Friday, 6 March 2015

Substitute Teachers


In these present days of Teaching Assistants galore, classrooms are nicely awash with support for children, but it wasn’t so long ago that only having your regular teacher in class was the norm.

That said though, a sprinkling of substitute, cover or student teachers occasionally dipped in to the mix which usually meant absolute chaos would ensue within seconds of them entering the classroom.

They were often an odd sort weren't they? Horrendous dress sense, totally incapable of maintaining any kind of decent control over the class, and seemingly prepared to accept all kinds of personal abuse from those who fancied their chances against them.
"Yes, Barry Manilow DOES know..."

In fact, none of those who taught classes I was in seemed to exude any skills of note. Perhaps they should have watched what Sidney Poitier did in To Sir With Love?


My memory is usually pretty good, but it has failed me a little for this one, as there are quite a few such specimens that I can remember by appearance, but not by name! So out of fairness, and to promote anonymity, I've opted to revert to nicknames for all of the candidates below:

Alan
Let’s start by clarifying that Alan was actually a female, and was only known to us as ‘Alan’ as she looked like the brother of one of my best mates – who was called Alan!
Alan was a student teacher assigned to teach us French in Year 11 (5th year) during the LAST TERM before we left to take our GCSE exams. The LAST TERM! Whoever made that decision wants their head examined… at a time when we needed that final push and support before leaving school, it’s no wonder so many people got low pass marks. On the whole, she was a very forgettable teacher, but  bless her she was memorable for trying to express ‘pain’ in French, by running around the classroom feigning tummy illness – for 20 minutes.
At least I think she was faking it…

Denny
So named because I think this chap was Danish. I could've gone with other food related links to Denmark, but was advised caution against being ignorantly racist!

Poor Denny seemed to lose the class before he'd even started. Another student teacher, he was brought in to teach German and miraculously managed to survive just about one term before moving on. Bright and breezy in his introduction, some of my more ruthless classmates started tearing him a new one almost immediately. The lessons immediately crumbled into a torrent of abuse towards him, his accent, his beard, his dress wear, his lack of authority etc. No amount of him shouting and literally screaming could stop the barrage of mocking coming his way.
Towards the end of his tenure, our class was split into two, in order to help him attempt to manage / teach a smaller group – which clearly didn't help our education. During these split sessions, one of the heads of year asked me to tell her what we'd learnt, so I honestly and openly told her ‘not much’ and that it would take a miracle for the majority of the students to ever turn and warm to him.

Coming towards the end of term, we were ‘lucky’ enough to have him cover a Design Technology lesson for us. During which some students wound him up so much that he literally threw a desk at a girl who had dared to laugh at him! He then sent her in to another room and about a minute later all we could hear was screaming. Evidently he had held her in an attempt to calm her down apparently, and she had retorted with 'get your hands off of me you b******!’ before running out and home.
And to cement the growing list of incidents, shortly after the above incident he had the tyres slashed on his Citroen 2CV Dolly by a 1st year student.


Unsurprisingly he didn't return in September, and we had a brand new female teacher in his place. She was a breath of fresh air, instantly liked by all, and didn’t receive one dot of abuse.
A footnote to this story though, is that she actually knew her predecessor rather well. She ended up being one of the best teachers I ever had, but to be fair, whoever his replacement was would have been almost angelic in comparison. Long after his departure, she told me how amazed she was at the series of events as she found him to be such a nice chap!
Trusting her assessment of him, I'm sure he was probably a nice guy – he just didn't get off to a good start for whatever reason and it got diabolically worse from there on in.

Hagar – But Not Horrible
“I used to teach in London.”

A fact he often reminded us about. Possibly it was coding for ‘don’t screw with me’, but he was generally alright in the way he handled the classes. He basically used to give as good as he got, and to that end he had a fair good rapport with most students. What we ever learnt was debatable though.
He opened himself up to abuse by declaring he was a Crystal Palace fan, which was a burden for one of my Crystal Palace supporting mates (coincidentally the brother of Alan above), as every time Hagar appeared before us, he’d make a beeline for him to discuss how the football was going.
Oh and apparently he also taught John Barnes. Just in case we’d forgotten from the last 50 times he’d told us.
'Digger' Barnes - not yesterday

I think he also used to lift share with another cover teacher who I think was nicknamed Charley Farley, or Farley’s Rusks or something similar? The name Rudolph rings a bell though, but that might be due to a red nose I recall him having. It distracted from the tweed suit.

The Twins: Cunning Linguist & Watoo Watoo
And finally, a brief mention for these two student teachers who popped up at Primary School.
The Cunning Linguist wasn’t popular amongst fellow teachers and children alike. This was compounded when I heard other teachers slagging him off just after he left. The nickname is because he often used to mispronounce the name of our lovely headmaster Mr.Cunliffe (RIP) to Mr.Cunnicliffe – which as a child I found funny, and as an adult I find mildly disturbing!
And finally, Watoo Watoo was just a friendly play on the family name of the preceding nice young student teacher who at least came back and visited us again.


Think how much our children are missing out on these delights!

Sunday, 1 March 2015

This Sporting Life

To start with, here’s a joke (though nowadays probably both politically and factually incorrect) that features in the spoof disaster movie ‘Airplane!

Elaine Dickinson: “Would you like something to read?”
Hanging Lady: “Do you have anything light?”
Elaine Dickinson: “How about this leaflet, ‘Famous Jewish Sports Legends?’”




The point being that a leaflet would pretty much sum up the pool of achievement and talent that is my sporting prowess!
But I did have a couple of moments that linger…

Dreadlock Holiday
I don’t like Cricket. Oh no! I LOVE it!
During the glorious Euro ‘96 footballing summer of, erm, 1996, I played in my very first ever proper cricket match (in actuality there was only one other match).
I honestly had no idea how good I would be at cricket, but suspected I might be a reasonable bowler, but a below average batter. So on one warm summer evening as part of a work inter region tournament, off we went to play in a lovely field on the Kent / Sussex border,
We won the toss and decided to bat first. I was not expecting to even get to put pads on, let alone to actually bat, but we had a mid order collapse and so as eighth man, I had to gingerly trot out for what would be the last couple of overs. Was I scared? Yes. Yes I was.
Of the six balls I actually faced, the first four produced a single and a four – and I would have been happy with that effort. But – astonishingly – for the penultimate delivery I smashed the ball out of the field and over the clubhouse to the waiting parked cars behind for a glorious six! Marvellous scenes!

That moment when your own actions stun yourself speechless? That.

And so our innings finished with my batting career total score being 11 not out, off six balls.
I bowled my allotted two overs quite well too, and managed also to take a catch in the gully, but the batting effort was such a shock to me. Thankfully I have a family member that witnessed it, as if I had only witnessed it myself I doubt anyone would have believed it!


BBC* Sports Personality Of The Year 1989
*Sorry, NOT BBC, I meant PCC (Portslade Community College)
Incredibly, in 1989 I was jointly named the inaugural school ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ alongside one of my best friends! This really was a miracle and one or two jealous types considered it to be a joke in light of the fact that neither of us was particularly talented at many sports (maybe apart from Hockey, at which we both played games for Sussex Schools.)

The fact that the award was given for effort and willingness to take part in virtually every sport going was lost on some people… though it gave my mum a laugh!


One-Seventy-Five
This one was a very nice conspicuous victory!
I’ve never been that good at ten pin bowling, though I’ve always enjoyed playing for a laugh. That said I was probably rubbish in the initial games I played as I had the wrong fingers in the bowling ball holes. Note to adults: Children need to be shown these things sometimes!

Anyway, fingers adjusted and on to one of the last events I was involved in for my retail career: a work night out with about 25 colleagues down the bowling alley.


Anyone who has worked in a supermarket will know that there are some over precious egos at work much of the time, which generally involves boys showing off to girls and vice versa. So we had this mammoth game with all these people fighting for bragging and shagging rights, and I simply played my own game quietly and unnoticed amongst all the sawdust flirting. Evidently most hadn’t been paying much attention to scores other than their own, so after an epic 3 hours later (for ONE game) up pops my name on the screen as the winner, with a pretty reasonable total of 175! I kid you not, at least three lads stormed off home. I have no idea if they were embarrassed or had lost bets etc. but they just went! I’ll always remember one lad, who once the screen had done its reveal, just turned to stare at me in disbelief, threw his shoes off, grabbed his coat and ran out via the fire escape. All very odd!
What else could I do but smile that I was soon to be leaving some of these morons forever!?


The Backwards Race
You see THIS should have been the best one.
Picture the scene. Unsurprisingly I wasn’t the fastest 7 year old there’s been, but I DID have an ability to run backwards with some cohesion, and at some speed. In the practise sessions for the always eagerly anticipated primary school sports day, I won every backwards race heat going. I’d found my niche! So come the big day, I couldn’t wait to get a coveted First Place sticker, to go alongside the same prize I’d won the previous year at Wellyboot throwing. It was a formality surely.
Nice action

BANG! Went the gun… and I fell on my backside quicker than the gunpowder leaving the casing. The audible groan of sympathy from the crowd wasn’t lost on me either. So I got up, ran backwards for about 3 metres, and blow me if I didn’t fall on my arse AGAIN! I could’ve cried – it would’ve sounded in tune with the now embarrassed audible groan from the crowd this time.
Determined to finish, I still had 30 metres or so to go. So I just absolutely went for it…



…and I’d love this story to have a happy ending…




But I finished second!

Thursday, 26 February 2015

The Acknowledgers


This is just the briefest of interim blogs before the proper ones start again next week!

It’s a simple, but extremely grateful 'shout out' to those celebrities and/or well known folks in the public domain who have kindly taken the time to interact on some level with BerryLogs and me on Twitter over the years.


I’m not knocking those who haven’t though, as I would guess that when one has millions of followers, as some of those famed people have, a soppy little blog which briefly mentions the subject in question is probably not high on their priority list!

That said though, I should probably give a special mention to a TalkSport DJ. For the best part of the last decade I’ve listened to his show and agreed and disagreed with his views in largely equal measure. But I can’t even attempt to interact with him on Twitter. Why? Because he blocked me in error and has ignored my efforts to change this status!
Never mind – I’m sure I’ll live!

So thank you to the following, in the most shameless terms of name dropping I could ever hope to portray!!


From the World of Sport:
Riddick Bowe 
Gary Lineker 
Craig Mackail-Smith
Kazenga Lua-Lua
Nicky Forster
Adam Virgo
John Byrne
Robyn SchΓΆnhofer
Bianca Westwood
Dick Knight
Dave Beckett
Keith Hackett
Andy Naylor
Andrew Hawes
Johnny Cantor
Steve North
Leon Knight
Bob Wilson
Paul Camillin
Ian Abrahams
Gary Stevens
Darragh MacAnthony
Chris Waddle
Dame Kelly Holmes
Joe Bennett
Jason Cundy
Chris Eubank
Steve Sidwell 
Inigo Calderon
David Stockdale
Tim Prendergast
Colin Murray
John Barnes
Jim Rosenthal
Sebastien Pocognoli
Laura Woods
Kevan Brown
Ally McCoist
Brian Horton

…and of course celebrity Brighton fan Brett Mendoza!


From the World of Music:
Carol Decker
Cheryl Baker
Les McKeown
Joy Valencia
Mike Stock
Roy Wood
Jona Lewie
Natalie Appleton
Gilbert O'Sullivan
Paul J. Medford
Kate Nash
Nicole Appleton
Tess Henley
Midge Ure
Kevin Rowland
Paul Young
Alex James

From the World of Entertainment/Misc:
Fern Britton
Kim Cattrall
Amelia Frid
Harry Goaz
Faye McKeever
Jason Watkins
Lorraine Cheshire
Carl Rice
Beverly Rudd
Emma Samms
Sarah Gorrell
Nicholas Hammond
Lizzie Cundy
Gail Porter
Dom Joly
Dan Gasser
Tony Blackburn
Mike Read
Madchen Amick
John Challis
Claire Goose
Jane Horrocks
Angela Douglas
Noel Edmonds
Anthea Turner
Sir Roger Moore
Gaby Roslin
Dame Joan Collins
Sarah Greene
Mark Hamill
Samantha Fox
Chanel Cresswell 
Joanne Froggatt
Laura Tott
Kyle MacLachlan
Anneka Rice
Dean Andrews
Jeremy Sisto
Ewen MacIntosh
Max Rushden
Art Hindle
Ralph Brown
David Arquette
Lucy Speed
Steve North

May you all continue to have time on your hands to talk to your fans!

Belief.Love.Spirit
XxX

Monday, 26 January 2015

Do you remember the time?

So how is 2015 for you so far?

Enjoying your flying cars, Hoverboard,
Nike power lace ups and inside out jeans?
How about the Pepsi Perfect you had in the CafΓ© 80’s?
Not everything forecast in Back To The Future Part II  has come to pass (although the Nike Power Laces are on the way soon!), so whilst I’m taking February off, and replenishing my blogging juices for a proper bit of writing, I’m going to play my ‘get out’ card for this one!
I haven’t done a retro list for a while, so here are a few memory joggers for all you lovely 80’s and 90’s children!

So do you remember the time, when…

… you could watch MTV and you knew EVERY song they played?

...If Clarissa couldn't explain it all, then Sabrina might try instead 

… Comic Relief was genuinely the funniest night on TV all year?

when Starbuck was male, and not female, and not a coffee house?


… you wouldn’t eat porridge oats, as you thought the Quaker dude was looking at you a bit funny?

… we were apparently 18 months behind the Neighbours storyline?

... virtually everyone liked Band Aid?

... Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks were the best thing on the telly on a Saturday afternoon?

... barely four football matches were televised a month?

... we only had three channels on TV?

... it took half a day to set the VCR?

… you knew what a VCR was?

... Big Brother was a relation?

... kids played in the park?

... all we had were three Star Wars films?

… female celebrities had their original lips?

... The Beano and The Dandy gave away free gifts that glowed in the dark?

... the internet cost £2.50 per hour to surf at home?

…when surfing was something only west coast Americans did?

... Saturday morning TV was for children?

... flat screen TVs were only on Star Trek?

... when 3D was red and blue? Or you’d make your own out of those plastic sun visor hats?

... F1 was competitive between more than two drivers?

... a pound coin was a note?

… school glue was a fashion accessory?

… you knew what a Squarial was?

… a Polo packet cost 7p?

… you only had sausages wrapped in bacon at Christmas?

… ‘Wannabe’ was the only song on the radio all summer?

… Lime Green ruled 1996?

… Twitter was something the birds did?

… Celebrities were genuinely talented in their profession?

… hardly anybody’s parents were divorced?

… there was a pub in every village?
 
I’ll be Back To The Blogging in March!
 Belief.Love.Spirit
XxX

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Friendships

So what makes a proper friendship? Is it one single component? Or maybe a plethora of traits that keeps it all glued together?
My Reunions blog visited a little bit of the detail in here in that there are periods of your life when you are thrown together, and almost forced to work at friendships you maybe hadn’t originally desired to. School and working life best cover these times, and many would note that key observation spoken by Martin Freeman’s character at the culmination of the TV mockumentary The Office:
The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. I mean, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. But probably all you have in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.


It certainly rings true.

I also recall some advice I was offered, immediately before I started my first job working part time at Sainsburys in Feb 1991:
Don’t ever trust work mates – at most they are often just colleagues, and rarely will they be your friends
It’s quite a bleak view, but having been in part or full time employment now for nearly 24 years, I can indeed think of examples that compound that thought process. Conversely I have also made some great friends along the way too, so it’s not all bad!

So are work and school friends of a temporary status only, compared to the friends who you specifically choose to socialise with? Quite probably, though it’s absolutely possible to have acquaintances who sit in all three circles.

Experience tells us that some traits are more important than others in assessing friendships, but having done some research into the apparent key traits below, I wonder if it would take an angel to truly completely fit the criteria:

Be Gossip Free
Everybody talks about each other. Fact. If your friend is talking to you about a mutual friend, chances are they’re also talking about you behind your back! To be gossip free is extremely hard, but I guess consideration should be given to whether it’s for welfare reasons. Sometimes the greatest help from friends starts from them having talked about something that concerns or worries them about you.

Trustworthy
Absolutely ties in with the above. What happened in Naboo, stays in Naboo.
Trust and Loyalty can never be underestimated in life – without them, so many of the people you spend your time with are nothing more than acquaintances. Counting and depending on people at times of need, and knowing they will come through for you, provides an incredibly powerful support network.

Never Jealous
Willpower has to be immensely strong if you are to be totally supportive of a friend when they are achieving or fulfilling something that you desire too. I wonder if it’s even possible to not be even the slightest bit envious. Friendships should never stop anyone being truthful though. Strong friendships often come from a place of brutal honesty. The best Friends are there for you because they want to be, not because they have to be.

Be Honest
Carrying on the honesty theme. Is there any truer truth than being honest? Not everyone handles it well, but the whole point is that this person is the one you’ve chosen to be your main confidant in so many things. What have you got to hide that they don’t already know anyway?

Make Time
You can verbally insist you have a great friendship, but it’s amazing how you don’t actually spend that much time together! Texting and messaging doesn’t count either...
Making time for friends – particularly outside a family life – is an increasingly hard act to pull off, but you don’t necessarily need to be in your friends’ pockets to still be true to them. Meeting up with friends after a long absence and hitting the same old groove from the get-go is absolutely a sign of a strong bond. Just don’t stay away too long next time!

Never Flaky
Pfft! This is an annoying one. There will always be episodes when you genuinely thinkwhy do I even bother? – but one-offs ought not to dictate your thought process alone. It’s when fair and honest communication breaks down more than just once or twice that you should rethink the relationship. No-one likes being mugged off, and certainly your friends should never be putting you in that position regularly.

Never Judgmental
We all do things in shame – but how does a true friend react to it? Abandon you? Laugh at you? They might even take you to task over it, but the key is that hopefully they won’t think any less of you. It’s all about tolerance and understanding. If at the crux you are a good person, your friend will forgive you most of the things you wish you hadn’t done! And if you’re really lucky, show you some compassion too.

Be Respectful
You don’t have to always agree with your ΓΌber freund, but being respectful to their opinion is a must. And seeking it should be something you are confident in doing. It’s too easy to say that they will simply ‘want for you, what you want for yourself’, as a solid friendship should be encouraging and influential, rather than paying lip service or being domineering.

Have Humour
If you can’t laugh shamelessly with, at yourself or in spite of your best friend, when can you? Notwithstanding tragedy, surely Laughter is right up there with Love as a truly great gift humankind is blessed with?

Just Listen
I love that lyric in the songDriveby The Cars:
Who’s gonna pay attention to your dreams?
The song seems to be about a broken down relationship, but the friendship theme runs through it a great deal.
Some describe a ‘best friend’ as someone who will literally just listen to them – incessantly if required. Hearing is one thing, but truly listening to a friend can be so worthwhile to them. Perhaps lesser friends only pretend to listen, but it doesn’t mean they are wholly disinterested. It just means they are otherwise engaged on something else in their mind that isn’t you! Don’t hold it against those friends, but just know when to recognise the friend who clearly is taking all your words onboard.
Whilst this is possibly the most important trait to some, it’s probably one of the hardest to realise, the desire to soak up everything from your friend in their time of need.
The skill to just let your friend rant, rave and indeed cry whilst you say nothing is borderline genius. Is silence a fear of saying the wrong thing? Sometimes. But a true friend’s silence can actually speak volumes in them affording you profound respect for the depth of vulnerability that you may be in.


I think that what all this really tells me is that there is no such thing as the perfect friend – every single one of us has flaws. Accidentally (and maybe accidentally on purpose on occasions) I have certainly been a failed friend at times.
Importantly though, all this shouldn’t be too upsetting, and on reflection, I believe that there should be immense joy in the value of finding friends who fulfil large chunks of the traits deemed desirable.
Do we actually need ALL our friends to be this revered though?
When recently having a discussion about the amount of Facebook friends that people acquire, I was asked:
How many true friends have you got?” versus the amount of social networking ones…
Enough!” I replied – and I believe that more than anything.

It’s not the massive quantity of friends that’s actually important, it’s the overriding quality of the friends you have, even if it’s only the few, or the one.