Importunate Witnesses

I invite you to share a few moments of my Saturday morning. It won't take long...

I am sitting in the study, working on various bits and pieces for the church, when the doorbell rings downstairs.
"That'll be my new phone!"
The childish excitement lasts only as far as the hall. There are two figures on the doorstep, one of whom has begun to pound the glass panel vigorously. I open the inner door, and then the storm door.
"Give me a chance - I was upstairs ..."
But a horrid recognition is dawning. The woman - about my age - who was pounding the door smiles. "You know me!"she proclaims triumphantly. And alas, I know her - or at least I know who she is. The man behind her, bulky, big leather jacket, stubbly head, is a stranger. There is a moment when I think they are trying to effect an entrance into my porch, but I hold the door firmly, lean out towards them.  A few words of small talk ... "How are you? How's retirement?" (The connection had links with the school, though not recently).
"I'm very busy. With church, you know."

That does it. "What do you think of Armageddon?"
I go for the light touch. "I try not to, much ..."

But they're off. Regardless of the fact that this woman (a) knows exactly who I am, (b) knows that I have a long-standing commitment to the Episcopal Church and (c) has been this way before, she pitches in as if I was somehow virgin ground, ripe for takeover. The man is worse - he very soon becomes aggressive, and actually has to be shushed by the woman. When they see that I don't intend to rise to their questions, she produces a pamphlet.
"Will you read this? It won't take long..." and the man adds "Surely you have an open mind?"

Now, I have been through all this stuff in the past. I thought that we'd been clocked as unlikely converts long ago. I was aware by this time of the rising bile, the wish to be clearer than politeness was letting me. In a small town, you don't really like to let rip at someone whose family you know; it's not like the city where you can - as my nephew advocates - merely shake your head at them and shut the door. But I've had enough. They haven't brought my new phone, and they've begun to tell me about the Bible.
"I'm afraid I think you believe some very odd things," I say, firmly. "And I'm not interested in learning any more about them."

And they go. But I suddenly see how awful this doorstepping actually is. I used to wonder if we should all do this sort of thing - if this wasn't perhaps a laudable exercise. But now I see it as calculated to put people off at best, to give them a complete scunner - for that's what this visitation did to me. If we can't live in such a way as to make it clear that there is an extra dimension in our lives, then I reckon we should give up. Or try harder. And I don't think we should presume to tell people they've got it all wrong.

Unless they're on the doorstep, that is.

Restoration, in more ways than one.

I've recently discovered Rose Tremain - I'm still in that lovely place when you realise that someone whose writing you enjoy has written loads of novels, all waiting out there for another foray - and I thought until a moment ago that I had reviewed The Road Home, which I read in the autumn. This is an entirely modern story, the story of an economic migrant from Eastern Europe whose experience of London gives a new perspective that I - mere country bumpkin that I have become - found not unfamiliar. I triumphed and suffered with Lev, and was eager to repeat the experience.

Restoration was an entirely different experience, except as regards the skill of the writer. Where I had felt sympathy for the Lev, the economic migrant, I began with nothing but distaste for the physically unattractive, bumptious, facetious Merivel, whose infatuation with King Charles II and irrepressible appetite for food, colour and sex seemed to make him a typically Restoration figure. But as I persisted with his story, Merivel's journey towards his own restoration took hold, and the book had won.

Merivel tells his own story, speaking as it were directly and self-consciously to the reader, and Tremain's language throughout is such that I could believe in the historicity of the characters - if there were anachronisms and anomalies I wasn't aware of them. The life of the Restoration period comes alive in all its colour and contradictions, and left me feeling once again how lucky I am to live now. Merivel's original calling is that of physician. As such he is aware of the dreadful variety of ailments that can carry people off, the threat of plague, the fragility of life. The cures he has access to are horrific, and as for childbirth ...

The Restoration of the title is historical, personal and metaphorical. It's a great book. I'm looking forward to the other title I got for Christmas, but I shall save it for a bit. Joy.

How the other half lives with liturgy ...

Last week I spent some time in interestingly erudite company thinking about Liturgy. I tend to feel, on these occasions, like the class idiot - the one who asks the questions no-one else does - but in fact this time I felt I had prepared rather more than usual by reading up on the background and rationale behind our 1982 liturgy, and I realise now that as a result of the two days of meetings I'm still thinking about what we do .

I can't begin to plunge into the detail, but things that stuck include:
The perils of over-specificity even in poetic images in liturgy.
The fact that clergy tend to have a different view on the above from laity simply because they repeat it with greater frequency.
The 1970 consecration prayer is much improved by removing some of the parenthesis and repetition of ideas and the archaic pronouns and verb forms.
I found myself objecting less vigorously than has become my wont when we used the 1970 liturgy on Sunday.
I enjoy the company of academics, while recognising how studiousness has never been my forte.
I don't want to sit any more exams, even to become officially a Lay Reader.
"And also with you" is as weak a response as it always seemed to be.
It's usually clergy who insist that a Service of The Word is an acceptable substitute for a Sunday communion service - usually when the Reserved Sacrament is involved - bearing in mind that this is a service they need never attend if they don't want to.
Once you start worrying about gender bias in liturgy you realise how useful the word "God" is. But "man" is still a no-no, whatever men say about mankind...

I'd better stop. But it's always fascinating to step out of my own worship zone and realise what other Episcopalians take - or do not take - for granted. Andrew's recent post touches on that, interestingly. It's hard work being part of a huge, sparsely-populated - let alone priested - diocese. But every time I step out of it I'm reinforced in one central idea.

 I wouldn't be anywhere else.

Carver, Tallis and ghosts

We don't go to concerts often these days - we're as likely to be performing as listening, to be honest, and the late-night return, involving as it tends to an hour's wait for the last ferry or the long drive over the Rest, puts us off, rather, especially in winter. But on Saturday we made an exception, and the resulting evening was one that we both considered well worth the trail. It also achieved an interesting bringing-together of various elements in my life, and I hope to be able to convey something of this.

The concert was in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries, and I found out about it on Facebook and booked it online. In that simple sentence you have the beginning and end of a loop: I spent many a wet winter Saturday afternoon in childhood looking at the animals and the armour in the Art Galleries, now a very different place: to my recall the animal displays were all round where we sat as an audience, forming a sort of ghostly backdrop.  And to get there we drove through Broomhill and Hyndland and over Gilmorehill. I found myself wishing I still had my parents living in Broomhill, remembering Hyndland for both my early childhood and the excitement of buying the tiny flat we lived in when we were first married, thinking of the strange thrill of being around the university on winter evenings, whether for pleasure or - occasionally - study. I reflected on how carelessly the young me had felt ownership of that whole area, without thought or fear, how I had walked the dark streets alone and heedless.

But the concert - ah, the concert. The Tallis Scholars were singing "our" music - Tallis, Allegri, Byrd, the incomparable Robert Carver. They sang it perfectly - the best choral singing we'd ever heard live. Of course we knew their excellence - we have several recordings, and that's why we went - but the live performance overwhelmed me with its wonderful creamy sound, the perfect intonation, the flawless phrasing, the ebb and flow and the heart-stopping wall of sound of the word "Jesus" when it came, over and over, throughout Carver's motet O Bone Jesu. For Allegri's Miserere, there was a group of singers - the ones whose part includes the magic high treble notes - somewhere in a gallery above us and to the left, so that when they sang I was suddenly aware of the vast emptiness of the rest of the building, lurking art-filled and ghostly while some thousand people gathered at its heart. So there we sat, packed, still and silent, raptly caught up in something beyond the human in the unforgettable shared experience that we would, in the end, all describe differently.

More memories, more ghosts. We too sang in the Art Galleries once, when we sang with The New Consort of Voices in the late 60s and early 70s. It was hard to get an audience for Byrd and Palestrina in those days, and the few people who listened did so as they drifted about the space during an afternoon organ/vocal recital. We tried to sing in the way that the Tallis Scholars do now, we sang the same music (from the same edition of Byrd, I noticed), and no-one took any notice except for Kenneth Elliott. We even sang Carver, so I feel I know the music from within. I don't get singing like that so often now, for we don't have enough contact with others who can do it - and it annoys me to think that I sing better now in what must be my vocal twilight than I did when I was young.

We fortified our bodies with a delightful early meal in Konaki. The whole evening was a delight. And I have to thank the very current medium of Facebook for unlocking it all.

Wrestling with Swedish hornets

I managed, for reasons associated with where I live, not to see the film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, though I wish I had and still hope to. But at Christmas, I was given the book on the left. "You like detective stories, yes?" said Ewan. And yes, I do - right back to when I began with Edmund Crispin. So I began on my Christmas books with this one, thinking "fat book, get it read before I go on holiday". But I'd reckoned - as, I imagine, had Ewan - without the travails induced by reading the third book of a trilogy in which all the characters have appeared from the start - or so I imagine - and have, furthermore, Swedish names that stubbornly resist internal pronunciation and therefore memory.

That said, I ended up thoroughly enjoying The Girl who kicked the Hornets' Nest.  Perhaps there was an element of triumph in my enjoyment, but it meant that I ended up lugging the two-thirds finished tome all the way to Dubai in my cabin bag so that I could read it on the long flight.

Apart from the intricately worked-out plot that had me thumbing backwards to find out where the clues were laid (and to check out which Swedish name belonged to which plot element) I found myself revelling in the hacking that formed the backbone of the latter part of the story. (How sad is that?) I regretted my inadequate knowledge of Swedish geography and the lack of a map at the front of this book, and I marvelled at what Swedes seem to eat for breakfast. It was such an engrossing experience that I found myself bereft beneath the palm trees when I finished it in a late afternoon after a swim, and it was hard to start on another book - which I may also review - that evening.

Several people have offered to lend me the other two books - I shall be ready to start one in about a fortnight, the way my life is looking right now. And I want to see the movie ...

The tax man, the musician and the poet: a cautionary tale.

It couldn't last. All that laid-back, chilled cheerfulness induced by some out-of-season sun and warmth had to be dissipated, didn't it? So for pricking the bubble - in fact, for the prick of the year award - I nominate the tax-man. I suppose he mightn't like it if I named him, the almost-anonymous jobsworth who signed the letter to Mr B with a diagonal dash that bore no resemblance to the name typed beneath, and I actually don't know the gender as there is only an initial, but here's to you, AD, for raising a rant.

For a start, the letter dated 7 February comes in response to a written query dated 25 November which arrived in the tax offices on 28 November. Nothing unusual there - the workings of HMRC are glacial. The joyful tidings can be summarised in the opening of the second paragraph: I can confirm that you are still due to pay the amount as shown on the tax calculation that we sent you. They go on: You are obliged to obtain and retain all original documentary evidence of all allowances, reliefs, income, pay and tax, even if you are not required to complete a Tax Return, to allow you to check your liability and to allow you to inform HMRC of any income which has not been fully taxed. 

I hope you're paying attention. I hope you're doing this - are you?

The letter goes on, in impenetrable jargon, to tell him that he was issued a notice of coding blah blah for the year 2009-10 in January 2009. It's the following sentence that seems particularly impenetrable "HMRC have checked with your pension provider, SPPA Finance and HMRC agree that no error was made for which action can be taken." Quite apart from the weak punctuation that arouses doubt as to what the writer is actually saying, it looks to this non-accounting mind as if what they are saying is "We made a boob; your pension provider took it as being correct; it's not their (SSPA's) fault - because "they acted with reasonable care, based on the information they held at the time." The letter goes on: "You were notified of this decision on 2 November 2011 and that decision stands. I reiterate that your pension provider is not to be held accountable for the liability notified because it is your liability and remains due ..."


The letter goes on to make it clear that all these codes with which HMRC issue us have intrinsic meanings and that it's our duty to understand these and check them. "It is your responsibility to check (these) and to check your liability and you would then have had knowledge of any errors occurring and then would have been able to inform HMRC." Eh? Let's clarify the actual situation here. We have someone who has not filled in a tax return since PAYE was introduced, someone whose salary was publicly known and who never worked in a private capacity to earn extra money, someone who, furthermore, has been retired and in receipt of the same pension for the past seven years - and suddenly HMRC decide to send him a new tax code and get it wrong and it's his responsibility to check it? What precisely are these tax people paid to do?


The nastiest paragraph states "... you were fully aware that your tax affairs were not in order (as you have stated that you know that the incorrect PAYE tax code was being operated when compared against the notice of coding P2 dated 16 January 2009, yet you did not act to try to correct the issue. The evidence you have sent confirms that you were aware, (sic) of the situation, (sic) but did not act." Seeing that a different coding has been applied and automatically knowing that it's a mistake are two different things, surely?

Given that figures and taxation are part of a foreign country into which I have recently had to travel because of consultancy work, I know that these people blunder - but had they not done so quite so blatantly at the end of last year when they sent me two different codings within a week and then took a chunk off my pension as a result, I would not have assumed this. (I did not, by the way, ever recoup any money lost in the month when I was waiting for the repayment of this chunk).

Seems to me that the operatives at HMRC get things wrong rather too often for comfort and then send out these missives of hectoring and patronising jargon which threaten rather than apologise and assure us that they will take the money and there's not a thing we can do to stop them. We are expected to have a grasp of their arcane procedures, be we musicians or poets - even though their letters are so badly written that they could well do with the blethers' course in Plain English. Do the rest of us get off with blunders on such a regular and harmful fashion? Doctors, maybe? Dentists? (ouch)


From now on until I pop my clogs, I'm going to phone HMRC every time a bit of official paper arrives chez blethers, be it a tax coding or an allowance. I'm going to query every last thing. Join me. They asked for it.

Off the beach ...

Fort among the palms:al Bitnah
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Eight hours after arriving at Dubai airport, we set off on a trip to the Eastern Emirates. Yes, the shock of getting only 4 hours in bed made it feel a bit like Christmas morning, but I'm glad we did this first, on what turned out to be the coolest weather of our week, for we learned a great deal from our German guide and saw a very different side of life from the luxurious lazing of the rest of our holiday. The fort of Al Bitnah, one of the foremost heritage sites in the country, sat among palm trees far below where we stood, but the dusty colour of the stone and the brown hills were a far cry from the blue-green sea that dominated our view from the hotel, and the Al Hajar mountains were as high and as rocky as you could wish for (about 3,000' ; the name is Arabic for 'stone mountains'). It was there that we heard our second call to prayer that day - the first had echoed over the fish market in Diba al Fujeirah at midday - and the sound, mingling with the wind, was strangely enough a moving reminder of what united rather than divided us. You can hear a bit of it on the short clip that sits next to this photo on flickr - click through to find it. At another fort, Fujeirah, I saw four green parrots fly past.

It was on this trip that I found out that fewer than 20% of the population of Dubai are native emiratis - everyone else is a foreigner, and we heard English all over the place as the common means of communication. We realised even sooner, in the car that took us from the airport to the hotel, the dire working hours of many of them; our driver, from Nepal, often worked 18 hours a day. But out here at the foot of the mountains we saw a man herding goats among the palms, and you can see vegetables growing on the bottom left of the photo. And I learned the origin of the double rope that forms part of the Bedouin headgear: it was used to hobble a man's camel in the desert.

Camel in pickup, courtesy of Mr B

On the road back to Dubai, we were told that the fences along the side of the road were partly to restrain wandering camels - we saw some, grazing on bits of scrub - and partly to protect the desert from - wait for it - picnickers. Apparently the natives of Dubai like to return to their desert roots every now and then, so pile into their big 4x4s and head out of town, to park just off the road and fire up a barbeque. The story went that they aren't too careful with their rubbish, and it's easier to clean up after them if it's not scattered over acres of empty sand. Talking of camels: you may think of the ships of the desert and all that stuff, but did you know they tend to be flown in to the UAE from the Sudan? Or that they sometimes travel rather like sheepdogs, in the back of a pickup?

I fear I may be becoming a bore. I shall desist. I couldn't live there, for all sorts of reasons - forget the clothes restrictions: they have no home postal delivery, for heaven's sake. Imagine having to go for your mail and finding it full of Orvis catalogues ...

Why Dubai?

Why are you going there? they said. Dubai's a horrible place, someone else informed me. Never mind the oddity of telling someone that when they've just told you they've booked a holiday there - how sweeping a statement, and how ignorant of the possibilities that exist alongside the world's biggest shopping mall (we didn't even see it) and the enormous but rather inefficient airport. We went there, we stayed five nights which gave us four complete days, and I feel like a new woman.

I chose the picture on the left to sum up part of what was so good. The hotel had a lovely garden, full of pert birds that sang beautifully and were very tame, and there were comfortable loungers scattered throughout it. There were large, soft blue towels. When you had been on your lounger for a short while, a waiter - in a cricket hat and cream/fawn uniform, including trainers, would come over and offer to get you ... anything, really. We tended to opt for tea, green or peppermint.  We were easy pleased. And it was warm, warm like a perfect summer day in Scotland - hot, high sun, but a cool air which meant we could enjoy it for long enough to read, sleep, chat. I suppose it was about 24ºC in the first part of the afternoon. We both swam in the sea - though to be honest, it was so exhilaratingly bouncy that we tended to surf the waves rather than swim. The sea was also a bit Scottish summer - not warm, not the way it is when it's 40º on the beach - and had the same bracing effect. I loved it.

We were asked when we came home if we'd been able to wear swimsuits. Around the hotel, all we were asked in this Muslim country was that we wore a minimum of shirts and shorts - so we were spared the sight of fat men in semmits. On the beach, anything went, from the full cover-up of the black-clad women to the smallest bikinis and trunks.

What else did I love, other than the conditions that allowed me to relax so completely? One of the striking things about the hotel was the way the staff made a huge, international hotel feel like a bed and breakfast - because they were so friendly, so attentive, so ready to help, so smiling and cheerful even at the end of what must have been a long day. One of the waiters, a boy from Goa, told us that his name, Frezer, did indeed, somewhere in his family story,  have the Scottish connection that the sound if not the spelling suggested. I have to say I could get used to having someone anticipate my every whim - and even to being called "madame" at every turn. I guess that's what you pay for in the better hotel chains - the predictably good service and pleasant surroundings. The food was wonderful too - we never ate lunch as the breakfast buffet was amazing.

The hotel was right on a wonderful beach - Jumeirah Beach - and our balcony faced the sunset. In the pic on the right you can see the black shapes of the people who seemed to congregate there in the evening just to stand and watch as the sun dived towards the line of the Arabian Gulf. We walked along that beach in the mornings - it took about 90 minutes to walk to the end and back - collecting shells and watching sky-divers drifting down to land. It was spotlessly clean and felt somehow calm. I had wondered if I would be bored, but never got near boredom. I loved it.

Conspicuous consumption, a holiday like this? Well, no, not really. We could easily have gone much further upmarket on The Palm, for instance. Yes, it was an expensive four days, but it was a real holiday from greyness, cold, wet, winds, sinus infections, dark mornings and early nights, endless huvtaes. I will post more about things I saw and thought and learned, but this post is just to say it was worth every penny and I loved it.

Online Evening Prayer

I've just been to Evening Prayer - sharing with people from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen without even leaving my study. Google+ has opened up the possibility of online group video conferencing with its  'hangout' facility, and as far as I'm concerned gives a glimpse of how things might be much more accessible in our scattered diocese of Argyll and The Isles. The screenshot shows how it works - the liturgy on my main browser screen, shrunk to fit down the side of the new window that opens when you join a hangout, the participants down the side of the main picture which changes as different people speak. We were all wearing earphones, to cut down on interference, and for most of the service everyone other than the leader and one responder mutes their microphone so that there isn't the feedback of delayed sound coming through as everyone joins in the psalms and responses.

It all works amazingly effectively, even when we all unmute our microphones for the Magnificat and subsequent prayers and give rise to a disconcertingly Babelesque cacophony. As Kelvin remarked, rather like speaking in tongues.

What's not to like? It's free, it's useful, it only requires a decent connection and basic hardware. My earphone was a freebie on a tour of Pompeii and brings the necessary sense of intimate communication to the proceedings. I'm indebted to Kelvin for introducing me to the whole thing - watch this space!

Educational collaboration: a student's view

Every now and again there comes a comment on the blog that I wish could be seen by more people. Today I'm taking steps to make that happen. Last night a former pupil of mine left the following comment on my post about collaboration; with one stroke he allays the doubts I expressed and affirms the experience he had as a member of the class I describe. It seems one never gets over the positive effects of a bit of good consumer feedback!

This is what he had to say:

Duffy said...

Excellent post.
As someone who was a member of this class, I can honestly say that it was one of the most enjoyable learning experiences I had in secondary school - and for this very reason.
Helping the 'poorer' people in the class actually helped further *my* understanding of the topics at hand and we all really enjoyed listening and learning from each other - there was no patronising or arrogance, just fun. And yes, Ewan, we chose to do it; it seemed natural.
One of my greatest memories was doing 'Journey's End' - a play with an all male cast set in the trenches of WWI - and we had such fun! There were no inhibitions and everybody just 'went for it', which had a knock-on effect on other areas, such as our final S-Grade talks. We had the same level of confidence and enthusiasm, knowing that there was no judgment.
I remained in Mrs B's class for Higher, which was mixed, and I’m afraid to say it wasn't quite the same. The boys from the previous year (myself included) were thought of as loud-mouthed and over-confident, but for us speaking out and having good debates was what we knew – we’d been doing it since we were 12! We soon took the new members under our wing, but they never quite ‘got’ it and were fairly boring to be around as a result.
Collaborative and cooperative learning are now a huge part of my daily teaching and I always think about my time in English and hope my children are having as much fun as we had.

Seduced into education - again

I was seduced yesterday - my day taken over by the temptation to participate in an Education Think Tank at BETT. In London. No, I didn't actually go there - but having found the livestream online I lurked quietly for all of ten minutes before I found myself being drawn in. The first tweet gave me away, and from then on I might as well have been there. Seems that some of my experience is still relevant to the discussions that were taking place, and I found myself asking questions. One of them found a public response, and it is this that I want to explore now.

The question I asked, in a discussion on collaboration, was this: Does collaboration work to the advantage of all if there is inequality of ability? It might clarify where I was coming from if I sketch in what I had in mind as I asked. 

In the last ten years of my career, I made several discoveries about my own teaching. I volunteered to take an all-boys class for S2 in a year group with a preponderance of boys, thus freeing other colleagues who preferred mixed classes to get on with it. I've often cited this class as an example of the best experience I had as a teacher, and as an example of what can be achieved. In the end, I had the same class right to the end of S4. Three boys jumped ship at the end of S2 - they wanted to be in a class with girls. The others, who were all offered the possibility of reorganisation, stayed put. This gave a class of 28 boys, of whom five or so were expected to gain a Credit Grade 1 at the end of S4, and six of whom were classified as Foundation and destined to a grade 5 or 6. Completely mixed ability, then, but together from a stage when adolescent attitudes hadn't formed. 

I could wax boring about this class and the fascinating developments that took place over the year, but we're looking at collaboration here - collaboration between pupils. By the time we were in that first winter of Standard Grade, I could see that there were clear patterns springing up of collaboration among the boys. Most noticeable was the willingness of one of the very brightest in the class to sit down with possibly the poorest - intellectually, socially, in self-esteem - and quietly enable him to keep up with the rest of the class, pointing out how he could tackle a piece of writing, helping him to understand a bit of text that was causing bother, pairing him in Process Writing so that the limited subject-matter of the weaker student's writing was expanded and enhanced. He did all this quietly and unassumingly, and no-one raised an eyebrow. Other fruitful pairings grew up and flourished. When the results came out at the end of S4, no-one had a Foundation award. Fifteen had Credit passes, nine of them at level 1; the rest had 3 or 4. 

So it worked. But I used to look at what the more able boy put into this collaboration, and wonder what he was getting out of it. He'd certainly deepen his own understanding in the way I think we all do when we have to share our learning; he'd know he was doing something really important for another person; he'd feel a sense of achievement. But my job was to make sure his experience in the study of English was as enriching as possible. And I used to fret, slightly.

Now I'm not so sure. He's graduated from University and is doing well. He seemed to be happy with what he was doing, and he stayed with me for Higher English. Maybe what he learned from the process of collaboration was precious to him - I don't know. I'd love to have the chance to ask him. The other boy, who was a delight in that class, seems to have taken to a life of petty crime. His background was stacked against him, and I sometimes felt that the all-too-brief time of civilisation that he enjoyed during these three years was the only chance he ever had.

Maybe that's it. Maybe collaboration is the bedrock of civilised - and civilising - behaviour. And I haven't even started on the business of collaboration with one's colleagues in teaching. Guess that's for another post. Comments on a postcard, please .... you know what I mean...

To boldly go ...

There are some fascinating things coming out of the woodwork now that Scottish Independence is once more in the news. This bizarre star ship comes from a cartoon video on NMA.TV - do watch the whole thing if you feel the need to retain a sense of humour, as some of my friends obviously do. The trouble is that the old adage of not discussing contentious subjects at the dinner table now seems to apply, really, to only one subject: religion and sex don't seem to have the same effect any more. But politics?

Today I was discussing the effect that living through the Thatcher years as a Scottish adult might have had on those who shared this experience. I said in my last post that I was able to view The Iron Lady equably because my experiences of these years were history - but I know that I am still capable of the instant emotional response to a quip such as Kelvin Mackenzie couldn't resist making last night on Question Time - one about the possible name of a putative Scottish currency, punning on the word "Euro". Yes, it was funny, in a way, and I bet he just couldn't resist it, even after volubly expressing his opinion that Scotland should have its own way. But it grated.

Neither Douglas Alexander nor, more impressively, Nicola Sturgeon responded to this. Perhaps they thought it detracted from the real question. Perhaps it is better just to ignore buffoonery. But the casual assumption that it's always going to be all right to laugh - affectionately or not - at "the Jocks" (really) begins to grate. Apparently Michael Portillo, later in the evening, referred to the "infantilisation" of the Scots over the years, and he may well be right.

It's a fact that for a while people like me were lulled by the sounds of Scottish voices at the helm of the UK government. But now? We're not lulled any more, and Cameron is in danger of recreating the Thatcher effect.

Interesting times.

Cathartic Iron Lady

It is a tradition - or has been since work no longer interfered - to visit Glasgow on Mr B's birthday, meet rellies, take in a movie (fun that, to go to the cinema in the late morning with about 10 other people) and enjoy a late lunch somewhere nice (tapas, this year, and very enjoyable). Yesterday we went to see The Iron Lady. There were reasons for doubting the wisdom of choosing this over, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I'd read negative reactions from people I know, as well as glowing reviews from journalists I trust; I tend to favour the big action movie for the proper cinema with the super sound system and be content with more domestic action on the small screen; I loathed Thatcher and all that she stood for when she was in power. But the time was good for our day - time for coffee before and lunch afterwards so that we didn't fall asleep like the old fogies we become - and the consensus obvious, so Mr B spent a chunk of his birthday with Margaret Thatcher.

I was bowled over. It's a magnificent piece of acting on the part of Meryl Streep, for a start. Jim Broadbent was fascinating as Dennis - and the scenes of the young Margaret and Dennis fed convincingly into the couple we felt we knew at the time, and made the partnership credible. Yes, it brought back the rage and the frustration and the demonstrations I took part in; the sinking feeling after her third election victory and the sense of alienation from the British electoral process. But it brought it back in such a way that I knew it was over - history for Thatcher, history for me. What is not over is what happens to people as they grow old, and I was convinced by that too. I've read fictional accounts of dementia  and felt somehow cheered, and I know that there are wonderful moments of hilarity in the life of a friend who now suffers from dementia, but this film showed another side. Along side the chuckle-producing moments with the recurring visions of the deceased Dennis, there were the moments of despair, exhaustion, bewilderment - and the all-too-obvious physical effort of being ...  old.

I don't see me struggling into smart frocks and pearls in my eighties - don't do it now, for heaven's sake - but I was made to think about the illusions we create, the armour we put on, the show of strength that becomes pathetic as we diminish. It was this that stayed with me and had me reaching for the wine-glass over lunch, and this that makes me wonder if our reactions to the film are coloured by our stage in life.

The film has its entertaining moments, but it is not mere entertainment. For me, it was as striking as any tragedy, complete with fatal flaw and the fall from a great height. And like a good tragedy, it achieves catharsis.

Visceral learning

It's almost the end of the school holidays, and the thoughts of even this retired teacher turn, once more, to education. Is it my coming to the end of a job which involved setting exams for standardised testing? I don't know. But in conversation the other day I found myself stating the three most important facets of my own education - most important in that they are foundational to the me that is me now, today, the person who recognises her own strengths and is confident in the use of them and in the acknowledging of weakness in other areas.

9 yr old blethers

I learned to read long before I started school. I can remember the look of a particular book of numbers and letters to which I was devoted - and the setting of my memory makes me three years old, as my mother was in the nursing home giving birth to the sister who is three years younger than me. I can recall all too readily the excruciating boredom of listening to other children in my Primary One class struggling to read aloud to the teacher, of hating one poor girl because of her hesitant voice and the long silences between words ... syllables ... Her name was Carol. What I don't remember is being made to learn letters and words. They seem to have come to me in the daily business of living, and there was certainly no pain or resentment involved. And  by the age of seven I was reading Treasure Island.

For the last twenty years or so, I have known about poetry. That sounds very prosaic, at once sweeping and vague. But I mean I know how poetry works, why it works; I have learned how the right word in the right place can stir emotion in the reader, how a sudden shining image can transform a piece of writing - or a sermon, come to that - and I have explored these exciting possibilities in my own writing. And how did this come about? I certainly wasn't like this as a young teacher, let alone as a student at school or university. What brought about the epiphany?

I think it can only be described as a visceral need to know. Poetry, as my father's wonderful note on the subject began, poetry, like all the arts, is useless. There is no practical need for it - so it's not like basic reading skills. Somewhere along the road, however, teaching Larkin's poetry to seniors, I suddenly got it. And I have this picture of myself, on either a holiday or recovery from a sickie, sitting at the table in our dining room with three books open in front of me - the Selected Letters, Andrew Motion's A Writer's Life,  and Larkin's Collected Poems. For perhaps the first time in my life I was behaving like a real student, reading, comparing, contextualising, making notes - and all for my own enjoyment. There was no reason for this depth of study in terms of the teaching I had to do, but for the fifteen years or so after this event I was aware of the added depth, the insights I was able to share, the asides that would bring a poem to life for someone else. I did the same with the work of R.S.Thomas, buying slim volumes eagerly as they came out, even copying a whole collection laboriously by hand into a notebook when I realised it was out of print. I studied his style as it changed over the years, his subject matter, his autobiographical writings; I read both the unauthorised biography by Justin Wintle and the much more perceptive one by Byron Rogers. Two summers ago I visited two of R.S.'s parishes, and bought another small collection I'd never encountered. Two weeks ago, I re-read some of his work and was able to find the words to write another poem of my own. No purpose here, only enrichment and excitement.

The third leg of this self-motivated learning props up what I am doing at this very moment. From the day when I decided that I wanted to touch-type while my second-born infant had his afternoon nap, I was on the road to being what I am probably best known for now. I asked a friend who taught Business Studies if there was a good way to learn this skill; he gave me an old school text-book to prop up beside my portable typewriter and I started - two fingers, two hands, three fingers .... Then came the day, years later and back teaching,  when I sacked most of the pupils who could use Adobe Pagemaker and had to learn desktop publishing for myself, and my latest forays involve YouTube videos and Google+ hangouts. You could argue that there was a degree of practical necessity in there - the magazine would have died the death had I not learned to format it - but there was no compulsion for me to run it at all. It was fun, though.

And that last sentence sums the whole thing up. It was fun. It is fun. Nowadays, I'll not stick with anything that doesn't engage and absorb me. The idea of sitting for hours on uncomfortable bench seats at cramped desks listening to boring teachers talking about quadratic equations appalls me. (When did you last use a quadratic equation?) What a dreadful penance to impose on the innocent young. What did it do for me? Even in the English class I found a way to opt out and became expert at reading under the desk, where I would stash a pack of Mintolas to sweeten the experience (soft enough to swallow whole to avoid detection). Now, if we'd been exploring our own passions, I could have told you all about the vicissitudes of first century Rome - for that was an enthusiasm of my mid-teens.

And that too was fun.

Back to the stone age?

Photo: Campbell Bryson

I'm indebted to (brave/foolhardy/dedicated) local photographer Campbell Bryson for the photo that  I'm too much of a wimp to go out and take for myself - this huge tree, blocking Argyll Street in Dunoon, is very close to home, but as I write the rain is once more battering down and I'm here instead of out there and .... and ....

And this morning brought home to me yet again how precarious our comfortable life is. We woke in the dark, some time before 7am, to hear an ominous crashing above our heads - and then there was a flash outside and the whole of Dunoon went dark. The torches were downstairs, and I found myself feeling my way to the kitchen to find one - walked into the long-case clock on the way - before trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep again. Daylight revealed our neighbour walking across the road carrying a long piece of ridging from - his roof? our roof? Could have been either, for his house and ours and the one at the other side of our block are all missing yards of the stuff, with the remaining bits sticking up at crazy angles. And now, as I said, the rain is back ... Let us not think on't.

The lack of power was interesting. We have a couple of gas fires, so the demise of the central heating pump wasn't quite the catastrophe it might have been, but there was no hot water and I had to boil water for tea on a little camping stove. We'd thrown out our stove-top kettle too, so it was in a pot ... And then there was the matter of the toast. I made toast. Barbecue tongs and the gas flame after the water boiled. Quite quick - but different texture and a tendency to go on fire. Better than the raw bread, however.

All this took so much time - and even with the decision not to wash up until we had hot water, the business of dealing with the wee stove, finding a suitable pot, refilling same, finding more candles ... it was almost time to think of doing it over again (for coffee) when the power came on. But not once had I thought of how I was missing my computer, nor wondered what I would do with the day - and I realised that the ordinary business of living could fill your entire waking life with activity if you had to boil every drop of water for drinking, washing, bathing, if you had to light your way with a candle or replenish an oil lamp.

As it is, I bet we have water coming into our roof-space right now, soaking wood and dripping dismally. I'm not going to think about it any more. I've just heard that the place we rehearse with 8+1 has lost part of its roof altogether. Maybe we could worry about that instead ...

Glass baubles and messages

Glass bauble
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I was remarking with friends last night how traditional my style of Christmas tree is. We sat, side by side on the sofa, mellow with drink and food, and stared at it: multi-coloured lights, random decorations from the past 40 years, and fragile glass baubles, eight of them, which have miraculously survived their annual trip down the loft ladder and back, as well as two flittings. My memories had been further jogged by the sight of the Downton Abbey tree, dripping with lametta - I remember that my father always insisted that there had to be a generous quantity of lametta or it just looked silly, and who was I to demur? It's many years since I used these silver strips to hang from the tips of the branches (a third of its length to be draped over, the rest to dangle), but I replaced my forty-year-old multicoloured Pifco lights only last year (they had died in their box) and they in turn had been my attempt to replicate the inch-long pointed coloured bulbs of my parent's lights.

Of course, I've been on about all this before, as several of the links above will lead the diligent new reader to discover. But last night the brain wandered off somewhere, and lo: there were other memories. Like being sent for the messages. What age was I, for example, when I had to go for potatoes by myself? Maybe six, seven? I remember being given the brown leather shopping bag, with a folded newspaper inside. Don't forget to get the paper put under the potatoes to keep the bag clean. And off I went, up Novar Drive to the top, to the grocer's shop in what we called "Wee Hyndland", the row of shops opposite St Brides Episcopal Church and Hyndland Parish Church in all their red sandstone splendour. There were no roads to be crossed - presumably it was thought a safe errand. It was, however, terrifying. First I had to make myself seen in the queue of adults - women, natch - and hand my bag over to a large man with a bald head and a blue apron. It was all very well for my mother to direct him what to do with the newspaper, but words failed me and I watched despairing as he shot a shiny scale-pan of earthy potatoes - could it have been half a stone? a quarter stone? - into the bag in which I could see the still-folded paper reposing uselessly down one side.

I think I got a row for that, and I know I suffered mass disapprobation on the day when, for some unfathomable reason, I was sent to collect the newspapers for all the houses in 66 Novar Drive. It was a windy day. Much of the "pavement" was a muddy sidewalk beside allotments (plots?). People didn't like their mud-spattered, randomly-ordered newspapers. But I think I was maybe five at the time, and looking back I think there was either lunacy or child-abuse at work.

Amazing, isn't it, what can come to mind under the stimulus of a drop of champagne and the peeling of some King Edwards?

That's Christmas for you ...

Round-up

Last read of the year

I realise, through the Lemsip-induced haze of another cold, that I've been remiss in reviewing books recently. It's not that I've given up reading - nothing can replace that comfortable joy of having a good book on the go - but simply that other things, usually music, family or church, got in the way. So here, on the last day of the year, is a round-up of stuff I've read recently.

Unless, by Carol Shields, was an odd book. It was beautifully written, and I enjoyed reading it immensely - but realise, at several months' distance, that I had to check the Amazon review to remind me of one of the threads. But I loved the involvement in the mind of writer heroine Reta, her anxieties about her eldest daughter who drops out of university and sits on a street corner in Toronto with a placard saying "Goodness", her tussles with her insensitive publisher, and I was completely convinced by her wonderful conversations with her friends.

After that, I had a quick scamper through some old Penguins. Sweet Danger and The Crime at Black Dudley, both by Margery Allingham, convinced me that I was right to consider The Tiger in the Smoke the best I've read of her books - the style remained seductive, but the plots were pretty daft. They were really old Penguins too - the original green and white covers, with yellowing pages, foxed at the edges.

One of my birthday books I had added to my wish list purely on the grounds of its Amazon description. The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst, is a great tome (I read it in hardback - quite risky reading in bed when sleepy, lest it fall on one's nose) covering the span of almost a century with complete conviction and mastery. In one sense, it is a novel about a biography - a biography of someone we have already met in the opening chapters, just before the outbreak of World War 1. But it is also about Englishness, and about how people change over time, and about manners and customs and society ... and it is beautifully written and just challenging enough to keep me flipping back to check my memory against that of various protagonists.

Then I was lent A.D. Miller's Snow Drops as a suitably small paperback for a plane journey. This kept me riveted for two flights and the time in between, and I agreed with the reviewer who said it 'reads like Graham Greene on steroids'. Snowdrops are apparently the corpses that appear when the snow of the Russian winter melts, and the winter in Moscow is as much a character in this story of love and betrayal as Nick , the English lawyer, and Masha, the Russian girl he loves. The writer used to be The Economist's Moscow correspondent, and he convinces with every word. As I look forward to a trip to Russia in the coming year, I can't help wondering if 'grandma's summer' will be over and the cold air will already be threatening the winter to come...

I finished the year with another Josephine Tey, having so unexpectedly enjoyed The Franchise Affair. I had tried The Daughter of Time in my teens - I have a feeling my mother gave me it when I was off school with some bug - and completely failed to become interested in this tale of a convalescent detective solving the mystery of Richard the Third from his hospital bed. Who killed the Princes in the Tower? Perhaps they weren't killed at all. Was Richard the horror depicted by Shakespeare? Check the origin of his sources. The book is intricate, painstaking and fascinating. I shall never look at history in the same way again. The mature me loved it, and I finished it yesterday. The picture above is of the edition - now 50 years old - that I read; it seems to me a suitable illustration for an end-of-year blog post.

I have now started one of my Christmas books - two pages of The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest already have me feeling more cheerful about this wet Ne'erday - and there are others waiting in the wings. Now, off the computer and back to the books ...

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe ...

The kitchen is warm. No - it is actually unbearably hot. The erstwhile poet/musician, transformed for the nonce into Domestic Goddess, is hard at work. The oven is purring, for she has begun the day by roasting beetroot. There are still ominously red drips splattered over the white sink, as if Lady Macbeth had been washing her hands there, and sticky red blobs show where the cranberry sauce was poured, splashily, like a fine wine, into the warmed jars. (The DG was unhappy with the first batch, the cranberries having been over-long in the freezer, and has ditched it and made another lot.)

The heat is loaded with smells, individually rather wonderful, but together somewhat worrying. The burbling from the cooker-top indicates that it is time for the spiced prunes to come off the heat - star anise, honey smells - and it is time to find the preserving pan. Why, in the name of Christmas, the preserving pan? Well, the DG is very fussy about marmalade, and has just opened the last jar ... Ok, she uses tinned oranges, but there are a couple of red grapefruit to chop up (red again, and sticky) and careful calculations to be made about quantities of water, sugar ...

Why does she never write these things down? Why, indeed, did she not make the marmalade last week? Well may you ask. Could be the same penchant for distraction that has Mr B the musician back at the piano tinkering with an arrangement (don't ask) instead of getting to the church while it's still daylight for a spot of practice. He has already seduced the DG into running through a particularly challenging alto line (Tavener) for Midnight Mass - the other two singers are turning up tomorrow for the (only) rehearsal.

The DG finds herself thinking of Monty Python, as she shrieks at Mr B, currently in full composer/arranger/performer mode. 'Get up to the church!' (He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!) She tests the marmalade, which seems to wrinkle in a satisfactory fashion, slops it into more warmed jars, screws on the tops and leaves them to cool before attempting to wipe off the sticky bits. (More stickiness ...) The preserving pan is incandescent, and defiantly sticky. She fills it with hot suds and leaves it on the stove for when she feels stronger ... Oh God. The brandy butter ...

A friend asked me this morning how it came about that I felt I had so much to do when I was going away on Christmas Day. Quite apart from the fact that all I'm not cooking is the main course - and I always did that with a glass of champagne in my hand - I think part of the trouble is that just right now my head is full of poetry and music and I want to write and sing and .... and ....

Maybe I really need to be a student again. And 45 years younger.

But then I might have nothing to say.

Thinking of angels

Oh, do not try to make it ordinary
or even think of credibility -
this visitation by the angel
or many
to shepherds in their freezing fields
or Mary -
no: I see hosts of snowy wings
descending in impossible sweeps
of power, I see
faces taut and gleaming, and those
piercing eyes that penetrate the soul
so that breath fails, and when it
passes there remains a vacuum -
and perhaps just a single
                                          shining
                                                       feather.


©C.M.M. 12/11

Dedicated to the choir of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, for their singing of A Babe is Born (Matthias)

Winter Solstice

The silver tree is a white ghost

in the dimpled white of last week’s snow

as the pale glow in the eastern sky

shows where the short-lived sun will rise

while night withdraws itself to where

a thin moon hangs above the hills.

The coloured lights of the coming feast

Shine in the silent streets below;

The last cries of the drunken night

Are echoes, and the drinkers sleep.

The birds wait, frozen on the tree.

A prayer stirs in the coldest heart.

© C.M.M. 12/11