Let the procrastination continue . . .

Me with wavy hair. Don't ask me what that pose is meant to be.

Last night . . .

. . . I dreamt that I was at school (it had elements of my school anyway), and Sylvia Plath was a teacher there. BUT, she was killing the children en masse by poisoning them. I figured out that she was responsible, but others weren't convinced. I really wanted to kill her. I think Alex Turner was there too, but I can't really remember (I don't think he's fit or anything, though I do quite like that Last Shadow Puppets song).

Anyway, I'm blatantly really looking forward to going back to school on Monday. But any other dream interpretation would be welcomed. In all fairness, Sylvia Plath would have probably made a shit secondary school English teacher.

Will blog about the millions of bands I seem to have seen live in the last week shortly.

Marking awaits.

Hot Club de Paris, Hey! Housebrick Video

While I'm waiting for my dinner, I thought I'd post this. Because it's good.

Review: the new Cadbury Twist

So here's the idea: a creme egg, but not in an egg shape. I bought one and ate it because I am a huge creme egg fan. Verdict: no where near as good as a creme egg. The texture of the chocolate is different, and the satisfaction of eating it is all wrong too.

The other good thing about creme eggs is that they're only available for a limited period each year, which is extremely good for my waistband.

Bucking the trend. In a very small way.

It may be shocking to hear this, but my hair has a strong "natural wave", which I've decided to do something with in order to save my hair from the terrible effects of straightening, and to save time too. For school my hair is invariably tied back simply because I don't have the effort or imaginative at 7.30am to do anything with it.

Anyway, today I walked through Eldon Square with my hair bordering on curly and noticed just how hideous the hordes of straight-haired girls has become. I felt stupidly liberated with my un-straight hair.

I hate talking about hair, so I'll stop now, but not before stating that I'm now on a quest to go wavy-haired to school and try to put forward the plight of healthy hair and hopefully stop a generation of females going bald.

That's right - feminism alive and kicking. Who, after all, has the time and inclination to do this?

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Simply a matter of work."

This random strategy is extremely prescient.

After school yesterday I went to an Open Evening at Sheffield Hallam Union in order to find out more about their MA Writing course. To be honest, I didn't learn very much, because the admissions tutor doesn't actually teach anything and didn't know what the writers/teachers actually do, but still, it's definitely something I want to do.

Basically, I have to perfect my writing submission to gain entry to the course, and the admissions tutor advised me to join a writing group (but didn't have any recommendations, and to be honest, the quality of such groups is too variable for me to risk going along) or go on an Arvon course. I might sign up to one of Sheffield University's "Lifelong Learning" writing courses instead.

It's interesting that perceptions of writing are based on sparks of inspiration, bursts of creativity and excitement, when in actuality most creative processes really demand a lot of hard work.

Anyway, if you're interested in any of my non-creative writing, I've been posting music-related blogs up on Shovelled Up Like Muck. I've got my own column too, called "I Wish My Personal Life Was as Organised as This", where I basically list things and write about them. I'm currently working on "Top 10 Over-Exposed Guitar Bands", which is a paean against the Radio 1 playlists being dominated by nondescript indie guitar wank. I need a tenth band though . . .

I feel semi-famous.

I emailed Phil Gladwin, the screenwriter who runs the Screenwriting Goldmine site, about some creative difficulties I was having, and he's posted our conversation up on his site here (with my permission, of course). He's given it the slightly melodramatic title, "Ideas that can KILL stories", but I suppose these screenwriting luvvies are wont to do such things.

My regular readers (I'm pretending that people other than my mam read this on a regular basis, rather than being referred by searches for "pope tea", amongst other things . . .) might recall that I went to Berlin over Easter. I wrote up a sort of travel diary while we were there, and this is from the actual journey into Berlin from the airport (which was massively complicated because parts of the S-bahn and U-bahn track were closed):

"At each wait for every bus or train I was worrying about invalidating our hostel reservation through lateness. At one point we were sat on a motionless train for about 10 minutes. Thankfully, I wasn't the only confused one: a boy of about 18 with bleached-blond hair and a pack on his back with a "National Youth Orchestra" sticker on it (I still say it was a bassoon) got out of his seat to scrutinise the map above the doors and said to us in a overly-concerned, Wirralite accent, "Is this train even going anywhere?" He was trying to get to Warschauer Strasse, which we'd never heard of. Once he calmed down and the train actually got going, we heard him babbling away on his mobile in German and were instantly jealous."

I bring this up now, because we were watching TV while eating dinner. The judges were deliberating Young Musician of the Year 2008, and the winner of 2006 came onto the stage to perform. I stared at the screen and said, "Ian, do you think that's —"
"Yes," came the reply.

It turns out that our Scouser in Berlin is in fact called Mark Simpson, and a clarinettist (damn it) who won when he was 17.

Bizarre who you bump into.

National Awareness Ridiculousness

Further to yesterday's post, have a look at the amazing days and weeks you can celebrate/be "aware" on this site here. There's trillions on here, just for the month of May.

My personal favourites:

11 - 17th May is both British Sandwich Week (WTF?) and National Breastfeeding Awareness Week, which will be great for all those people who feel uncomfortable around toddlers sucking nipples in their immediate vicinity.

21 - 25 May - Noise Action Week: "Noise Action Week raises awareness about noise" - erm?

23rd May - Friendship Day - bleeurgh

Apparently, as well as Compost Awareness, this week we should also be aware of deafness, honey and the Red Cross. Right.

Mark Wallinger's Proposal for Kent's "Angel of the North"

33 times the size of a normal horse. Mint.

Compost and nerdiness

You will all, of course, be extremely excited to hear that it is Compost Awareness Week. I dig composting, but that's because I've been a bit of an eco nerd since I was made "light monitor" at primary school (cue switching everything off at home and driving my brother mad for the next few years).

I'm also a gardening nerd. An unrepentant one at that. I can name more types of tree that most country-dwellers (me being a city child), and I'm getting pretty excited that my hostas seem to be thriving at the moment despite the rampant slugs and snails that patrol Sheffield gardens. The sunflower seedlings are starting to emerge for my planned sunflower hedge at the allotment, and our random anenomes in pots look ace.

I'll take pictures soon to prove it.

The only problem I have with Compost Awareness Week is its stupid name. It must be the done government thing to name everything "awareness week", regardless of what it is. For example, "Islam Awareness Week" was roundly mocked by a host of people - could non-Muslims be any more aware of Islam in the current climate?

The word "awareness" seems perjorative in this sense, as if "compost" were a sexually transmitted disease you needed to protect yourself from, rather than a good way to take the strain off your wheelie-bin. We should be "aware" of gonorrhea, but "educated" about recycling facilities for fuck's sake.

What's wrong with just a "National [insert topic here] week" or "[Insert cause] Education Day"? Or failing that, get rid of all these bastard days and weeks that mean nothing.

Which reminds me: I need to send off all the letters my Year 10s wrote asking the culture minister (Andy Burnham - I hadn't heard of him either) to adapt St George's day to National (or International - I'm not fussy) Shakespeare Day. Pork on a spit and ale up and down the country - sounds good to me.

WTF?

Boris! ROTFL!! LOLZZZ!!!! [etc etc]

Some things make me really relieved to be British:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/29/italy1

I do have happy times, honest

Today I was part of the boring coursework moderation process for the entire day. Some of my pretend marks were fine, but others were hilariously far out, so yet again I'm back to feeling insecure.

I also faced some weird doubts from two people about my idea to assess GCSE Macbeth coursework using oral interviews rather than getting the kids to write yet another damned essay - they're bored and I'm bored, so what have we got to lose? "Ooh, it'd be very difficult and might actually take up more time than marking essays." / "The moderation process is really strict and it's quite hard for them not to lose marks"/"you'd have to do them one by one and use your lunch hours because you can't have a class of 32 doing something else."/etc etc

(I realise this is all extremely boring, but I need to vent.)

To top a dull day off, I went to the work room after school, looking for the cover work I'd set, and one of the older members of staff told me (in an extremely nice way) that I shouldn't have told any of my students about inflation and the teachers' strike because it could be construed as being "political". Firstly, by telling them about pay-related issues I'm actually teaching a bit of "Citizenship"; secondly, they knew I was going on strike anyway, so therefore they also already knew about my politics!

Whatever I do, I'm going to get criticised for it . . . I'm beginning to realise this now. But seeing as I actually have a personality, I'm going to have to develop a tough skin and battle on regardless.

I was told on Saturday by a girl I'd not seen for years that I was too cool to be a teacher. Too individualistic, that's for sure.

A Political Militant

I am on strike tomorrow. Not by accident, but because I actually voted for strike action. Doesn't it make every bit of sense for my salary to remain in line with inflation? It's not like my rent and food costs are not going to rise by 4.4% (or thereabouts).

Evidently, however, my strange upbringing (hanging out with other kids at local Labour Party meetings while the grown-ups talked about whatever), has rendered me incapable of seeing how disgusting taking strike action is.

I was hanging around in reprographics, waiting to get a ream of paper for the staffroom photocopier, but there was no one around except a fellow NQT (Science, PHD) who I've always found to be extremely supercilious and strangely pious. To make small-talk I asked if she was striking. No, she said, but was I? I said I was, and she took that opportunity(?) to espouse about how the very reason she didn't join the NUT was because of "things like this" and their "militant" reputation.

Militant reputation! She must have missed every news report, because everything I've heard and read says this is the first strike in over 20 years. I found it hilarious at this point cuttingly remark, "Well, I am from a militant background," to which she didn't respond, except to tell me that she saw herself as extremely privileged to be earning the money she was AND she'd taken a pay cut to teach.

She made some attempt to recover the conversation by then telling me, "But if you do get us a pay raise I won't say no!" I grimaced. I should have said, "But we're all so privileged. Won't you waiver your pay for the government to assign to those who need it more?"

What a twat. I will take every opportunity to give her ambiguous but possibly dirty looks in the future.

Berlin Pictures

I've just organised all my photos on Flickr and I can't be bothered to upload them again, so if you're bothered, you can click here then click the square Berlin picture on the right hand side to get them in the proper order.

I'm back from Berlin, but more about that later.

More importantly, we just saw the Sheffield University Challenge captain in Tesco! We were very excited because he was extremely clever. They only just got beaten in the final by some Oxbridge team. I would've said something, but I was grinning in far too inane a manner.

Now I'm on holiday and all the time is mine, I think I've got creativity stage-fright.

Brian says, "Use an unacceptable color," which, if I'm honest, isn't remotely helpful.

Prioritorise, Jess. Prioritorise.

PS. "ise" endings vs "ize". I always thought "ize" was American and therefore used "ise", but according to woman in my department, it's the other way round. I need to investigate and change my whole spelling system . . .

Edit: I wasn't wrong but neither were they. Wikipedia and this site say that "ize" is the only form used in America, while in the UK two-thirds of people use "ise", including newspapers and magazines. However, the OED and thus many academic journals insist on "ize". I'm more right than they were. Ha!

Get your Ryan Adams fill while you still can . . .

Ryan Adams has finished writing the songs for his new album and the new Cardinals album, and so the blog is apparently over.

I'm genuinely going to miss it. It's totally bizarre to read through the creative left-overs of someone famous as they're in the process of creating . . . and fascinating.

This is his last video, and apparently a song off his forthcoming album. Probably the best song he's shown for an age:


CROSSED-OUT NAME from Ryan Adams on Vimeo.

Perhaps the site will stay up even if he isn't posting any more. Probably not though.

Karaoke at The Old Crown

What an excellent way to spend the night of the last day of term.

I met up with my buddies from PGCE for a couple of ales (why can't I write "ales" without thinking about Richard E. Grant? "Ale" sounds so much better than "bitter" . . .) which was excellent. There wasn't too much depressing teaching chat, and I surprisingly wasn't as tired as I'd expected myself to be.

The Old Crown is immense. It's a favourite haunt of Pete and Tom because of the excellent atmosphere and the fact that the locals were characters worthy of stories: Stan (I think) who talked his way through his songs; a fifty-something woman clad in animal print who sang as if she had a life of lost love; an older woman with a soul-diva voice - truly great.

Pete was without doubt the best performer of the night, really getting into Dancing in the Dark and Living On A Prayer, and my other companions did sterling Oasis covers.

But the rotters put my name down while I was at the bar and suddenly "Jess" was announced. Being a good sport, I got up and did Tainted Love, with backing vocals by Tom and Paul. They were very nice about my performance afterwards, but it was a pretty surreal experience. I felt like I had no control over my voice, and I was hitting bum notes all over the place. Plus, it was pretty low for me, so I sounded like a boy.

For my public singing debut though, it wasn't too bad. Next time though, I'll be sure to find something in my range.