Memories of a Hillhead infant

It was this picture that started it. I've been rummaging among my old teaching materials and came upon a small buff book, with cartridge-paper pages that are half blank, half ruled in light and heavier red. This pre-dates all the other stuff I found, as it comes from my childhood. From 1952, I would say, when I was in Infants 2 in Hillhead Primary School in Glasgow. A chance remark on the Facebook conversation that followed its publication there brought memories flooding back - far too many for that medium. And it struck me that this is social history as well as my history, and I find it fascinating. That's what brings me back to Blethers after so many months. I want to write it down before I forget, or before no-one who was there is around to remember with me.

Let's begin with Christine Findlay, pigtailed in Primary 2. By this time she will be almost 7, because her birthday is in September. This meant that she started school in January, already 5 years and 3 months old and able to read. She is no longer playing with Plasticene and lacing cards (the latter, for some reason, a great thrill; something never seen at home).

Presumably for reasons connected with accommodation - and perhaps staffing - her class was called 1e and the school day began at 1pm and ended at 4pm. She travelled by tram from her top-flat home in Hyndland along Great Western Road to the foot of Cecil Street, where she crossed the main road with the help of a traffic warden. (He was once knocked down while she waited beside the road - perhaps this story will reappear). The lunchtime journey cost a ha'penny - the "Ha'penny Special" for school children; the return a whole penny. A yellow ticket at lunchtime, a blue to go home. Six months later her class became 1a and attended school in the morning. I cannot recall - see: it's going already - if the beloved Miss Buchanan survived the transition to morning class or if it was then that Mrs Reilly appeared, a red-haired, vivacious woman confusingly addressed by older pupils as Miss Forrester.

It is her class that provides this book, and some of my clearest memories. I can actually remember writing some of the legends in it, drawing the pictures to go with the writing exercise. In the course of it, we moved on to joined-up writing, copperplate. But before I go there, a vivid, stressful moment...
We were writing the letter l, lower-case, on the same kind of ruled paper as is above. And I couldn't work out how long the letter l (lower case) should go on. How many lines? Two thick and two thin? It looked far too long and wavering. I was distraught. We were forbidden erasers. Even when I saw a friend - was she a friend? - doing what looked a more correct version, there was no way I could hide my shame. I was a fool, and I blushed. That perky child in the picture - wearing, I notice, the regulation school winter jersey with the collar (striped in school colours) through which one threaded the school tie under the gym-slip - was feeling anything but perky.

But I progressed. My writing became fairly spectacularly neat copperplate - an example occurring in the day we learned about Diogenes. There is a wonderful picture of someone else's vision of how he might live here, but this is what I drew.

On other days we drew such things as the Glasgow coat of arms (so hard, these fish!) and a cuckoo which still looks quite convincing. All with this amazing writing underneath. Of other learning I remember less; I was bored much of the time during reading lessons because I was already a fluent reader and became cross at people who read aloud each individual word. Clearly, I was not destined to be a patient person.

I think there were forty children in my class, boys and girls equally distributed. The "a" designation referred to our birth dates, and all of us had our birthdays between September and December. We were the oldest class in the year group, we had had two terms of education more than the rest of the year. We felt superior, and no doubt we acted that way. We had embarked on our Hillhead journey. And the next time it's raining and I have little more to do, I'll regale the waiting world with a few memories of the next stage of that journey ...

I and me and chord sequences

Oh bother. I'm feeling a grump coming on. Having spent longer than is sensible reading old green Penguins - see past entries - I buy a couple of books at the church coffee morning. One, the first Simon Serrailler thriller by Susan Hill, I enjoy immensely and am glad to discover there are many more - though a chance conversation with a pal who has most of them leads me to guess at the dénouement earlier than I would have liked (deduction based, if you're old enough to recall it, on memories of the TV series The Virginian).

There is, however, one fly in that particular ointment - a solitary grammatical howler that stabs me to the heart in the middle of such a well-written book. As it's about two-thirds of the way through, I find I'm slightly on edge for the rest of it. Will it happen again? But it doesn't, and I'm glad.

And now I'm onto an American murder story - just started it. The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle. Follow the link and read the reviews - sounds good, eh? Set in Florence, interesting perspective on a murderous attack near the beginning - all very promising. And then the glaring errors slip in, one after another. "I" instead of "me" - that sort of thing. I don't know if I can go on reading it, for I suddenly find myself becoming critical of descriptions, names (Kirk. I ask you...), vocabulary. I develop a sudden loathing for the word "gotten".

I used to get irritated when Mr B didn't like some piece of music because of some poor chord progression or somesuch (many a modern hymn suffers from this). But I shall not be irritated again. Not by that, anyway. Because I am just as bad, and right now I'm sufficiently irritated at myself, let alone at writers who should know better or composers who didn't do enough harmony at school.

As I said: bother.

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.

Stringent

My current preoccupation with Letters from the Past means I have less time - and fewer thoughts - to post on this blog, but after a flurry of suggestions from Ewan about how I could enrich its content I found myself examining my attitude to what I'm doing there.

For widening my remit, so to speak, sent me hunting for such things as photos, references to the RAF base from which the letters were written, links to other sites. I became aware of the huge numbers of photos and memories now preserved online, and I was seized by the need to tie my contribution to a larger picture. But in a sense, the letters I'm reproducing have something more relevant to my own field of interest, something that makes them stand alone. The writing in them is wonderfully clear, succinct and evocative of my father's voice - the last of which is, of course, of more personal interest. Today's entry , for example, describes the weather as being "stringently cold". I've never come across that particular use of "stringent", and it's perfect.

These were, of course, the letters of one highly-educated scholar of English to another. I can only imagine the pleasure his references gave when the letters arrived in war-grim Glasgow. And it is this kind of feature that brings me to realise that the real interest, for me, lies in the letters themselves.

There is a whole box of them.

Progress Report, anyone?

This pic shows the end of a fascinating exchange on Twitter last night, one which sums up much of what I love about social media - but which in a way saddens me, in that the very praise that gave me genuine pleasure showed how slowly things move in educational circles.

The work that @digitalmaverick is referring to and commending to @janeyk419 is a blog, Progress Report", maintained through 2006 and 2007 by first a couple of S4 students and then by one of them. It began when the two girls came to me for private tuition; following an excellent Standard Grade result one of them returned to the blog for further mentoring as she worked for her Higher English. It became more widely known when I spoke about it at an early TeachMeet at the invitation of Ewan, aka no. 2 son.

So far, so satisfying. But note how long ago that was: four years have elapsed since that blog was being used to improve the writing skills of the students involved, four years since I realised my ambition to use technology to disseminate advice which in the normal classroom I might have had to repeat over and over again to different individuals and groups. The blog itself is as old-fashioned in blogging terms as the one I'm writing now, and the formative assessment given in the comments is what I've built up over a career in the classroom - no change there. After my talk at the TeachMeet, I expected a huge growth in the use of such basic technology to further all kinds of learning - including the fairly traditional model practised by me.

And that's why I was so surprised last night, to find that someone actually recalled this event vivdly enough to consider it outstanding, and that it was not in fact so old hat now as to be past mention. I suppose I thought there would be examples of outstanding practice all over the social networks, an explosion of exemplars that would render this now inactive blog redundant, a curiosity at best.

I left the classroom just as the possibilities of this medium were opening up. There was at the time one classroom's worth of laptops on two trolleys, and you booked them weeks in advance. Any one class was lucky to get them for a period a week, and the labour of tracking them down and finding that someone hadn't plugged them in to recharge put you off the notion as often as not. I don't know how much better provision is now, but I do know that more and more pupils have their own technology. I gather from some former colleagues that they find it a drag to use computers more than is absolutely necessary, but it's been 6 years since I was in school and I'm limited in my local contact now.

I do, however, have one question: how much detailed formative assessment takes place online these days? (unless it's one of these things that are not done any more) It seems to me an obvious area for widespread sharing, for teachers to be of use way beyond the walls of their classroom. Maybe there's loads, and I'm just showing my lack of current experience; in which case, dear readers, I wait for your correction - and your links!

Not a conjunction

It's happened again. I'm riveted by Sarah Dunant's latest novel and enjoying the intricacies of life in an Italian Renaissance convent and I'm pulled up sharp by a grammatical infelicity, such as happened in each of the other two novels I've read by this author. Each time it occurs in the latter stages of the story, and each time it comes as a shock because of the obvious linguistic skill displayed up to this point. What on earth happens? Does she too become so caught up in the story she's weaving that she grows careless?

I'll come back to this book when I've finished reading it, but for anyone out there who cares about such things, the sentence in question is this: "Instead, he, like she, had been a master of deception." "Like" is not a conjunction - I can hear my father's voice as I write this - and the subsequent pronoun should have been "her" - the object of the preposition "like".

Do dinosaurs say harrumph?

Linguistic delights

A bright moment in the midst of the flu-induced gloom which currently swamps my life. An editorial by one of my offspring of which the opening sentence was so beautifully constructed as to belong to an earlier age sent me into paroxysms of maternal delight. Further investigation revealed that there was, in fact, an element of parody involved.

Further explanation of this would be tedious to most and baffling to many, but a chosen few of my readers will understand why a Johnsonian turn of phrase in one's offspring brought a tear to the maternal eye and redeemed an otherwise dreary day.

And now I must desist before my own writing takes on the elements of an 18th century essayist ...

Of micro-tales and poems

The rain is back, the wind is blowing. Cowal Games weekend is upon us, and creativity seems to be returning as the swallows leave. Take a look over at Frying an Egg, where there is a new challenge to write a micro story; if you've not been before, the idea is to write a story of 100 words to a given opening, conclusion or idea; you can leave one in the Comments if you're not a regular. It's amazing how stimulating the extreme restriction in length can be - you have to suggest possibilities, hint at depth, conjure up a hinterland sometimes with a single word or by something you don't say. And then you find you have to be ruthless, losing 20 words without sacrificing essentials, and discover the result is better than before. Great!

And while you're at it, there's a new poem here on frankenstina: I wrote it actually during the Somme trip but was silly enough to enter it for something which required it not to be reproduced anywhere. Now it's free. I've already quoted it in its entirety during a sermon. If you enlarge the photo which accompanies it you can see the bluebells and the ridges of trenches among the trees to which the poem refers.

And as always, I wonder when - or if - I shall feel the need to write again!

Creativity and primeval soup

I've been reading Ewan's post on creativity - where good ideas come from. And already from the comments there it's obvious that creativity underpins exciting practice in all manner of areas, whether it's marketing or micro-surgery. However, we all tend, I think, to look at the places we're most familiar with, and mine tend to the traditional.

In discussion with Mr B I pointed out that while he is a creative musician, I am not. I am quite a competent one, with a decent voice and an ability to read at sight and to interpret certain kinds of vocal line - but I don't write music and I don't improvise on any instrument. I do, on the other hand, create in the literary sense, with most of my most satisfying creative moments resulting in a poem with which I am happy. So I'm going to wander briefly down the process which results in the creation of a poem.

I sometimes find myself in a situation where I think: I'd love to write about this. I should write something about this place/experience/emotion. And nothing happens. It's dead. Or perhaps I produce a line or two or several - and discard them. Hopeless. So when does the magic happen? It happens when a phrase or a line suddenly comes into my head and demands attention. Here's an example. I was standing in Delville Wood on the Somme battlefield, a place filled with the resonance of the battle fought there, and a line came: "and birdsong in an empty wood". I actually said it aloud, sort of fixing it. A short while later, down another leafy avenue "and bluebells on the parapet". By the time a third line crept in, I knew I had to remember them and dictated them one at a time into my camera as I filmed the trees. That first line - which ended up as the final line of the poem - gave me the metre and the mood; the rest followed.

At the time, I wasn't thinking about writing or poems; I was thinking about death and loss. The rest of the poem came galloping out when I had a chance to sit down and think about it, but that first line had given it to me. So the creativity came from something over which I had no control, and I know from experience that I can go for months without having a single creative moment. But after the initial power-surge, as it were, what happens to the result is anything but random. All I have ever read, all I have ever worked on in language, these feed into the writing, providing me with word-associations, imagery, sentence-structures, line-breaks and so on. It's unconscious, in a way, but at the same time I'm aware of it.

The other thing I'm aware of is the need to keep reading and studying so that my own creativity is nourished. If I visit a friend who encourages me to read a poet I've never encountered, I can find myself suddenly bursting to write - perhaps because of an idea, or maybe simply a sense of liberation given by seeing a new style unfold. And that goes into the voice which, I am told, is now recognisably my own. Add to that the immense reservoir of language and image to be found in religion - not just religious poetry, though that's there too - and you have the basis on which creativity is fed.

Come to think of it: when I was teaching English, one of the greatest gulfs in the experience of the pupils, one of the biggest barriers which they had to overcome in understanding so much of English literature, came from the lack of exposure to religious experience and language in their lives. I felt I had to fill in so much background to make their understanding more complete that it was like having to explain why a joke was funny. So maybe the answer to the question "Where do good ideas come from" has to do with the quality of the primeval soup in the brain of the creative person - even though there will always be many more people who will simply interpret and recreate.

Just like me and music, in fact.

The curse of me and my friend Elsie

I've decided there are some conditions - or is it some forms of conditioning? - which amount to a kind of curse. Nothing as bad, you understand, as having everything you touch turn to gold, but annoying nonetheless. This morning it was the book I'm enjoying. I may well blog more about the book as a whole when I'm done reading it, but for now I'm at the stage where the narrator is becoming recognisable, so that I begin to care what happens to him; the historical setting is enjoyably unfolding in such a way as to convince, and the grounds for the story are beginning to be laid in a way which promises further involvement. In other words, it's becoming a book I'm enjoying, in the classic manner of a summer read which won't over-tax the brain but is at the same time intelligent and engaging.

So where does the curse come in? Well, towards the end of Chapter four, actually. At the bottom of a page, where I read: "Most, like you or I, are content with the hope of salvation, and leave matters in God's hands." And I feel immediately discomfited. I know people have bothers with "like" and "as", and tend to use "like" as a conjunction - in fact, I'm almost used to that in direct speech. But this isn't even that. It's just one of these sloppy moments - and I feel the writer ought to have been more assured. In fact, I feel it ought to be impossible for him to write that. And it clearly isn't.

But then he didn't have my upbringing. I knew from regular repetition that "like" wasn't a conjunction from such an early age that I can't remember not knowing. I think I used to say "like I did" for devilment. But even devilment wouldn't have me write "like I". See what I mean? It's a curse. And I can't switch it off.

I'll tell you about the book in a bit. As long as there aren't more infelicities.

Brief encounter with an egg to fry

There's a new egg to fry over at Frying an Egg, the micro-story-writing blog. I've had a bash, and realised yet again what a fierce discipline it is to stick within 100 words. (I didn't, quite).

This one ends with a train pulling out of a station. Do pop over and have a bash; you'll see how to a couple of posts down if you've not been there before.

Fibs

I've been diverted from onerous minute-writing (though made more accurate by our new Edirol recorder) by a new form of word-smithing: The Fib. Look here for the lowdown; I am indebted to Jim at Living Wittily for the link.

Like a haiku, only different, this relies on a mathematical sequence of the number of syllables in each line, in which each line's syllables number the sum of the previous two lines. Jim explains it clearly. And, having had some interesting forays down the hill yesterday and before dawn this morning (the dawning realisation that the gritter is just starting its rounds when you're already committed to a black slope brings a pang of panic) I felt this was an appropriate first try:

Black
ice
sneering
as it lies
deceptively there
on the supposedly gritted
pavement where old ladies pirouette in lethal dance.

I could have gone on...but mercifully the gas man arrived. It was fun while it lasted.

Unlocking the brain

It's interesting what influences can unlock the creative bit of the brain. Having written nothing new for several weeks - and not having the slightest desire to - I found a poem forming as I drove home from Lay Training today. We'd been identifying themes for the church year and discussing with regard to Christmas the themes of birth and the reactions to that experience. Then I read an interview with Seamus Heaney, which reinforced much of my own experience of writing, and this acted as the trigger to go and do something about it. So almost 31 years after the event I found myself writing about the last time I experienced childbirth.

You can see the poem here.

Haiku challenge

There's a new writing challenge over on Frying an Egg - a haiku challenge rather than a micro story. I have to say this is a form I'd never tried before, so it was fun to have a go. Join us!

Pictorial story challenge

I'm back from the wilds of Herefordshire, though organising my life (mainly in the laundry and larder departments) has kept me from my laptop today. So can I just publicise the appearance of a new challenge on Frying an Egg - a visual one this time - to keep you busy till I blog again.

And I s'pose I'd better write a wee something there too.

The third egg in the pan

There's a new writing challenge at Frying an Egg, and I've kicked off with yet another tale of domestic triviality. It's interesting to wonder if this is result of the stimulus or if I simply don't get out enough - or read the right kind of lit these days. It's also interesting, once again, how much you have to chop to keep to the right word-count; I've gone slightly over this time but hope I'll be excused.

As a result, of course, the morning has passed without domesticity - other than ironing a king-sized duvet. I definitely need to get out more.

New egg to fry

There's a new micro-story challenge over at Frying an Egg. Get over there and give it a go - you were all wonderful the last time!

Stories, poems - and a challenge

The other day, over at wordswordswords my friend Alison launched a challenge: to write a very short story (100 words) or poem suggested by the words "She was just frying an egg when she expired". Always up for a challenge, even at an hour when sensible people are thinking of bed, I had a bash, and for the purposes of this post I'm going to replicate the result. Story first - because at this point I hadn't seen that a poem would be acceptable:

HOMELESS

‘She was just frying an egg, when she expired!’ Bella’s voice was redolent of Morningside, though she currently occupied a room in a flat in Canonmills.

There was a touch of the Ancient Mariner about Bella now that she had a story to tell. The egg-frier, it transpired, had been the owner of the flat, and that morning Bella had found her lying on the floor, the egg blackened in the frying pan.

‘It was the smell, you see.’ And you could tell by the frozen horror on her listeners’ faces that they weren’t thinking of burned egg.

Now, I found that quite difficult. I don't really write stories these days, and in the absence of a class full of weans to challenge in this fashion it's been 3 years since my last micro-story. But then I saw that I could try a poem, and bashed on:

SLIPPING?

‘She was just frying
an egg, when she
expired!’ And that
was that. No time
to worry about
clean undies or
what the ambulance man
might think.
Just the smell of
hot fat and the
cosy sputtering as she
sputtered to the floor
with a fish slice
in a clenched hand.
Death came too
early in the day
for her to be making
the nice scone more
suited to her station
than a vulgarly
fried egg.

I see I left the original quotation marks in, and shall continue to do so - think the beginning of Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" or Larkin's "Poetry of Departures" (where I prefer the demotic spoken interjections in italics) - because the original remit contained information about accent, and this was an important feature in both attempts.

But my point is really that in doing this I was reminded forcibly about what poetry does. For I was well over 100 words in the story before I realised it, and was nowhere near my point, that the genteel Bella was now going to be homeless and that it might be hard for her and that no-one was going to notice this in their reaction to the death of her landlady. I had to prune wildly and then rely on the title to suggest this theme, and my ending relied on black humour for its effect rather than anything more subtle.

The poem, on the other hand, has information in the spaces between the lines. Somehow it seems easier to suggest the sudden pangs of death in one word, and to create the scene by the repetition of 'sputtering' when no-one is expecting me to spell it out. The reader supplies the knowledge about the worry of having an accident in grubby undies - do people still talk about that, or is everyone fussier anyway in these days of ubiquitous washing machines? - and the realisation that a scone might be seen as more typical fare for a genteel lady of a certain antiquity than a fried egg. And somehow it doesn't matter if the reader wonders about the accuracy of their assumptions, because this is a poem and speculation is part of the game.

So when poetry doesn't rhyme of even necessarily have a recognisable rhythm, here is something which defines it: the potential of what isn't said, the context suggested by a word or a juxtaposition.

And finally, on a teacherly note: if I were in a classroom right now, I'd be setting my students to enter that challenge - unless of course the Education Authority in its wisdom had barred blogs. And I'd love to see what came out of a rush of micro-stories here. So I'm passing on the challenge to anyone who reads this - follow the link at the top of this post and put your efforts in the comments. Go on - it's not bedtime yet!

New poem

Yesterday, as usual, I listened to the sermon with all the attentiveness of someone who knows she will soon have to write about it. And, as I do every second week, I sat down later and wrote up the service for the local paper. Now, I know what I and my alter ego write goes down well in the community - people come up to me in Somerfields to tell me they like it - and must be reasonably effective - one of the Old Guard at church hates the way we write because, presumably, we write like the bloggers we are. But yesterday I had a wild notion to write something different, something which really pointed to the difference between choices.

I wanted to write about the girls in Argyll Street shouting their displeasure at Sunday. Sunday, as Doctor Who said the previous day, is always "very boring". That's what I thought as a kid - until the homework took over. So the readings about building your house on the rock instead of sand, about the choices you make in life - they're really about choosing whether Sunday is boring and restrictive or something much better. Are they? Is that the relevance, really?

Anyway, you can see the poem that resulted from this here. The paper would never have published it, even though the language is that of the town it serves. And maybe, tomorrow, I'll put up the poem which inspired me to write one. But not today - it's too good.

Not blogging but ...

I read recently that someone had said that we ought not to describe ourselves as bloggers, and find myself agreeing with this. I'm not a blogger: I'm a communicator who will use whatever means seem appropriate to the task. That said, I'm delighted to welcome two new blogs to my Bloglines.

The first belongs to my latest private student, who is getting to grips with Shakespeare for the first time and has just begun to write about it here. He would welcome comment from any of my regular readers as we embark on an old-fashioned education in English.

The second blog is that of one of my oldest friends, who has been writing all the time I have known her and would probably have had a blog in the 60s, just as I would. Have a look at wordswordswords - and if you have any advice on laying out verse in WordPress this would be a good time to visit.

And you will note we are not averse to the odd quotation...