Officer Dibble? Don't be disgusting!

I’m sure that we’ve remarked upon the capriciousness of the English Language before. Considering its rather complex development it’s probably not all that surprising. Mind you, the particular linguistic feature I was thinking about earlier this week is not, I have learned, just confined to English. I refer to the contranym.

Contranyms are those strange words that can be used with two opposite meanings. Back in the mists of time I had a teacher who wished to explain the concept to my class – not trying to be disrespectful but he’d have been a lot better off sticking with noun, verbs and adjectives and giving up the rest as a bad job with a sizeable minority of the class.  Instead he decided to muddy the waters by using the word ‘cleave’ as an example. I mean, not many of us had ever used the word in the sense of to cut, let alone the archaic, well, frankly, even biblical meaning of cleaving unto someone else. The funny thing is that there are such better examples he could have used – dust – fast – left being just three that everyone would at least have heard of before.

You know, despite that, I can’t help being glad to have attended school back in the days when you were sometimes taught useless knowledge like this. I mean, it’s difficult to think of a context in which not knowing that such words have this property could have a seriously adverse effect on your life. Although I can imagine a situation where asking someone to cleave to you could have potentially disastrous consequences.

I’ll be honest, I do quite like using an archaic word like cleave from time to time. Let’s take the word placket, shall we? If you’re a fan of TV shows like the Great British Sewing Bee you’ll probably know that it is, today, a perfectly innocuous term meaning a type of deliberate slit in a garment. However, when Shakespeare, for example, used the word in his plays, he was not trying to give dressmaking tips. No, he was using a term for an intimate part of one’s anatomy. No names, no pack drill – you can look it up if you’re that interested. I will state now that I never called a child that I taught a placket, but it’s a word I would use when I had the odd occasion to do so. The first time I heard it in that context was in a sketch by Dick Emery. You hardly ever hear his name mentioned now, but he was a hugely popular TV comedian in the 1970s, and had a TV sketch show in which he played a range of characters. He was a product of his time, and derived humour from material that you just wouldn’t see today – if you know much about Britain in the 70s it won’t surprise you that he regularly used racist and homophobic material, as did the majority of ‘family’ entertainers of that time.

In the sketch in question Dick Emery was playing one of his stock characters, an aging vicar with prominent buck teeth. In the sketch his daughter had brought her new boyfriend home to meet Daddy. The point of the sketch was that the vicar had a huge aversion to any word or phrase that could have a slightly risque meaning. OK, quite funny. But he twist in the sketch was that the words the reverend had taught his daughter to use in their place were all archaic terms that were far, far ruder than the modern words they avoided.  Hence, instead of offering the boyfriend a mince tart, he offered him a mince placket. The vicar becomes more and more annoyed with the boyfriend. It doesn’t help that he is a bit of an English expert who knows what these terms mean. To placate the vicar he apologises for making these errors – but he calls them boobs. “STRUNTS!” – thunders the Vicar, not knowing that he is fact using an archaic term for penis.

Two other words in the sketch are pizzle and dibble, both of which also mean strunt. I knew pizzle because I had heard it used in the context of a bull’s organ. Yes, the things we learned in Oaklands Junior School could make your hair curl. But Dibble? Prior to this, my only understanding of the word was as a surname, as in Top Cat’s Officer Dibble. Did, I wonder, the writers at Hanna Barbera have any idea of the original meaning of the slang term dibble? I’m guessing not, but I will admit that the thought of the writers’ room at Hanna Barbera giggling away at the name that they’d sneaked past the censors is a pleasing one.

The Pen

So, let’s start with a bit of housekeeping. It’s five weeks since I broke my shoulder. Last Monday I had a second appointment at fracture clinic. In a nutshell the news was good. Bone is growing nicely, the shoulder is securely in place and won’t come out of place again for anything short of another accident like the one that caused it in the first place. If I’m honest I think the doctor really didn’t want me to think about work for another fortnight, but he said I could discuss an earlier return with them. So I did and I’m starting back part time tomorrow.

What a difference a couple of years makes! Over my last 8 years as a teacher I had a number of extended absences with depression. And when you get right down to it, the prospect of coming to the end of those absences and going back to work did not make me happy, as the thought of tomorrow now does. If I’m honest it always filled me with dread. Well, that was then and this is now. So, fingers crossed it goes well.

This blog post is the first thing that I have typed two handed since the accident. I’m getting more movement in my upper arm, but I’m not there yet. Well, I’m no spring chicken any more.

Being the kind of person that I am I couldn’t help wondering about the derivation of the phrase, spring chicken. Yeah, I know it sounds obvious, but actually, like many idioms, it does come down to superstition and ignorance. Apparently in the 18^th century farmers believed that a chicken born in the spring would have more tender meat than one born in the Autumn or Winter, which would have been toughened up by having to survive a British winter when tiny. Cobblers, but there you go.

One upshot of the injury was that for the first two or three weeks I found it really difficult to handwrite. I’m righthanded, yes, but not being able to hold down an answer sheet with my left hand made me come to the decision that Jess was going to have to write down our answers. And to be honest, she did it too well for my liking. Joking. But let’s be honest, one really shouldn’t underestimate the power of the penwielder in a pub quiz. The pen really is mightier than the sword, although I shouldn’t take that phrase too literally if you ever do have the misfortune to find yourself in a swordfight.

Incidentally, did you know who came up with that little pearl of wisdom? Edward Bulwer-Lyttton. Yes, that’s right, Edward Bulwer–Whothehell? Well, Bulwer-Lytton was actually one of Britain’s most popular novelists and dramatists in the immediate pre-Dickens period. He had a prodigious output, although sadly in my opinion not much of it is actually much good. I’ve tried reading several of his novels, including The Last Days of Pompeii, but I’ve never managed to finish them. Don’t take my word for it. One of the most famous phrases coined by him was “It was a dark and stormy night “, the first sentence of the dreary “Paul Clifford”. This was the reason why the annual contest for the worst opening sentence to a novel was named the Bulwer-Lytton prize.

Not that you should feel too sorry for poor old Edward. He was a pretty successful politician and was made a baron in 1866. While better remembered novelists like Dickens and Thackeray privately had no great love for Bulwer-Lytton’s writing, they found him a good friend. Supposedly it was Bulwer-Lytton who persuaded Dickens to rewrite the ending of Great Expectations to say that Pip and Estella would get together in the future. Which is actually quite a comforting thought. We can’t all expect to produce great works of Art and Literature, but at least we can try to be a good friend. Even if it was a dark and stormy night.

Two weeks in . . .

Look, there really isn’t that much that I can tell you. It’s just over a fortnight since I broke my shoulder, but my appointment at the fracture clinic isn’t until tomorrow. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want to start talking to work about going back until after I’ve had the appointment but I am really anxious to get back and start working again. What a difference a couple of years makes.

So, June 15^th, then. My birthday, as it happens. Both Courtney Cox and Michael Laudrup were also born on 15/6/64, although as far as I know neither Mrs. Cox nor Fru Laudrup were in the same ward of Chiswick Maternity Hospital as Mrs. Clark. It is also the anniversaries of both the signing of Magna Carta and the 2007 Mastermind Grand Final. And Father’s Day. Father’s Day. Hmm. I will be honest, I did not know such a thing existed when I was little, until my friend Bill told me his dad was also born on the 15^th June, and so when his birthday fell on a Sunday Bill, being of a pragmatic and practical nature, would only need to get one card and one present. Back then in the early 70s it never seemed like as much of a deal as the big production umber that was Mother’s Day.

I’ll be honest, I did do a cursory search into the origins of this celebration, and I found very little. What there is seems to concur that the celebration was unknown prior to World War Two, and took quite a long time to gain traction afterwards. Nothing actually said that it was an invention of the greetings card companies but it certainly has nothing like the venerable lineage of Mother’s Day. Both my Nan and Mum insisted on calling Mother’s Day Mothering Sunday, despite neither of them being religious or churchgoers – the two are not always the same thing. Mothering Sunday was the religious festival whose mantle was assumed by the secular Mother’s Day in the early 20^th century. Mothering Sunday always took place on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was an official day of respite from the Lenten fast. Certainly sounds like a good idea. The purpose of the celebration was to honour one’s mother church, that is, the church in which one was baptised. Over the years this extended to honouring the Virgin Mary and then all mothers.

Well, as I said it is my birthday as well. 61. You know, I spent so many years wishing I was 60 so I could take the money and run from teaching that when I got there this time last year I just wanted to stay 60. Well, that was never going to happen. But I am still living in the moment and enjoying pretty much every second of it, shoulder notwithstanding.

Do I feel stupid. . .

     Right. If I don't post much in the next few weeks, it's because, rather stupidly, I've gone and broken my shoulder. Typing is a bit of an effort at the moment. Which is a shame because I planned a great post on Loomis Day which was yesterday. Shame.

Harry Clarke's Legacy

Do you know of the great contribution that Father Harry Clarke made to British culture? In case you don’t, he is credited with introducing the car book sale to the UK in the 1970s. The catholic priest had spent time working in Canada where he saw car boot sales in action, and he recognised a good opportunity for a charity fund raising occasion.

Over the decades Mrs. Londinius, I and our family have often made a visit to a car boot a regular Sunday outing. This has not always been with unforeseen consequences. For example, the las one we visited was in a farm near Cowbridge a week ago last Sunday. The field was bumpy and uneven and quite unpleasant to walk upon, even going at the pace I like to think of as the ‘car boot amble’. As a result, I’ve been suffering with sciatica ever since.

More than three decades ago I attended my oldest daughter’ Parents Evening where the teacher observed that she had a ‘butterfly mind’. By tis he meant that she was never occupied by one topic for more than a short time and was always wanting to move onto something new. Judging by he way she turned out, the fact that she earned a good university degree and has held down an important management job for a long time since it suggests that the teacher was either exaggerating, or that it certainly hasn’t done her any harm. But I have to admit, I do recognise that tendency in myself. I am prone to new enthusiasms, and just as prone to losing that enthusiasm almost as quickly as it developed.

It's probably true that of all the things I’ve ‘got into’ over the years, the only ones I’ve kept going with over a long period of time are quizzing and art. Now, this tendency can be managed so that it is relatively harmless, but it does make car boot sales particularly dangerous places. Mrs. Londinius could testify to this. I still have a too many vintage transistor radios hanging around the house, for example, none of which I ever really possessed the skills to repair.

Funnily enough I have never bought much in the way of art supplies from boot sales – generally they’re not worth using however cheap they are. I haven’t bought much quiz stuff either, although did pick up some vintage quiz books once, including an original copy of the 1940s Puffin Puzzle book – what on earth that was doing at a car boot sale, I have no idea.

Mike Yarwood, a bed of lettuce and a pub in Builth Wells.

Whatever you might have thought of her yourself, I don’t think you could realistically disagree that Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure. Her election as UK Prime Minister seemed to kill off Mike Yarwood’s career. If you’re under fifty his name might not mean anything to you, but he was one of the UK’s most successful and popular entertainers of the 1970s. He was the UK’s top impressionist, and his 1978 BBC Christmas show was one of the most watched TV shows of the whole decade. A large part of Mike Yarwood’s act was his impressions of politicians of the day. It was often said that being impersonated by Mike Yarwood was a mark that you’d arrived, and politicians actually wanted him to ‘do’ them. It’s hardly surprising. If we take the example of Labour Chancellor of he Exchequer Dennis Healey, in real life, although a very cultured and well educated man, he was a rough and tough political bruiser. Mike Yarwood made him into a cuddly, avuncular figure. But with the best will in the world, he just couldn’t do Margaret Thatcher. And after she was elected, everything changed. Cuddly was out.

If you want to understand some of the difference between the 70s and the 80s you should compare the difference between the political satire of the 70s in the Mike Yarwood show with the political satire of the 80s in Spitting Image. I felt that the writing in the first series was a little weak, but it got stronger and more savage as the decade progressed.

One politician who got the full works from Spitting Image was Kenneth Baker. Kenneth Baker, now Baron Baker of Dorking, was a senior Conservative politician who held a number of important posts within the Thatcher and Major governments. But do I think of any of this when I hear his name? No. I think of him being as a slug munching on a bed of lettuce, which is how Spitting Image came to portray him.

What brought him to mind yesterday was the fact that my grandson Ollie, who lives with us, had an INSET day yesterday. INSET days first came into being in the same year that I began my first teaching post. Which brings to mind Kenneth Baker, because he was the Education Secretary who brought them into being in the first place. Indeed, for quite some time afterwards they were informally called Baker days by the profession. And I have to be honest, the thought of INSET days made me want to get down on my knees and thank God that I’m not a teacher any more.

Now, the idea of INSET days, on the surface, is a pretty good one. Five days a year guaranteed for staff development and training – bloody great. But in reality, I would say that I took part in almost 1000 hours of INSET during my career. I’d guess that at least 600 of those hours were a waste of my time. Why? Well, in no particular order:-

So much time was wasted on bolting down educational rabbit holes, whatever the latest fad was – VAK – the Highly Reliable Schools Project – AFL – DFL – Key Skills. So much time was and probably still is wasted on ideas which actually had no factual basis to them, or which had been concocted by academics who had no experience of a classroom situation. All of them were quietly forgotten about when the next fad came along.

So much time was wasted on things which were irrelevant to my situation. For example, the last INSET day in which I participated was about the new Curriculum – sorry, the latest new Curriculum. Together with our partner Primary schools  we were addressed by a former headteacher of a primary school. After three hours in which he had ignored the Secondary contingent completely I got up and walked out. I felt slightly better about doing so because my own Headteacher was doing so too. Too much of my INSET time was wasted on things which could have no impact on my own teaching and therefore no impact on my pupils.

Terrible presentation. For heavens sake, we were supposed to be good at teaching and training, yet INSET was almost always delivered so badly! The last 10 years saw a lot more in house INSET in my schools. Not surprising since it’s a lot more cost effective. But basically, you’re asking people with a highly demanding full time job to find time somehow to plan INSET and deliver it to colleagues who they know aren’t really interested, for no extra payment. But even external facilitators who have been paid to deliver are guilty of really poor delivery. Even before I developed sciatica I found it difficult to sit still for 2 hours nonstop. When my hearing got worse I would despair of facilitators who would refuse to use a microphone, then stand and 'broadcast' to the other side of the hall.

The lack of personal development in personal development. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to sit a whole staff down in a hall and talk at to them for two and a half hours than to provide each one with a meaningful personal development activity. Sure, it was always nice to be given half a day to get on with marking and preparation while the grown ups were talking  (Heads of Department and Senior Management meetings) but that is blatantly not a developmental activity.

If I am honest, there are only two INSET days I look back on as having been a particularly good experience. About fifteen years ago we used a company to provide training for us. The presenters varied from the mildly interesting to the deranged – I think of the time that one came in to try to get us all to teach our pupils to revise by singing their revision notes to the tune of ‘You Are My Sunshine.” That was always going to end in tears. However we also had one come in who spent a half day on the subject of making quizzes a valuable part of your teaching. To me, this was about as much of a revelation as the facts that kids are unpredictable and if you go out in the rain without a coat or an umbrella you might get wet. But for partt of it he used a quiz game which involved triangles which had answers to questions on two side and a question on he other, or vice versa. He trick was to match up questions with answers. “You can have three quarters of an hour,” he said, “ but probably won’ finish it.” 10 minutes later it was fun watching the Head explaining to him why my department had fiished it so quickly. Yes, little things please little minds.

The other one was when we took an INSET day to visit an educational trade show called Education 93, held in the Royal Welsh Show ground in Builth Wells. We walked straight out of the show into Builth, had brunch, then spent a most enjoyable few hous in the pub before home time. Which, let me tell you, had a far more beneficial effect on staff morale than any other INSET day I ever took part in.

There are Russians in the Harrow Road!

Arthur Nounce, of Old Holborn was not, as it happens, a character from Dickens’ lesser known novel, “The tragic Misfortunes of Josiah Buttockfondle”. Many years ago, in an episode of “Only Fools and Horses” the Trotters’ father appears on the scene, and Del is far from ready to welcome him back into the bosom of the family. At one point he makes the observation “He sold his soul for half an ounce of Old Holborn.” The moment I heard this line I thought immediately of my father.

I wouldn’t want you to think that I had a grim childhood, far from it. But the happiness and normality were due to the efforts of my mother and my nan. When it came to fatherhood the late George Clark was a bit pants. Well, he was a lot pants. In fact, let’s call a spade a spade. He was the whole underwear drawer.

I don’t want to make this out to be a tale of woe and misery, because it really wasn’t. But I don’t think I was that old by the time I realised that there was precious little that he wouldn’t do to get his fix of the aforementioned tobacco product and Taunton Autumn Gold Cider. At a pinch he could do without the tobacco, but not the cider. Which doubtless contributed to the pickling of his pancreas that resulted in its removal in the mid 70s. By the end of the decade he’d left the cider far behind and graduated to some awful concoction called Clan Dew, which blended whisky with wine if I remember correctly. After his penultimate drinking binge in 1981, our long-suffering GP, Doctor Cowan, came to the house (which shows you just how long ago this was) and told him, “Mr. Clark, if you drink again, then you will die. Not could die. Not might die. You will die.” This shocked my father sober for a year, but being who he was he had to test whether Doctor Cowan was exaggerating or not. So a year later he went on one last binge, and it practically did kill him. He survived, but was only kept alive by a combination of drugs for the last 9 years of his life.

In one way I think it’s pretty amazing the way that he went cold sober without joining any support group like Alcoholics Anonymous. But, being the person he was, by the mid 80s he found another way of getting off his face without taking to the demon drink. He discovered that if he took a week’s dose of his medicines in one go, not only did it save time, but it also got him completely out of his tree. And this is where the title of this post comes in. In the summer just before I moved to Wales, I came in to the house to find him sitting stark naked in his swivel chair. “Why are you sitting naked?! I asked him, or words to that effect. He mumbled what to him seemed like a perfectly logical answer, “Because there are Russians in the Harrow Road.” I promised him I would deal with them if he put his clothes back on – a promise, incidentally, that I have never kept. My younger brother happened to walk in during this exchange, and ever since that time this phrase has been part of our shared vocabulary. Even now, if we’re together and someone says a particularly baffling non-sequitur one of us is bound to say “There are Russians in the Harrow Road!” setting the both of us off in fits of conspiratorial giggles.

If you have been sharing these ramblings with me for some time now you’ll know that I have an enquiring mind. I have often wondered just how the old man’s mind latched onto the idea of Russians in the Harrow Road. I mean, back at the time the Soviet Union was consistently portrayed as the Evil Empire, but why on earth the Harrow Road? As far as I know he had no connection with the Harrow Road at all. Well, even if I’d asked him about it on one of his more compos mentis days I somehow doubt he would have been able to shed any light on it, or why the thought of it necessitated him stripping or action.

Now, in my current occupation I talk to many people on the phone every day. Some of the people I speak to seem to have no familiarity with the word or concept of ‘oversharing’. One of the people who rang with a query proceeded to tell me about how the pain from his teeth had led to him overdosing on his prescription drugs and boom – the phrase “there are Russians in the Harrow Road” flashed into my mind.

So, today, on a whim, I googled that same phrase, fully expecting nothing even remotely connected to Russians or the Harrow Road to come up in the results. Yet what did come up was a news story from earlier this very month. A group of Bulgarian people, living in Harrow, were convicted of spying for Russia and sentenced to a combined total of about fifty years in prison. Apparently  the neighbours’ suspicions were first raised a couple of years ago when they put up a large satellite dish, conspicuously pointing in the opposite direction to all of the other dishes in the street, and tried to put up an aerial about half the size of the Eiffel Tower. Alright, slight exaggeration there, I admit. Now okay, I don’t know if the part of Harrow where they were based was anywhere near the Harrow Road, and they were Bulgarian, and just spying for Russia. But come on! You have to admit that it’s interesting, don’t you? Well, please yourselves.