take small pleasures in the Northern Nazi's cringing discomfort but what the hell...in her bumptious know-it-all wisdom, she decided that all Year 7s and 8s including those forced into the straitjacket of the tragically misnomered Golden Groups should sit their end of year exams with the rest of the cohort. Those of us blessed with the Goldens raised a skeptical eyebrow,  expressed concern to Those Above, that they would not be able to sit  two hours in silence for them to be put in an unacceptable position of failing spectacularly a subject that  will likely never be useful to them nor will they ever get...

...and lo, inevitably, kind of amusingly, did it come to pass...

Through abject  boredom, frustration, avoidance and for a bit of a consequence free laugh, for that is what it was, the Goldens felt they could disrupt the others and amuse themselves in the smart new BSF multi-purpose hall... It was prefaced by a  number of frustrated sweary exam paper ripping stomp outs occurring at the start  which was followed by a rousing session from the multi-pen tap percussionistas, followed by dropping of said pens (all borrowed as they never have any), the asking of  bewildered / silly / pointless / needy questions, the wrong kind of coloured paper for the bloody IRLENS kids,  outbreaks of bogies and its close cousin bollocks, the contagious cough which rose to TB pandemic hospital proportions. All a terrible blight on those students wanting to get on and the  pension supplementing civilian invigilators who did not have a clue what to do until the shouty fat SLT came down to impotently shout and purge the hall of the tarnished grinning and gurning Goldens.

What bothers me more than the HoDs blindness and ignorance towards the Golden Groups (average CAT scores around 70)  which she does not teach is the damage done to the kids who could not possibly sit an academic exam, in strict exam conditions as well as upsetting the exam chances of those who could. Possibly a more heinous act is the one allowing her to do it.

Well done Miss W*******,  well done SLT...Golden management guys...

The Northern Nazi, edicts and house cats...

Now, having slithered up to the ranks of HoD as it was once called and of course having always worked with one, I think I can say I have a fair bit of experience to judge our new Head of Learning as the turd polishing jargon these days has it. Whilst I have been too easily descending into the world of moan and mither I shall for once focus on what there is to admire not  least her self-described direct no-nonsense northern bluntness. Thudding emails, missives,  directives and stern notes written in the imperative with too many exclamation marks are left around the once happy smiling department. Perhaps us wussy southerners have missed something as her staff management seems based on the philosophy of losing friends and alienating people. Done within a term. Well done miss.

She who must be obeyed

Not just myself but three other members of the department have opted to look elsewhere leaving The Northern Nazi, as she has slackly become known,  and her ball free French Number 2 to sweep the tumble weed along with the time server holding out with his eyes closed and fingers in his ears for another two years for his increasingly meagre pension.Yes, the silly woman is enamoured of said bollock free zone as evinced by the placing of most unwise pics and dedications worthy of an over-sentimental 12 year old girl placed on his Bloody Facebook wall along with those of her fat house cat.  House cat! House cat? Who in the name of the revolving head of Ray Winstone keeps a Bloody House Cat?*

Anyway NN and the  BFZ and the pensionista will be the sole survivors of a once relatively stable and happy department which will lose continuity and school knowledge and be staffed with cheap and eventually soon-to-be cheerless NQTs who will be put off teaching after a year and seek a welcome challenge at Asda with all the other angry graduates.

The failing school from which she was hooked for her first middle mis-management position allowed her to reach and exceed her own levels of torpid mediocrity while desperately trying to play her imagined management role-play fantasy.  A person who cannot listen or delegate, deluded of her own abilities bringing in a divisive siege mentality with no talk, explanation or sharing of ideas or experience. Communication is by edict and her hostility, or fear, of listening means that there is widespread muttering beyond the department.  A shame really as we are all easy going grown ups.  She has even  instigated break and lunchtime lockdown of the department - so extra curricula bollockings of oiks and extra support of various waifs, strays and quiet students and misfits are now by appointment only.

Along with the new heads of two departments, these are the  pliant members of middle management who are eager to ingratiate themselves with whatever bonkers new ideas descend from the Wise Head and her eunuch lickspittles. The newbies are definitely them rather than us and trying too hard in their efforts to impress invoking the kind of Stakhanovite ethic which gives HoDs - the squeezed middle? - a bad name with the people with whom they are supposed to work most closely thus encouraging them to look elsewhere. Back in the day it didn't use to be that way...or maybe that's the false memory kicking in?

Anyway Keep Dumb and Carry On as the really annoying schtick might have it.


* Who has a house cat?

Well according to the female French teaching assistant (who can say such things politically correct men ought not)  terminally single women in their mid-30s with an unhealthy relationship with food. Hope that's clear.

The lizards have taken over...

Now, like most normal civilized middle class Brits, I have always liked a bit of France. I love all the usual cliches about the place, have some good friends there who I can impress by still speaking, arguing and schmoozing in the language pretty well and these days in many circles you can get by generally well by saying that Sarkozy is une tete de merde. I can also effect a pretty good Gallic shrug too. The result of too many good holidays as a kid, campsite work following an old fashioned A' level which has served me very well to this day.

On a good day I can wave to my Gallic pals from the beach here and am close enough to breath in the fresh fragrance of a delicious Pastis and Gaulloise combo. For me France is a place where smoking seems to be right. I did enjoy the odd toke in my times there which never transferred elsewhere. It was something you did in France.

Now having been living so close it seems strange that I hadn't been for a number of years not since accompanying a relative over for a new hip which by way of detours are much cheaper than the private queue jumping option in the UK and you get wine with your meals too...

Is this  the real face of Carla Bruni?

I recently went over for a long weekend to Le Touquet  to celebrate the handing in of my notice - what a hppay day that was - the disingenuous platitudes from the head and northern Nazi. Anyway, it was the first proper visit in a few years but something terribly sideways and askew. Almost as if some parallel France had been created by skin-donning lizard imposters. Many would argue that the high heel wearing, short-arse posturing of the unlamented grumpy late president was that of some kind of lizard creature who, for  a moment hypnotised part of the nation into something it wasn't. On the outside it still looks as fine as ever, the women as wonderful, the shops and food great but... but... but....where were the smokers? Where were the long lunchers? Had the fat bloke drinking his red at 10.00 and pulling on his filterless coffin nails been abducted?  Why wasn't driving any more thrilling than a trip to the shops in Milton Keynes? And, who were these Health and Safety fools in the ubiquitous High Vis jackets that seemed to have spread like eczema across the landscape during my gap decade in Asia? What had happened to the impatient raging French drivers who were now stopping at zebra crossings or amber lights? I was in shock but the True Horror finally kicked me in the throat, the foul truth was driven home like a metallic shard through the eye -  the lizard people  really had donned skins and taken over. I knew this finally when I saw a finely turned out femme d'une certaine age  gracefully bag the garlic fragranced shit squelchily spawned by her equally well turned out dograt.

In all the many commentaries I have been reading about France in recent weeks why am I the only person to have noticed this takeover? Doubtless the journo lizards are involved in the conspiracy.

For me some soul had gone missing. Perhaps things have moved on, adapted, improved on those things I remember fondly. To misquote that  well-known educationalist  Dr McCoy:  It is France Jim, but not as we know it.

The late- Monsieur Sarkozy

Civilian

Great - the kids got me to take them to the appallingly misnomered fun fair on a desolate piece of out of town scrubby pylon flecked edgeland on the way to the rubble of the former redundant power station. You get the picture. Well, it was the last few days of the holiday and it was a choice between the Horror and trauma of said  fair or the Horror and trauma of the DIY shop / gardening centre double header as Mrs B has got it into her mind that the house was looking all lived in and the neighbour had passed comment on the maturity of the garden.  No argument - it's a holiday, time off, getting away from the chores or helping out on the desperate Easter revision school....so needless to say the supposed fun fair won out as the nagging of the kids was more powerful than the call of Homebase or holiday revision for Year 11s ever could be. There is plenty of time for that stuff and nonsense when I retire at 75 or get receipt of  my P45.

I did use to enjoy amusement parks as a kid and enjoyed the Year 7 jollies to the money extraction themed Thorpe Park  and Disney on a spurious French trip - all of dubious educational value but Space Mountain was worth it. It's been a while though since I have been to one and it must be accepted that Grimmouth, like all past-it seaside towns, is to Disney as a Greggs pasty warm or cold  is to decent food. It's a marvellous mixture of patched up seedy rickety wooden 1930s style friendly rides and some shiny noisy ones with epilepsy inducing strobe effects,  movement designed to induce nothing but bubbling bladder boiling fear, blackouts and copious amounts of fun fair fast food themed lumpy steaming vomit of which there was much...and of course, bless 'em, there were several packs of the Academy's Most Outstanding  who had made it away from their screens and out, pale faced and blinkingly, into the sunlight. I always like the reactions of students when they see you out as a civilian. Some are very friendly and genuinely pleased to see you in the way they would be if a (very) minor celeb hit town - not that they ever would find reason to. Some are embarrassed, others look your children up and down suspiciously - you  can see the thought bubble develop: are they really his or is that twatty tosser who tries to teaches me a kiddy fiddler? Why else would a mostly middle aged man come to fair runs the logical logic? Indeed, why would one? It's like going to a kids film without kids.

Other studes,  as happened yesterday, come up to you smile, manage to articulate a cheery hello  (because you have small children with you)  and ask in Oliver Twistesque faux humility whether I could be possibly lend them a pound until Monday to which the only to the tutor group now sod off rule is strictly enforced.

My kids then whispered things about the money bludging scrotes around daring to murmur that  they aren't as bad as you make out dad  and asking lots of curious questions recognising them to my dismay,  as members of their fellow species after all a bit like early explorers encountering new and definitely lost civilizations...although civilization in south east Kent may be pushing it.

Where's all the fun gone?

Well, the term is nearly done, it needs to arrive in a warm and friendly, liberating way for it has been a bit of joyless Stalingrad of a term. It will come as relief not so much from the  largely pointless Year 9 classes and to be chemically coshed kids from Year 8 whose specialty is hitting each other and making senseless noises. That's been almost enjoyable. No, there has been little relief from the plethora of edicts and diktats from the new HoD who has  brought a siege mentality with her from a failing school in Darford. One minute all pally and flirty, next minute an email, copied to some SLT drone, lands with a thud of foreboding. The biggest one was the one demanding lesson plans for each and every lesson - Union says no, as does Ofsted. Colleagues reckon the Stasi will of course back up the HoD, now known as Rosa Kleb, as we suspect that she is only obeying orders following the recentish inspection in which SLT crapped themselves mightily. Lots of other little annoyances too which have taken away from the occasional pleasure I did get from coming to work. Balancing work and home is increasingly difficult, it never used to be. At present stacking shelves on the night shift at Tesco seems more pleasurable than working for the Joyless Division.

Head of learning - one of us or one of them?

How things have changed

		You have probably seen this but what the hell...too many mind-numbing wheel reinventing meetings and late nights to write anything new insightful or rude...and it made me smile.
		HIGH SCHOOL -- 1957 vs. 2012 Scenario 1: Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack. 1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack. 2011 - School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers. Scenario 2: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school. 1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins.. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies. 2012 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it. Scenario 3: Jeffrey will not sit still in class, he disrupts other students. 1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again. 2012 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability. Scenario 4: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.. 1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman. 2012 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist. Scenario 5: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school. 1957 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock. 2012 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons. Scenario 6: Pedro fails high school English. 1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college. 2012 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher.. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English. Scenario 7: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed. 1957 - Ants die. 2012 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents -- and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again. Scenario 8: Wally falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Nancy. Nancy hugs him to comfort him. 1957 - In a short time, Wally feels better and goes on playing. 2012 - Nancy is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison... Wally undergoes 5 years of therapy.

Margate

Well, that was fun...the glassy corpse of Xmas taken and deposited at the local recycling centre. The festive time was indeed festive there were many highlights aside from catching up with the old friends, and excessive consumption which I have long stopped feeling slightly guilty at, and the 'bad' behaviour of adults which got pursed lipped censoriousness from sanctimonious bloody children.

However, the surprising highlight was a long day out, ironic of course, to Margate for some fresh sea air at this foul and rotten cadaver of a place. Like  so much seaside squalor it needs a bit of a clean up, makeover, rebranding or whatever kind of bollocky marketing terminology is used to hide the fact that it a turd in need of sharp polishing. Queenie was hired for the day before xmas for some fawning, creeping by the end of empire local dignitaries and glad handing of the flag waving plebs which probably set off the Duke's ticker.

Ever at the cutting edge of 1980s  transport technology we meandered down on the High Speed train which of course is not high speed until you get back to Ashford and beyond towards civilization.

Despite attempts to make try to redesign it as a kind of New Brighton it still richly deserves its high rankings of the Crap Towns book / website, and mostly very well-deserved too. Yet signs of life do  appear with the white and shiny new Turner Centre currently hosting Rodin's The Kiss sculpture and a great exhibition on Youth with lots of references to my own not so wasted youth in the 80s...Class War and The Smiths anyone?

It also has a great cafe and is  not far from a nice little pub in the Old Town called The Life Boat, it is cosy,  dark, wooden, sawdust on the floor a top selection of alchobooze, no children (always a bonus) or TVs and  only lacking a haze of smoke which I guess I will always associate with a proper pub. There is also an odd little 'gallery' with a dozen or so vintage pinball machines including one allegedly played by Roger Daltry in Tommy. 

That said wondering around it is still a depressed slum of a place, left to fester by a useless and apparently corrupt council,  frequent  suspicious fires at the once famous Dreamland amusement park and the appalling social dumping and fellow travelling problems associated with down at heel seaside towns which will undoubtedly get worse as the consequences of the housing benefit cap and bedroom tax kick in.   A slow high speed link, shiny new (free) gallery, a couple of decent pubs, and a visit from an ageing celebrity monarch won't bring back the good old days or give it the kind of kudos that Brighton gets...got to start somewhere though.

Fun times over and back to the winter drudge, the season of observations, mostly pointless meetings, reports and generally mellow fruitlessness, looms a few hours away. Ho hum and so on...

Have an amusing and interesting 2012.