Friendship? No - Destiny.

It is a funny old thing, when you get right down to it. What is? Memory. Facts wise I like to think that I have a better than average memory. Of course, the other side of the coin is that I never (alright, I’m exaggerating, let’s say hardly ever) remember where I’ve put something, even if it was only a couple of minutes ago that I put it down. In fact, I have to make a special effort to take notice while I’m in the act of placing something down and even then there’s no guarantee I will remember it.

But as I say, I don’t think I’m being unnecessarily boastful when I say that I do have a good memory for facts. This extends to quiz questions. When I hear a quiz question, I’ll usually have one of a number of reactions, including –

heard that before a large number of times and the answer is . . .

heard that once or twice before and the answer is . . .

heard that once before and the answer is . . . 

heard that before but I can’t remember the answer. . .

never heard that before but the answer is . . .

never heard that before and I don’t know the answer.

When it’s a question I’ve only once heard before I can often remember which quiz I heard it in and who the question master was. Now, it’s not rare to hear questions the answer to which I do not know (more’s the pity) and it’s not rare to be asked questions I’ve never been asked before. However it is quite a bit rarer to be asked questions which – a) I haven’t been asked before – b) I do not know the answers to – and – c) are really interesting questions that make me think , why haven’t I been asked this before?

Last night in the club the QM was Ann. She’s a very nice lady, but not in my list of favourite question masters. Fair play, though, she came up with this question – the three core principles of the Commonwealth Games are Humanity - Equality – and which other? Now, okay, she did actually say that this was the motto of the Commonwealth games rather than the three core principles, which was wrong because the motto is ‘more in common’. Let that go. I thought to myself , well that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I should have heard before. . . but I honestly don’t think I have. I was clutching at straws a bit, so I thought, well, the Commonwealth Games are known as the Friendly Games, so I put down friendship. The actual answer was Destiny. I don’t mind getting it wrong so much because I think it’s a fair question and because I won’t forget it in a hurry and it’s something to know.

Mind you I got frustrated with her over another question. She asked, “Which is the coldest planet in the Solar System?” Now, I know that it’s Uranus, because a couple of years ago my grandson Ollie asked me the same question. I said Neptune, and he proved to me that it was Uranus. I googled it again when I got home yesterday to be sure. You’d think it should be Neptune, being further from the Sun, but no it’s Uranus. Now, being as Ann had picked the question to ask, I took it for granted she would have the correct answer. What answer did she give? Bloody Neptune. We took the hit for it and still won. But unfortunately this is what we get a lot of the time in the quiz. There are certain question masters who - and I admit I am being mean here - don’t possess the craft, skill or attitude necessary to make a mostly satisfying and enjoyable quiz. I tend to call any quiz they host ‘amateur nights’. They’re marked out by having the odd really great question which you’re really glad to have been asked, and some really quite simple howlers that the QM could have got right if they’d checked the bleeding answer properly.

Not that I’m bitter, you understand.

We're Havin a Heatwave - a bloody nuisance heatwave

This didn’t happen in my day. Whether that’s a good thing or not, well, that is another question. I am referring to the news that most schools in my area of South Wales ( and all the others for all I know) are closed today and tomorrow due to the extreme temperatures.

I was 12 in 1976 and distinctly remember being told to some into school every day but being allowed to wear civilian clothing. Then in my 37 years as a teacher the two schools I worked in never closed for extreme heat, even in 2022 which was a similar situation. Trust me, school managements and their governing boards appreciate just how serious the disruption caused by school closures is. It really is – and should be - a last resort. So how have we come to the situation that this time, the schools are closing.

Well, I don’t know, but I do have my theories about this. Logically, when you remove all else and get right down to the essentials, the children should not be at more risk by coming into school. In fact, there is an argument that with parents at work, some of the children will be at more risk from the conditions with the schools closed. We can’t ignore the huge disruption for parents. But. . . I know that this might be a controversial thing to say, but the situation may well have been brought on by the actions of a growing number of parents themselves with their own actions and attitudes. There is no doubt in my mind that through the noughties and 2010s parents gained more and more power. In some ways that’s a good thing. However power can be abused.

Personally, I can’t help wondering if the school closures are, at least in part, prompted by fears over parent reactions and, yes, potential litigation if children become ill through the heat while they are in school. And before you say – oh, surely they couldn’t do that – you need to know that in many cases, yes, they could and yes, they would. Of course, I haven’t spoken to any headteacher or chairman of Governors who has had to make this decision so I don’t know if this has entered into their thinking. But I’ll be honest, yes, maybe it is hotter than previous heatwaves, but why this makes schools less safe than pupils’ own homes, I really don’t know.

My thoughts go out to all my brethren and sistren who have been at the chalkface this week in this weather – not easy at all. Summer holidays are on the way.

We’re in work at the NHS today, not that this is relevant to the issue.

Internet Challenges - Obsessives, approach with caution

Sorry, it’s been over a week since my last post. Excuses? How many would you like? This week has been allocations week in work and the upshot is that the phone line is red hot all week and I have been too exhausted to be thinking about what to post. It can be difficult to find any thing I| think is even remotely interesting enough to write about during the off season when we’re waiting for Quizzy Mondays to return. Also, it’s June. During June I usually participate in the internet 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge and that acts as a bit of a spare time hoover. Basically, if you take part you need to try to paint 30 direct watercolour paintings during the month of June. Direct is the key here. Direct watercolour means you start directly with the paint, no sketching or drawing the design on the paper first.

What do you get for completing the challenge? Nothing material, certainly. I first took part in 2018, when I completed the challenge. Since 2018 I’ve completed the challenge 5 times. I didn’t do it in 2020. Not sure why? Lockdown, perhaps? Then I started in 2024, produced 8 terrible pictures and got so despondent and frustrated with it that I gave it up as a bad job. This year I’ve so far made 24 paintings in 21 days, so I’m looking good for a completion. But that doesn’t answer the question, what do you get out of it, does it? Because once you’ve done it the first time, then you know that you can do it. Which is where competitiveness comes into it. I want to do better each year than I managed to do the previous year. I want to produce better individual paintings and I want to produce a better set overall.

All, or at least most, of the above does actually sound quite positive. But while I do find challenges a great motivating force to actually do things the great drawback is that it does tend to play on the obsessive side of my nature. Being honest with you, if I have a day when I don’t paint during June, then I get really quite anxious about it. Case in point. I had completed 17 paintings by last Sunday, June 14^th. Monday, the 15^th was my birthday, and I knew that kids and grandkids would be coming round after I got in from work, so I wasn’t going to be doing any painting. Well, come Tuesday 16^th – still one day ahead of schedule – I was in a bit of a state, convincing myself that I was going to have a hell of a job trying to finish by the 30^th. I did calm down. I’ve made 24 and with six paintings still to make and 9 days to do them even I’d have hard work convincing myself that I’m not going to do it.

Well, as regards the personal challenge, yes, I do think that some of the paintings I’ve made this year have been better than anything I’ve done in the challenge before, and yes, I do think that this set are on target to being the best set I’ve done yet. But then, I do always think that.

So - Who really was Clint Eastwood's old Dad?

You know, I caught the old Carry On film, Carry On Screaming a couple of days ago. Yes, I know, the Carry On films, especially the later ones in the 70s, were not at all PC. Funnily enough, as the 70s progressed I think that they became progressively less funny and more un-pc in a weird, inverse ratio. But I do think that a few of them, especially those parodying a specific genre – do stand up quite well, even today. I still find Carry On Cleo extremely funny, as an example. But I was writing specifically about Carry On Screaming. It’s not to my mind quite as funny as Cleo, but still has a few good lines – The Master is dead . . . But I’ll see if he can see you.’ For example.

A prominent role in the film is played by Fenella Fielding, and this immediately made me think of one of the more famous urban myths that found its way into quiz questions back in the day. Namely – who is the famous brother of Fenella Fielding? The answer given in more than one quiz I played in was Marty Feldman. This is, of course, a complete set of what my Auntie didn’t have (presumably) and my Uncle did (presumably). I googled this in an idle few minutes at work, and the AI feature attributed this to Feldman being Fenella Fielding’s real birth surname. This may well be the origin of the urban myth, but I reckon the quiz popularity of it was due to it featuring in the Pears Quiz Companion.

I’ve written about this volume before o I’m not going to go on about it now, but it did sterling service to me when I first started compiling quizzes for the club back in the mid-1990s.. Many was the time I’d turn to it when I was stuck for a question belonging to a specific category and it rarely let me down. There was another couple of quite well known errors in the Quiz Companion. One was  that the lovers in Aida were burned alive rather than buried alive. Another was that Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square was sculpted by one Edward Hodges Banley rather than Edward Hodges Bailey. I’m pretty sure that these were typographical errors, though.

One of my favourite urban myths quiz questions I heard second hand. Dai Jenkins, an all round good egg who was our Deputy Headteacher for a while and went on to become a Headteacher in Bridgend, once asked me “Who was Clint Eastwood’s real father?” I replied that I didn’t know, and he said that in a quiz he’d attended the night before, the question master had sworn blind it was Stan Laurel. Well, I investigated this one, but it is pure urban myth, spun out of the fact that I believe that the Laurels had a son who was either still born or died not long after being born at around about the same time that Eastwood was born. I couldn’t resist asking it in the club one night. A number of teams did actually put down Stan Laurel, but my answer was Clint Eastwood’s father was . . . Clint Eastwood (senior).  That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Dirty Harry.

Words guaranteed to make your heart sink

There are certain words that I hate. Of course, if you really want to unpick it, it’s not so much the words themselves, per se. As it is there are few if any words that I hate for themselves, although quite a few I’m very fond of. The name of the capital city of Burkina Faso, for example, Ouagadougou, is in and of itself an utter delight. So really and truly it’s what the word represents that I hate. Such a word is workshop.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. The portmanteau word workshop is of itself perfectly inoffensive. As is the proper meaning – a space in which work is carried out. When used in this way to mean a place where things (preferably material) are made or repaired  is in fact a pretty pleasing concept. My hatred for the word really began concurrently with my teaching career. I’ve written before about INSET (in service training). For the vast majority of my first 30 years as a teacher, my heart used to sink at the prospect of INSET generally, but it would then sink several floors further if the words ‘workshop session’ were mentioned.

“We will be having a workshop session.” Translation, we will be expecting you to listen to someone who probably has no experience inside any classroom and certainly has no experience of the particular situation in YOUR classroom lecture you for at least 60 minutes, then you will be instructed to perform some totally random exercises which have very little real connection with the subject of the INSET and absolutely NO practical relevance to what goes on in your classroom. Hey, I was an English specialist and I just objected to the hijacking of a perfectly innocent word. Because despite what the authorities might have thought, just calling some pile of crud a workshop did not automatically transform it into an experience where something useful was produced or made better. We genuinely had a saying in the school I taught in for my first 29 years – never trust anything that calls itself a workshop. To be fair, by the time that the school closed, even the senior management had stopped using the term.

Why do I mention this? Well, in my current position as an NHS patient coordinator with the Dental Access Portal, from time to time I get sent generic emails inviting me to take part in inappropriate and irrelevant training. The one I received today used the offending w word. Thankfully it’s totally irrelevant to me now.

It’s difficult to think of other innocent words which so arouse my hackles. On a personal level I suppose there’s ‘organise’. A perfectly innocent word, I grant you. But in her personal idiolect, Mrs. Londinius uses it as a synonym for ‘do’. So she will say ‘Will you organise the washing up?’ when all she means is ‘Get off your bum and fill the dishwasher’. She has many, many excellent qualities, I should hasten to add, but this one little linguistic idiosyncracy is a persistent niggle.

Back To Basics

Do you ever have a yearning to go back to quiz basics? I did last weekend. Don’t worry, I’ll explain. Since 2021 when I started going back to the Aberavon Rugby Club for the Thursday night quiz I’ve tried to compile the quiz and act as QM whenever I’ve been asked to do so. It hasn’t been on anything like as regular a basis as I used to, but that has been fine by me. Well, last time I did the quiz was about 4 weeks ago, and I’ve been asked to do it again.

Since 2021 every time I’ve compiled a quiz for the club I’ve used connections in the quiz. Is it because I think it makes for a better quiz? Well, one always hopes that it will, but that’s not the real reason. Selfishly I’ve done it since it’s been a way of keeping myself interested in the quiz while I’m compiling it.

Then last weekend, when I got round to sitting down to write it, it occurred to me – why not, for old time’s sake, do what I used to call a ‘bog-standard ordinary quiz’ with no gimmicks or connections, and compile it in the same way (or a similar way) to the way I used to do it in 1995 when I started. Not quite the same way since I did not have the internet in 1995 and I did it all with books. I’m sorry, but although I did use some books when compiling this quiz, the idea of not using the internet at all smacks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

So basically, this meant finding a question for each round on several different categories, and two on popular entertainment. I have to be honest, I quite enjoyed it. You know , if you made me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth I would admit it’s not the old quiz custom I would most like to see come back at the club. Up until Covid the question master and/or glamorous assistant would have the papers collected at the end of each round and mark them. Covid put a stop to that, understandably. But I’d just really like it to happen once or twice now. It doesn’t reflect very well on me but I will explain my reasons. Each team marks their own. I cannot help being highly suspicious that one particular team are being very economical with the truth about their scores. Let me admit that I have not lost a quiz at the rugby club since Covid. But the team in question nearly always come second. Okay. Now the suspicious thing about this is : - prior to Covid they were the worst team in the quiz. Also, when my teammates compile a quiz, they will (quite rightly) ask the odd question about up to date pop culture. And the team in question, all of whom are in the senior citizens age bracket, invariably gets a full house on these rounds! I long to go up and ask – which one of you is the (insert band/singer/video game) fan then? – I’m not proud of myself. Mind you, my suspicions were further heightened just a few weeks ago when they tried to award themselves 15 on a 14 point round! Could have been a genuine mistake. Just like my auntie could have had you know whats and secretly been my uncle.

 

Working for pocket money

Like a lot of men of a certain age, I am prone to exaggerate. Particularly when I’m mentioning my childhood, I do have a tendency to suggest a harsh upbringing akin to that of a Dickensian waif. Nothing could be further from the truth. So don’t give me any sympathy for what I am about to write even if you do by any chance happen to feel any.

I have just read a Facebook post by my best mate from University, in which he responds to the news that children are not having the opportunities people of our generation had to experience paid work in their most formative years. Me, I had a choice. Get jobs or have no money. Not strictly true. Get jobs or make do with your meagre pocket money would be more accurate.

Looking back, I started with delivering a local advertising paper called The London Market. You had a number of local streets to cover and had 500 copies to deliver once a week. It took two weekday evenings and after you’d given a cut to your Mum, then there wasn’t a great deal of money left. To be fair she did fold all of the papers for ease of delivery. From there, when I was 11 or 12 I progressed to a milk round. I was fortunate that at the end of Leighton Road, the street adjoining ours, was the Ealing branch of Jobs Dairy, and you could usually find a milkman to help on weekends. When I started with Stan, we would work from 6:30am until about 4pm on Saturday, because that was his day for collecting most of the money. Then on Sunday we would work from about 6:30am until about 10:30 am. Would you like to guess what I was paid? £2 for Saturday and £1 for Sunday. Now, admittedly this was the mid-late 70s and money went a lot further, but even so! This was the whole year round, too, and if you have never spent a winter in London let me tell you it can be a lot colder than you might think. Essentially the only thing that Stan did on a Saturday that I didn’t was driving the milk float. I would have done that too if he’d let me, but he was, thankfully too sensible for that. By about 1979 I was working for Paul, who collected money all week, so we’d be finished by midday on Saturday. He paid me £5 for the weekend. If we finished at noon, it also meant that I could go out and help another milkman for the afternoon and get anything up to another £5.

I turned 16 in 1980, and after my birthday I started to work a couple of evenings a week and all day Saturday in the local Budgen supermarket, while I was doing my A levels. I transferred to the Coop after about a year. I can’t remember how much I earned, but it had to be more than the milk round(s) or I’d never have done it. In the summer holidays after securing a place at the University of London Goldsmiths College I joined a temp agency in Ealing Broadway for whom I worked every holiday until graduation. The money really wasn’t great or even good, for that matter. But occasionally the jobs you got were quite interesting. My first was working in Hoover in Perivale putting together repair manuals. I also had a stint on the delivery vans for Harvey Nichols, where a woman in Kensington called in a glazier to take out then replace her front window so we could get a huge sofa bed into her front room. For the most part I ended up washing up in the kitchens of various BBC canteens across West London. Looking back, the temp agency were actually pretty terrible people. They used to hold off paying you and then joke that this was all a way of helping you save. We finally fell out for good when they told me to go to a hotel kitchen to do a spell as an under-chef. I’m not a brilliant cook now but back then I was worse. I point blank refused to be part of what was so obviously an act of deception on their part.

They never offered me another job again.

I‘m going to end this with a recollection of my old Nan. This was my mum’s mum and it was her house that I grew up in. I loved her dearly, but I have to admit lying to her on one occasion. After I qualified as a teacher and was appointed to my first teaching post, her reaction was – Oh, lovely, you’ll be able to pick up some temping work during the long summer holidays!- My head said – I should cocoa!- but my mouth said, “Oh, Nan, didn’t you know? I’m paid a 12 month salary in 12 installments so I’m not allowed to work in August even though I’m not in school.” Did she buy it? Well, she didn’t argue and that was good enough for me.