so far so so-so

Known

Invisible invincible

Grinding, obliging, distilling

In repletion hungry, in yearning satisfied

Reaching, unfolding, encompassing

Shines bright

Unimagined

Yesterday I heard from a colleague (literally as a child yocked in my face on the corridor for getting in his way as he tried to kick the door in) that an ex-pupil had died. He was 19.

I taught him for several years and sat with him at lunch almost daily, because he nearly always sat alone and used to call me over to talk enthusiastically on and bloody on about Iron Maiden while the food fell freely from his ever smiling mouth. Over time he sprouted facial bum-fluff which he cultivated proudly although it never did turn into a man-beard. He was bullied (misfits can be bullies too) but he was a buoyant lad and after a freak-out he'd just bounce back, louder, happier and even more exasperating than ever ...

After he left school I'd see him in town sometimes, knocking round with his mosher mates in his loooong leather coat. He'd bound up with arms outstretched for an inappropriate bear hug bellowing 'HIYA !'(with a disregarded sandwich hitting the deck as per). He was triumphant. He had friends and would tell me all about them while they got twitchy and turned to gaze mournfully at their own spooked reflections in shop windows ...

Over the last couple of days I've been thinking about him a lot. I didn't know him well so there's not much to think about really, except what's going round and round in my head, which is something we all know already (but he and his preternaturally maudlin/happy young gang possibly didn't) ...

That it's not fucking fair...

Beloved and I saw District 9 on Sunday ...

The references to surviving apartheid and anti-refugee sympathies are clunky, the plot full of holes, and the FX derivative. The carcasses of Predator, Terminator and Independence Day have surely been picked clean ...

The best acting is over and done with in the first ten minutes in the 'documentary' footage... from then on the show is held together pretty much single-handedly by Sharlto Copley in the role of hapless government agent Wikus Van De Merwe ...

I was disappointed to spend an evening and £20 on overpriced popcorn and tickets for this sometimes uncomfortably brutal and bloody Sci-Fi caper, and I have to say that all the trailers for the whole raft of forthcoming similar films such as Avatar looked similarly unimaginative and joyless ...

I shall give up on the genre for the time being, and hope for better things from Creation ...

Say we can, say we will ...

Not just another drop in the ocean ...

I was gazing forlornly into the cutlery drawer before, and it occurred to me...

At least I've got one ...

And it's a counter-intuitive piece of kit ...

Knives, forks then spoons (teaspoons at the bottom and breadknives to the side) ...

Hands up if you haven't got a cutlery drawer ...

Fork off ...

You're kidding me, right ? ...

I had a planecrash of a day, then just as I was settling down to watch Poirot Beloved hauled me down to the beach with my little digi to take photos of a light aircraft that had ditched on the shoreline ...

I'm still pissed off that I missed Poirot though, which along with Dexter must have one of the best opening sequences on TV ...

Firstborn's been down a few times tonight, waving his arms in the air and making noodles ...

Just now in the kitchen he said something and I had to say :

'I CAN'T HEAR YOU ... YOU'RE DAD'S PLAYING HIS GUITAR TOO LOUD !'

So we ended up windmilling and gurning at each other going ...

'WASSATWHAT ?'

Do any of us still write them ? ...

I found a pile of letters in mum's flat when I cleared it out ...

Most of them were from the fifties from my sister to our mum, and they were largely about her love of Elvis, making dresses with particular emphasis on collars, dating boys she didn't much like, how she hated (and didn't understand why she was) living with her grandparents, and eventually making references to the yet unborn me ...

And then there were letters I wrote in the seventies from college ...

There were always separate letters to mum and dad, with apologies for not having written to one or the other (although as far as I can gather, there were hardly ever any replies from either parent to either of us) ...

The letters are generally three to four pages long and were written at least once a week and now I've been nudged, I remember writing to friends, cousins, aunties and uncles all over the world all the time ...

I wonder ...

Have we still got it in us ?

I fear the art of crafting a letter on proper paper with brain-distilled ink is flopping belly-up in the deoxygenated goldfish bowl of techno-history ...

Twenty five years on and genetic profiling has transformed the way criminal investigations are conducted. The techniques used have been extensively refined and improved, and today it's even possible to recover a DNA fingerprint from a surface an offender has merely brushed up against. ...

Yeah...

You'd think this would be a good thing, if the crimes where the scumbags swarmed all over everything and still got away with it didn't remain 'unsolved' ...

And there weren't more innocent people (people who haven't ever committed a crime) on the database than guilty ones (people who have) ...

To protect us from ourselves ...

*feels all warm and comfy now *

I'm not a science teacher so don't judge me ...

Call me a fascinated amateur ...

There was the informed educational text about the central nervous system in the book...

But there were two long benches and crayons beckoning to me in the science lab ...

One had to be the sensori-neural path and the other the motor-neuron, with a convenient gap between them to represent the junction of the synapse and the relay-neuron ( prop-kid on standby with his arms outstretched) ...

And lots of little bits of paper with 'OW!' writ large upon them in orange feltpen (the reds had run out) ...

So ...

If you tread on a pin, the owchy goes all the way up the sensori-neurone into the nearest part of the central nervous system (CNS), gets chucked on via the synapse to the relay-neurone, which passes the pain to the motor-neuron, which passes it to the muscle ...

Which goes 'Waahh ! That hurt' and takes appropriate action...

ie) Hopping from foot to foot exclaiming ...

'Shitshitshit...I'll get you for this bitch'

And here endeth the first lesson ...

By George, I think I've got it !

This week I have mostly been eating science ...

The Central Nervous System...

I've been teaching again for all of 10 minutes and I've got a logjam of detentions until Christmas ...

What part of 'Don't tell me to...

'fuck-off-or-you'll-stick-a-chair-up-my-arse ' do you not get ?

And (crucially) ...

Is that before or after you chuck the chair through the window ?

Been back at work for a week ...

*BadadadaDAH ...I'm Lovin' it !*

Thanks ...

The spam/virus/anti-virus appears to have succumbed to the onslaught of me pressing ALL the buttons you told advised me to...

*throws bouquets*

xx

The proper lappy is being eaten alive ...

We get a red on blue hysterical screensaver message saying

WARNING-YOU'RE IN DANGER

YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH SPYWARE ...

Your date is still available for forensics, and in some cases
For your boss your freinds your wife your children
And could break your life

It also opens a window onto a system scan from Total Security (who they?) which detects about a gazillion viruses and demands that we activate our anti-virus software ...

But we can't access anything at all, even AVG to check what's going on in there because it's all completely crashed ...

Is this a spam or a virus ?...

How do we get rid of it ?

I've been reading a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems recently (by 'a lot' I mean about 3% of her lavish outpourings ) ...

There's something of the Bronte sisters about her (particularly that other Emily) in the repressed passion and religious fervour fed by a rather cloistered life that was full of obligation, loss and grief (as was the lot of many) ...

This is a poem I read to my own kids today, and I chose it because it has a searing unromantic simplicity ...

The Lost Thought

I felt a cleavage in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.

Huzzah !

I've got a fortnight's supply teaching at mine and Firstborn's old gig, the local special needs school where I used to teach (and he used to go for a kickoff and a kip) ...

Next week I shall be mostly teaching science and art, or as I like to call that particular combination of subjects, 'Truth and Beauty' ...

That'll put some chocolate biscuits in the barrel, if I can only shoehorn Firstborn into his taxi for his first day at college on Monday ...

*gets hooooge emergency shoehorn out and tries to locate own shoes*

Being techno-lazy I've only just downloaded the software for my 'new' digi camera, which I bought in February. I should have got a Kodak Easyshare to replace the one that broke on the holiday from hell, but I was seduced by this coquettish little moss-green Fuji which unfortunately came with a Googlesque manual ...

So I made sourdough pizzas and took practice photos of our dinner (pepperoni on the left, veggie on the right) before I noticed the section on page 15 ...

How to hold the camera correctly ...

Our choir might be selected to deliver your friendly 'Songs of Praise' advent-day hit ...

If the altos don't get struck dead on entry to the church and you are not stricken with a plague of non harmony ...

They came and did a display for lifeboat-day again ...

It was the best and worst of displays ...

It bucketed down so (relatively speaking) the odds were against them. They stuck to low-level stuff in the oncoming storm clouds before they peeled off early...

The commentary was the best I've heard ...

Well done Baggers ...

I didn't know that the five / four formations were called 'Enid' after the Famous- Five and 'Gypo' (seriously, I don't want to know)...

Some interesting facts came to light amid the storm-clouds ...

Apart from the fact that the pilots still rely on speech impact like salsa dancers to know when to press the buttons ...

AAAnd roll Aaand GO ...

Apart from the fact that Red 7 is hung like a horse and a bit of a wag ...

Did I hear correctly ?

These magnificent machines are 30 years old ? ...

Surely that can't be right ...

*shakes water out of ears *

The first time I took my baby in his pram and the collie on his lead to see the Arrows, I came back with the baby under my arm and the collie in the pram... with our road being the flightpath and all ...

I've been to Officer's Balls at Valley and met pilots, and they are a truly rarified breed ...

Despite everyone's best efforts at everything it appears that the stars are not in Firstborn's favour again ...

I was waiting in for the big assessment, the priority safety evaluation, something that would make him that little bit safer ...

What we got was a fire-engine outside and two firemen inside with drills looking to put up smoke alarms...

Usual questions :

Do you smoke ?

Do you use a chip-pan ?

Do you use an electric-blanket ?

We had all this last week...

Would you like us to test your alarms then ?

NO... they were only put up last week ...

'Bye then...

Stop right there fellahs ! Back up a minute ...

*shuffles-back-in-big-boots*

You are here to do a hearing assessment and give us life-saving equipment and to-hell-with-the-cost, right ?

Er...

*shuffles-fowards-in-big-boots*...

Nope, they dunno nuffink about it, but they'll get the manager to call me ...

Three 'phone calls from me later and no reply ...

Back to square one ...

If there is one thing I hate more than a system that doesn't work it's a system that thinks it works ...

Wankers ...

As the remnants of Hurricane Gordon battered the western coast causing a hard rain to fall through the uneasy rooftiles, Beloved gave me a poke in the ribs at 4am to mention that the bedroom ceiling was leaking and that it would need fixing ...

We have rules in this house :

1 : Don't ever wake me up without a cup of tea in your hand and an apology on your lips ...

And

2 : Don't state the bleeding obvious (what's the point ?) ...

Actually darling, I find the 'thokthokthoksplat' very soothing ...

Drill a few more holes in the ceiling while your up will you? There's a dear ...