The earth moved for me

That was fun to be part of the disaster up the road in Iran and Pakistan. There I was giving the class the most mild of bollockings, for that is what it mildly was, when the floor started moving, tables vibrating. Very weird. As I thought it was just me and feared another seizure was coming on I rode with it not least as I am a professional educator as my Yankistani colleagues are wont to say. While the floor was wobbling and furniture rumbling I continued said soft-toned bollcking-lite to some of my lovely but  lazy students. It is all that is occasionally needed as they are brought up to respect their teachers and they have the added bonus of Allah on their side but that is another story those off us working in the Middle East know all about.

Mid-bollocking however  Manic Muna, as she is fondly known, a lovely local colleague and source for local culture, came into my room and asked me quaveringly whether the earth had moved for me. She was visibly scared  and then asked the girls now relieved at the relief from their bollocking if they too had felt something, which of course they had but were too timid to say anything for fear of speaking over a teacher which can never be done here.  This was done first in English, then in Arabic and what ensued was some Richter scale madness as, in a fraction of  a micro-second, they had all gleaned from Muna and their dumb phones (set to panic mode) that they had been in a level 7.8 quake and we were all going to die.

Fortunately, being British and working in a world of excitable foreigners it  is beholden upon me to wield ruthlessly the cold wet fish of hard reality  which was drawn from my desk drawer in which it is kept for such occasions, and liberally slapped in copious blubbering faces including that of dear Muna who I escorted back to her class from which her students had decided to flee in a Hollywood style screaming girly panic and that was just the boys. One look to mine - honed over many years of dealing with semi-house trained feral Year 9s called Jordan - left them sitting more soberly realising that, as the our media might have said say, a minor tremor had occurred in a far off excitable place, no Britons involved.

I shall now be marketing the t-shirt below in a range of colours and fabrics with the extremely  annoying but catchy  slogan as below, could be my way out of teaching...

Damn, I spilled my wine

There I was having a quietish  sundown excuse of a red out on the stoop with some genial pals and assorted children, when the now unsurprising news came through that a doddery old bag holed up for her last unwinnable stand in the Ritz had died of a brain attack. Yup, my worse instincts got the better of me  along the line of the bitch is dead, fuck yeh... so I performed a merry Irish jig around the aforementioned stoop. It was the instinct and frustration of growing up as a teen during the old bag's reign coming to the fore. How could it possibly not? Awful times.  I thought I was bigger than to be happy at someone's demise...obviously not. The 80s tainted me more than I imagine.

The children around looked quizzical at the passing of someone equivalent to them as Harold Macmillan or Anthony Eden (who they?) were  for me at their age, at  least they or the outcomes of their policies  were not so divisive and damaging. The colonial commoner among us from Australia looked quizzically shocked but his pommie partner fully understood but rather than spill her wine chose only to join me in performing a round of ecstatic cartwheels and double backflips to accompanying fireworks and the Ode to Joy. Not intended, just knee-jerk instinct, as I suspect it was for millions of others.

A calculating woman with, for me, divisive ideas and outcomes which ruined and disunited my country and made it a nastier, greedier place the legacy of which lingers. Sure, well worn arguments have been had and doubtless will continue to be so as she, and those times, inevitably becomes an increasingly forgotten footnote. Arguably the best time to have celebrated was in 1990 when  she got stabbed in the front by her own as a liability for which the appalling Mail has been lamenting ever since.

That said, having an awful lot of folk crowing unashamedly at your death is the stuff of dictatorships, or demagoguery or regimes smelling cloying close to it. Ugly. Indeed, ugly in that the once impartial BBC won't play Ding Dong in full in fear of upsetting the right which kind of puts her on a par with Mohammed in terms of sensitivities among some idiots and fools.



So, yes, were I back home I may well have been up in London, for old time's sake, waiting for some dumb fuck now underpaid overtime dependent plod, or overseas private plod, to make up an excuse to bash a few heads with Daily Mail sponsored batons and spuriously nick a few folk. It would only confirm that the legacy of Thatch has only been negative, nefarious and nasty.

 


May she sup well on the sulphur with her chums Saville, Ronnie, Botha,  Pinochet et al. In the meantime good old Glenda Jackson seemed to sum it up well.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/apr/11/glenda-jackson-margaret-thatcher-video

Appraisal, epilepsy and green ink

Now, last time I was appraised back in the make believe weirdo world of Goveland a year or so back it was of course by my then subject leader. Leader can only be  loose and vague as terminology, as the Northern Nazi had yet to develop any leadership skills beyond those that her beardy supervisor, the weekend war gamer, a monosyllabic hairy eared knuckle dragging neanderthal caveman had told her to do. In turn these had come down in tablets of stone from the swivel eyed head  who appeared convinced that the path to academic success was through dress standards. I'm sure little Govey would squirm in squeaky delight at that.

Caricatures they may be eh? Yet, as with all such things  they are easy and simple and redolent of slack thinking but based in a fetid slurry of tiresome truth which explains why I became one of the large stat of teachers who quit the profession in the UK this year according to the BBC. Yes, I was given a hard and rotten time and told I would have failed an Ofsted inspection for not having marked books in green ink. As simple as that. It didn't help that I raised an arched and skeptical eyebrow before sniggering like a 14 year old at the bollocks thus spouted by the insecure daft over-promoted woman and the SLT caveman who had spent plenty of the lesson observation texting. Needless to say this did my position no end of good. I knew that spending the next years of my diminishing life in such a place could not happen and that I was probably on my way out then anyway.

Dark but occasionally amusing times from a different chunk of  clunky time. How easy it is here though, a world away - how cooperative, how friendly and how good-natured. Just as I felt when I first entered state education in the 90s. The head didn't really want to know about the lesson, he assumed I could teach without having to follow narrow restricting teaching by numbers strictures. He was more concerned about how I was settling in to his country, what I thought of the students and how we could improve attainment. No complete and utter bollocks about marking in green ink that's for sure. We talked briefly about the lesson he watched, went through his ticky box list  and as I thought he was winding it up, he then caught  me  by pulling out my health record, not something that has ever happened before and possibly not legal in the UK. Were unions allowed here I would certainly have questioned it.  What was the point of it all? He really wanted to about epilepsy. This being based upon the record of a grand mal full on seizure I had back in the last century which he had worryingly highlighted in green ink. Needless to say it took me off guard as it has never been an issue well, apart from when it happened - not at work thankfully. However, all sorts of  left-field concerns were raised. He went through a lengthy interminable pedantic list of pre-prepared 'what ifs...' which I had to try to assuage in detail so as not to be accused of being mentally ill,  possessed or in need of trepanning or exorcism  in the unlikely event of another overdose of electrical discharge, anything in short which could freak out deeply religious, sheltered and superstitious students and some non-western teachers too.

It has never been a question brought up by anyone other than the doc  now a very long time ago. In the world of illness epilepsy just ain't sexy. It really isn't. As far as I know it doesn't get it's own awareness day where you can buy a  pretty ribbon to show solidarity and that you really, really do care. It can be subject to all sorts of myths and ignorance in the UK - fortunately being possessed or in league with Beelzebub are no longer among them.

Qatar Airways and fat religious women

Oh dear, I am getting slack in my mithering, moaning and whinging, life is obviously too good here or something. Catch up time which after re-reading and re-editing still sounds borderline Daily Mail. Oh dear.

Yes, the half-term break here known as Eid was pretty good unless of course you happened to be born as a  goat. Tens of thousands of the gormless creatures were mercifully slaughtered by elder sons wielding traditional curved knives which glinted and gleamed in the midday sun as the point descended (in slow-motion of course) ceremonially and mercifully piercing the carotid artery of the beast in a feast and fountain of symbolic (unless you were the poor goat) spilt blood, representing one of the nomadic desert religious nonsense from superstitious goat herds back in  the Dark Ages. Sure,  I really ought to take more interest in such things but....I suppose the local equivalent of the Daily Mail, were such a rag to exist,  would have me down as one of those cursed foreigners who just won't integrate... but having lived overseas before they don't tend to expect or say such things...still live and let live and all that.

However, I wasn't around to see the bloodshed as I had headed back to Broadstairs and the ancient and reinvented tradition of Halloween resurrected gratefully by Tesco circa 2004 beginning the displacement of the  tradition of burning effigies of a catholic terrorist. It was a good break despite the comparative cold and not seeing Tottenham win a single game. I caught up with a couple of old colleagues from Kent's crappy coastal academy. Not a single cell made me wish I was there.

The return journey was an eye-opener. Qatar Airways, the airline of a tiny but crazily, obscenely, rich state which by rights ought not to really exist. A bit like Dubai and Saudi they got blessed with geography. Good luck to them - what to do with all that cash? Well they splashed the cash by 'buying' the 2022 World Cup as well as Harrods and large swathes of London and support now given to various Syrian and Palestinian 'brothers.'  Yes, Qatar Airways is comparatively cheap and as the self-declared 5 Star Airline of the world provides an  otherwise excellent service. However, the seating arrangements seemed to highlight the confluence of extreme wealth and stupidity. The airline seems to have a seating policy designed by religious fat women sharing huge amounts of Celebrations across the aisles and bizarrely travelling in pleb class with the likes of me. Travelling through the Gulf before it had often seemed that Business Class had been bought out by whole families which makes sense as the flight was delayed by more than an hour as the cabin crew spent time asking various male passengers to play non-musical chairs to assuage certain passengers a row in front of me who didn't want unrelated men sitting next to them. I had never experienced that before and  all the while various take-off slots were being missed which would inevitably mean a missed connection.

I had angry time to kill in Doha Airport (a hole) as my onward connection had been missed so along with a few other irate passengers, questioned the seating policy which was naturally denied by the harassed Qatar Airways drone who tried to buy us off with free use of the closed lounge, and free use of the Qatar Airways phone (to wake up various lifts at 3.00 am)  while continuing to deny such a policy existed to the tune of 250 dollars in compensation.

February 2014 - update

Well since being delayed by stupidity I have travelled on a number of airlines and indeed it is the national careers such as the much vaunted Etihad who also pander to dumbwittedness. I have been handsomely compensated immediately to the tune of airmiles and a meet and greet and welcome champagne. KLM however have no truck brusquely handout a complaints sheet which will doubtless be filed under i for ignore. What still gets me though is why with such wealth these women are forced to sit away from hubby /  brother / uncle travelling up front away from us plebs. Ah well....all pre-ordained by Allah I guess.

In the Gulf

Now, it's been a few weeks I've been away from the stupidity of the  exam fixing Academy which was once a school in which I worked and lost my skills. I'm sure the AQA would have been concerned about the way exams went home with some teachers, I did inform them, but there was never any response from the gutless tossers.  Anyway that's foul, soulless  and sordid mismanaged history, well, it was MFL (among others I believe) actually but now I'm now happily ensconced down by the warm seas and white beaches of the Arabian Gulf - a strange and amusing place far from familiar people and places and far from the rot which  passed as a professional life working in a reprehensible self-deluding factory for that is what it was - with the head and assorted pointless lickspittles leading by fearful example grubbily begging the question as to whether teachers do make the best heads.

In terms of teaching it's great here- I have my courses to teach (free periods abound), one short meeting a week, voluntary PD to which you actually want to go, no tutor group (which I do miss ) but it is compensated for, but only just  mind, by paying no tax a bit like Starbucks, Amazon and various overly rich folk. Now there's a rarely made comparison.  Importantly, I am treated as a pro who will, like my new shiny multi-national colleagues, get on with our jobs in a professional and happy way. Everyone appears to get on and there do not appear (yet?) to be any politics not least as politics tend to be somewhat discouraged in the Gulf. 

There are no threatening misnomered learning walks from pointless over-promoted but insecure self-important HoDs (with personalised school number plate) or grunting unimaginative beardy SLT.  (Apologies to decent HoDs and SLT).  A once yearly appraisal is all along with supposedly anonymous student feedback. There will be observations but they are not in that slavish imagined box ticking way Ofsted would do...and marking in green ink is optional. We take turns to observe one another for differing practice which is what we used to do not so long ago before imagination and initiative were stifled by Ofsted inspired damaging neurosis and fearful paranoia, in the days when education, for me at least, was threat free and well,  fun.

For sure there are some downsides - no unions and any form of collective action is outlawed, the press self-censors, the driving is appalling (Allah's will and all that pre-medieval goat herd cack), and the call to prayer does bring to mind some kind of 50s horror zombie film. Then again back at the academy in coastal Kent the unions were moribund with people only joining them in case they were called for being a paedo and younger teachers were very Daily Mail in their view of them, so perhaps I'm not missing anything. Well, I'll know if ever I need one.

So Eid approaches which, incidentally,  is Arabic for half-term - the mythical work-life balance is back, balanced more in favour of life, the sun shines every day. Even better  my students, who have no idea what Lynx is, want to learn, kids don't stare at their crotches and smile as they don't dare text in lessons. My fellow colleague is not ground down by useless unsupportive management and boundaryless kids.

However, my inner cynic, honed by too long in my last coastal Kent crap academy, says that there can only be one way  from here when things seem  so initially good they can only go down...

...or not...?

Three Mobile's can't do culture

Now, it's not often I need to moan, mither, whine and foam... well, actually I do, but have tried to keep things limited  to the sunny world of education. However, while everyone was loving up in a warm self-congratulatory way over the summer, I sloped away while no one was looking from smiley, happy, England. Yep, I am contentedly plying my trade overseas once again avoiding, among other things, the worst of slimebag Gove down to the idiot Northern Nazi fool of a HoD and the obligation to mark in green lest we hurt some over sensitive mummy's darling's feelings.

Anyway the last left-over moan from home is that about bloody mobiles. It was a world into which I was relatively late entering. My needs were always simple text, and being a bloke minimal speech so I was happy to be a humble 2G pay as you go drone.  It worked perfectly well while on my previous stretches abroad not least as there was usually only one company and one easily digestible tariff. How lovely. On return a few years back the horrors of competitive capitalism and leaps of technology dragged me blinkingly and happily into 3G world. I discovered a whole new world of things I didn't know I needed or wanted but the clincher is that  it ended up being cheaper than PAYG, so the brave new 3G world was for me. Which company? Well, in a haphazard unthought  through way I ended up with useless fucking Three Mobile. Why? A nice bloke in the shop sold me a contract I wasn't really looking for while idling away some time waiting for a friend. I also naively thought it would be good to break away from the iron embrace of bloody Tesco.

However, most terribly dumbly I hadn't read a simple review about the crap company I was signing up with. Sure, many review sites just post moans and whinges but at least you get an idea of what you might be letting yourself in for and would know to avoid useless Three Mobile as it should be rebranded. Now, the service, coverage has been fine, no problems had so long as you stick within your limits there is no way to get stiffed. How can anyone go through 5,000 texts in a month? However, the customer service has been unbearably crap. It is now more than a month that I have been trying to secure a code to unlock the phone so that I can use it over here in the Gulf. I will spare the details suffice to say that call centre culture, or Three's anyway, does not lend itself to initiative and is a prime example of a can't do culture. Phone calls from the UK, multi-emails going over the same thing from here and no-one taking on any responsibility to deal with it. Part of it is corporate culture, I suspect much of it is down to the use of  outsourced cheapo initiative free call centre culture that the useless, money sniffing crooks in Three Towers use.

The terrible and angst inducing moral of this story is that I should have stayed shackled to those corporate good citizens at bloody Tesco.

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews12640.html


Update: July 2013

Thinking I would never have to deal with the incompetent  scammers again, I am now receiving mail saying I owe them for a contract that is long terminated - how fucking useless can you be Three Mobile ?

Burned and Frazzled: an update

Update 31/08/12

Had a quick exchange of email tennis with Dave (see previous posting), he's better but not coming back just yet while considering his few choices. Fortunately, he has an understanding GP. Stacking shelves at Tesco seems a more worthy option for him than dealing with scrotes but more importantly teaching to numbers and marking in green. Very important that. Trouble is I think he is serious about the supermarket option and will have a fight with all those unemployed graduates and pissed off NQTS, to get one.

Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, get well cards which were written by some of the kids, especially his form group and given to the Northern Nazi to pass on were never received. Neither was anything received from the collection made from the staff in his mini-community, nor the caring sharing Wise Head via the do-it-all PA.

Not a person, just a resource.

Teaching - a caring profession? It still is I am sure in some areas, with decent managers who allow expression of individuality and personality, who are not constrained by bloody Ofsted, getting into the local press (which is just ads for houses, cars and dating anyway) or fearful of it.

Glad I'm gone and off somewhere way better....