On and Off the Page

Gawain and the Green Knight

2012-01-31T07:50:00.000-08:00

To Cambridge bouncing around in a very snug van (four in the back, no seats, some cushions, creaky bones) to the Cambridge Storytellers last week.

http://www.cambridgestorytellers.com/

And what did we do there?

We saw the fabulous Sarah Rundle there

http://www.sarahrundle.co.uk/

performing Gawain and the Green Knight: a medieval tale of fantasy, treachery, wild animals, noble deeds, beautiful ladies, indestructable monsters, a magic axe, complicated family relationships and much much more.

It was very good.

It was, as someone commented in the van on the way back, a performance. Elements of standup in it for example: when Gawain is faced with a decision, it appeared as a powerpoint presentation (bubble/diamond) across the stage.

When I say 'appeared', I mean, of course, 'didn't appear at all'.

Sarah told us about it and acted it out and made us imagine it in glorious technicolour. Well, largely green: there really was some glowing vivid green as a backdrop, but... we were also imagining all the other colours. Especially white (teeth) and red (blood), thanks to a terrifying sung passage about Mr Fox.

And this is the power of the spoken (sung, acted) word.

The pictures are better.

All About Me-ve

2011-12-30T07:34:00.000-08:00

There isn't much I want to write about just now, for reasons I may return to. Now, normally when I've got nothing to write about I don't write - years can pass this way - but I thought I might finish the year with some sort of trivia thing. All the papers do it, don't they?

I borrowed these questions from an auto-interview by/with the wonderful Efler blogger 'Lathophobic Aphasia', written by someone with a better turn of phrase and more of a gift for creative grumbling than most of the people you meet in the staffroom. No apologies for borrowing, though, as Mr Aphasia himself borrowed the questions from an interview that EFL demi-god Jeremy Harmer did with Professor Deborah Cameron, another bright light of the ELT industry. And jolly good questions they are too. Borrow them yourself. Maybe we can make it into a meme.

What three adjectives would you use to describe yourself?

Creative, disorganised, passionate.

What is your greatest achievement?

You ain't seen nothing yet.

What’s your favourite smell?

The sea, windfall apples lying on winter mud (smelt that on Moushold Heath this morning), cut grass, a clean cat, rain in the desert, burning seasoned oak, mangoes, coffee.

What is your favourite taste?

Liquorice, mint, pineapple.

What’s your favourite piece of music?

Umm, don't know. I'm ignorant about music. I'm most comfortable with baroque type things - they have a pattern that I can just about manage to get my head around, and they resolve. Bach and Handel kinda thang: I haven't evolved as far as Romanticism. At one time in my life I went a fair bit to opera with someone who knew a lot about them (that was in Italy) and I remember the first one I went to which I enjoyed all the way through without a minute's boredom or inattention. It was Cosi Fan Tutte - nothing but the best, eh?

What book would you like everyone to read?

Just one? Impossible.

Books I tend to recommend to people I like: Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall ditto, Mary Renault's historical fiction, The Once and Future King (TH White), Middlemarch

What website would you like everyone to visit?

Not a clue.

What is your favourite sound?

Cat purring. Wood fire crackling. Rain outside. The sea.

If you were an animal, what animal do you think you would be?

Cat in a comfortable home, or small wild cat in a well-protected jungle. But then, I love to swim, so maybe otter or seal or one of the catlike prehistoric critters that went back into the water and became seals or whales or something. Or a Lake Van cat - they swim.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

'Spare' is a bit of an odd concept for me... as indeed is 'time' - perhaps that's why I have trouble getting things done. I don't have a telly, but when I watch dvds (or, rarely, when I watch TV away from home) I feel a need to fidget. In the last few years I've started to deploy this in making things - beads or jewellery, and lately, patchwork. If I watch enough films this year I will finish a patchwork quilt bedspread.

How many languages do you speak and why?

Well, I'm still struggling with English after 51 years. I learnt Italian quite well - I lived there for 6 years, though after 4 I no longer felt I was improving - after the age of 28 and with a history as a 'failed language learner'. It remains the only foreign language I ever got really confident and contented in, although I doubt I ever spoke it perfectly at my best. I'm fairly rusty now, though I still read it with pleasure, and recently have dreamt in it. I can read French and Spanish, but can't claim to speak either. French feels like a failure as I spent years being taught it without actually learning it, and now my 'default language', if I'm not speaking English, is Italian. I learned Anglo Saxon (or Old English if you prefer) per force at University for a year and was frustrated that I could not translate the poems well enough to do them justice: I felt they were wonderful but was not good enough - or indeed keen enough and hard-working enough - to make my versions adequate. I lived in Thailand three years without really getting to grips with Thai, but last week I watched a Thai film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives, and was surprised how much I could catch - but it's at the level of words rather than sentences and meanings. Same with Arabic.

What do you like most/least about your job?

I like the students who make this enormous courageous leap to living and studying in a different language and culture, and who make many small leaps of courage in order to communicate and approach each other and me. I like feeling that they are becoming ever more able to express more of their own meanings. I like getting to know people who do or will do such amazing and interesting things in life and who come from such varied and interesting countries: in what other profession would I meet Kurdish agriculturalists and Laotian ministers (who went to school in a cave and speaks Russian as a second language) and lawyers from the Ivory Coast. I like the strange and varied people who work in EFL too.

I dislike the insecurity of zero hours contracts, the tedium of meetings, and the odium of the occasional embittered colleague one meets who seems to dislike students on principle.

What would heaven be like if you were in charge?

Bliss. Warm sea, flying, music. Everyone I love around.

When and where are you happiest?

Lathophobic A's answer is pretty good: 'in a warm bed on a cold morning when I needn’t get up'. But also sitting in a tree, or on a hillside in summer. Riding a motorbike alone in Thai mountains. Sitting on the bottom stair in my nightie to listen to The Hobbit on my Dad's radio when I was 8. Writing something yesterday that seemed like it was working.

Something you are never without.

Something to read or to write on/with.

What is your most appealing habit?

Not sure I have any appealing habits.

And your least appealing habit?

Gloom.

What is the trait you most dislike in others?

Dropping litter and crap in beautiful places. Seriously. You go somewhere lovely - or even somewhere just passably pleasant - and defile it?

What is your most treasured possession?

Hmmm. My brain, I suppose. I would struggle to save the laptop and my mum's ring, and her diaries.

If you could have a supernatural power, what would it be?

Three, please, and they need not be supernatural at all - just very good technology indeed. I want

a time machine
a cloak of invisibility
and
a Babel fish.

This last was Douglas Adams' invention - a fish that swims in your ear enabling you to understand all languages in the universe and be understood. It would make my job obsolete, of course. But think of the evesdropping! Think of the history! You could settle all arguments about when people first started using language, for a start... and so much more.

What words or phrases do you overuse?

Like most Brits I swear a lot.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

An income I could rely on.

How would you like to be remembered?

I don't expect to be remembered by anyone, unless I write and publish something really good.

What music do you enjoy listening to/playing most?

Can't play anything. I've enjoyed singing in choirs and want to do more of it, and better. Most perhaps was a piece of music Barrie wrote (and I wrote some of the words for) and Stephen arranged for the Al Ain Choral Society, in which we both sang: Blue Carol. Listening... see above.

What did you dream of being when you were younger?

Writer. Trying to stop dreaming and work on it instead.

What were you like as a student at school?

Space case, then later on enveloped in impenetrable gloom enlivened with sarcasm. I stuttered, could not choose between two words of apparently equal meaning (would say 'tan' or 'kin' instead of tin or can) and could not concentrate on anything.

How do you cheer yourself up when you are feeling down?

I was very influenced by TH White's book 'The Once and Future King'. There's a point in which Merlin says that the one thing that never fails is to learn something - and then goes off into a long speech about the different things there are to learn and how many lifetimes it would take you to learn them all.

But learning is quite difficult to do, so a lot of the time I just read. Which feels similar, but is not quite the same.

If I hadn’t been a teacher, I would probably have been a...

writer sooner.

Who has been the best teacher you have ever had?

Richard Holmes, the biographer. You could sit in his seminars and feel your brain expanding gently under his influence.

Something that few people know about you.

I can't drive a car - never have learned - but I can ride a motorbike.

If you could travel back in time where would you go and why?

All over the place! Specially if I get my cloak of invisibility and my babel fish too.

What’s your best learning memory from school?

Walking in the park after midnight thinking that I understood 'Middlemarch'.

Are you a tidy desk or a messy desk person?

Exceeding messy. It hampers me.

What’s your favourite thing to do when it rains?

Sit by the fire with a warm cat and a good book.

A poem you know by heart.

Afterwards, by Thomas Hardy. This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin. Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll

What would you like to learn to do next?

Write!

What question would you have liked me to ask you?

‘Can I publish your next book for a large sum of money? And can you do a sequel, please? And, how about film rights...’

What would have been your answer?

Yikes! But yes, by all means.

Things autumnal

2011-11-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

Ah November, season of damps cramps colds and most of the birthdays in my family. It was B's yesterday, and - apart from having to go to work to pay for it all - we had a pretty nice day and some great pizza and wine at Pizza Express - still our favourite place to eat in spite of my not winning their invent-a-pizza competition (I came second. To be fair, the winning one was delicious, but I could have done with the prize money).
It hasn't been very cold but it has been quite damp: not raining, but foggy and condensation-y all over. And most days have been dark, too, overcast and foggy all day, with a few stunningly beautiful exceptions.
We put our clocks back two weeks ago, making the mornings lighter - although that did not last for long - and the evenings set in an hour earlier. As I type, at ten past three in the afternoon, it is too dull indoors not to have the lights on and it feels the dark is closing in. On some days now, we go out in the morning twilight and come home in darkness. It feels very Northern (though I suppose it could equally feel Southern, only in 6 months time). It also feels as though we should be spending much more time asleep than we actually do. The instinct to hibernate has always been strong in me (I may be closer to our burrowing ancestors than most people you'll meet), but I notice that the cats are sleeping much more (even) than usual.
The other things this time of year brings include colds and coughs. It's our second autumn back in England and only the first cold for both of us, so we've done pretty well, but it was a goodie. I blame the students.
Seriously, I do. In every class there is at least one student, and often three or four out of 16, with a massive cold but no hanky or tissues, and no idea that a rhythmic snuffling every 5 seconds gets tiresome after the first few hours. I'm considering inventing swine flu/bird flu/elephant flu/cat flu rumours to encourage everyone to wear those hygienic masks popular in Japan. I've read that the masks are not actually that useful but I don't care - it gives something to catch the.. ahem.. effluvia.
Richard II was said to be a pretty useless king of England. Shakespeare portrays him as vacillating, self-pitying and feeble in the play of the same name. Richard's cousin Bolingbroke certainly thought so, and decided he would make a much better king himself. He got the crown and sent Richard off to Pontefract, where he may have been stabbed or may have been starved, but in any case rapidly became unfit for consideration due to being dead.
But Richard is supposed to have brought the handkerchief into use in England and for that alone he deserves a statue... possibly one placed in every language school in the country, where students can observe, mark and follow his example.
If they won't, I wonder whether Pontefract castle still has dungeons? Just a thought.

Singing in the Forum

2011-11-09T02:12:00.000-08:00

Saturday was the 10th Birthday of the forum, a large glass-topped building from which you can look out on a much finer one; St Peter Mancroft's. The Forum houses Pizza Express, a cafe, the local BBC studios and even a library - see what you need to do to get people into a library? Offer them pizza and beer.
It's a good building and a really great library - three libraries in one, the kids library, the American USAF library, and the Central. (Norfolk Council seems determined not to close any libraries, which is to be applauded).
Anyway, the celebrations involved much fun - Guardspersons on stilts, two Gentlemen of the Press in 1930s trench coats, storytelling (not by me), kids painting a specially erected painting wall, barbershop singing, and in the midst of it, a Flash Mob.
Do you Flash much? I never have before. Suddenly a portly gentleman burst into song in the library. He was homed in upon by people from all quarters of the place - not angry hushing librarians (a dying breed it seems to me) but singers. Men, then altos, then sopranos, lead by the lovely Meg Turpin. Oh... I see... it's a choir then. Yes indeed, for it was Norwich Community Choir. We sang and then, still singing, processed onto the glass balcony over the painting and crafting below. People looked up startled and delighted. We sang an African song - no idea what it meant, but the feeling and the harmonies were lovely. Some people were in tears (and NOT because they were saddened music lovers). Then we processed singing down the stairs and dispersed. We had been instructed to 'recruit men' - a perennial shortage in choirs. I'd brought my own along, but he already sings with the UEA choir. Heyho.
It was fun. We didn't sing happy birthday dear forum... maybe we should have.

well.. erm...yess - still here.

2011-11-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yes I'm still here. Well, not here as in here, obviously - there'd have been a good few more posts if I'd been here more often. But here as in still on this planet, in the land of the living.
Appropriately, it's the Day of the Dead (aka All Souls Day) as I write this.
November is kind of a funny, life/death month in my family. Half my family have birthdays around now, from my nephew at Halloween through my sister-in-law, two of my bros 4 days apart, my Beloved, and another nephew on the 19th November (he was supposed to have been a Saggitarius but dropped in early, thus joining his mum, dad, big brother and uncle in the same sign and turning their home into a nest of Scorpios). Then - tomorrow in fact - is the anniversary of my dad's sudden death - 37 years ago and still a shock. Widen the scope a bit into October and you get my third brother's birthday and my mum's anniversary. So, when it comes to remembering the living and the dead, November is it.
As part of the general Halloweeniness, I did my first storytelling gig in England since about... ooh, 1987, perhaps at the Waterman's Art Centre in Brentford? It was a kids' party and the theme of course was Halloween. It turned out to be a rather small audience, but very enjoyable (one tot who I know is only four sat their with his eyes getting rounder and rounder... I hope he got to sleep). Anyway, a good time was had, and I met some interesting people at the party, including a medieval historian in proper 15th century costume. So tonight we're off to the Norwich Storytellers gettogether (a new experience for us both) - theme of course spooky - and I might tell a tale or two, given half a chance.

Standing up to be miscounted

2011-03-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

We went on the TUC-organised March for the Alternative in London on Saturday. Got on a bus organised by Unison which left Norwich at 7.30 and were dropped at something called Gallions(sic) Reach, which is on the DLR in a docklands post-industrial wasteland near part of University of East London. Nothing like a ticket office in sight, and as we queued to tackle the ticket machines (which refused our money and insisted on debit cards only) we felt somewhat country-bumpkin-ish - in the big city and not quite sure how things work. From there to the Jubilee line at Canning Town where the platforms were crammed with protesters. We hopped off at Southwark, and instead of crossing Blackfriars bridge, nipped into the south bank in search of much needed coffee and loos. We could see a massive party going on on the embankment, and talked to a guy playing a one-stringed African guitar/harp who said 'There's not much difference between a protest and a festival'. People were gathering on the South Bank - there were some UK Uncut folk and posters saying "What the Foucault?" and "What Would Gramsci Do?". Crossed the river at Waterloo Bridge - people were thick on the ground, covering the road and pavement, and the bridge was closed to traffic coming from the North. It was impossible to get onto the Embankment there, and some polite police directed up up into the Strand and round... the crowds got thicker and thicker, a solid mass of persons from one side of the road to the other, though everyone seemed polite, cheerful and patient. Rather annoyingly there were also touts selling whistles, which was deafening, and there were the usual dullards with loudspeakers and tedious slogans - but there were also some splendid drummers. It took us two hours to get from the Strand down to the "start point" on Victoria Embankment, by which time the head of the procession had already reached Hyde Park. There was a Welsh women's choir, which I remember from Greenham Common days, a greyhound with a jacket that said on one side "Cameron, I'm no poodle" and on the other, "fight against the cats" with the a crossed out and a u written in. Lots of intelligent posters. We were glad to see a Father Ted tribute reading "Down With This Sort of Thing". Near us were the Fire Brigade union, Nurses, a sign saying "Pissed Off Social Worker", kids in pushchairs, a couple of wheelchair users and lots of other folk. We reached Westminster Bridge at 3 pm and decided we'd have to peel off to get back to the coach, which had to leave at 4.30. On the South Bank we looked across and saw the tail end of the procession passing under Waterloo Bridge - this was at 3.30, a good four hours after the head had got to Hyde Park. I suspect the estimates of 250000 - 300000 is rather below the real figure on the march - and it also doesn't count the students, who marched a different route, the people occupying Trafalgar square (including one of B's sons, and his small daughters) and the UK Uncut people who were revelling along Oxford Street, as well as those who went straight to Hyde Park. I had signed up to text message updates from the Metropolitan police, which was interesting. At one point, things obviously going too well, they informed us that "no containment - ie kettling - is in process at the moment. Later, a text came which said "light bulbs full of ammonia have been thrown at police" (I'm not sure how you would go about filling a light bulb with ammonia, even if you wanted to, but that's another matter). Shortly afterwards, no doubt after some legal consultations with the TUC's lawyers, a message came through saying "ignore last message: it was nothing to do with the march". This retraction was at about 2.30, yet when we were listening to the 6 o'clock news on the BBC in the coach on the way back, the first message about ammonia filled lightbulbs was still being repeated. Ho hum. I also got a text saying the Fortnum and Mason's "is now a crime scene" - this was about 6. 30. Apparently, the UK Uncut protesters accidentally knocked over some chocolate bunnies, the fiends. There was no mention of the baton charge against the person who put a sticker on the Olympic - doesn't bloody work - clock. Much has been made of the black-clad protesters who broke some windows at the Ritz. I didn't see any of this, though when we were walking towards Blackfriars Bridge that morning we had seen 4 or 5 young men getting out of a van accoutred in face scarfs - a bad idea, obviously. According to a Tax Justice Network, the Men in Black stated that they are against all taxation, which puts them rather a long way from the fair tax campaigners in UK Uncut. Interesting, though: I have lived in a zero-tax country (the UAE) and it is not exactly a bastion of liberation... This morning someone on the Beeb said "Anarchists - what do we know about them? How can we get in touch with them?" He almost said "can anyone put me in touch with their general secretary", but not quite.

True Grit

2011-02-18T05:32:00.000-08:00

Back in the UK for the first winter and spring we've had for 4 years, apart from very brief visits in January. Well, it was a fair old winter, the coldest December in 200 years (although globally the year was the warmest ever recorded). Snow fell, and stayed, until Christmas Day.
The worst thing was that it became intensely slippery underfoot. For some reason (increasing girth, decreasing agility) I hate and detest the idea of falling over. Partly physical cowardice - I really don't want to get hurt - but a good deal to do with not looking any more ridiculous than usual. The Beloved, who already had a dodgy knee, was much the same.
So as the ice stuck to the pavement day after day, I went out in search of grit. Now there's a thing you don't often have cause to shop for. Luckily the wonderful Roy's (Roys of Wroxham - it should be Wroys, wreally), which is just down the road from us at Anglia Square, has bags of budgie sand. In two different textures. This is a situation where choice doesn't work for me: I had no idea. Ended up grabbing 3 bags of one and 2 of the other. Sanded the pavement from one end to - nearly - the other. It did make a difference. Enlightened self interest, I suppose, especially as in one fairly short journey back from the city centre I had seen three people hit the ground hard. And then, at B's choir concert rehearsal, the professional tenor soloist stepped outside and broke his leg. I suppose choir masters have emergency tenors on direct dial - the replacement arrived 10 minutes before he was due on, taking the solo in the St Nicholas Cantata. And very good he was too.

Beware of pasta

2010-06-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

The justification (or should that be "justification"?) for the blockade of Gaza has always been to preserve the security of Israel by keeping out dangerous materials. If pressed, apologists sometimes elaborate the justification from preserving security, to preserving Israel's very existence.

So, now that the announcement has come that the blockade is being eased after the public relations disaster of the storming of the Mavi Marmara and the detention of the aid flotilla on the high seas (footage of which, having been saved from confiscation, can be seen here)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/11/gaza-flotilla-attack-new-video

it's interesting to have a look at the list of things which can not be brought into Gaza.

Sewing machines, razors and spare parts for tractors are a no-no. Fair enough. Ingenious people, Palestinians: one can see how tractor parts, blades and perhaps needles could be cobbled together to make some sort of cutting (or perhaps sewing, or harrowing) missile which would threaten the security of the most heavily armed country in the Middle East.

Flavourings and smell enhancers, A4 paper, and something called "industrial margarine" are also banned, possibly in case an attack of greased paper planes impregnated with vile smells is planned.

But, OK, flavour enhancers have got to be chemicals, haven't they, and there may be some fiendish method of engineering them into something even nastier and more vuirulent than pine air freshener. The same goes for pencils, also banned - the graphite in them must be dangerous, I think.

Clothing fabric cannot be brought into Gaza. Nor can baby chicks. Nor can seeds. Nor can dried fruit. Nor can sage, cardomom, ginger, nutmeg, halva and, until now, jam, although apparently the "easing" of the blockade will henceforth permit the import of jam.

Rejoice, for jam is going to be available to the Palestinians of Gaza... tomorrow. Halva too, though apparently chocolate remains on the banned list unless brought in by a humanitarian organisation: it cannot be imported by merchants to sell.

Pizza, macaroni, and biscuits are also banned, lest they threaten Israel's security or its very existence.

In 1990, as Saddam invaded Kuwait, I was in Naples watching Italians panic-buying tins of tomatoes and packets of pasta. I was bemused by this at the time, because the products being swept off the shelves were staples produced in Italy, not imports whose prices and availability depended on peace in other countries.

But seeing that macaroni is banned from Gaza makes me think that maybe those Neapolitan shoppers were onto something. They were not, as I had assumed, spurred by atavistic memories of 1944 in Naples when the warehouses were boobytrapped and the sea mined, when there were no cats to be seen because they had been eaten ("and frankly," said a friend, "there were no rats either."), when all the trees for a day's walk outside the city had been stripped of their bark which was boiled up for soup.

No, they were not stocking up on food as I had supposed, but cunningly preparing an arsenal to be used if Saddam, not stopping at Kuwait, had swept west, crossed the Meditterranean and landed in Calabria.

They were preparing to defend themselves with tomato-paste missiles and the macaroni of mass destruction.

And it's obvious from reading the partial list of items banned in the blockade (apparently the list changes almost daily, but numbers about 4000) that macaroni is as dangerous today as it has always been, along with baby chicks, olives and soft drinks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm#food

Thoughts on the workshop

2010-06-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

If you think teaching is difficult, you should try learning!

Atmospheric Conditions

2010-06-13T04:04:00.000-07:00

It was 6 pm and 48 degrees, but we had finally managed to get to the pool. It was packed, pool and loungers. Tuesday is a night when the sauna is women only, so all the hairy muscular little guys who spend a happy evening hanging out in the eternal triangle between sauna, steam room and "plung" pool had per force to hang out in the olympic (well nearly) sized pool. They were two or three to a lane - some of them just hanging out, but enough of them were doing showy splashy lengths up and down to make us think twice about getting in ourselves. The length markers are quite close together and we both hate colliding with others or being jostled.

We both behaved characteristically. I flopped onto the nearest available lounger like a beached whale and started to read, or at least look at, my book. It was Boris Johnson's collected bits, purloined from the library and not bad: he has a good turn of phrase and some decent enough instincts, at least in journalism, but a bit of a tendency to grandstand. It was not quite absorbing enough to prevent me flapping my ears at the possible international flirtation going on amongst the loungers to my left. Barrie, instead, paced the poolside, poised like a hawk (if hawks wear swimming trunks, which I rather doubt) to leap in as soon as a lane was free.

I must have nodded off - no surprises there, as I was exceeding knackered. When I surfaced, Barrie was submerged. It was full night now, and two small, smooth clouds gleamed low down in the sky. Gradually, though, the sky to the west began to be overcast as a continuous blanket of cloud pulled across from the direction of Oman.

Suddenly there was thunder, a long, low, distant rumble, but I had not seen any lightening. What happened next, though, was that the air began to cool and rush about - gusts blowing this way and that. People were getting out of the pool, and the kiddie pool began to empty. It was still hot, though, and some of the gusts of wind were warmer than others - warmer, and grittier. The cloud continued to draw across the sky, which told us that the wind high up was steadily blowing from the wet, whereas the wind and ground level was coming from all sides. I had grit in my eyes, and the taste of it between my teeth.

Barrie got out and came and sat beside me under a towel. Everyone else had disappeared. We kept wondering whether it had started to rain, or was starting to rain, as from time to time we each thought we had felt a drop - but every time we could not be sure it wasn't just a spray from the pool.

The lightening came, and we counted for the thunder, which was sharper, and much closer. I kept saying "Rain. Come on, rain". All week I had been wanting half an hour's rain to settle the dust and relieve the endless heat. Over the wall in the date orchard the palm trees were thrashing about. Barrie counted the next one lightening strike off and declared the storm was 8 kilometres away - about half the distance it had been, and closing fast.

Suddenly a huge wave of pinky-yellow rose behind the trees in front of us, like a mammoth lifting its head, and moving closer and to the right. It was a cloud of dust, or sand, picked up from the dry wadi that lies beyond the hotel's irrigated gardens, and which extends right down to the border. It loomed and moved, fast, against the direction the little gusts of wind were mainly coming from, and like a thing with a mind of its own: I'm going this way; you do what you like. Its yellowy pinkness was partly from the colour of the sands and partly from the neon lights around the hotel reflecting off its dusty flanks.

Then the rain started, spots and spits and then a proper stream and downpour of rain. Although we were sitting under the awning, we were wet. And cold enough to shiver: the temperature had dropped about 15 degrees. Lovely rain, the smell of wet earth. Even the hotel lawn, which is as denatured as astroturf, smelled suddenly of grass.

Then I swam. I'm not quite foolhardy enough to swim in a thunderstorm, but after the rain had passed over and headed away to Sarooj, it was time. The water was cool and filled with shards of palm leaf and large, bemused beetles like black volkswagens. As I got out I could see a bright star just under the edge of the cloud... almost impossibly bright, so that I thought it was a plane heading directly towards me, but after ten minutes it was still where it was.

As we drove away, the car temperature gauge said 38 degrees. It was twenty past eight in the evening.

There was no rain in Falaaj Hazaa, where we live.

It was still hot.

Instructional Skills Workshop

2010-06-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden it's the last week of the semester (apart from the other week for which I won't get paid, but that's another story). This week I'm helping facilitate an Instructional Skills Workshop, with one co-facilitator and three colleagues participating. It's a programme originally developed in Canada which provides a short, focused and quite intense workshop in practical teaching skills.

For people who've done a lot of teaching it's a refresher, a backto-basics, and a chance to play around with techniques and ideas. For people who are new to teaching it's a safe space to try out some instructional tools which will work almost anywhere. For me as a facilitator it's all that and more, plus a chance to get to know some of my colleagues better.

One of the principles of the ISW is that we enter a kind of ISW bubble - we work together, lunch together, and are supposed to be released from all other duties for the duration. Back in the old days, I'm told (paradise is always what we have recently lost... just before my time, usually) the college would fund us or find sponsorship for us to go off to a hotel for 4 days, so we wouldn't even be physically on the college campus. Nowadays, the facilitators are also providing lunch for themselves and the participants every day.

And principles don't necessarily work well with practice.

Which is why I'm still at my desk at 9.30 pm to complete the grade entry for the last of my courses.

Say not the struggle naught availeth...

Just a thought

2010-06-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

Is there nothing, really nothing at all, that Israel's government and its armed forces could do that would not find defenders and apologists?

I've been wondering about that for years, and here we are again with another, even lower, low.

Most amusing comment on the IDF's storming of the Flotilla in international waters so far: our delightful Tory Foreign Secretary Willian Hague has called for "an independent inquiry."

Fine [well, in politician terms fine - ie not very, especially when we remember how effective the last independent inquiry, into the attack on Gaza, was: results sat on for months and when finally released the Israelis suddenly discover that the internationally respected judge who chaired it was a war criminal who has no right to say anything about Israel ever to anyone... you can read some stuff about it here, if you must:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/05/19/neve-gordon/land-of-security-know-how/ ].

Back to the Foreign Secretary - that is fine, right up until you read the last two words of Hague's sentence....

Thats "an independent inquiry by Israel."

Umm, yeah.

On the other hand, an "independent inquiry by Israel" has a slightly lower chance of having its head smeared after the results come out and are found to be mildly critical.

Slightly.

Rape in the UAE - an update

2010-05-31T03:53:00.000-07:00

My last post but one was about a rape case in which an 18-year old Emirati woman reported a gang rape, was arrested, held in prison, and put on trial for having sex outside wedlock. The 6 men accused in the case were on trial both for rape and for having consensual sex outside wedlock - two charges which, I would have thought, were mutually exclusive, but apparently not here. I haven't been able to find it explicitly stated anywhere, but it seems that if the prosecution fails to make the case for rape (which can carry the death sentence) against the men, they will still be done for unlawful sex, which carries a jail sentence and possible flogging.

Then a couple of days ago it was reported in The National that the woman had retracted her statements, including the charges of rape against the men. She is still on trial for having sex though, and appeared in handcuffs. The men are still on trial as well - although charges against one of them have been dropped. One, under questioning in court, was visibly supressing his laughter.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100525/NATIONAL/705249822&SearchID=73392354040809

There are quite a few questions that this report leaves unanswered - most of them about procedure (are the men still on trial for rape, or just for consensual sex?) - but the main question is, why on earth would anyone ever report a rape in this country?

The first reponse seems to be to arrest the victim and treat them as a criminal - and this applies to male rape victims as well as to female ones, as witness the appalling story of the French/Swiss teenage resident a few years ago. The 15-year-old was abducted and raped by 3 locals (two adults and one older teenager), escaped and went to the police - only to be accused of being homosexual and asked by the doctor examining his injuries to "confess he was gay." Furthermore, one of his attackers was HIV+, and knew it, but according to the boy's family, local officials assured them for months that there was no risk to the boy of sexually transmitted disease.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1680682,00.html

To put this in some sort of perspective, rape convictions in my own country are shockingly hard to come by - about 6.5% of the cases that actually come to court in England and Wales result in conviction, compared with about 34% of criminal cases generally - and it's only a 2.9% conviction rate in Scotland.

This is the lowest conviction rate in Europe, and the convictions that are obtained are almost always the result of confessions by the accused. So basically, if you plan to commit a rape in Europe, your best bet for getting away with it is in Scotland, and whatever else you do, if you get caught, just keep denying it.

The careers of some rapists who eventually became well known (Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer and child rapist; Kirk Reid, who enjoyed a 12-year long stint as a rapist and stalker; and John Worboys, who combined his work as a taxi driver with his hobby as a rapist over 13 years, are examples that spring to mind) show them shrugging off accusation after accusation.

But one important difference is that accusations of rape in the UK very seldom proceed with the arrest of the victim. Although, (to quote the Guardian quoting from the Home Office report) victims in the UK are "found to experience delays, "unpleasant environments", inappropriate behaviour by professionals, insensitive questioning during interviews and "judgmental or disbelieving attitudes" when coming forward with complaints of rape", they are seldom arrested as soon as they make the charge, banged up in prison until the trial is heard, or appear in court in handcuffs.

Here, however, sex outside wedlock is a criminal offence, and it seems as if prosecuting this takes precedent over deciding whether sex was consensual or forced. Of course it's difficult to prove consent or the lack thereof, as consent leaves no bodily signs, and lack of consent cannot necessarily be inferred by bruising or other damage. Easier to determine whether sex took place - although from the reports, there may also be some peculiarities of the forensic tests as used (or as interpreted) here - for example, the 15 year old boy raped by three men was told the tests proved he was homosexual, which no test could in fact prove.

For rapes amongst Emiratis there is also a powerful disincentive to report rape in the value placed upon women's physical intactness, and the role that physical intactness plays in the pride and status of her male relatives. This young Emirati woman has apparently been beaten by her brother, disowned by her family, and ... well, now what? If she is found guilty of consensual sex she is likely to have a prison sentence and lashes, after which - who knows? If she is acquitted of consensual sex (which presumably would require the charges of rape to be upheld), will she be returned to her family without a blemish on her character?

The only possible safeguard for her now would be for the court to magically find that no rape at all has occurred and no sex either - in short, that she is completely untouched by hand of man... except that the court has already heard that she got into a man's car, and this alone is enough to destroy her reputation and her family's pride in the eyes of many.

So who can guarantee her safety now? Nobody - not her family, from whom she is clearly in danger, not her fellow nationals, and certainly not the legal system of her country.

And what about the accused, "supressing their laughter" in court? I don't know whether or not they are guilty, obviously, and would not like to speculate. But it seems to me that if any potential rapists are following this story - people who would quite like to rape somebody, if they only thought they could get away with it - they will be supressing some laughter of their own.

Gutters, greed and grumbles

2010-05-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

Two daft and depressing recent stories from the world of tabloid. And one from the fuzzy zone where tabloidness and politics merge and blend.

First off, somebody vaguely important and connected with a game that lots of people seem to like quite a lot had an ex-girlfriend. They went out to supper together and she secretly taped his conversation and sold the recording to a newspaper (actually this should be "newspaper" - it was the Mail on Sunday) for 75,000 pounds. As a result of some of the mildly indiscreet comments that he was taped making, England's chance to host a massive festival of the game that lots of people like has been destroyed for ever. Or not.

We won't know for a while but Lord Triesman (for it was he - and no, I hadn't heard of him before either) has lost his job heading the Football Association (for it was soccer - I have heard of that, but only barely) and has obviously annoyed a lot of people in the important world of football. The UK has spent a phenomenal amount of money on preparing for the Olympic games in 2o12, and evidently there was some hope that we might get a chance to recoup if we could host the football World Cup in 2018. Blown, apparently, for a mere 75,000 quids and a few more readers for the MoS.

Secondly, somebody who was once married to a former helicopter pilot who got lucky in the lottery of birth is secretly filmed soliciting huge sums of money for "access" to her ex husband. Apparently she was under the impression that meeting her ex-husband would be worth that kind of money to some of the people who have that kind of money.

But who would pay that kind of dosh to meet this rather undistinguished guy? (I believe he's a good golfer, to be fair). Well, the ex-husband has some rather nebulous role as the UK's special representative for International Trade and Investment, so quite possibly coughing up half a million quid (the price named by the ex-wife) might somehow turn out to be all worth while for the keen investor. Invest in Britain - my lovely country, with the best royal family money can buy.

Both depressingly ugly stories. Both involve a certain degree of illegality and some grey areas. For one thing, it is illegal in the UK to record a conversation without all parties being aware that recording is taking place. Journalists sometime get round this by claiming a public interest exemption (where for example the person taped has public office and the taping provides evidence of their unfitness).

But one trouble with public interest is defining it. Is it more in the public interest that Britain gets to host the World Cup, bringing huge sums into the economy? Or is it more in the public interest that we find out that someone most of us have never heard of texted his squeeze with the words "sweet dreams" and gossiped about whether one nation competing in the footie might try and bribe a referee? Who decides where the interest lies?

Then there's the general grubbiness of people "monetising" their personal relationships. I'm not sure whether Triesman's fancy, one Melissa Jacobs, was ever in it for anything other than the dosh. (She's a civil servant, apparently, and my goodness how standards must have fallen. She's also a blogger, inevitably enough.)

But how much would you sell access to your ex spouse for? Should I be offering introductions to my Beloved for the highest bidder? A current spouse, no less, and he'll probably make you a nice cup of tea too. But alas, no investment advice, so introductions to him have no monetary value.

Finally the third story - well, not so much a story as a state of affairs. The News of the World, the paper which gave us Fergie floggin access to Andrew, used to employ a private investigator and a journalist who together tapped phones, hacked into voicemail and did a lot of reprehensible stuff on a large scale. They were both caught and jailed. The paper had to pay damages to a number of victims, including footballers and members of the royal household (not, you'll note, just of people who happen to have been born or married into royalty, but also people who simply got jobs there).

During the court case in which the two were jailed, editorial staff at the paper were criticised for suffering a convenient "collective amnesia" about arrangements for the bugging, especially as regards to who knew about it, or indeed who solicited it.

The then editor especially, one Andy Coulson, claimed he knew nothing whatsoever about it - which either means he was an extremely poor editor who had no idea how the stories which appeared in his paper were obtained or what the large payments were being made for, or he was being extremely economic with the actualite. Numerous people are said to be considering suing him and the corporation for which he worked (News International, owned by Murdoch, which at the last election not only supported the Conservative Party but turned fairly rabid attacks onto Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems... until he made the deal which put Cameron in Number 10 and was suddenly hailed as a noble statesman).

Coulson is no longer editor of the News of the World, which ought to be good news. But actually, it isn't. He's now "Director of Communications" for the Prime Minister.

One wonders who is more pleased: Cameron for having such a direct line to his master's voice, Murdoch for having his bagman not in the corridors of power but inside the very office, or Coulson for the wonderful reward for his sterling career in "communications".

I'm sure all the other tabloids (those few not already in the News International kennel) are taking note.

Expect more of this. The rewards for illegality, grubby muck-raking and pursuing vendettas are great. Rather greater, one must now suppose, than the half a million quid solicited by La Fergie for a chance to press the flesh with her ex.

So depressing

2010-05-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a highly educational story from my local paper. It goes like this:

An 18 year old woman reported to the police that she was gang raped by 6 men. The police arrested her. She has been in custody since making the report, and is now facing charges.

To put a little more flesh on the bones, the prosecutor claims that she agreed to get into a car with one of the men, who was presumably someone she already knew. The prosecutor claims that by agreeing to get into his car she was clearly agreeing to have sex with him.

The man then called five of his friends, who raped her.

She is now accused of having extramarital sex with all 6 of them. That is, of course, a crime in this country.

I am not sure whether the prosecutor believes that agreeing to have sex with one man means you automatically consent to having sex with any of his friends he cares to invite round. It may be that in the eyes of the law, the simple act of accepting a lift from a man means that you have in effect consented to being used by him and all or any of his friends.

The main thing that comes across is that this woman must be punished - though it isn't clear whether she's simply being punished because she complained.

Two other points worth noting: she has no lawyer to represent her, and her family were not in court...

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100518/NATIONAL/705179850/1010

A Mistake

2010-05-17T04:45:00.000-07:00

When I was but a sproggette, I was good at reading. I enjoyed it, too, partly because we were a bookish family (my father's study, lined with books and dark red curtains, is in many ways my ideal room) and heavily into words, read to and rhymed at and recited over from the earliest ages.

Plus of course every Sunday we got together in a large building with many of our neighbours and spent an hour or so repeating responses, listening to readings, singing hymns, hearing sermons and reciting prayers - some of which were in Latin (my father's missal was bilingual: Latin and German).

Being able to read, and then reading a lot, and then reading about reading and writing about what I had been reading seemed to be pretty important things to do. Everybody I met seemed to agree on that.

Eventually I fetched up at university, only negatively by choice - the careers advice at my school consisted of what university might accept us to do what subject-and naturally I chose to read my "best" subject at school: English. I really enjoyed it, and through reading, discovered
Philosophy, Politics, Criticism and such like exciting stuff.

All that time, as I did my BA and then my first Masters Degree, it seemed as if there was nothing so important, nothing so valuable as to read and to read well, to discuss what had been read with others who had read the same, to fine tune one's critical apparatus, to read what others had written about what you and they had read .... and there would be no end to it, but that was fine, that was what CULTURE consisted in, that was the cutting edge of what it's all about, and we were on it.

And now, 30 years later, it has become apparent that I was completely wrong.

The cutting edge, the place where our culture is making itself, is science, much of which is expressed in a language that I and most of my literary chums can barely read: maths.

I feel a bit of a twit now - though I'm still glad I read most of those books (if I had my time over again, as Woody Allen said, I probably wouldn't read The Magus).

Not that there's anything wrong with being able to read stuff and understand it, but never again will I be able to confuse reading a lot with the cutting edge of culture.

2010-05-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

On a Thursday about fifty years ago, in Perivale in the county of Middlesex, a woman was lying in hospital reading a book by a former show girl about her affair with a famous writer. She was waiting for the doctor to induce delivery of her second child. The baby, already more than a week overdue, showed no sign of wanting to budge.

Eventually the doctors' efforts succeeded, ("they broke the waters" she used to reminisce "but nothing happened") but by the time the child emerged at last it was after midnight on Friday the 13th of May. The child's father was fast asleep after a long day's teaching few miles away in Ealing.

There was an outbreak of jaundice in the hospital at the time so the baby had to sleep in a bathroom instead of the baby ward, and mother and child remained in hospital for a week. When the father visited, he later recalled, he noticed that another new father in the waiting room had brought his wife a hula hoop - a fashionable toy in 1960, but perhaps not ideal for a woman who had just given birth.

The parents had already chosen a name for the baby: Thomas. They hadn't bargained for a daughter, but that's what they got. So for about 10 days she was described as "our little girl" while alternative names were canvassed - Thomasine, Charlotte (the father's first name was Charles though everyone called him by his second name, Stephen, and its abbreviation). They settled on Sarah, which alliterated nicely with her brother's name, Simon. She already had cousins, Desmond and Dena, with similar chiming names.

It was odd that they didn't decide to name her after a saint (there is actually a Saint Sara, who is black, mythical, and dear to the Romany -but they did not know that at the time). They did at least give her the classic Roman Catholic girl's name Mary as a second choice.

Well, that was my Mum and my Dad. The book she was reading was Sheilah Graham's account of her love affair with F Scott Fitzgerald (which I should get around to reading one day) and the baby of course was me.

Never knowingly puctual...

The Ties That MIght Possibly Bind

2010-05-12T04:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned that Gordon Brown, resigning perhaps in the hope that the Lib Dems would consider a deal with Labour once he was no longer leading it, was photographed wearing a purple tie.

Purple is the colour adopted by the "Fair Vote Now" protesters who demonstrated outside the Lib Dem headquarters while negotiations were going on about the Tory offer of a Parliamentary Commission to ignore - I mean study - the case for Electoral Reform.

I signed off by saying that we should watch out for Cameron wearing a purple tie.

And guess what?

Today, the new Prime Minister David Cameron was photoed on the steps of 10 Downing street wearing a purple tie and chatting with his new Deputy Prime Minister and NBF, Nick Clegg.

Clegg seems to be wearing a yellow tie - the colour of his party.

Perhaps we should take it as a message that Cameron really means it this time on electoral reform. He's apparently promised that there'll be a whip to ensure all the Tory MPs vote in favour of a referendum , although they'll be free to campaign against a yes vote in the actual referendum.

And Clegg seems to be reassuring his own party that Lib Dem values will not be diluted by getting into bed with the Tories.

Of course they could have just picked the tie with the least egg stain on it.

After all, they've all been awake since last Thursday...

On and Off the Page - the blog which gives you the news before it happens.

Providing it's about ties.

Oliver Miles on Britain's Election Problems

2010-05-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

It wouldn't have happened in Azerbaijan, apparently.

This is from the excellent London Review of Books blog:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/05/11/oliver-miles/it-wouldn%e2%80%99t-have-happened-in-azerbaijan/

In the meantime, campaigners for electoral reform have taken the colour purple as their badge... and when Gordon Brown was announcing his resignation, guess what colour his tie was? Yep.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/10/general-election-2010-gordon-brown

Cameron meanwhile is still wearing blue.

If he's spotted wearing a purple tie...

A Job Well Done

2010-05-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

I follow a wonderfully-named blog called "lathophobic aphasia" http://giaklamata.blogspot.com/
by a chap with a lot of EFL under his belt and an excellent take on the joys and sorrows of the English teacher's life. He's been talking recently about "learner English" aka comic learner errors, a subject beloved of all EFLers.

As it happens I've been marking and reviewing writing exams. Here are a few of the delights I've stumbled upon (the topic was whether old people should be cared for by their families or in special homes).

I think tace car for the old People it well be like wine you take care for your sealdrenor your babey.

Thay need more care for food ho thiy eat and take abath and sleap also and if thay sike not soud yo bo you well thake him far the housebetal.

In my opening the beast please to be old people fine is home with family.

Another thing meny some of the people desn’t like niers, you wan’t help you one in you family.

I conclusion I hop every one to do what the beast for old people in my opeining everyone do this with any pearse.

Alson, the children meby bess in oyr live our withe them family so the will not tok care with bernts.

Meade the havi some desses and the should get madecen but the forget takeit then they will be very secia and ne one the new.

And I listen all people put the old man in the sameplaces.

Some people now put your mother and father of you old people on the special hospital and no need old people on your house.

In conctusion…

The interesting thing to note is that it's usually pretty clear what they are trying to say - in fact, if you read it aloud and allow for L1 interference (my students are Gulf Arabic speakers) and pronunciation confusions (p/b for instance), indifference to vowels in spelling, plus inadequate spacing between words, you can understand almost everything here - though I drew a blank on part of the second sentence - soud is presumable should, but yo bo I do' 'no'.

So the students are, in spite of appearences, getting somewhere. The problems are

a) knowing where to start in helping them

b) overcoming the horrors that the "surface errors" inspire in any teacher and most native speakers.

Anyway, reading these scripts made me feel fairly secia, but I try not to get mad(ecen). Definitely not soud yo bo, bro!

In conctusion, (but certainly not in my opening) I’m going home.

It’s the beast place for me.

I’ll check there are no old people on my house, especially not the mother and father of you old people, who must be ancient.

I’m planning to do something tonight that will be like wine.

A LOT like wine.

More politics, sorry

2010-05-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

People were turned away at the polling stations. Young people were told to allow older people to go first, then by the time they got to the head of the queue they told the polling station was closed. In some places not enough ballot papers had been printed and people could not vote. In some places, would-be voters sat in to demand their right to vote.
Third world?
Nope, the UK.
Not everywhere, not all over, and almost certainly thanks to incompetence and antiquated systems rather than actual fixing - although there are enquiries going on in some places into the use of the postal vote, where suspiciouly large numbers of voters have suddenly registered from the same address.
It was a hard fought election and the majorities in many places are very slim - just a few votes between winning and losing the seat. In Oxford West, for example, after an ill-tempered campaign in which the sitting MP was described on leaflets as "Doctor Death", the winner polled only 176 more votes than he did.
What effect has the lost votes had around the country? Nobody knows, and the only way to find out is for individuals who believe they have been prevented from voting to mount an individual challenge in that constituency. If their challenge succeeds there can be a by-election.
Our voting system is often described as "first past the post". This is true on two levels. In the constituencies, the winner is the one with more votes than the next candidate, even if it's only one more vote. In Parliament, the party with more seats than the others gets to form the government - which means that all the ministries are headed only by members of that party, only that party gets to sit in the Cabinet (the inner circle) and the leader of that party becomes Prime Minister. Latterly, ministers and Cabinet members have even been appointed directly by the Prime Minister not necessarily from members of parliament (or, conceivably, even from members of the party of government), so important roles in government are taken by people who have not been elected to anything at all. Lord Young, part of Thatcher's government, was the first I can remember.
The situation at the moment is that the Conservatives, polling a minority of the votes cast overall, have more seats than the next party, Labour, but not more than Labour, the Lib Dems and all the small parties put together. This means that if they tried to pass any laws - especially laws that not all their own members agree with - the other parties could defeat them, and a government that cannot legislate cannot govern.
But Labour and the Lib Dems, polling a majority of the votes cast between them, don't have enough seats to pass laws if the Conservatives (and perhaps a few of the parties with one or two or three seats between them) oppose them.
So neither party can govern.
It's an irony of the situation that the two major parties which campaigned on electoral reform demonstrated the need for it by getting 52% of votes cast, but not 52% of the seats. The Lib Dems, for example, with nearly a quarter of the popular vote, got fewer than 10% of the seats.
This is why the negotiations between the Tories (who oppose electoral reform) and the Lib Dems (for whom it has been a platform for many years, and who stand to benefit most from it) are a bit delicate just now...
In the meantime, how would we know whether our elections are fair, or whether unfair tactics have been used, or whether local parties have lied to the electorate? Oddly, there is no central data monitoring, as Ben Goldacre explains:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/08/bad-science-election-data

Sexual Abuse

2010-05-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

I blogged below about the sexual abuse which, it turns out, went on for many years at the school where my 3 brothers went and where my father taught from 1948 until his death in 1974. The school, Saint Benedict's, is run by the Benedictine monks of Ealing Abbey, which was also our parish church. One of the convicted abusers, David Pearce, was a priest at the Abbey. The other, John Maestri, was the maths teacher, and a family friend.
Since writing about it I have heard credible accounts from a close friend and ex-pupil at St Ben's of abuse by Maestri and by another monk, Fr Lawrence Soper, who is currently in Rome. Other allegations that I have heard indirectly name two other monks at the Abbey - one still alive, and in fact one of the trustees of the school, and the other now dead.
The deceased monk was head of the junior school when we were small - and I remember that my mother told me my elder two brothers did not start at the school at the age of five, as they could have done, because my father did not want them around this monk. I always assumed it was because that monk was heavy-handed with the cane, but now I wonder.
Well, Pearce was finally brought to justice after 30 years of complaints against him. In the last few years he was put on a restricted ministry and supposed to have no access to children (officially, according to the Abbey, the "protect him against false accusations"). Nevertheless, he was still able to find a minor to abuse. He was jailed for 8 years, after the court heard the testimony of some of his victims.
Fine, but on Friday his appeal to have his sentence reduced was heard, and it succeeded. He's now down to 5 years. The really extraordinary thing was the statement of the judge, as reported in the Times, that Pearce's activities should not be "elevated to the status of a crime". In which case, why on earth is sexual abuse of minors prosecuted at all?
What the judge seems to mean is that Pearce manipulated, groomed, emotionally blackmailed, groped, fondled and snogged boys in his care, and for whom he was headmaster, priest, and possibly also their confessor. He did not penetrate them, so it's not serious. Possibly also the judge thinks that as they were boys (some as young as 11) it doesn't matter so much. Well, we all know what boys are like, don't we?
In the words of Private Eye "this justice should be seen to be done."

2010-05-08T02:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I wasn't going to blog about the election but it's been so interesting, and I've been thinking about it far too much for my own good. Plus my Facebook status updates were getting longer and longer... so here it is.

Interesting times - first hung parliament since I was a teen. Good. Labour did not deserve to win again after their record in power. Iraq mainly, but also so many things to chose from... mainly, for me, from turning themselves into Tory-lite, cozying up to the markets, the "faith" pressure groups and worshipping power and empire at its most naked in the GWBush adventures.

Unmitigated Toryness would be a disaster to all but the super-rich and the financial markets -as usual. The fact that they've got a smooth and emollient PR man at the head doesn't mean they have changed, expecially when you get... well, I was going to say "get below the surface", but Chris Grayling, the man who believes it's OK to discriminate against people, is shadow Home Secretary, which is hardly subterranean. Home Sec. is the third most important government minister.

The Lib Dems deserve some recognition of the fact that so many people in the country actually support them and their policies. It will be interesting to see how it pans out and will require negotiation and compromise - rather alien to the British tradition which is usually more adversarial and either/or.

Electoral reform may be on the cards now, at last, though that will be a tough one for the Tories, as they had specifically ruled it out. Right out. Right up until the morning after the election when they realised they'd have to offer some kind of sweetener to the Lib Dems to let them take power. So they've promised an all-party committee to bury it, I mean look into it. Classic political delaying tactic, given that there is likely to be a second election within a year. I hope Clegg has more sense than to accept.

Lib Dems also want to end Trident, a hugely expensive piece of junk which enables us to destroy Moscow if we really want to. Why we should want to, and why we should carry on with this vanity project left over from the Cold War is something nobody seems able to explain, but both Labour and the Conservatives have said we MUST keep it, because... er... we must.

Historically, Labour was against Trident, and only swung over to pointless militarism as part of the NuLabour project, which has done us so well in the last 13 years. It did get Labour into power, though and cast off the spectre of the mid 80s when they campaigned on a disarmament ticket, were slated as tools of Moscow and thrashed at the polls (though a majority of the voters voted against the party that won - more arguments for electoral reform, of course). But the Conservatives are generally the more military party.

And the Lib Dems want closer ties with Europe, which is a deep rift among the Conservatives still.

Tricky then for the Cons to work with Lib Dems, though as Cameron really really really wants to be PM and as his leadership style is extremely "kitchen cabinet" and centralised, he may manage to force his backwoodsmen and women to accept a deal, at least for the moment. He has a following wind in terms of media support, for now, and could possibly manage by offering deals and then blaming the Lib Dems if they fall through.

Tricky also for the Lib Dems to work with Labour, though they are in many ways more naturally allied. Labour promised electoral reform in 1997 (though forgot about it when they won a landslide under the winner-takes-all system), for instance. But Labour is very grubby and shopsoiled now, and Brown is no asset. Lib Dems might well lose popularity if they seem to be shoring up a government that the country thinks is well past its sell-by date.

So, yes, very interesting. A goodish result, I think, (and the first Green MP elected, hurrah!) but the exciting thing is what comes next.

Standby for a power struggle within Labour coming shortly, and before that, look out for what Clegg does next...

Beads and bead-related...

2010-04-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

Beading is currently my new craze... not sure whether it's the scent of the glue or what, but I find making paper beads quite addictive. It's getting too hot to go our much so indoor activities are more appealling. Plus, I had a rush of blood to the head, accompanied by a rush of money from the pocket, at the Global Village this year, and bought lots of beads and semi precious stones to work into jewellery.
Then a friend who is an absolute beading fiend, found all these amazing shops in Dragonmart...
For those who don't know the Plague Pits of Mammon -- sorry, I mean Dubai -- Dragonmart is an enormous wobbly warehouse on the outskirts (insofar as Dubai, which has no centre, can be said to have outskirts.
Dragonmart is different from the average Mall in that it is entirely Chinese, mainly tiny little stalls and shops with names like Modern Appliance Trading Co (which sells, as you'd expect from the name, frilly baskets). Basically it is a cross between a souk, a Shanghai slum and the very biggest mound of tat you have ever seen or imagined in your life multiplied by ten.
Wander round there for five minutes and you wonder just how deep the Chinese tat mines can possibly be. Lots of shops sell beading suplies and what the jewellery trade rather bafflingly calls findings (the bits of wire, catches, spacer beads, etc that you string your beads on or use to stop them falling off the chain. I plundered.
Making paper beads, though, requires very little equipment - just toothpicks, glue, something to stick the toothpick into (I was using half a potato at first, but I've since acquired an old piece of polystyrene which does very well), scissors and paper. Thin magazine paper is good, but I've also had some fun with wrapping paper. I get pretty stuck on experimenting with shapes and colours. So far I've made two necklaces and a pair of earrings from paper beads and have dozens of beads in various stages of completion on the go.

In theory...

2010-03-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

Recently I exchanged a number of emails with my supervisor and the Human Resources person where I work, which resulted in a deeply philosophical conundrum.

The background to this is that I am leaving in June as I don't want to renew my contract here, but have accrued 16 days of leave that I am due.

First, I wanted to know what would happen about that leave I'm owed.

Instant and very clear answer from HR. I will be paid in lieu. Great.

Next I wanted to know if I could take a single day of that leave during the semester. There is one working day coming up when (for that day only) I have no teaching. I also won't be required for exams or for marking sessions. Could I take that single day off?

The HR person said "Certainly, if your supervisor approves it."

The Supervisor said "It's unprecendented and it can't be done."

I said "OK, but HR seem to think differently."

Supervisor replied "HR was talking theoretically about institution policy. Honestly I've asked "higher" and "higher" says it can't be permitted."

I thought of emailing Supe to elucidate the difference between a theoretical policy of yes which always in practice comes in as a no, and an actual and admitted policy of no... but I decided not to.

Just as well.

I'm pretty sure Supe doesn't see there is one.

(It occurs to me to hope that the payment in lieu will not merely be a theoretical one...)

A roof over my head

2010-03-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

Been very quiet for a while. Partly work and then holiday in England, during which I was offline for a massive 12 days (and saw the sun once, for half of a morning). Then back at work and job hunting - ah dear. I may just have possibly ever so very slightly mistimed my resignation, as the job market is pretty poor at the moment in my target areas and lots of people I would like to work for not hiring. Hey ho... Will be attending the job fair at TESOL Arabia next weekend and hope there will be a couple of possibles.
In the meantime, work on the tiny hovel in England has restarted and moved into phase ... what is it now? Phase 97? 324? I've lost track. Anyway, after the stripping of the carpets and the cleaning which was more like archaology, and tearing out the hideous fireplace, and putting in the woodburner, and new windows, and new doors, and a new boiler, and central heating, and underpinning the walls... we're now getting a new swing-a-rat kitchen and swing-an-undersized gerbil bathroom, yippee yiy yay!
Naturally as things get replaced or improved new defects occur - I was alarmed by a leaky roof blackened with mould, and news that the roof over the bathroom (a flat roof cobbled together in the 80s) was in a bad way. So we're getting a sedum roof put in (aka a living roof or a green roof), which I've thought was a great idea ever since I heard of them. Basically the roof is planted with a dense carpet of small plants that don't need that much care, so that instead of yet more tarmac - bad for runoff and flooding - there is at least something busy photosynthesising away. It won't reverse global warming, but it is quite a nice thing. Pity I can't grow veg on it (not strong enough for any depth of soil - the roof I mean, not me) as our garden space is the size of a tablecloth.
So it looks likely that come July I'll be back in the UK and jobhunting at a bad time, but I will have a niceish house to do it in. Count blessings... ONE.

Gruesome

2009-12-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

I grew up a Roman Catholic, in a London parish attached to Ealing Abbey, a Benedictine foundation. The Abbey also runs a school, run and taught by monks and lay teachers, where all 3 of my brothers went, and where my father taught History, Classics and advised on careers.

In recent years one of the monks (a former head of the junior school) was accused of sexually abusing boys, suspended from serving, and investigated by the police. Dom David Pearce was found guilty and jailed for 8 years. The Charity Commission has investigated and criticised the Abbey for its handling of the case - you can find the report here:

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/investigations/inquiryreports/benedicts.asp

I remember Father David well - and remember that my brothers and their friends disliked him greatly. Perhaps now I have some idea why that was!

What makes it more appalling and baffling is that he continued to abuse after he was suspended and under police investigation. I can't imagine what he was thinking (was he mad? was he addicted? did he think he was immune?)

It also seems pretty clear that the Abbey did not do enough to protect young people in their care, and that they need to sort themselves out. The Abbot apparently apologised during Mass to the parishioners, but I wonder whether lessons have actually been learned.

A personal sideline on the story - and a terrible warning, if you like - is that David Pearce had himself been a pupil at St Benedicts. He left the 6th Form intending to become a dentist, but my father, who was his careers advisor, made the following note about him: "priest?"

For years after my father's death, my mother mentioned that as an example of my Dad's wonderful insight....

Arrghhhh!

Of course if Pearce had gone on to become a dentist and abused young lads from that position of trust, the profession of dentistry would have been horribly tarnished instead.

Err... yes... ahum... hi there

2009-09-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

Been very quiet for a long time - variations between nothing to report, and oh-Lordy-so-much-going-on-it's-the-last-thing-I-can-do-to-blog-about-it.

Well, that's holidays for you.

I'm now back in the UAE, back at work, and no less busy than ever. A bit fitter and thinner (marginally) and taking steps to become more so. Back behind a screen more often, as well.

So there will be more to come.

Some of it might even be good.

Watch this space, as they used to say on telly.

Meanwhile... back at the farm...

2009-06-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

While all this has been going on, back in my home country we're having an election.

Not the kind of election most people get excited about, where you might have an outside chance of changing the government. Nor the kind of election that it seems from away over here my compatriots would rather enjoy at this stage, with greedy, self serving MPs swinging from every lamppost.

No, it will be one of those elections people don't normally bother to get out of bed for. Except tomorrow, I rather think they will.

We (or rather they, as I missed my registration) are voting for local government councillors and members of the European parliament... I'm ashamed to say I don't know who my MEP is. This sort of thing would normally attract a turnout of about 20% of the electorate, in a good year. Tomorrow I hope it will be massive. The opinion polls don't really know how to read it: bad for Labour, the party in power (a massive recession followed by a huge scandal... lovely!) but possibly also bad for the Tories (umm... what's different about them on policy?... errr....).

One curious thing over the last 20 years or so is that there has become essentially no difference in policy between the two main parties: both agree with more privatisation, even of social services like the NHS, deregulation of business and financial services (and we now know how well that has worked out) and increasing authoritarian control.

We haven't, so far as I am aware, ever had a national debate about whether we wanted these things (in fact I seem to recall all parties insisting that they were NOT trying to sell off the NHS, the London Underground, schools, the Post Office, while all the time the creeping tides of privatisation lapped ever higher around them).

But where there is no difference in belief, parties have to compete on their competence and honesty. Nobody's debating what the government should do, just whether party x or party y will manage to do it without leaving top secret information on the 7.15 train to Waterloo, and without vastly enriching its MPs at public expense.

The Labour party has failed on both counts, but the Conservatives have been equally corrupt, and show no signs of being any more efficient.

So it's an interesting election all right. I wish I was there.

Playing God with the Mogs

2009-06-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

Roxy's kittens are thriving and rampaging around the house.

While still feeding them milk, Roxy celebrated the kits' near-independence by ... going on heat and rampaging around the house singing her eerie love songs. I suppose that, having made a rather good job of bringing 4 healthy moglets into the world, she thought now would be the time to start another 4, and another, and another.

We thought otherwise. She was scragged, bundled into one of the shiny new cat carriers we've got, and delivered to the vet under protest.

He's a good man, our vet. Very critter-oriented, it took 3 visits before he made eye contact with us primates. All the same, we felt like murderers.

She was at the vets for 3 days, during which the kittens wandered about looking anxious and deprived. We did much the same.

Yesterday we brought the poor mog back, complaining loudly. Her flank has been shaved and painted blue, with a neat row of staples pinning her wound together. I sat in the back with the cat carrier open and stoked her head all the way home. At first she was just cowering and moaning (especially on the roundabouts - not surprising given some of the driving we could see), but as we got into our neighbourhood she stretched her neck up to peer through the windows, and I would not be surprised if she recognised perfectly well where we were.

Once indoors she was immediately surrounded by the kittens, who sniffed her, kissed her whiskers, stroked their tails along her flanks, and licked her ears. She licked them back. It was so clearly an affectionate reunion that we felt, if anything, even more guilty for taking her away. The next thing was that she lay down and fed them... at least, they all sucked away frantically and, apparently, we satisfied.

She is obviously aching and rather cranky - tends to crouch and moan, and walks stiffly. This will pass. But she has also lost some of her trust in us, and is not happy having us pick her up. She cowers when we come close, which is upsetting. It seems that she is afraid we will grab her, stick her in a cage, and whisk her away to a strange place where people do painful things to her.

The worst of it is that we will, on Sunday, when we take her back to have the staples taken out.

Poor Roxy.

She'll get over it, but I'm not sure whether we will.

so much to blog, so little time

2009-06-01T03:43:00.000-07:00

The pace just gets quicker, with teaching and grading, testing and final presentations all galloping faster and faster to the end of the week. Something in my brain goes dead and I find myself sneaking peeks onto the net...

And answering emails. There has been an email-based debate about teaching vocab here - basically, what when and how.

The background to it is that on the course I teach, a new target is for students to "learn" - which means they must be assessed - on the Academic Word Lists, the top frequency words in Academic writing.

This came in for the first time 2 years ago. So one of my big jobs last year was devising assessments... which we now have a bunch of.

Oddly, the requirement for the course was that students should demonstrate passive understanding of 65% of the list and active production of 60% of the list... I suspect the figures should be rather different for realistic language learning (I'd guess 75% passive recognition - 50% active production would be more likely, though I don't know any research on the figures).

Anyway, devising an instrument that assesses production is quite hard, and the freer the production the harder it is.

There is now the suggestion that some of the AWL should be devolved down onto the level below.

However, the problem I notice most is not with students learning an academic word list (they are good at "learning" - in the sense of "memorising the translation of" lists of words). It is with the more basic vocabulary - what is often called the basic 3,000 words.

Plus they suffer difficulties with forming sentences and word forms (as in history - historical - historian) - it seems hard for students to recognise what a plausible sentence of English looks like, even into their 2nd year. Obviously, this affects their writing, but it also affects their reading.

A lot of exam reading comprehension consists of recognising parallel expressions (so in a text which mentions "eyesight" the question might ask about "vision") - one expression might contain the Academic list word but the other will use a paraphrase.

Students sometimes say "I know what this means in Arabic" but being unable to find other English words is a barrier (and it also encourages students to plagiarise... another can of worms).

Personally, I think that more lists would be pretty deadly - another move, as if we needed more, towards the "memorise-test-forget" cycle a lot of our teaching seems to aim to emulate. I would like more reading - more extensive reading and more focused reading with vocab support. But it's harder to measure the benefits of that.

I even proposed a test - some students in Foundations doing the AWL earlier, and some doing extensive reading with vocab support - then see who does better in the AWL in Year 1, and in everything else.

I'd be willing to bet money the readers would not only learn the AWL's better, but score better in reading and writing....

Comfort

2009-04-23T02:21:00.000-07:00

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I got no sleep on Monday night.

A little after 5am on Tuesday, I finally began to relax and to doze a little - the sort of semi-sleep when you can't tell your thoughts from your dreams.

Naturally, this is about the time when normal people are starting to stir - normal people, and normal small furry mammals.

We have 6 of those in the house at the moment, and the 4 little kittens are just beginning to scamper about. To scamper and to climb, as I discovered.

I dreamt, and then realised that it was truly happening, that one of the little kittens was resting its head on my arm... and she was. She had gone to sleep under my hand, having climbed all the way up to my pillow - about the equivalent of me climbing up my house to go to sleep on the roof. And she's only 4 weeks old.

I was glad it was the one we call Big Spot (or probably Molly, short for Mollipop) who we are hoping to keep. She seems to be intrepid and affectionate.

Anyway, it was a nice scrap of animal comfort after a very bad night.

Turn-up for the books

2009-04-20T05:56:00.001-07:00

"No Miss. I don't deserve it."

I've never had a student argue for a lower mark before, but it happened today.

The student's reason was not having done as well as expected (as expected by both of us, frankly) in this assessment.

I thought the mark I gave was fair (well, naturally I would think that) and, true, it would have been good for some students but was rather disappointing for this one, who is normally excellent.

It's an odd reaction, but it reminds me of going into my university exam in Anglo Saxon thinking that I hadn't prepared hard enough and really deserved to fail (actually I did OK - not great, but OK). But part of me felt I deserved to do much much worse.

Seems to me there are two issues here. One is the basic feeling that performance and result, or effort and result, should match up, which most teachers (and students) would agree is a Good Thing generally.

Now, while performance should match result (in a sense the performance is the result) it isn't necessarily true that effort matches result. I have known students who speak virtually like native speaking teenagers but made no attempt to learn anything more since leaving their English-medium high schools, and I have known many students who valiantly struggled to improve from a very low base, and who made it to a high level of achievement.

The other issue is what the criteria for success or failure are.

When I went in to translate some bits of Anglo Saxon poetry my personal criteria was to produce a good English poem which would catch the meaning and some of the spirit of the original. Fat chance: I was nowhere within a million miles of that sort of ability or knowledge - but what I had managed was clearly good enough for the examiners to give me a creditable pass. (I still feel that wasn't good enough, but it may now be too late to go back and try to out-Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney).

My student's criteria for success seems to be, to be able to express her ideas clearly, 100% accurately and (very important to her, this) in a totally original and amusing way.

This, needless to say, is way beyond the exam criteria.

But it is absolutely lovely to have a student who has that kind of approach.

This is the student who called me over during a reading exam and pointed to a sentence in the text. My heart sank, as I was sure she was going to ask me for help - which of course I would have to refuse. Instead she said "Miss, I LIKE this sentence." Two days later she could still recite it by heart.

Conference workshop

2009-04-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

For a while now I've been posting mainly about moggies, which may have given the impression that I do nothing but play with the kitties (while waiting for my manicured nails to dry and in between making the maid's life a misery). But no, I do a bit of work for my keep from time to time (only when I have to, y'understand), don't have a maid, and must have the least manicured nails in the country, if not the region.

So ... one of the things that has been happening here has been a conference on Cultivating Real Writers. Due to my neurotic urge to volunteer for things that seem interesting without considering whether they are feasible, or indeed wise, I stuck my neck out to run a writing workshop for student participants. A lot of the workshops and presentations were very pragmatic - aimed at finding out how you could improve your IELTS score in writing, for instance - so naturally I wanted to be the light relief.

The workshop uses an idea I saw someone demonstrate about 5 years ago at a NILE (Norwich Institute for Language Education) event, done by a very good chap whose name, I'm embarrassed to say, I have totally forgotten. He was a writer and teacher, and it went down very well, so I borrowed the idea - ie stole it. I'm sorry not to remember his name - I would credit him if I did - but at the time I was too interested in what was going on to make a note of it.

Anyway, the basic idea is that, if you can get someone to write a single line, then you can get them to write another single line, and then another. I use similes (as the original geezer I saw did) and try to take it through the different senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, in roughtly that order.

The great thing is that neither I nor the students know what to expect, but usually (I've done this a few times in a few different contexts) what comes out is terrific.

I did the workshop twice, first with a group of lads from one of the big cities, then with a group of girls from a smaller place. Neither group had the choice of what to attend, which was rather worrying to me - they had been signed up for the workshop willy nilly.

Some of the images that came out were fantastic.

How about: "...darkness that burns until I look for a hand of light to pull me out of it"?

"Sorrow is grey like an old TV program"?

"Shyness is like a little flower in a huge heaven./When I feel shy I want to hide/so nobody will pick me."

I mean, wow! Images I would never have thought of in a million years.

They were not brilliant English speakers BTW, though some of them were pretty good, but the point is that they were using all and any of their language resources to write something fairly simple, but full of meaning.

If I have a point of view on the native speaker/non native speaker thing it is that a language belongs to anyone who uses it, perhaps especially for those who use it well, and to do that you need to play.

Also, most people told to write a poem would feel pretty shy, but writing one line - that's different. The poem is the result of the process, not the start of it.

Roxy the beautiful!

2009-04-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

Some time ago we took our little black cat Roxy to the vet to be neutered. "Uhuh," said the vet, "too late," and showed me two little critters wriggling away inside her on the scan. Ah.

On March 23rd I watched her give birth. She did this on our bed, with our active participation which she evidently wanted. She had a cosy nest in a cupboard in the bedroom, which she had checked several times, but no, she wouldn't stay there, and as the evening wore on, I realised something was starting.

She was alternately pacing the floor, miawing, and jumping on the bed to curl up next to me and lick my hands. I noticed spots of amniotic fluid dripping from her rear end. I got some newspaper and an old shirt of B's under her. She was groaning - a deep throaty noise, a sound I have never heard a cat make.

Something shiny and dark was protruding from her rear end. It had a metallic gloss to it, like the sheen on a soap bubble, only tarry black. It was about the size of my thumb tip, and didn't seem to be moving.

Roxy carried on jumping onto the floor, pacing, groaning and jumping up on the bed again. After a while I noticed that the shiny "bubble" had emerged further. At this point she started to push and heave, with great shuddering gasps, and with me stroking her head and telling her she was doing very well. In between gasps she was purring, which I understood meant she wanted me around.

The bubble had what looked exactly like a curly little porcelain teacup handle sticking out of the middle of it. I had no idea what this could be.

And then she heaved some more and the whole thing slid out, a shiny bundle faintly shaped like a kitten. And it was tail first - that little "handle" was the tail, about an inch long.

It lay very still, completely covered, like a cat mummy in glossy bandages. She pounced on it and fiercely licked it all over, breaking and swallowing the wrapping it was in. In seconds, she had a tiny, stripy, motionless little male kitten, quite wet, and still attached to her through the umbilical cord which disappeared into her rear.

This emerged with a push attached to a thing like raw liver and almost the size of the kitten, which I suppose was the afterbirth, and which Roxy immediately ate, licking up the blood and chewing through the umbilicus. This was when the kitten first showed signs of life, and I breathed again. She washed its head, and we stroked it and her.

A few minutes later she went through the same thing again. A black male, this time, a bit faster emerging than the first one and a bit more alert and moving as soon as it was out. A second afterbirth too, which again she chomped up.

Then a third - this one, black and white, was a little female. By now Roxy seemed quite experienced.

Finally, after about an hour from the start, and obviously exhausted, she roused herself, pushed and heaved, and produced a fourth, also a black and white female.

So... four little kittens all alive-oh. All born tail first, between 10.30 and 11.30 pm, local time on 23rd March, and each one we could see and handle from the first emergence.

Not much blood - quite clean and tidy, all things considered. She did not feed them until they were all born, and I was worried she would not have enough milk, but at first, they were so tiny and must have had such miniscule tummies, just a drop would be enough.

She's certainly feeding them well. They are just coming up to 3 weeks old now and at least twice the length they were. I noticed this evening that the stripy one has got little kitten teeth begining to bulge in his gums... not quite broken yet.

The picture is of them at 15 days old...

My, my, it has been a while...

2009-04-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed.

The expression "stupid busy" that I read in an excellent blog called "Sheepdogs and Wolves" lately comes to mind. In my case, that perhaps should just read "stupid".That's me at work, but at home also been a bit pushed.

We had our first guests to stay for 10 days, and great fun it was too - I got to do a lot of stuff in 10 days I probably wouldn't get round to doing over a couple of months, plus there was that panic that set in just before with me thinking "beds... we need beds! And spare towels! Oh, and curtains! Must have curtains!!" (Which reminds me, I still have to pay for them...)

The result is we finally furnished the spare bedroom (only been in the house for 6 months!), and thanks very much to our excellent neighbours for lending us another bed.

I think they had a good time. We enjoyed them being here, too.

Noggin the Mog

2009-03-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Noggin the Mog was our first cat, found stuck in a drain as a tiny kitten. We took him in, although my husband was adamant he was not a cat person.

He was a timid, homeloving and remarkably un-agile black and white cat with a baggy bum and an anxious expression, and became very attached to my husband. He used to wait on the doorstep for us when we came home (although we left the window open so he could easily come in) and as soon as my husband sat down, Noggin would rest his chin on my husband's foot or leg and gaze up at him with adoration.

He was our boss cat, as we added Sophie and Roxy since then.

We assumed we would have him for the next 15 or so years and would take him back to the UK with us when we leave here.

Two weeks ago he didn't come home. We have been out every day since then looking for him in the evenings and in the early morning when it is still dark.

We didn't find him, but I did find another cat which had been shot dead.

It is so unlike Noggin to be out for more than an hour. It did happen once before when he managed to get himself stuck in the car, but as soon as we opened the car door in the morning he hopped out.

So, we have to conclude that Noggin the Mog, aka the Nogster or Mogworth Portly-Feline is dead.

You've had the gifts, now for the shockers...

2009-02-24T00:59:00.001-08:00

We were doing a reading comprehension when suddenly a student leapt up and ran out screaming.

Now, my classes are not usually that exciting.

What had happened was, she was sitting next to a girl who is a bit of a skivver. Let's call her Girl A and the screamer Girl B.

Girl A was using the class time to discreetly fool around on the Internet. Specifically, to fool around on an Arabic website that purports to tell you the future (terribly haram in the Islamic world, BTW).

Girl A had typed in a silly question to which the website bot replied "Stop playing! This is not a time for playing!"

Which caused a bit of a sensation. Especially with Girl B, who is a fairly sensitive soul.

Gifts and shockers

2009-02-19T01:22:00.000-08:00

This morning I had set up the class to talk about an object - you know, describe what it looks like, what it's made of, what it is for, what it means to you...

Just before I left the house this morning, the youngest of our three cats shot into the house with what looked like a tennis ball made of raffia and flock in her mouth.

A bird's nest, with three tiny orange-tinged eggs in it.

We think it is a sunbird nest.

The eggs were still warm (possibly because they'd been in Roxy's mouth) but there was no way we could have persuaded a parent bird to sit on them again. So that's three little birdies that will never say tweet tweet tweet.

Oh dear.

A mog is a mog, and they will hunt, but having three of them does rather tilt the odds in favour of the feline crew as against the feathered prey.

But it did make an excellent talking point for the class. And while I would never disturb or handle a nest in the wild, it is fascinating to see one up close.

It's mainly made of something like reed or dry grass, with a fluffy padding. I can't tell if the fluff is organic, gathered from the Arabian Fluff tree (there is a tree here called the Ghaff and another called Ethel), or gleaned from the discarded matresses of itinerant labourers.

The eggs are cream speckled with orange, with denser colour at the rounded end.

(I wonder, about eggs, whether the pointed end is the end that emerges first... that's one for henhouse experiments.)

Anyway, that was my warmer for the class ... it went downhill from then on.

More on that later.

Never volunteer!

2009-02-12T00:49:00.000-08:00

A few months ago an email went round asking for volunteers to work on a college magazine - a magazine that would represent the students' and the college's achievements to the wider community.

I volunteered because I have some editorial skills and experience, and because I think a magazine would be a jolly good thing.

There is no funding for this, and an earlier pilot was produced by someone whose job was student development and promoting the college... and it didn't come off.

They got as far as a pilot is all.

Naturally, with no funding, everything has to depend on selling space to advertisers, but my boss said - I quote - that I "would never have to worry about dealing with sponsors" -

Well, we busted several guts, but mainly mine, to get an issue together and over to the printer for the pilot.

And guess what?

The funding from sponsors is not enough for what the printers are asking, the sponsors can't get their ads together, the boss wants publication brought forward to coincide with some random visiting bigwig... and somehow this is up to me to sort out, in my spare time (hah!) from teaching, marking, team leading, assessing and keeping up-to-date in the world of EFL.

Now, I do have editorial and writing skills, but I have no skill, and almost certainly no ability, to conduct financial negotiations or sell advertising space!

I'm an English teacher - you might as well ask the cat to do it.

The lesson, surely, is that when an employer says to you "you will never have to worry about X" you should start worrying about it immediately.

One of the reasons I like working where I do is that there are lots of opportunities to participate in the life of the college outside the classroom, and there are lots of ways you can enhance students' experience.

Should I just swear off this volunteering business?

Random thing

2009-02-10T22:28:00.000-08:00

Well here we are again, back at the chalk face (ahem, the white boards) after the mid-year break.

A student said to me this morning "English isn't really about anything, is it?"

I had to agree with her.

Topics we've been talking about in the last 2 weeks include

imports and exports
labelling of products
the incense route
smells we like and what they mean to us
the trade in spices
Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas
bushfires in Australia

Reflections of ELSS part 1

2008-12-14T05:05:00.000-08:00

Top of the head phrases

- is there anybody there? said the traveller (in cyberspace)
- what if they gave a collaborative working exercise and nobody came?
- the natives (cf Prensky) are not nearly restless enough
- the sound of one blog blethering

This really started to emerge for me during week 3 when it seemed that the tumbleweed was blowing through the deserted alleyways of the VLE. Then, when I signed up to follow all the participants' blogs that I could find, I noticed that only Patsy was following anyone else's blog.

It's early days, I thought, and sure enough Marion found her way to mine, (welcome Marion! - a 100% increase in readership already), but other blogs remained unvisited.

This connected for me with a suspicious feeling I have about much of the Internet, that there are an awful lot of talkers and precious few listeners.

In the context of the course, and especially when getting ready to work collaboratively, it played right to my insecurities.

I'll say something positive in a later post, but I want to get this feeling in focus first, as it coloured my experience of the course considerably.

Playing Catchup

2008-12-04T04:22:00.000-08:00

Well here we are at the end of Week 4 and I'm just getting to grips with part of Week 2, playing with Delicious. Most of what I've bookmarked has been folkie videos (simply because some friends I'm in touch with over Facebook keep sending me stuff that I wanted to keep... the problem with this internet business is how one thing leads to another...)

I can see the benefits of developing a group resource or reading list: one of the goals for the students I teach is to broaden their horizons, develop awareness of what's going on in the region and the world.

Also it would perhaps help with the ever-present problem of plagiarism, if students know that the resources they are using are already available to the instructors - although most of the plagiarism we have to deal with is not that sophisticated: a basic google search tends to come up with anything suspicious immediately.

Have also been doing some reading - the Franklin and van Harmelen piece was interesting.

Think I can see plenty of opportunities in students creating a Wiki... students often have to work as a team to research a topic and present their findings in report form - a wiki might be a good option.

One thing I have noticed as an English Language teacher with student writing is that, even with word processing, once things have been put into a given written form, they tend to stay that way... corrections and re-writes tend to focus on the rather superficial elements - "surface errors" rather than serious structural problems.

I wonder whether wikis would encourage more flexibility of approach to drafting and re-drafting? Also of course another way to create a shared reading/resource list.

Well... I hope to find out!

Facebook study group

2008-11-25T20:26:00.000-08:00

I was dreaming last night about searching for people on the internet...

Have been getting a bit worried about this collaborative bit of Week 3 as it's already Wednesday and the only person I'd heard from left a message that they weren't going to be around...

But this morning I found I have another follower! Welcome Marion!

And a message about getting in touch via Facebook.

I have to invite someone to be a friend before I can invite them into the group. That means I have to find them first... and it isn't entirely easy unless you have friends in common, or know which networks they belong to.

I appreciate the difficulty, being one of several hundred Sarah Walkers with few distinguishing features.

Oddly, if someone is not on Facebook at all, I can invite them into the group - provided I know their email address.

Which for the most part I don't.

Week 3 Facebook discussion group

2008-11-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

Well now I've created an Oxford Brookes ELSS discussion group on Facebook.

This was quite easy, but I was choosing options without a clear idea of what they would mean in practice - so it's a closed group (not open to the casual passerby), but I'm not quite sure how people can join it. I hope that makes sense!

I now have to find out if anyone else is on Facebook and whether I can invite them to join the group.

Any advice gratefully received!

Week 2 thoughts

2008-11-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

Week 2 is over and I have only submitted 1/3rd of the assignments - the blog link. And I managed that at the beginning of the week. Oh dear.

However, I have managed to track down other participants' blogs and signed myself up to follow them - and very interesting they are too. It was quite easy to find them thanks to the ELSS tag (I see... so that's how tags work). Memo to self, check I've tagged my blog appropriately.

Otherwise, I've been creaking my way through the VLE to find comments and posts, but all that seems to have moved out onto the blogs.

Not surprisingly, as the blog interface seems (to me) much easier to use, and gives a better sense of communications as coming from a particular source - ie a sense of people discussing something. The VLE seems somehow to anonymise, if that's a word.

Partly it's just the non verbal stuff, like everyone's blog coming in in colours and layouts that the blogger has themselves chosen: a similar effect to the tones of someone's voice.

Blogs, purely as a means of self aggrandisement, are quite appealing. I'm afraid mine is mostly grumble so far.

Had a look at deli.ci.ous but not wildly inspired (and, as an English teacher, predictably irr.it.ated by the skin rash of punctuation).

Will go back to it and have another bash.

On programming the video recorder

2008-11-22T04:06:00.000-08:00

I did the BBC's 2005 online quiz about whether I was a digital citizen or not.

Well, the questions I knew the answers to, I knew.

And some of those I didn't know rather gave it away with their confusers - Christopher Wren has not been designing anything much recently - not since St Pauls and many beautiful churches, and Richard Rogers only does buildings (question 3).

Are we seriously expected not to have heard of them?

The other questions I had no clue about, but undoubtedly most of the information has been superseded over the last 3 years.

My score was 7 and the verdict was "probably still have problems programming the video recorder."

On the contrary.

I don't have a video recorder - or a TV - so I have no problems programming it.

It's not incapacity but lack of interest in almost everything that gets broadcast. (I do watch DVDs on the laptop).

I know the quiz was just a bit of frivolity, but why so insulting?

And, given that most of the information will by now be long out of date, what is it doing on this course anyway?

A classic confusion between the medium (the high tech equipment involved and the no doubt complex skills required to press the right keys on the remote control) and the message (in this case, the drivel that passes for 95% of TV output). Oh well, it's the Beeb so they're probably rather in favour of the drivel they broadcast...

Heyho.

Just call me an old fogey and have done with it - but it doesn't inspire.

Now, where did I put me cosy cardie?

A Question of Citizenship

2008-11-21T02:08:00.000-08:00

The course materials include a 2001 article by Mark Perensky which talks about having "digital citizenship" or being a "digital immigrant".

A curious choice of metaphor (are no immigrants citizens?).

I wonder whether I could be described as a "digital refugee", or with a nod to the tabloid press, a "digital bogus asylum seeker."

If we have to play that game I would hope one day to consider myself a "dual nationality holder", with one passport from the digi-realm and the other from the world of what I'd like to call "heritage technology" - ie books, pens, paper, etc.

Well I suppose it was just a modish sort of terminology, but I prefer the driving license metaphor.

I don't actually hold a car driving license either, and only a fraction of an ICDL, but at least it clearly refers to skills which are either acquired or not acquired.

In the meantime, another aspect of illiteracy strikes me every time I open this blog. Because of where I am based, the front page always appears in Arabic first. I can read a couple of words of Arabic (generally when I already know what they mean: it's the same with Thai).

I've now located where the "change language on this page" point is. There is no icon but I can remember the place - which will be fine, until the site gets revamped.

This is part of the problem most users face, and I'm sure "cut off dates" (Perensky's sensitive euphemism for age) will not make any difference.

No matter where people come in on this thing, they will constantly have to be relearning and unlearning as things get changed, "upgraded", and generally superseded by other things.

Of course the older we are the harder it is to learn new stuff - but that applies to everything else as well.

A sixteen-year old relative of mine has been grumbling about the changes to the Facebook interface...

More thinking

2008-11-18T02:59:00.000-08:00

Have done no more actual work on the topic but just a bit more thinking.

Part of what I teach here comes under the heading of "career preparation" - focussing on skills in English which will be useful when our Business and IT and Engineering students get jobs. The kinds of tasks we ask students to do include job applications, CV writing, etc.

For example an assignment was to find an advert for a job you really could do and write a letter of application for it. But naturally most of the jobs the students look for are advertised online and don't even give a land address - it would be odd to reply to an online ad with a letter unless it was specified.

Students tend to use email principally as a private-life means of communication, which means that they are not usually familiar with the norms of business-style email communication... sign offs like "I miss U" etc abound.

So it needs some thought and a bit of work...

Well there you are

2008-11-17T04:38:00.000-08:00

I decided to start this blog when I googled myself and discovered I don't exist.

This was not an exercise in pure existential angst (well, not intended for that, anyway) but an assignment on a course I'm doing from Oxford Brookes University UK about using social software to enhance student learning.

It's only the start of Week 2 and I've already had to rethink my entire existence... or at least, the part of it that concerns my professional profile.