Altered States

It's the same old story - you wait months for a day to arrive and then suddenly it's tomorrow. Felt a little stressed (poor bastard - hasn't worked for two months and now he's sodding off for four more. Life's tough) but having bought enough pharmaceuticals to open my own branch of Boots and more electronics (Kindle, laptop, camera, iPod) than you could shake an opportunistic mugger at, it was finally time for the off.

Teary-bye at Gatwick with the better-off half (love you, see you soon) misguided optimism about a potential upgrade (sorry, sir, but you're not rich/famous/handsome/young/thin enough - please make your way to the 'essentials' wing and try not to stain anything on the way) and I arrive at my seat. 39F. A fire exit seat. Things may be looking up! So here's what I see that causes immediate ball shrinkage:

- Family of five with a new born baby, two and four-year-old sat right next to me.
- Family of four with a three and five-year-old sat right behind me.

OK, everything's gonna be fine. I'll just lose myself in the inflight entertainment and try to drink myself into an early sleep. Because I'm in an exit seat, I've got one of those TV screens that comes out of the arm and extends in front of you, so I promptly yank it out and try to manipulate it into the perfect viewing position. Once I have it I release my grip and the screen swings limply down into an unwatchable spot. I can't help but sense the sexual parallels and grin meekly at a disappointed looking lady sat next to me. 'This has never happened to me before', I venture, tapping the unit so that it waggles pathetically in front of us. She's unimpressed. Actually, so the fuck am I! My only solace from an inevitable night of shrieks, screams and projectile vomit is now impotently drooping ineffectually before me! I made a fuss. I needn't have bothered. 'Sorry, sir, there's nothing we can do. Can you hold it up?' The humiliation.

Seven and a half hours later I'm exhausted. The crying has been relentless and without anything to watch, I've had to stare bleary-eyed into the darkness forever. I feel like William Hurt in Altered States - that my delirium has somehow allowed me to gaze straight into the existential heart of the universe, where all the answers of life sit and wait for the soul to be tested to an extent that frees the mind and opens the corridors of enlightenment hitherto unattainable by a sane mind. My eyes are burning and I feel I've narrowly avoided cutting the trip very short due to some brutal infanticide, but I've made the first leg and I limp lethagically into Dubai Airport. And then it's all worth it.

Exotic, absurd, unusual, unfamiliar - I'm so enamoured by what I see that I'm immediately bitten by the bug again. The bigger picture suddenly comes crashing down on me reminding me of what's to come and I feel a ripple of excitement purr through me. Looking around it's all so different, they're all so different - and so, spirited away from my own natural state of indifference the journey begins.

Riot Here, Riot Now

I miss the News of the World phone-tapping scandal. Do you remember that? Just the thought of those tabloidese scum profiting from the misery of others gives me a warm and slippery feeling in my tum-tum. On and on it went, promising to never end unless something came along that was even bigger – but that was unlikely. Surely scum of that magnitude couldn’t be usurped, bettered, trumped? But this is England and we do some of the finest scum you’re likely to find anywhere in the world. Mmm, finger-fucking good.

I am, of course, referring to the recent bout of insanity perpetrated by our darling lickle yoots. I know I said that the last post was it for English Bitcherature, but I’ve come out of retirement to bemoan the current climate and tenuously link it to the world I’ve just run away from. Looks like it’s not just me who’s running now. I’ve heard story after story from armchair pundits and those caught up in the violence themselves – including my sister and her family on their way back from the theatre – high culture to no culture in a single train ride – and I feel it’s time I gave my side. You know, the inconsequential angle.

To borrow a cliché used a lot recently, I’m shocked but not surprised. The behaviour we’ve all witnessed, wide-mouthed and limp coffee-cupped, comes from exactly the kind of defiant and belligerent pupils I’ve been banging on about for months now. What’s different about this is that it’s being legitimized left, right and centre (well, mostly left) by the proliferation of analysts and commentators adorning the news of late. This is not to say that I don’t see what they’re saying – for some of these kids, their socio-economic backgrounds are devastating and this mayhem can surely only be an entirely understandable reaction to that. However, for some of them the truth is that this was all a kind of game to play and it’s an uncomfortable reality that, to borrow from Alfred the butler, some people just want to see the world burn.

The reasons for the violence became more and more fragmented as time went on and just seemed to me, as someone who’s spent three years listening to poorly constructed and unrealistic excuses, as little children regurgitating what the media had been saying. This is very similar to teaching and just as frustrating. What children do, because they’re stupid (not their fault, but a fact) is repeat what they hear on TV.

It struck me that these ‘excuses’ didn’t start vomiting forth from their mouths until a good two or three days after the riots began. Coincidence? I used to hear the same old thing day after day from the little tossers who ruined every lesson they were in – ‘I’m distracted’, ‘He’s distracting me’, ‘I’m not engaged’. This from a little bogey with the vocabulary of an ape is more than suspicious and I saw precisely the same thing on the 24-hour coverage. Which I watched with the kind of compulsion usually reserved for a US DVD box set. Except it was real. And just down the road. Sometimes I’d hear a police siren outside my house and then there’d be one on TV. Messed up.

Horrible rat children were using the words of the academics on TV to justify their actions and, in doing so, took away from the really important reason this all began – the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police. Clearly this man was no angel (sorry, but having a loaded weapon in your car makes you a bit dodgy, at the very least) but his death at the hands of the police and the subsequent handling of his family in the aftermath was unjust. The latest travesty of our increasingly tough times. However, the entire incident which tried, in some ways, to make sense of the riots, was passed over by the majority of the mob.

This wasn’t about injustice or institutional racism, it was about a chaotic free reign of the streets, the chance to smash and destroy and a free plasma TV or two. ‘We’re taking our taxes back!’ they drawled at the cameras, faces obscured by the same hankie gran had used on Sunday to wipe the gravy off their chins. ‘When you give us respect, we’ll give you respect!’ they spat, seemingly unaware of the contradiction of requesting respect from the police with a boiling hot DVD recorder under your arm.

Now I’ve driven into a puddle deliberately once or twice and the resulting soggy rage gave me much to smile about as they and their clothes shrunk in the rear view, but the joy these wretched boils squeezed out of their actions was, for me, the most disturbing thing about the whole affair. It was one of the things I always found hardest to deal with as a teacher as well – the overt pleasure pupils would get from seeing someone else upset. Where’s the empathy? Where’s the understanding? Jesus, where’s the humanity?! Well, it’s not here anymore. When I saw how happy it made these kids to burn down an old woman’s home who stood before them in tears, it made me realize one thing – fuck me, I’m glad I’m not a teacher anymore.

And here’s another thing, how come the rioters got all the good weather? It’s been raining ever since. Typical. By the way, are they over? If so, what am I going to do with all this boiling oil? Some questions to tide you over until next we meet.

Last Day of Term

So, there you have it. 1,095 days ago I was considering changing careers and becoming a primary school teacher and, three years on, the General Teaching Council saw fit to pass me as an English teacher at secondary level. I’ve taught in two schools, first in Peckham and then Greenwich, been on dozens of school trips both in the UK and abroad, had 18 parent’s evenings, two tutor groups, seen tears of rage, sadness and happiness – although mostly rage – and made the phrase, ‘who do you think you are?’ an almost daily mantra. But now it’s over.

I wondered how I’d feel after the final curtain dropped, and to be honest it’s a bit numb actually. The last two summers have been great, but at the back of my mind I always knew what I was going back to and did the odd lesson here and there to ensure I was prepared, but now I have nothing. OK, so the reality is that, while the last couple of summer hols did include some work, now I really have to pull my finger out (that’s metaphorical this time – thankfully). I’m officially unemployed at a time when no-one can get a job. Have I lost my fucking mind?!

Well? What’s the big idea then? I’m glad you asked. My hope is that I can take some of the stuff I’ve learned as a teacher and use it in a capacity where I’m not bullied by a bunch of 12-year-old girls every day. You know, so that the entire experience hasn’t been one colossal waste of time. I have a few ideas about this, but rather than brashly announce these to the world (9-10 people) I’m gonna work on them a bit first, in case it all comes crashing around my ears. Supply teaching, anyone?

In the meantime, I’m off to South-East Asia in late September until the new year where I intend to pretend I’m much younger than I am, exploit the hell out of the rate of exchange and learn how to play projectile ping-pong at the Chairman Miaow tittie bar. I’ll be back on the blog for this, so keep your emails and your minds open (yes, it’ll be a deep voyage of discovery) in preparation. I can’t wait to travel again and this’ll probably be the last time I get this kind of chance, so I’m taking it. Sorry, Mum.

I’m so grateful for the fact I had such a good last day, as it’ll be that which remains with me, rather than those days I felt like writing ‘shutthefuckup’ backwards on my forehead and head-butting my way out of the school gates. It began, as every other day had that year, with my tutor group and there were already tears in the morning of our final registration, as well as an unprecedented amount of farewell gifts. Apparently the girls all want me to be drunk and fat. Look at them all in the pic at the top which includes, as I understand it, a perfectly valid certificate of qualification. I will be adding this to my CV.

There was an assembly where the rest of the departing staff and I were sat at the front and told how great we were before receiving more presents. Loved it. Then I watched a film with my difficult year 9 class who, despite having me shout at them for talking throughout it, put together a home-made card with really touching messages in it. Appreciated it. Afterwards it was nearly time to go, but first I showed my tutor group the deliberately emotive film I’d made to get them all weeping, which worked like a charm. Relished it. (see it here: http://vimeo.com/26757821) And finally made a speech, got more presents and cards and achieved new levels of obscenity down the pub until the wee hours. Forgotten it.

There’s so much I haven’t told you about my time in the classroom. Deleted scenes, if you like, which never made it to the final DVD. The way the boys used to wait until a really tense moment in the lesson, where the behaviour had gotten so bad it’d driven me to scream at the top of my voice causing the whole room to go silent, before some anonymous voice would completely undermine me with the classic, ‘waa, waa, waaaaaaa’. Or when Ofsted visited, like the Dementors in Harry Potter, and everyone would be absolutely terrified except the kids, who drank it in like sweet nectar. ‘Why are you writing objectives on the board?’ they’d ask, adopting faux confusion on their face because they knew an inspector was in the room. ‘You don’t normally show us how to reach the next level’, they’d continue as teacher grinned and sweated anxiously.

No? How about sitting through an entire speaking and listening assessment where a girl debated the necessity of abortion and kept referring to foetuses as faeces? ‘Faeces have feelings too!’ Or even a classic case of confusion when a science teacher saw a couple of boys clearly pulling their trousers down and looking at each others’ bits. ‘What do you think you’re doing?!’ was justifiably bellowed across the room at the boys, to which one simply replied, ‘chill out, bruv; Jefferson just didn’t believe I had any pubes.’ Oh, that’s fine then.

It all happened and I saw it all. Well, most of it anyway. And that’s what I’ll miss the most. Not the pubes, but the unpredictability of children. Adults have to abide by rules and you very rarely see public displays of lunacy from them, but kids; well, they say and do the oddest things at times, which can be infuriating, but also incredibly funny and endearing as well.

I’ll also miss being a form tutor – the role in which I felt the most confident. Having kids confide in you and trust you completely is quite disarming and although it’s a big responsibility, I always did my best to sort out their issues. This included a wide range of problems which could be as serious as self-harm, but also as frivolous as self-tanning too much and staining the forehead.

In conclusion, I will miss a lot of things about teaching, but I’m not going to kid myself; it has been, without doubt, the most stressful thing I’ve ever done. Children are different now and prey on teachers for sport, making trying to teach them and reach targets exceptionally traumatic in a lot of lessons. How people do this job for decades is beyond me. I’m just grateful to have come out of it alive and without any pending court cases. To be honest, I’m not sure my bottom could take another one of those. Dad always told me that having a job you love was the most important thing in life – I loved lots of aspects of teaching, but it just wasn’t enough. Next chapter…

Waiting to Exhale

A little while ago my good friend and long-time reader of my blog(s) – he was even there during the ‘Andrew From The Blog’ days (www.millsdoescanada.blogspot.com) – asked me to write about the way these kids smell. There is no doubt that they are, on average, twice as smelly as what you find in your belly button after a couple of months of absent-minded fingering (my girlfriend once told me it smells like a miscarriage in there) but really it’s more about their ability to ignore the smellingly obvious and act as though their particular brand of olfactory obscenity is perfectly acceptable that’s of real interest.

After every class leaves another enters and almost without fail says something along the lines of, ‘Oh, Sir – can’ yu open a window?! Oo was dat you jus ‘ad in ‘ere?’ – at least I think those are the words they’re using, combined with the usual grunts and slavers. It seems that they’re only immune to their own specific class fragrance and react like a rival gang when they get wind of an unfamiliar waft – eyes narrowing and curling lips with suspicion, like a chimpanzee who’s bounced back into the enclosure from Chimp Camp only to find, upon inhaling luxuriously, that his favourite wanking rag has been covertly stolen and washed by the meddlesome zookeepers.

Before I began teaching I thought that a lot of these smells were exclusive to adults. However, it transpires that things like BO, cheesy willies and fishy fannies are just as prevalent among the young and, worse still, their as yet unrefined washing habits mean that you get a heady cocktail of these ingredients in most classes. It’s like walking into a wall of smell sometimes, especially if you’re on a cover lesson where the stench has been given some time to gather its strength before you arrive.

Summertime is without doubt the worst. As I can vouch for, being a smelly boy myself, boys are definitely the most pungent of the lot and at the all-boys school I used to teach at this rang true with a frightening adherence to stereotype. I can only assume that the little stinkers were made of asbestos or some other kind of heat-resistant fibre as during the sweltering summer months, where the blinding sun glared in through the patchy blinds all day long and the classrooms’ heat built like a foul-mouthed pressure cooker, they wore layers upon layers of clothes.

When the bell went to signal lunchtime they would peel off one tier, to reveal their running-around-like-a-mad-bastard clothes and then proceed to do exactly that for the entire duration of lunch. Upon returning, sweating like Rupert Murdoch at the point of realisation that he’d contacted the wrong person while trying to get in touch with a foolish Arthur from EastEnders (Silly Fowler – do you see?), the boys then simply reapplied the previous film of clothing and sat panting like a car window dog – adding shitty kid breath into the equation. On occasion I’m sure I’ve actually seen authentic comic book-style stink lines rising above them.

Smelly girls are, admittedly, a lot rarer, but equally offensive when encountered. Leaning in to help some girls is like being punched in the nostrils by an angry trout on the turn and they have a far greater ability to linger around in your hairy batcaves all day. As if their curdy genitals are not enough to be getting on with, they also buy the world’s cheapest perfumes and drench themselves in it before, during and after lesson, so that your classroom ends up smelling like a combination of a whore’s armpit and a strawberry Refresher. Sweet, but repulsive.

So there you have it. Ask and you will, eventually, receive. Thanks goes out to Al and Rob for being both repelled and elated by last week’s posting. I have to say, a lot of people liked the bum worms – to the extent of there being talk of a spin-off blog – ‘Bum Worms – A Modern Fairytale’. Well, if it’s disgusting you want, I have it by the anus-load. Last week at school and as a teacher next week, so expect nostalgia and blithering last-minute contrition in equal measure. Maybe see you then?

A Bum Deal

Readers of a nervous disposition look away now. I have to warn you that this week's subject matter is likely to make a lot of you squirm. A verb so appropriate, you can't even imagine. OK, so don't tell me I didn't warn you.

(To be sung with an inane open-mouthed expression while skipping at full speed down the dirty Streatham streets with your trousers slowly falling down) Summons came, summons came, summons came in the post today! La la-la, la la-la, going to court with the other scum! How did it come to this? Well, simply put, I was driving without any insurance, as you might remember, and finally the summons came in the post to remind me, like a big papery finger. It'd been ages since the incident - 14th March, if I remember it. My. Cocking. Birthday - and I thought there was an off-chance they'd forgotten about the whole thing and we could return to being firm friends and sharing needles together on the park bench; but sadly, no.

As the day approached there was a furious compilation of paperwork. Everything had to be meticulously arranged so that I had the best chance of presenting myself as a fine upstanding member of the community and the court would have to let me off. Paper trails were printed showing payments made throughout the period in question, while notes were taken and documents produced. It really was a work of intense personal scrutiny, for which I can take virtually no credit as it was all done by my girlfriend, who looks after me in a kind of carer's role. Feeds me, wipes me, holds me through the night terrors and such.

One thing that would be a massive boon and help our case enormously would be a letter from the insurance agency taking full responsibility for their error and for the incident completely. Now this should be an almost impossible task, but believe it or not, we found the world's thickest insurance agent who was happy to write out exactly as we dictated, so long as we let him chase torchlight on the wall every 10 minutes. Go get it! I've put one of his letters on the post to show you his childish scrawl and that he spelt 'being' incorrectly. How can you get that wrong? It's 'be' 'ing'. Jesus.

Anyway, the day was approaching and I was starting to get a little nervous. We arranged to meet up with a lawyer friend a few days before who was fantastically helpful, but pretty much assured us we didn't have a leg to stand on. This made things even more fraut for me and I started to consider cutting my losses and pulling out of the case altogether. It was around this time that, in the evening, my bottom started to feel itchy.

As the temperatures soared in our late June burst of summer, I found myself on the sofa at night constantly adjusting my pants and scratching around the bumhole, where the itching sensation was building nicely now. I was pretty sure I knew what this was as I'd had it as a child, but what the hell was I doing with it now? It wasn't until a couple of days before the case that I looked down into the bowl after delivering a couple of witch's fingers and saw the tell-tale tails. Bum worms. I hadn't had it for about 20 years and was assured that it only came from kissing cats too much (I can't help it!) but without any cats in the vicinity I can only assume I got it from the kids at school. Thanks a lot, you bastards.

Treatment is a pill that, after 24 hours, should rid you of the wriggly swines and give you feeling of awesome power when you look down at the clump of death gently swirling in the murky water. It's quite beautiful, actually. Thinking I had plenty of time, I took the pill a good 48 hours before the hearing and waited for the toilety holocaust to present itself; but sadly this wasn't to be. If anything I think it just made them angrier and more desperate so that by the morning of the case they were writhing around in there like a bait box of maggots.

The timing couldn't have been worse. While we drove towards the courthouse my mind was supposed to be on the extensive notes we'd made, the case we'd built for ourselves, the plea and the speech, but all I could think of was how insanely itchy my arsehole was. When we arrived I can still see my girlfriend trying so hard not to be utterly horrified, as I goose-stepped my way around the scorching hot waiting area, pulling and scratching at my suit trousers; a look of mania and fear etched into my contorted face. An all-time low was going into the toilet at least five times just for the simple act of plunging my finger up to the knuckle in pure, fleshy anus. The act itself was vile, but the consequential sensation was almost orgasmic. Closed-eyed and open-mouthed, my head tilted upwards as I rummaged around in my colon as though I was trying to identify the culprits one-by-one by pointing to each of them.

A wild-eyed, fixed-grin on my face meant we were finally in front of the magistrates and, God knows how, we actually pulled it off. I'd only got halfway through the first of seven pages of notes when they simply asked for copies of the bank statements and asked us to wait outside. Wait, wait, wait. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Back inside again we were informed that the charges were 'withdrawn' and almost immediately the itching stopped. All sounds a little too convenient for the purposes of this story, but it's true. The worms died with the case and I couldn't help but see the poetic symmetry of the whole sorry affair - two pains in the arse ending at once.

Well, there you go. I've often opened my heart to you, but this week it's my sphincter. Consider yourselves honoured. I'd like to say that's my happy ending, but I pranged the car a couple of days ago so the premiums should be right back to where we started again. But so the saying goes - shit happens. And sometimes there are worms in it. Goodbye.

Mike Hunt

And look, I found one! You should know who this is and if you don't we can't be friends anymore. When I saw him he was tugging a granny trolley behind him and looked like something out of one of his own films. I love how 'real' he is.

I actually have a massive problem with the propensity for every argument to come down to a measure of how 'real' or 'fake' you are these days. Where did it all come from? Concerning yourself with something so obviously a fabricated construct of the media - 'real'ity television' has a lot to answer for (but I still love it and hate myself for that) - and then proclaiming another to be 'fake' is the clearest example of an oxymoron I've ever heard. Emphasis on the moron. It seems to me to be an excuse to say poisonous things to whoever you wish because you'd be 'fake' if you didn't. No. That's not right. Not telling someone they're fat or annoying or ugly is not being 'fake', it's just being a normal human being with a modicum of empathy. To do the opposite means you're an obnoxious twat. For real.

Anyway, really short rant as I just wanted to put this pic up and show the world how much I love Mike Leigh. I told him as much and he was lovely about it all. Why is it I always want to please older middle class men? Nothing good that way lies. Maybe it's because my own mother had only this to say about the blog - 'it's a bit moany'. Well, so's hardcore pornography and I understand that's been going from strength to strength. Toodles. X

Cave Worms

What a beautiful day. The birds are chirping in the trees, the sun's lapping around the streets like a docile house cat and passersby compliment each other on their respective hats. What's that, little Jimmy? Of course I'll push you higher on the swing. Higher and higher we go, Jimski, ha-ha-ha-ha! God it's good to be alive. I think I'll adopt Jimmy and together we'll help each other through the hard times - if only he'd stop obsessing over these bloody bean sprouts? Hang on - bean sprouts? That doesn't seem to fit into all this. I hate bean sprouts, they're nature's nose hairs. Why am I in Germany now having bean sprouts rudely crammed into every hole by Reinhard Burger? Oh, that's right, it's a dream and the radio alarm's headlines are invading my mind like one of those brainy serial killers off of the films. Fucking typical.

This is how I imagine you think of me - a person so unswervingly tied up in his own mission to bring all children to justice that any dribble of positivity may only be experienced behind closed eyes. That's the impression I've got from speaking to a few of you about the blog's contents in the last couple of weeks and it's strange really because I don't actually see it like that. I suppose that while you're in the middle of something - in this case teaching - it's hard for you to imagine that other people don't feel exactly the way you do. It just makes sense. OK, so here's the thing - this week will be a wholly positive experience for all involved. Upbeat doesn't even cover it - by the end of this post you'll be smiling so broadly that the arrival of a beaming Hare Krishna man descending upside down from the ceiling would not only be appropriate, it would be essential (see Airplane for details).

My tutor group are stars. They're only year 7 and, for the most part, they act this age; which makes them fun, engaged, interesting and obsessed with Justin Beiber. Must... Contain... Cynicism... Nearly every day they come to school with a enthusiastic story about how they narrowly avoided a dog attack, did a new dance move at their cousin's (which everyone's copying now) or got ever-so-very-slightly hurt attempting some kind of circus trick. Knee or elbow grazes are presented as a testament to the 'danger' they put themselves in for this last one. They are the top set in the year and produce the most incredible pieces of work which the kids in my last school would struggle to... No... Put-downs... Rest-assured - these are good girls who make childhood look like it should - a massive, trembling balloon of joy just fit to burst.

Over the next few weeks, the humanities departments (English, History, Geography, ICT, Music) have all come together for what's called an 'intergrated project', where year 7 pupils will see how the different subjects link with each other and how one can inform the next. The title of the project is '80 Days Around The World' and my contribution to this was a week-long scheme of work based in India which I taught last week. I actually surprised myself with how much I enjoyed this and, as a classroom experience, it's probably my favourite to date. Given the short amount of time left this term, I'd say this is unlikely to be beaten; unless the final week's project is called '80 Comments Around The Blog'. Hint alert.

Every lesson we journeyed further down the country, taking in the sights and sounds of Amritsar's Golden Temple, Cochin's river villages and, of course, the great Taj Mahal - complete with an almost entirely fabricated history made up by moi. The highlight, though, without a doubt was their visit to Mumbai, where the girls were picked to be in a Bollywood musical and all learned and performed a dance number which I turned into a film - you can see this at http://vimeo.com/24870301

The idea for this only came the day before and relied entirely on my girlfriend's goodwill to come in and dance in front of these kids with hardly any practice. I am a lucky man, no doubt though, because that night we made the whole dance up from scratch and it was at that point I finally got a single, tiny, glow-worm in a cave at night-like pang of regret about leaving the profession. What other job would have you spending a night coming up with a Bollywood dance to teach the next day? There are lots of reasons why I'm leaving this career behind, but when it's good, you just can't beat it. The lows can be all-consuming, but the highs are dizzying too and it's easy to forget that - particularly if you read this poisonous vitriol.

Big props to my girl for having whale-sized testes and giving it her all in front of the girls. You are the glowworm to my cave - although maybe that should be the other way round. Thanks also to Rob for last week's comment - it alludes to a time long past when I used to have a quick temper. These days I'm all relaxed, you see - in a way... Now I'm off to snap a baby's neck and drink the mother's love directly from its spinal cord to address the imbalance occurring as a result of this post. Peace and love. X