The day I stopped caring (about pants)

I like to make an effort. I have a couple of rules about going out and socialising. Well, not rules exactly – but a couple of habits that have endured for ages.

Number one: Never turn down an invitation unless you genuinely can’t make it.

Number two: Always wear something nice.

And this is the way it was for years.  Years and years. Number one was a symptom of growing up in a small town that was just a little bit far from almost all my friends- who lived in the next town. I was cut off by forest geography after about quarter past ten each night.  And I was always aware that, quite rightly, my friends met up without me because I just couldn’t always attend and I was that much further away.

But I was always a teensy bit jealous.

So I always went to everything. I never missed an opportunity to socialise and never made an excuse or avoided a situation. I lived for being sociable -  being slightly more cut off either drove this or made it more annoying. Who knows.

Recently I’ve become a tiny bit more picky. I will say no to the occasional invite, though it’s still pretty rare. Sometimes I get that feeling whereby, despite a longstanding plan with friends that you’ve been looking forward to for ages, and despite enthusiasm at the time of planning, it gets to the night itself and I think:

OH HORRORS, DO I HAVE TO? THE SOFA IS SO COMFORTABLE.

But this passes pretty quick. I have a third rule- never cancel on people at short notice.  People do it to me ALL THE TIME and, whilst I never mind, on one particular birthday I learned never to do it to others because it can be a fuck when it happens to you, all at once on the same night, one cancellation after the next.

And you make yourself go, have a drink, put on some Britney- get yourself enthused, and then you go and have a FUCKING GOOD TIME.

I just fancied a quiet night out.

Of course it’s fun! It was always going to be fun.  We just experience that lazy bit before hand.

We’re older now.

But now?  A new development. A new development pertaining to Number 2: Nice clothes.

 I’m a bit fussy about clothes. I like clothes. I like outfits and looking nice and making the effort. People generally conclude that I’m quite well dressed. I like that.

And the other day, I was getting ready to go out. I had some nice new jeans on. You know when they’re all new and tight. I had my amazing winged trainers on. Nice t-shirt. Nice belt. Nice outfit.

Then I noticed I was wearing horrible pants. 

Not horrible.  Boring maybe. Not a nice waistband. Not nice enough to be poking out from beneath my jeans a bit, and more importantly NOT MATCHING ANYTHING ELSE I WAS WEARING.

But my winged trainers take forever to do up. They’re really tall lace-up hi-tops. And my new jeans were so new and skinny and tight they were a battle to get on and off.

So I did nothing.

I left it, and went out in horrible pants.  And within a few minutes I didn’t even remember.

I’m sure no-one else would notice/care/give a fuck anyway.  But *I* do.

Until that day.

That was the day that I stopped caring.

That was the day I stopped caring about pants.

Pride in Pictures

Less ramble.  More photos.

 

11.00 Morning booze and Parade through Brighton

     13.00 Chair-O-Planes and boy bands

     14.00 Naked fitties all around

     

17.00 Freemasons dance-off and skanky street booze preparation

     

00.00 Street Party and finally allowed to eat again

And that was (some of) Brighton Pride 2013...

NO PIZZA FOR YOU!

Today I got paid for eating Domino’s Pizza and watching The Amazing Spider-man.

Jimmy came in in a foul mood and refused to do any work all morning (and it’s end of term, so for ‘work’, read maths games/colouring in/gentle, undemanding, semi-educational activities punctuated by treats and end of term reward events. Like DVDs. Or pizza).

To try and help him recover his day and get out of his foul mood, I tried to persuade him to come and choose his pizza toppings.

“Don’t want stupid pizza. It’s boring!”  (He’s been talking about nothing else for days)

“You’ll be sad if you miss having pizza.”  (He will)

“I hate pizza. It’s boring.”  (It’s not. It’s his favourite thing in the world)

“Well, you need to make a good choice now if you want pizza.” (He does)

“Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care. DON'T CARE. DON'T CARE!”  (He blatantly does)

“Okay then. I’ll have to order you a school dinner...”  (I do)

Time Passes.

Our pizzas arrive. Staff and students. It’s a pizza party and the mood is euphoric. Every pizza is labelled with the appropriate pupil’s name. They locate and collect their pizza and take it to their seat.

“Where’s my pizza?”

“You didn’t want one, remember? You said pizza is boring and you hate pizza, then you started shouting at me.”

“I was only joking. Can I have my pizza now?”

“There is no pizza for you.  I didn’t order one for you because you didn’t make good choices.”

“But I want it now.”

“It’s too late now. You need to be good when I say, otherwise you don’t get nice things.”

Jimmy sulks and refuses to eat his school dinner, which- to be fair- looks questionable, though he’ll literally eat anything. I saw him try to eat a shoe once. If I’m honest, he could stand to skip a meal or two, so I let him sulk and refuse to eat.

Perhaps meanly, I also make a point of saying to everyone as we eat our pizzas:
“Is everyone enjoying their pizza? Good!  Well done- you all made GOOD CHOICES so we get to have a pizza party. Mmm- delicious pizza!  Mmmmm!”

But we have to do that to make sure he connects the dots.

He totally does.

After about 20 minutes, once his school dinner is nice and cold and the baked beans are all disgusting and congealed, he sits down and starts sheepishly eating it.

It doesn't look very nice.

Maybe next time he won’t be such a little bitch about it...

STOP OR WAVE...?

Stop or wave?  Stop or Wave? STOP OR WAVE?!

I just don’t know...

I’ve become a wave.

I’ve become a don’t stop walking, slow pace a little and wave a bit- and maybe say something weird and quick and rhetorical like “Heya- y’aright?” but never stop walking.

Which is odd because I was always, ALWAYS a stop. I’d beam from a distance, wave a bit, slow down, pull up (looking carefully behind me to avoid annoying any followers, as if driving, and pull in somewhere convenient for a proper conversation.

With anyone!

Well, not quite anyone. But anyone I sort of vaguely knew. I wouldn’t feel awkward, it wouldn’t be stilted, it would always be quite jocular and good-natured- a brief chat and then part company happily and be on my way.

And now?

Now I scope from a distance, keep walking, smile, say “Heya- y’aright?” or whatever, but DON’T STOP WALKING.  Don’t even slow down! Keep moving, don’t initiate or respond with anything likely to stimulate further discourse. NODON’TSLOWDOWNDON’TSLOWDOWNDON’TSLOWDOWN! Phew!

Made it.

I have no idea why this change has occurred. Granted I’m busier these days than I was as a student, and spend less time just trolling around town aimlessly- but that wouldn’t explain the complete lack of enthusiasm for engaging. I used to actually like irrelevant, off-the-cuff nonsense with people I loosely knew. It was nice feeling you knew lots of people and knowing a few faces as you wander about.

But now I’m not just less enthused, I’m actually avoidant. It feels like a hassle and I dismiss the value I once saw as needless effort for no benefit.

Sounds a bit mean-spirited now I think about it.

I should add, this is only for those fringey-friends of friends types that you know, but don’t know well.

I have two exceptions- people with whom I happily pause and gossip in the street...

Proper friends.

...And hot people.  People I don’t know too well but who are super fit.

I am a shallow, petty man....

Activity Week

Such a funny term.  It really doesn’t describe what it is at all.

At the end of the year, we have Activity Week at school. A week where we go off timetable and do... well, activities. Fun things, trips, games, visits, etc- under the umbrella of ‘enrichment’.

Activity Week was last week.

And what a week it was.

I’m earning quite well these days. I got my nice promotion in September, I’ve gone through the pay threshold this year and I’m doing quite nicely at present. So it feels a bit bad that I’m paid a not insubstantial amount of money to spend my week basically playing.

On Monday we went to Knockhatch, an adventure park In Hailsham. I spent the day rowing on the boating lake, sliding down the avalanche slide, jumping off the demon drop, bouncing on the giant pillow, racing round the go-kart track and zipping down the zip-wire. It was amazing fun, and I got paid to do it. On Tuesday we went to the Sovereign Centre in Eastbourne- a long way to go for a swimming pool, but they have a wave machine. So another hard day’s labour.

Wednesday we did a scavenger hunt, an egg drop competition a quiz and giant Pictionary, followed by Laser Quest on Thursday, which is probably the most fun anyone has ever had. There is something immensely satisfying about spending the day running around in the dark, under UV lighting, shooting your colleagues in the back. Then on Friday we watched Despicable Me 2 at the cinema  and had Dominos Pizza.

All in all not a bad week.

AND WE GET PAID TO DO IT.

Pretty well paid, too...

It does kind of make up for the verbal abuse, the kicks, the punching, the spitting and the general lack of respect we get the other 29 weeks a year.

I know.  It wasn’t a typo. THE OTHER TWENTY-NINE WEEKS...

Twenty-somethings...

Last weekend I went out for a birthday with lots of twenty-somethings.

I felt SO. OLD.

Some of them weren’t even that much younger than me.  Only a couple of years, but they seemed so much younger. We went to a bit of an impromptu house party for a friends birthday; just a little bunch of gays, none of whom I really knew.

But it was really fun.

But they just don’t get tired. And they can drink so much. They made questionable home-made horrorshow cocktails comprising whatever random nastiness they could find. Wine and beer and sambuca and vodka and whatever else they could lay their hands on.

I even drank it.

But they just appear to feel no effects at all. They just carried on. I was already hungover before I went to bed. It was awful.

But then I started thinking... ‘Hang on. I remember this.’ And I recalled when I first started working in schools and I socialised with the little school crowd and really started drinking properly, that’s what we did.  

We drank anything. Everything.

Even really horrible things we didn’t even want or like.

I’d forgotten. Or repressed it, maybe. But maybe it’s not that different.

Either way, they are hardcore. Or I’ve become really, really softcore.

Don’t get me wrong. We had a lovely time. An amazing time... I’ve never met such a warm, welcoming group of people in my life. They were great.

But so young.

And they party too hard.

Dissertation Complaints Service

I handed my MA dissertation in a month ago. A month before the deadline, I hasten to add. It has since been forgotten and life is good, calm and relaxing again. 

The Guilt is gone.

But now they write to me asking for my feedback on the dissertation supervision process. 

And what a can of worms they have opened.  This isn't, I should add, what I sent them.  This is what I wrote whilst writing my dissertation, every time I received any feedback for a chapter I'd just submitted to my supervisor. This is what I wrote in preparation for the day I would be asked to comment on the process. My actual response is a lot kinder...

10 problems with the dissertation supervision process.

1) Your sentences are too long:
You insist that 'mixed SEN classes' has to be changed to ‘classes of pupils with many different special needs diagnoses’. ASC pupils has to be changed to ‘pupils with a diagnosis of autism spectrum condition’.
If you make me write long sentences then ALL MY SENTENCES WILL BE LONG!

2) Canvas vs. Canvass. 
I want to canvass staff opinion.  Canvas is old sacking.  Please stop telling me to write about old sacking.

3) Avoid grouping pupils by SEN. Consider them as individuals.
THIS IS WHAT MY DISSERTATION IS ABOUT. In my teaching, of COURSE I consider pupils as individuals.  It’s not about diagnoses. But this dissertation is about a stereotype in labeling and in grouping of students. I am trying to explode a myth about pupils with autism and with EBSD.  It is VERY hard to do that if you aren’t allowed to a) USE THESE TERMS, and B) Consider the pupils as groups.

4) Your dissertation needs to be about that.
No. YOUR dissertation might be about that.  Mine is about this. Please stop trying to change what I’m actually investigating long after the research has taken place.  You agreed to the research at the very start.  You said it was interesting. You said it was brave. You said it was new. Now I’ve actually done it and I’m writing about it, stop telling me to change the focus and talk about pupil emotions and treating pupils as individuals, on the understanding that “this will be more interesting”.  That is NOT the focus of my research. A consideration, perhaps, but not what all the research is working towards.

5) Underlining terms used in school.
STOP UNDERLINING THINGS LIKE ‘SEN teachers’ and ‘ASC department’. The school has an ASC department.  I know in your out-of-touch, ideal, self-indulgent world of research, we don’t separate ASC pupils.  Sorry- pupils who have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition. But this is a case study. In a school. Where I have been allowed to conduct research. They have a department for pupils with ASC.  It is called the ASC department.  I really can’t do anything about this when I’m writing about the school. Please stop underlining it and suggesting that I change the wording to something your dippy dreamland researchers like more.  That is what it is called.

6) Commas
Yes, I overuse commas sometimes. And many of your corrections are valid.  But once in your stride in removing excess commas, an excess of zeal has led to the obliteration of nearly all the commas in my meisterwerk. Seriously. You eliminated all the commas in an entire paragraph and now it reads like a children’s book.

7) Repetitious repetition
Constant comments about taking care not to repeat. Duly noted.
Followed by ENDLESS requests to reference a comment that was referenced in a previous section. “Use a reference to discuss pupil voice”. Terrific... I refer you to the ENTIRE CHAPTER I wrote on that, full of interesting, relevant references. Should I just repeat myself? Or would that be repetitive?

8) Trust your own judgement.  And then don’t.
I suffered prolonged conversations about how my view as a practitioner IS relevant, and how my own observations and views carry weight. Followed by constant requests to back up my views with documentary evidence and references.  There is no evidence. There are NO references. These are my views.  The ones you just asked for.

9) Anecdotal evidence that is widely published and scientifically validated.
My dissertation- as advised, is about exploding a myth. Or perhaps supporting it, depending on outcomes. This is based on ANECDOTAL evidence. On staffroom hearsay and even hyperbole. There is no material evidence for this. My dissertation is the first time this has been explored. As far as research shows, this has not been written about before. Please stop asking for evidence of this anecdotal evidence. I already told you it is anecdotal.

10) This will be more interesting.
This is a little repetitious of point 4, but we will proceed as it deserves some exploration in its own right. Having accepted, sanctioned and seemingly understood my dissertation project and the focus of my research, you now keep skewing it, pushing it in different directions and telling me to focus on something else that you prefer because “it will make it more interesting.” This is annoying and unreasonable. I can’t change the focus of my research now. It’s nearly March. There is no time, and the research is essentially finished. But what is more annoying is you saying that YOUR ideas are more interesting, and that YOUR research likes to focus on this, that and those. That is YOUR research, based upon YOUR interests.  I am interested in autism and EBSD, and how hard it is to co-educate these pupil groups. It’s fascinating, really! It really isn’t very helpful or professional to keep trying to push my investigation of pupil behaviour in different conditions into some fluffy, flowery rhapsodising over pupil emotions and individuality just because that is what YOU are interested in.  It doesn’t interest me remotely. Which is fine, but I haven’t burst into your office and ordered you to change your research into something more in-keeping with my own interests and preferences.