You Could Knock That Down...

Why are there so many average men walking around with such beautiful women on their arms? From celebs to your mates to yourself, this pattern recurs. How often have you sat in a cafe/bar/tree with night vision googles and stood/sat/leaned, simply baffled at how in a millions years he got her.

This is not a new thought, nor a new observation, but I am yet to hear a convincing explanation for it. It's always women are less superficial, men are intrinsically less attractive, women drink more these days... None of these ring true to me.

But, daydreaming one afternoon, I realised that the key difference is as follows:

- A man looks at a woman for what she is now.

- A woman looks at a man for what he might become.

- To translate to ManSpeak, that is to say that a woman looks at a man the way a man looks at a house.

Let's put this to the test.

When a man goes to look at a house, and this is a fact, whilst his prettier half is discussing logistics with the sleazy bad suited rep who's still thinking about whether the new Mini Cooper is safely parked, the man is mentally knocking down walls, installing cupboards, visualising where the projector could be hooked up for movie night, picturing the things he needs that doesn't know the name for yet to buy in B&Q, and thinking that if the downstairs bathroom truly is the 'unique selling point' that MiniSuit is telling you wife it is, how much more unique is a cocktail bar/man cave?

Thus, when a woman is looking at a man she is not thinking what she has now, she's thinking: ok, fair enough, decent area, room for improvement there, some of these friends need to go, I can cut that down, we can paper over that, that can go away when we have guests over, mother important but is neither a neighbor nor a supporting wall. Interesting.

And, may I add, long may this continue. Right, I'm off to B&Q to get me some things-me-gigs.

You Are What You eat

I thought I had to share this. The first, a truly remarkable story from the Middle East, and the second, my take on the theory based on Argentina.

Email from Pricey:

Every now and again I catch a glimpse of something so brilliant on Arabic TV that I just have to share it.......

On Saturday I was channel flicking on TV when I paused on a picture of a packed auditorium of smartly dish-dashed gents being spoken to by a local Iman (of undisclosed nationality!). He was speaking in English on an Arabic channel and mid-way through his clearly thought provoking diatribe, this is what I caught:

"Many great writers and poets throughout history have philosophised that WE ARE WHAT WE EAT. This explains so many aspects of our cultures and societies. The reason that we as Muslims are so peaceful is that we eat peaceful animals, like cows, sheep and goats. However, our enemies eat vicious and violent animals like..............PIGS (!!), WOLVES and .....................(wait for it)..............TIGERS"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely brilliant! I would stay and chat but Sarah's got a full shoulder of Tiger roasting in the oven............

Case Study. Argentina.
You are what you eat? Case Study 2: The Argentine.

Argentines are made almost entirely of cow. As such, they should make an excellent Case Study, unpolluted as they are to extraneous factors that would colour the study, such as fruit, vegetables or others meats such as chicken, wolf or tiger.

At first, I thought that is was actually hard to think of an animal that reflects the average Argentine worse than the cow.

Cows are, after all, slow and dim witted, whilst your Argentine is a sharp witted and intellectually aggressive character: I have never heard a cow getting angry over politics, for example.

Cows are not talkative, even monosyllabic, and spend far less than 2 hours a day in front of the mirror.

Cows are systematically abandoned at birth without any obvious signs of trauma, whereas an Argentine will spend half their life in therapy based on no more than an implied sense of parental abandonment as they were only breastfed for 22 months, rather than the 9 years they so craved.

Cows are rubbish at football, and not that good looking.

But then I thought some more.

Cows are, I reflected, notoriously work shy. Bulls are a different matter, but they don't eat bulls! Cow are happy to stand around all days eating grass and talking crap. Moo? Like that means anything. Maté, the national drink, is after all, not much more than dried grass. And when did you last see a Cow, or for that matter an Argentine, returning home from the office past 8pm, I asked myself?

Argentines, like cows, do spend a lot of their time blocking roads. Furthermore, Argentines, like Cows, show wilful disregard for the rules of the road, wandering acorss the lanes without ever indicating or showing respect for rights of ways, as is particularly evident in India.

Then there is the President who is, after all, almost entirely skinned in leather and has a singularly bovine intelligence. And she, like Cows, shows nothing but comtept and dislike for the farmers who, she believes, are trying to steal her milk then bleed her to death.

And to answer a previously unsolvable question of these people: how does one process the staggering amounts of meat the average Argentine eats in a year? You're there before me. 4 stomachs.

You know what? Your sciency bloke may be on to something...

Resources

It's exam leave time, which is a truly wonderful thing in the life of a teacher. It's like waking up in the morning, about to go to work, and you realise it's Saturday. You're so used to your timetable by this time of year that you completely forget you're not teaching. A thing of beauty...

And at this time of year your forgotten little ones - the little year 7s - finally get the attention they have been craving. Naturally, when preparing 18 year olds for important International Exams, a teacher can focus a little too heavily on the 'exam classes', leaving the enthusiastic ones slightly out of the limelight.

It's not like you don't teach them, you think, quietening your conscience, you just teach them quite well, rather than brilliantly.

Now, I didn't realise the true state of affairs until this morning. Having spend a good hour preparing resources for the lesson - something interesting and engaging, even writing an example answer myself - I bounced into the room, excited to deliver a brilliant lesson, rather than the only quite good ones they are used to.

My first clue was when I opened the folder to smugly and safely save as a joy foever this thing of beauty, and there was, worryingly, but one file in my entire Year 7 folder. Very worryingly, it was labelled almost exactly a year ago to the day. Truly, deeply worryingly, it was simply saved as: "A resource!"

Not to be deterred I bounded down the corridors to the eagerly awaiting recipients of my planning and erudition.

"Morning guys, how's it going?" I asked, with typical enthusiasm.

They looked up, in retrospect, kinda surprised. They had that look of bemused but pleasant surprise, now I think of it, like the look you give your Dad when he asks you a question that indicates he's actually been listening. That look. Multiplied by 24 (faces), or 48 (eyes).

"Morning... Sir?" they replied.

"OK," I said, with continued enthusiasm, and, trying to disguise my pride, announced, "here are your resources for the lesson. Take one each!"

Silence.

Eventually a hand born of the courage of the ignorant raised itself, and ventured, quizzically, shatteringly:

"Sir. What's a resource?"

The Diving Bell and The Brick

Have you read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? It is the story of Jean Dominique Buaby who suffers a stroke. Tragically, he is left with a perfectly functioning mind, but his only form of communication is by blinking his left eye. Using this method, he narrates the entire, beautiful, novel.

The patience and dedication required to complete this book I previously would have found utterly unimaginable. The hell he must have gone through to write even the simplest sentence.

The agony to correct a mistake, I could barely bare to read on, as you feel every letter eeked out with such a force of spirit.

Then I bought a phone that pre dates predictive texting.

It's the same.

Teaching Drama, and Being Hit Over The Head With A Chair

For Emma, who gets upset when I don't update the blog regularly

I used to teach Drama. I was dreadful at it. I would be OK now, I think, but I got stuck behind the 8 ball early on and never really recovered with that class, in my first year of teaching at Big School.

I was recently asked by a colleague to state the worst 5 things that happened at my previous school. Given that at No.4 I had written: "Child tried to hit me over the head with a chair", she was quite surprised that I had "Teaching Drama" in at 2.

But it was a bit like this, you see.

Teaching Drama

When I arrived at Big School, all keen and ready for battle, and received my first timetable with the excitement of a Primary child opening a new set of Staedtler felt tipped colouring pens, I couldn't workout what the acronym Dr meant.

Drama, a helpful colleague informed me, laughed, and walked away shaking his head.

I went to the office to sort out the mistake. No mistake. I had expressed interest at interview, I was informed. Assuming this was true, I lived with my lie. After all, during an interview if someone asks you about your kite flying experience, you tend to talk up one disasterous Sunday with dad 17 years ago as a childhood dream yet to be realised, when do I start? Don't you?

It was years later that I realised that it was they who were lying to me.

So there I was, with two lessons of Drama on my timetable. How bad could that be, I thought? I can learn a few things, work with different department. I could even lose the tie from time to time, dress in black, take a coffee to lessons, swear infront of the kids, let me call me 'Doog'...?

I used to throw up before lessons.

That makes me laugh to look back on it now, but it’s true. I had break duty before the second of the weekly 2. I would stand on duty in the playground, feeling the seconds tick down to the start of the lesson. There was a disabled/staff toilet (yes, I always liked that joke) with a code on the door, and like a bulimic teen I would nip in there and hurl. Then, ready for battle, I would emerge; reeking.

And then I would get my ass kicked. But I learnt a lot. (?)

The school was growing faster than its population, so, in my first year, when you taught a 'non-core' subject like Drama, you could find yourself teaching in places like the refectory. So, 30 kids, in the refec, directly after break.

And to add to my joys the refec after break is where that famous slippery slope you read about actually ends up, with every bad kid in the school sliding down on chip fat and coke to group and congeal, like a stagnant pool of second rate DNA, a walking Daily Mail headline of low life expectations for the less than 5 GCSEs.

Lessons would start with me turfing out all of that lot, and end a long long time later.

Not knowing anything about the subject, far less how to teach it, I fell back on the work the department used. This was suicide as the department were in a worse state than me. Term 1: Group work and Improvisation. Somehow even the stupidest kids can improvise something that can make a teacher look stupid in front of a class. They might have 'Will Spend Rest Of Life Serving And/Or Eating Chips' tattoed on foreheads, but they can be a God for a 60 seconds when I try to bring them down.

Whenever I told off a kid off for fighting, or bullying someone, they would hit me with we're trying to get into character.

When they I told them to put down something dangerous, I was told it was a prop.

When they swore, they said their last teacher, the Head of Department, allowed it. I checked, she confirmed that she did, indeed, let them saying things like m*therf*ck*r and whore, as long as it was in context.

I asked her what strategies she'd used to control the class. She gave me the single most ineffectual piece of advice I have ever heard: If they misbehave again, just tell them they're throwing away their chance to get an A*. That was the last time we spoke.

It never got better.

I went to my mentor, explaining all of this. She'd also arrived that term, but had come from a properly rough school, listened patiently to my story, and said, I'll support you 100%. I'll take the class, or get you retimetabled, whatever. (Pause. Brilliant, I thought) But do you know what I said to myself when they broke my fingers? You're going to get me that f*cking easily. (Pause. Shit, I thought.)

So...

After Thursday's lesson I would dread Friday's. Friday's I would survive and look forward to 9 working days till next Drama lesson. I was so badly in denial that I was teaching it that I never planned my lessons properly, so it just got worse and worse. It's the only singularly negative thing I've ever experienced in teaching.

And yes. Way worse than being hit over the head (well, nearly) by a chair.

Portera Porteñita

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So Knot Me

The Windsor

I'm not a fan of the windsor, to tell you the truth. There is something ostentatious about the windsor knot, like you're trying too hard. At best it makes one look smugly self-satisfied, at worst like a footballer on the way to court. It undercuts any attempt at nonchalant cool, which is surely the aim of a man forced into such attire of on a morning.

I don't worry too long about matching ties to shirts, I pretty much keep it simple. When in doubt, Friendly Fire (blue on blue); this motto has, more than once, saved me vital decision making seconds in the morning coffee cornflake keys scramble out the door.

Frenchmen

I always wanted to wear a tie like a Frenchman in movie. Vincent Cassell, maybe. White shirt, thin black tie, espresso, cigarette. That's it, no job needed, just sit around, doing that and being French. But I don't smoke, and I'm pretty sure that's an essential part of the deal. You can be ugly as sin, but if you're French, and you smoke: you're gold.

What age do you get to when the wearing of a tie is almost essential to preserve your dignity? When I'm old, and look like a taxi driver, I'll always wear a tie. I'll hide behind elegance in the grey suit and unbuffed shoes.

The Half Windsor. This is something I should think about more. That's where we should be. If you're going to teach you son something useful, go with this.

The School Tie

It might have a real name, but it should be called the school tie. Why do they teach you that? Must be because it's the best knot to tie badly, articulating your anti-authoritarian adolescent angst. Have at thee, hegemony, the hoodies seem to say, not only is my tie an inch long but it is an insult to the Windsors.

The Shelby. Something suspicious about that final maneuver.

The Black Tie

The exception. Always forms a perfect knot, first time. From Charity shop cheap to cashmier silk. Ties must respect those that move on. I guess it's a bit of a shop window for them: after all, what man goes to the next place with an open shirt?

The Dickie Bow. No real need, is there? There's always one fella at every wedding who can sort you out. He'll wander in to the Grooms inner circle on D-day, on the pretense of an errand, and opportunely offer a helping hand, leaving the room, a conquerer, with a false modesty that fools no one. You whisper when he's gone that he practices for such occasions.

The Clip On. Never seen one, to be honest. Can't believe their convincing.