You shall go to the ball!

In ‘Pretty in Pink’ the diminutive record shop owner and mentor to Molly Ringwald’s poverty stricken aspirational teen with appalling taste in men (Ducky woman! Choose Ducky! What’s wrong with you!?) tells ginger Moll

‘You have to go to prom. If you don’t you’ll spend the rest of your life feeling as if you’ve forgotten something’.

Molly isn’t going to the Prom you see because she has no frock and all the posh girls have been giving her pony because she’s dating a posh lad. In the end she takes the very nice 50s prom dress owned by said record shop owner and in a fine example of turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear, buggers about with it and turns up alone at Prom in what can only be described as an envelope.

As a teenager I took this as a pertinent lesson in ‘if it ain’t broke,,,’ Not that it was a really relevant lesson as in my day we didn’t have Proms. When I left school, my chums and I bunked off last lesson and went to The Pretty Pigs where we had scampi in a basket before wandering off into sullen adulthood. So much for a right of passage. Indeed, in my day there were precious few formal occasions and I was 19 before it became necessary for me to buy evening wear. A shatung silk red number from Monsoon as I recall for the National Youth Theatre fundraising ball. The dress was pure 80s and would not have looked out of place in the final scene of ‘Footloose’ as would have my dance moves, but the less said about them the better.

Over the intervening years I have been forced into buying many black ball gowns for me role as the Doyen of the Opera but they were all notoriously foul as I had to be able to perform a de-rig and get out in them. It wasn’t until I got into the Teaching and learning game that the year long quest for the perfect Prom frock became an annual obsession. All my teenage fantasies about being Ally Sheedy in a sheer lip gloss finally getting noticed by Emilio Estevez (or preferably his muckier brother) raised their ugly head as, pushing 40, I attended my first Prom.

Kids nowadays don’t know they’re born! They have proms! And Chinese sweat shops that produce made to measure red carpet copies for under a tonne on e-bay. All I had was a John Hughes dream and some scampi in a plastic basket. As a result I go a bit over the top when it comes to formal do’s. I’ve been known to attend school functions commando so the line isn’t interrupted. This is not appropriate. I have also, more recently spent a fortune on Spanx and forgotton that with my fulsome chest a wonderbra is not only moot but harrowing for adolescents. Two years ago at prom my bosom entered the ballroom approximately 20 minutes before the rest of me. I have learnt to my cost that a halter-neck is not a good idea. You know you’re onto a loser when year 11 boys ask you to jump up and down. Trying to have a full on Prom experience whilst maintaining your professional dignity is something I have wrestled with for many a year but finally I think I may be at peace regarding this particular difficulty of modern life.

Friday is The conservation Ball – the first big event of the year and anyone who is anyone will be dragging glad rags under their fleece’s and tottering up to the FIDF hall for a three courser, auction and dancing. All the kids are having a sleep over in the Primary school (gawd bless em! First they had to deal with APP and now this!) leaving the adults to get amongst it right royally which is all very well but I haven’t any access to a TK Maxx and things are getting desperate!

Ordinarily around February me and me colleagues would start stalking prom frocks and accessoroies but frankly I don’t think a small branch of Peacocks is going to come good for this one. I bought my fail safe prom frock with me you understand – the one which doesn’t require structural engineering underwear and with which you can happily wear comedy socks, but it turns out that the wind, the walking and the absence of dial-a-meal has led to something of a spectacular de-biff.

Which is all very well and groovy if you have access to a River Island. I do not and my frock fell off when I tried it on. Thus it was that I went to see neighbour lady. It appears we are all in the same sartorial boat. She, a victim of the Stanley Stone has gone the other way. I, as she reasonably pointed out, have a narrow back. Neither of us have any clothes that fit.

Thus we spent a traumatic but largely hysterical evening in her bedroom in our scrungies trying on each others clothes trying to prevent men folk young and old from walking in when we were at our most vulnerable. We failed. Just as you are flattening your top hamper and easing it through a tight empire line, it is inevitable a man will walk in and witness the true horror of ‘Nam.

As a single person I do not appreciate this. I am not used to men seeing my flippy-floppies contorted into a size twelve and I think it most indecorous that I have no opportunity to giggle and point at their love handles in return. I will have my revenge I assure you. My poor eyesight often means I mistake the signs on changing room doors….

Anyhoo, me and the neighbor are now tooled up with fockage and accessories. The kids are taken care of and the tickets purchased. All that remains is the necessity to pamper that such an illustrious occasion requires. Amid the lust and locker-room talk that Friday night at The Narrows always entails, discussion raged about where one might indulge in a depilatory session. The men snorted with merriment:

‘Dunno if the West Store Salon do a back, sack and crack!’

We would have retaliated were it not for the sudden appearance of the help from the kitchen wearing a tight vest. After temporarily forgetting where we were, we returned to the important matters at hand. Should we go to the bother of having an up-do and a wax? I mused over these matters whilst supping my Exportation and considered that I would hold back on a decision until the western union transfer had come through.

This evening I took a look in the mirror, not something I would generally encourage. In a month I have neglected, shall we say my toilette. My eyebrows could induce panic in the avareage beauty therapist. Not shaving my legs in six weeks  has rendered the need for tights superfluous. I may need an angle grinder rather than a Venus wet ‘n’ dry. And as for my feet! Ye gods! Where are those ruddy ravenous fish when you need ‘em?

I think it’s safe to say that some major upholstery will be taking place at the newly re-Christened ‘Jamaica Inn’ this week. ( frankly Blenheim wasn’t windy enough). I hope the good people of Stanley appreciate these efforts, I’ll let you know….

Borah out

small town boy...

Tonight I have dug out my collection of CDs from ‘back in the day’ and am listening to Bronski Beat cos that’s how I roll, plus I have been thoroughly obsessed all week with ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which I put down to the simultaneous delivery of ‘Of Mice and Men’ to two year groups . There are parallels – honest.

Naturally enough this got me a-ponderin’ and a –ruminatin’.  In my four plus decades I have been about a bit what with one thing and another  - usually escaping from the scene of some kind of horrible misunderstanding as you might imagine, but on my travels I have garnered many a truism about life, so much so, that were I a gentlemen I would probably feel the need right now to grow a massive legitimate beard and write a novel like ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’. Fortunately I am not a geezer, so no undergraduate will ever be forced to perplex themselves at the foot of my moribund yearnings.

Suffice to say, that one of the truisms I have been forced to accept is this; If you go to a small community, there will always be a man in it who disturbs ordinarily quite sanguine women-folk. He will be inordinately and contextually speaking outrageously pretty. He will be in a position where the normal traffic of existence will make it hard to avoid him. Due to the nature of all other reverse Darwinism males in the vicinity he will take on a level of import that is truly Zeus like. And perhaps most significant of all, while he may well be aware of this, he will not use  this knowledge to his loiny advantage.

We have such a specimen hither and there is nary a woman between the age of 9 and 90 who doesn’t get a far away look in her eyes, giggle when he speaks to her or mutters to her mates what revolting things she would do to him given 20 minutes alone etc ad inf. I cannot help thinking this must be a terrible burden to the poor lad, but he looks quite well on it all things being equal.

Friday night is family night at The Narrows, which is a wonderful opportunity for grown ups to get thoroughly munted while their offspring run about like dervishes wielding pool cues about their heads. Yet by the 6^th dubious Chilean cocktail you can bet your wages the women will drop all pretence and start tarting with the help. It’s not our fault – he will insist on vaulting over the bar in athletic manly fashion, his lean tanned form displaying every rippling muscle adorned with high class tattage. The heir went googly eyed tonight muttering ‘Look at the pretty pictures on his arms’. We women exchanged a glance and discussed when might be an opportune time to deliver the ‘Talk’ to my 9 year old daughter.

But  not for long, because then he was supplicating his Chippendale taut ass before us to hand over cutlery. We all cleared our throats, breathed deeply and maintained our outwardly cool exteriors. Next he sidled up with a twinkling eye and a bottle of ketchup.

‘Sauce?’ he enquired his Latin dark eyes flashing with surpressed, barely, libidinously high sperm count. We couldn’t help ourselves. We giggled. Horrible.

I thought I’d escaped all this nonsense when the English department had an impromptu development meeting on the smoking deck, but OH no. Out comes the Falklands answer to Enrique proffering his massive zippo flame and interesting Spanish inflection. The normally highly ebullient pair immediately fell to taciturn sheepishness.

‘You know,’ say he ‘Deborah in Spanish has another meaning.

Sensibly, I kept quiet. I know, I’ve been had this way before. M’colleague though, being an excitable hard core metal bitch up for life’s experience said;

‘What’s that then?’

He violently mimed eating a kebab. Sounds horrible I know but both The English department had to hold each other vertical to forgo lust-inspired fainting.

‘Deborah me. It means eat me. You know, with real hunger’.

The junior member of the department fell into a sort of catatonic reverie. The silence needed to be broken. I swallowed down the five litres of drool and lisped with great difficulty,

‘So it may be taken as an insult or an erotic come-on?’

The Latin Love-a-rama raised his beautiful head and exhaled fragrant smoke into the brilliantly star covered heavens. Behind him a pub full of women sighed audibly. I kicked m’colleague visciously while he was not paying attention. She snorted and came back to herself with an irritated burst of profanity.

‘exxxxxxaaaaaactly’ he breathed, before smiling a smile that would encourage a nun to sell her soul to Bapometh and wandered back inside.

‘Bugger me!’ said m’colleague, ‘it’s illegal innit? I wouldn’t mind half an hour on that!’

‘Hmmmm….’ I replied unconvinced.

The whole thing reminded me of when I took the ladies of year 11 on a trip to that London and we inadvertently ran into the pretty half of ‘One Direction’ in an off licence. The ancients write about the horror of unbridled female sexuality quite effectively and I have witnessed it in the raw when a young lady who never failed to submit her homework  on time fell to her knees keening like an eighteenth century Latvian peasant and licking a minor pop celebrity. If you’ve seen that sort of thing, you never really recover. The mind is set on a different axis and will never see the world as quite right again.

Fortunately I have never been devastatingly attractive to the opposite sex apart from about 3 months when I was 22. And in fairness I don’t think that was me per se but a combination of Rigby and Pellar and a fishnet body stocking. I can honestly say that this is has never been a cause for distress. I have had some truly gorgeous friends and had the pleasure of having my dance card filled, if you will  by some seriously hot trouser and I always thought they carried an additional burden.

It is quite clear that if the purveyor of sauce had a phD in quantum relatively, the only impact this would have on women would be to make their ovaries rattle even louder when he walked past as clearly this would make him even more of a stud-muffin.

To be lusted after by half the populace must be awfully tiring and must seem particularly ironic if you have recurrent gout or trapped wind. The truly pretty have their human fallibility ripped from them like the thin cotton dress of a 70s porn queen. I for one thank the Lord for my intrinsic ability to be not sexy, however hard I try. The thought of having the science department all a quiver when I walk past would be truly terrifying….

Borah out

Craft wars

I have just received an e-mail from the Bodleian library which has confirmed my worst fears. I have indeed, as I previously suspected read every book on Everest ever published. So if any of you know of anyone who wrote one in pencil on scraps of paper,  then died horribly of cerebral oedema before they could get to a publisher do let me know. In the meantime I am going to have to find a way of filling in the down-time I have when I’m not otherwise encumbered by delivering Quality Teaching and Learning, parenting ineffectually, writing rubbish, drinking crap wine or threatening legal action. A girl needs a hobby.

Fortunately these fair Isles are full of useful pursuits and groups which peruse them. Some of them may even be undertaken whilst simultaneously smoking and lying down so I’m onto a winner. But I must be careful because hobbies are taken seriously hereabouts and I do not wish to offend by being half hearted in my approach which is going to be difficult. Half-hearted is my default setting ordinarily.

The annual craft fair has been advertised in The Penguin news since at least February so the excitement was tangible way before I arrived. The venue was school and as I have a key, I availed myself of a bottle of Exportation, let myself in a 2am and had a private viewing. Marvellous stuff. Though according to all, not as much submitted as last year for reasons people are only muttering about in dark corners. It matters not to me, though I knew something was afoot when the heir and Spare’s Sunday play date insisted through gritted teeth we put down the DS’s and ‘Make something’. Hmmm. I came 8000 miles with two children and a 21” suitcase. Crafting equipment wasn’t part of my payload. Still I managed to find cereal boxes and wool and if you’ve got those the possibilities are endless, as it would appear are the awards and Laurels.

All weekend, the town was a seething mass of rumour, conjecture and unrivalled bitterness as the prize winners were announced and cab drivers rang each other mid-job to discover whether each others taxidermical efforts had garnered a rosette. Such blue air when they discovered they were only highly commended! Ugly scenes!

As if all this excitement wasn’t enough, as we left the public viewing for a gentle stroll home along the harbour in the sun, the still skies on Stanley were rent asunder by the horrific cacophony of helicopter engines. 20 feet away on the school field a Sea king and 14 seater  hovered ominously churning a morass of goose poo and gorse bush into the air where it mingled with the crisp bags tossed carelessly by year 8, became a swirling mass of debris which immediately flew into the eyes, cleavage and wellies of all present. The spare being a small person keeled over in the force of the down draft and seemed pinned to the ground by some oddity of gravity. As I looked around, many other people were starring as if insensible as their pre-tween children lay flat on the tarmac. The helis landed and everyone wandered off spitting vitriol about the vile miscarriage of justice that was the judging of the felting.

Having peeled the boy off the floor I too wandered off considering as per that my skills are just not up to this sort of thing. Craft looks too full on for my liking. I may have to look into prime-time radio broadcasting instead…..

Borah Out

Not going out

It’s Saturday night in Stanley and I’m not going out. ‘What?’ I hear you cry ‘Bacchic booze hound Borah is not getting amongst it? Is she ill?’ But nay. Instead I’m channelling Jane Austen by catching up on my correspondence and encouraging the heir and the spare to earn their pocket money by doing chores like the vaccing and cleaning the lav in order to avoid any repetition of the ugly scenes earlier, when due to a want of cash, the boy went into an apoplectic rage at the charity shop when I refused to buy him a 1970’s 3 tonne computer monitor. Each to their own I suppose.

It is also a truth universally accepted that an English teacher new to the Edexcel lit spec and possessing only a 6 year old university essay on ‘Pride and Prejudice’ must be in want of a bit of a refresher before facing the ladies of year 11 for some Quality Teaching and Learning. Good job I downloaded it on the kindle before I left the UK. You never know in this game do you?

However after writing several letters to friends and relatives, plus a vaguely inflammatory and litigious bon mot to Staffordshire water Authority as it’s a bad month if I don’t threaten to sue someone, the night is still young and I’m at a loss. I just stepped onto the back stoop for a snout and heard a dreadful caterwauling from the direction of Deanos which suggest that a full Dionysian munt-on is in progress. This has made me vaguely regret not going out. Spending the evening writing reams of incomprehensible nonsense to people who will not even see it for 3 weeks might seems pointless and a total waste of youth. Still,  it’s an ill wind – I’ve done the pots.

The fact is I am currently in one of my murderous Hormonal Moods, no doubt bought on by the full moon and encroaching menopause and if I go out it could end very badly. Like some kind of evil Lycanthrope there are certain times when I shouldn’t be let loose on the innocent populace. I am better locked up and away from people, principally gentlemen. Now let me make this absolutely clear; I have had more than enough gentleman callers over the past 20 years to sate even those with the most gluttonous of appetites and to be frank I’ve had an ample sufficiency. I often think that if I hadn’t wasted all that time blethering on about boys and make up I would have been director general of the BBC by now so I have forsworn the company of men and my house is a lot cleaner for it. Thus I have spent several years ensuring my appearance dress and behaviour are so abhorrent to the average chap that none of them will come near me. I can assure you that I have been more than  successful in this venture.

In spite of this there are times when I feel the need to feast my eyes on a well turned ankle or whatever. Which is why I’ve locked myself in the kitchen. I have yet to feel it  incumbent on myself to don a white mini skirt and venture out to gurn at men half of my age but it is bound to happen sooner or later. Well I remember going to The Embassy Ballroom in Tamworth (a more inappropriately monikered establishment it would be hard to find incidentally) with my wide eye bunch of 18 year old friends, them clean as whistles in the Farrah St-pres and Lacoste shirts, all ready for an evening of the ‘Reynolds Girls’, only to be confronted by a wall of salivating 40 year old women hell bent on corrupting young flesh. It was known as ‘grab a granny’ night and I vowed at the time that I would never live long enough to despoil myself by joining their number.

Disappointingly,  I did not die when I was 27 though it was not for the want of trying and in fairness that hip never set properly. Which now means that if I go out I may well be accused of being some kind of dreadful cougar-wannabee gurning wildly at young service personel.  Because  lets face it, many of us get older but I for one refuse to grow up and given my complete inabiltiy to mature I am now faced with the unenviable ability to fancy anyone between the age of 21 and 65

Last week I was muttering obscenities to Mrs. Art when I happened to mention the finely chiselled features of Guru Grylls.

‘Oh no,’ Quoth she, ‘Too spikey round the nose, not my type at all’ Naturally enough this set me a pondering. This is not my fault, you understand but the ruddy Open University’s. Six years of undergraduate philosophy study and 1 of post graduate Cambridge think tankery leads to this navel gazing rationalisation nonsense,

‘I don’t like digestive biscuits but I’ll eat them in a cheesecake – why?’ Hmmmm, ponder, premise, premise, a priori, devil’s advocate, Mill’s Harm Principal, Yada yada ‘Ah! I hold an Unexamined Prejudice because my best friend’s mom when I was four told me digestives were made of sawdust. Marvellous! To the kelper store biscuit aisle immediately!’

The thing is I’m right with Mrs. Art on this one. I don’t really fancy Bear Grylls either but this has never stopped me licking the TV screen whenever he’s performing naked calisthenics on ‘Born Survivor’. Which is not something I’d recommend as a rule. The static makes your tongue swell to three times its original size which can frighten the children. I rather like my men beardy, polo-neck wearing, hurt and interesting with an obsession for early 18^th century painting and just a tiny bit gay. Which might explain why I’m single.

So what’s it all about? Why do I after years of thinking it was properly horrible suddenly find myself all a bother when faced with military types? Put simply it is the hell of a mid life crisis.

Back in the UK I had an unusually large number of single lady friends of a certain age and you could put large amounts of cash on how they would be spending their Sunday night – 3 sheets to the wind on Chablis surfing their Guardian Soulmates matches. The rest of the week would be spent e-mailing and texting before the inevitable, inexorable disastrous Saturday night date at Derby Nandos after which never the twain should meet again.

In the end I bowed to peer pressure and logged on to have a gander and see what all the fuss was about. Horrible! Horrible! It was like living in a painting by Breugal only more beige. Millions of divorced men! In cagoules! Up mountains with a massive dog! Looking for clearly insane women with a desire for ‘nights in and out, hillwalking and golf’ Millions of men with the identical retirement dream of sailing an RIB to Gibraltar! Ye Gods! The humanity!

As is my wont when confronted by irrational behaviour, I discussed the matter in depth with Alex my 21 year tutor of chav speak which helps me to be ‘down with the kids’ when delivering Quality Teaching and Learning, and the Daughter – who is a 43 year old man before you reach for the hotline to social services. ‘What and why?’ said I

The daughter explained thus

‘Listen woman, Guardian Soulmates is a well known fit up. I’m on it and my profile is a tissue of lies headed by a photo of James McAvoy in a bad light. It is the repository of the broken and hopeless who cover their worthlessness with generic profile statements in the hope of just one last blast of human warmth. I should give it a swerve and have your memory wiped so you never give it another thought’

Alex was more combative and proactive in her critique. She suggested we post a profile which told nothing but the heinous truth and accompany it with a photo of me wearing one pop sock having a fight with a box hedge. Thus it was, somewhat unadvisedly I placed the following in the public domain of the world wide web:

‘I enjoy smoking 200 fags a day, like swearing, being miserable and critical, suing people, drinking like a fish and discovering people’s weaknesses so I can spend hours amusedly abusing them. If you are happy to shovel me into a taxi after the end of an evening so I can go home and watch Discovery channel in my pants with a kebab then I’m your girl.’

I got 40.000 replies, chiefly from the Philippines. 22 of them were from women. Never again.

Why do all these people bang on about how they like climbing the Eiger and wrestling sharks when clearly they spend most of their time watching ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ on sky plus because ‘they work long hours’? Hmmm.

Teenagers will constantly tell you how individual and different they are when in reality if the average 15 year old turns up to school wearing anything even slightly different to her mates she will spiral in a catatonic panic. The middle aged are just the same. Encroaching awareness of their own mortality ensures they suddenly feel a need to ‘get out in the fresh air’ more often. This makes them pretend a lot, or even worse, they actually do go out walking and wearing cagoules. Most unpleasant. When I announced I was moving here my ex-colleague Luke – a Renaissance man if ever there was one – said ‘Why are you going to the Falklands? Oh I get it you’re scared of death’. This made me and the Daughter laugh until wee came out so apposite was the comment.

If you turn 40 and suddenly find yourself needing a Mondeo, think about taking up akido and decide to  build a conservatory rather than go to the bother of moving you might as well turn up your toes. However this is no excuse to go careening around the Southern most capital city in the world slaking your menopausal horn all over the defenders of Her Majesty’s oversees dominions. In life there must always be balance.

So whilst I agree with Mrs. Art, I’m indulging my fears by identifying with Bear’s obvious rude health. I shall not wander into The Vic leering but shall stay here inhaling Exportation (still 5 for a tenner – get in!) and enjoy what can only be described as THE FINEST PIECE OF DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKING IN THE HISTROY OF TELEVISUAL ENTERTAINMENT viz The first episode of Bear’s new series where he goes up against Iceland accompanied by – heavens ladies! Brace positions please! Jake Gyllenhall!

‘Shut the front door! ‘ I hear you squeal but tis true! The two of ‘em struggling and straining doing nudey press up together by a glacial lake. Brilliant! It’s like ‘Brokeback 2 – Winter’. Worth every penny of the huge amount I shall be paying Cable and Wireless for the bandwidth necessary to access YouTube. I may well look like Madame whatever her name was who gurgled churlishly with mirth next to the guillotine but sod it. I’m behind closed doors. It makes me happy and no corporal will get hurt.

Borah Out.

The first rule of Quiz night is that you don't talk about quiz night...

Far be it from me to indulge my latent competetive streak, after all ignominious failure is par for the course since I hit 30, but when someone says 'Who want to be on the pub quiz team?' the tamed beast within me rises all dripping fangs and pumped biceps.

I am old and due to the fact that I am convinced I lie slightly on the ASD spectrum I know loads of really useless stuff, especially if it requires translating from the French, which is strange given the fact I have an entirely unreasonable hatred of anything even vaguely francophile in nature. I blame that incident in the back of a fiat 128 in 1993.....

So tonight I procurred the services of a referee for the heir and the spare, donned me wooly hat, ventured out into the snow and hoisted myself into a landrover in order to mount an assault on the omnipotence of the SENCO. I am Borah! Hear me roar! Put me on a sports field and I will instantly go into cardiac arrest, ask me to convince a panel of the need to adopt new policy and I will wander off for a fag after half-heartedly composing a powerpoint, but ask me to intellectually enter the gladatorial arena of pointless knowledge and I will without a second's debate assemble a metaphorical arsenal of weaponary and sprint into the fray covered in cam cream with a war cry of 'Elvis Presley in 1976, trust me! write it down and move on!'

The Stanley Arms quiz is held on the first Wednesday of every month and there is a special to tempt your taste buds. Legend has it that no one can touch the SENCO who spends the week running up to quiz night flexing his intellectual muscles on logic problem websites. We upstart new teachers like a challenge - we ate 15 chicken fajitas on the plane down, we can handle it. And so teams were amassed, the country cottage pie duly pre-ordered and at 7pm precisely we sauntered through the swing saloon doors of The Stanley Arms, chewing matchsticks and looking like we meant business, or would have done had I not got stuck in the doors a bit and had to be freed.

Split into two teams to mount our upstart challenge and dethrone the king of quiz, we ordered soft drinks so as not to impair our academic prowess and got down to business. Three hours, twelve rounds, a great deal of country cottage pie, 17 pints of diet coke, a great deal of sweating, bitter recriminations and fierce argument and my team came second, a mere point I'll have you know from knocking the SENCO and his viscious cronies into the harbour.

The post bout analysis was not pretty. There was the horrible business about tomato being the world's most popular fruit, the terrible pressure that forced Mr.Science into an early bath regarding inert gasses, the legendary sucess of the film round and my wild card suggestiomn of Biddie Baxter failing to score. All to no avail! Why oh why! I've always prided myself on my ability to recall the seven deadly sins, but in the heat of battle, wrath escaped me. Ah! Twas ever so!

Still there's always next month and this time I will be reading the Penguin News more thoroughly in preparation for round 8. Your days at the top of the ziggurat are numbered Team BFD! Oh yes!

Borah out...

The Key to happiness

I'm always losing my keys. It cost my former employer thousands and they got inordinantely cross with me, which is never a desired outcome but what can you do? Latent dispraxia and tunnel vision do not make happy bedfellows when it comes to not losing small items. Here however, I don't think it's going to be an issue.

When I left Brize Norton three weeks ago I was wearing Kevlar, carrying MACE and was ready at any moment to take on some mutha with negative social urges with a oversized handbag and a large stick. The major cities wre 'gripped by fear' in the parlance of the red top newspapers by a bunch of marauding pubescents with blackberry messenger and a desire to get up to no good and possibly nick some trainers into the bargain.

While Britain burned and everyone got very cross about the riots, I couldn't help thinking that they were all a bit rubbish. As I have spent the past decade around hoodie wearing ghetto wannabees, I have got used to their ponderous ways and find them largely inoffensive. I can undertsnad why others might cross the street to avoid a posse of Burberry clad 6ft tall 15 year olds spitting and clogging the pavement outside McDonalds, but corridor habit has removed all threat from such an obstacle and I barge me way through muttering 'Pardon me gentlemen, walking here'. As the Burberry's also spend much time being shoved about corridors by teachers, they nary raise an eyebrow.

Why do they clog pavements and stagger about as if destroyed by drink? My theory is a complete absence of spatial awareness due to extremely rapid growth and blurred vision from playing COD till 6am. I always enjoy teaching a new year nine group because I know that by Christmas the boys will start falling over for no apparent reason. They will walk into doors, inadvertaly cartwheel across desks and from a totally still standing position suddenly and inexplicable tip over and fall down the stairs. Hours of fun for the observant teacher with a taste for slapstick, They can't quite figure out where their legs are and their feet have grown 4 sizes in 20 minutes ensuring amusing tripping over incidents that the girls think are 'pathet' and causes much heavily mascara'd eye rolling.

So you'll forgive me if watching news coverage of the rioting I opened a bag of popcorn put me feet up and waited for the inevitable pratfalls through plateglass windows.
Kids nowadays love the idea of being a bit ghetto, but its a load of pony. I want to see the Director's cut of 'Kidulthood' where amid all the maiming, procreation and drug abuse there are days of mind numbing boredom siiting on the swings and txting each other stuff like
'I'm on BBM R U. txtbk'
'yeah. RU txtbak'
'yeah'

I knew all this outraged upset about the state of Britain's rampaging youth was largely misplaced when a 14 year old was arrested for looting a Brabantia bin. Seriously! What sort of self-respecting adolescent goes and nicks something that could only  possibly be found desirable by a menopausal woman or a gay man? It's like nicking a poster of Jonny Depp or an Eames chair.

Despite this, it's a fact of life that schools in the UK are a hotbed of what some might term 'opportunistic crime'. Over the years I have learnt through experience to lock away my handbag, hide anything confidential and never, repeat never leave my fags in my pocket. The amount of snout I've had lifted by ruddy kids could give every employee of Philip Morris a very healthy retirement plan.

By extension, I have had to lock my classroom whenever the inevitable urge 'to go out on the field and write about our senses' lesson fills me (usually during summer term when no one can be arsed anymore). I locked it when we went to assembly, when there was fire alarm, ususally period 5 on a wednesday when year 10 didn't want to endure science, or whenever a child impaled themselves on a spike/chair leg/broken window which required the rest of the class to leave so the emergency services could get in and get suturing. Ah! Memories.

If you didn't lock your room, ineveitably you would return to find the place looking like downtown Tripoli with the contents of school bags cast assunder and packed lunch sandwiches stuck to the whiteboard.

So I was amused today when leaving for assembly I instructed my form to leave their bags in the room and not to worry as I would be locking the door. They all stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me with a mixture of wide eyed wonder and deep suspicion.
'Why?' they asked

'Oh yes' I thought 'I am in Stanley'.

The idea that your belongings might not be safe in an unlocked classroom is as alien to these young people as the idea that one day they will be forty. It simply does not compute. No-one locks their doors here. Ever. Which is handy as I can never remember where my keys are. people will return stuff to you that you have left lying about for days on end.. And when you're on the lavvy quietly minding your own business, 53 kids will burst into the house and demand a sleepover with snacks. Very like being a student again really.

Just after the riots, I was walking through Swad when I chanced upon some of my miscreant year 9  form careering around the streets 'being hard'
'Alright miss?' they said.
'Gentlemen,' I responded 'Not in Derby doing any looting then?'
'Nah, too far innit. And Swad's rubbish so whats the point? Plus me dad would kill me'

In Swad there are eight shops and three of them are Poundstetcher. You can see the lad's point. If you live in a small town, you are very likely to get caught and get a kicking and it's not really worth it if all you can get hold of is a fake brabantia bin and a jumbo pack of J cloths.

You'd be much better served by going home, playing COD and growing so fast that teachers laugh at you.
I think its safe to say I will not be locking my door much. They would find it odd and the very last thing any adult needs is to be considered 'weird' by a buncha teens. That way madness lies, not to mention endless paperwork.

Boarh Out

Cheque mate?

Due to a variety of ignoble past errors, affiliations and not to put to fine a point on it DUBIOUS MEN, I have for years now lived a cash-only lifestyle. This in some ways has a sort of recherche vintage cool about it but does irritate creditors when I can't make 'an immediate phone payment using a debit card' No bank worth it's salt is going to give me a debit card.  It would be a highly ill-advised move akin to employing Nick Leeson if you are Barings. Next stop - international forclosure and penury. HSBC hardly need that on their already guilt stained conscience.

It is only very recently that I got a credit card and I only use that for insane drunken e-bay purchases, or at least did before they closed my account over what I still maintain amounts to nothing more than a horrible misunderstanding. Not to worry! I still have the shower radio shaped like an Avon Skin-So-Soft bottle so I haven't really lost out.

Moving hither, I was concerned therefore to discover that there are no ATMs on the Islands and in the time-honoured tradition of banks - the only branch of Standard Chartered is never open when you need it. Or at least I thought it wasn't. Then I learned of the highly civilised practice locally of everybody having an hour and half lunch break except Standard Chartered.

Pity the poor tellers! While everyone else nips home for a pie and a pint, walks the dog, puts peat on the fire, shears a few sheep, smokes 40 fags or just demands soup with menace from Jacs, the blue neckerchiefed staff are forced to work and witness the horrible sight of Stanley rush hour through the window. Stop! look and Listen! As many as 40 4x4s may be clogging the byways of the city centre.  The words of the old Malibu advert come to mind - 'Oh no man! Its total gridlock!'

'Good' I thought. 'I can do my marking (Ha! The road to hell and all that) eat some pre-delivered soup then stagger down to the bank and get some cold hard cash over the counter and still be back in time to run a fabulously enriching lunchtime club'. As it turns out however, not even that is necessary as nobody much uses cash or credit but the staple of 1950s Britain - the cheque book.

Now I am all for a Luddite approach to technology. The only time I have ever used a chip and pin machine is on the numerous, I grant you, occasions when my mother forgets her PIN in Morrisons. She will get in a mess at the checkout while huge queues accumulate behind her puching any 4 digit number that comes into her addled mind until the machine finally blows up and everyone starts crying and shouting. At which point, I will sigh, put me fag out end enter the correct number before murder occurs. Not in itself a simple process as I am completely blind and can never see the display. Horrible scenes all round I assure you.

But the last time I wrote a cheque was in 1988 and even then I had to have a cheque guarentee card or the bloke in Victoria Wines would chase me out of the shop with an iron bar. I'd forgotton how to do it and further how to go about that most archaic of rituals, 'balancing the cheque book', something I remeber my mother doing religiously every Sunday afternoon, a copy of her bank statement alongside her while I went upstairs 'to play me tapes'. Half an hour of invective, muttering and 'I bought WHAT?' would curl up the stairs frankly destroying my enagagement with Adam Ant warbling his Berundi bletherings, before she finally gave up and took to drawing endless fish on the back of the phone directory. It's no wonder I've turned out like I have.

I was advised to order two cheque books intially and not to expect them to last long and further not to concern myself horribly about the idea of writing a cheque for two quid as everyone does apparently. Pffft! The day I enter a retail establishment and only shell out two quid will be the day both kids have left home and I've given up smoking, drinking and eating sweets. In other words a cold day in hell. Neither does it matter much if you are too flummoxed by drink to remember to sign it. As everyone knows everyone else and where you live I have heard tell of incidents where the staff of The Narrows have knocked on the door at 9am on a Saturday and kindly requested that the hanging occupant now sign their cheque. Brilliant!

When I collected my two shintycrisp cheque books on Wednesday I grinned to myself about my paper based 'liscence to bounce' and immediately stopped poisoning the children with my cooking and headed out for tea. I was handed a stamp in The Narrows shortnening by about ten minutes the writing of my first (wrong glasses) at which point I started muttering about Large Print Cheques and the disability act to a captive audience that I later discovered much to my embarressment was a coat stand.

The next morning I experienced what can only be described as shopper's remorse. I called my mother and enquired about how one might go about balancing it.
'Never mind that!' she squawked, 'the neighbors are in uproar. There is something alien and wrong with that voile panel I liberated from Dunteachin. Its offended the WI. What's the scoop?'

Discombobutated momentarily by her rambling I put down my cheque book and considered the matter
'What voile panel?'
'The purple one. With sequins'
'Ah.'
'What do you mean 'Ah', WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?'
'Those are not sequins, they are miniature solar powered LED lights'
'Are you quite mad? What are you talking about?'

Some time ago, I was  forced to enter a Romantic Liaison with a physics teacher. It wasn't my fault you understand, just one of those terrible cross roads in life where you fail to take the road less travelled and end up spending every weekend in Dunhelm looking at nets and beige faux suede cushion covers. During this miscreant period I bought said voil panel and after a particulalrly mind-boggling evening working out compound interest on a car payment with the physics teacher I locked myself in a cupboard and shifted the LED lights about a bit so that when the heat of the day dissipated and the gloaming darkened the streets, the word 'Knickers' would be seen writ large accross his lounge window.

As it turned out The Physivcs teacher appeared to be unimpressed by a purple jewel encrusted voile panel and it ended up languishing in some forgotton cupboard until liberated by my mother and causing a great deal of upset. Needles to say I never did find out how to balance my cheque book, so I had to work it out all by myself. Which I did. And I can say with full qualification I am skint.

But I can probably get away with a two quid spend.....

Boarh out

Reuse, recycle rethink

I'm listening to Justin Bieber on the radio. Ordinarily this would make me cry real tears, the result, no doubt of looking into the maw, Dante-esque visions of modern hell. Recently though I have adapted to life without urban stimulus and as a result am singing along most happily viz 'babeee, babee,babee aaaaalright!'

A couple of weeks before I left the UK I found myself snorting with derision at an article in Grazia magazine entitled 'Help! I'm Generation undecided!'. Let me first point out that I would never normally shell out actual cash for Grazia or any other Women's Lifestyle Magazine. This is beacuse I don't have an aspergic need for 700 pairs of uncomfortable shoes which cost £500, consider hair extensions the work of Baphpomet and do not spend every waking hour worrying nerotically about 'my relationship'. On this occasion though I was forced to buy it as it promised extensive details about the final hours of Amy Winehouse and a picture of James Franco in a vest.

Anyhoo, said 'Generation Undecided' are, apparently, modern persons of disposable income, urban addresses and seemingly limitless options. They get in a flap because they are suffering almost infinite variety regarding every aspect of life. Panic when the weekly shop on Ocado takes almost all evening? Spend three hours debating which takeaway to order? Never commit to watching telly but channel surf 800 available programmes in case there's something better on? Have a bedroom full of new clothes you 'might take back'? Welcome! You are a fully paid up member of Geneation Undecided.

Such nonsense makes me suck my few remaining teeth. In my day we had proper societal sub-groups. In my early twenties we had Generation X. Brilliant that was; an excuse to lie around being hurt and interesting, wearing ripped 501s listening to Pearl Jam and bemoaning the fact that our very expensive higher edcation counted for nought in the days of the dot.com boom. Generation X had excellent figureheads like Ethan Hawke in a vest and Winona Ryder looking delicate. Then Kurt Cobain died and we moved swiftly on to The Prozac Generation where lots of casualties from the M25-rave-in-a-field era finally gurned out and went into heavy therapy. We were sort of stuck with Sadie Frost and Pearl Lowe for that one but it was bearable in its way.

By the time I was pushing 40 there was the fantastic invention of 'Middle Youth', which if you ask me was merely an excuse for men in their 50s to not wear socks and women of an age where thread veins become an issue to go off and get some work done while they continue to wear a tube skirt. Which is a distinct improvement on the approach to middle age adopted by my mother's generation. In those days the minute you turned 43, you went out, puchased an 18 hour girdle and had your hair permed and cut short. leading to some kind of kafka-esque world where everyone looked like the same, a bit like the zombie Grannies in The Mighty Boosh. Brrr....

So now we're stuck with Generation Undecided. If you're going to bother with a movement I can't think of anything more useless. 'Oh dear! I have too many retail options! I must take to a darkened room, practice yogic breathing until internet shopping becomes the first casualty come the revolution!'

Don't panic UD's! I have a cure. Move to the Falkland Islands.
Anxious that you have spent a fortune on clothes you will never wear? The only worry here is that you'll turn up to school in the same Peacocks outfit as half the staff and student body. And that's not a particular worry as the chances are you will be wearing several layers and can just remove a couple for a touch of completely unnecessary individualism.

Spending hours trawling round Tesco, Aldi, Sainsburys et al looking for the best deals? As I was told this week 'If you see something you want buy it, because chances are it won't be available next week' which explains why everyone in town is running about with 900 rolls of bog paper from The West Store - its on offer and when they're gone, they're gone.

Concerned that your Sky plus is full of crap that you'll never watch? Move into Bleinhem - no ariel, no telly. Sorted.

All the psychic horror of modern living has been removed. I do not have to get the garden spade out every morning to remove the piles of junk mail preventing egress from the house. I am not unindated with endless unsolicited phone calls from Dehli asking if I would like to take part in a survey/have new windows/be interested in dog waxing. When I walk down the street there are no billboards advertising scrummy objects and services without which my life will be incomplete.

Here life is easier. Yesterday we were walking home when a taxi pulled up alongside us and the driver leaned out of the window to hand my son his hat  which he had left there 3 days previously. Tonight I read to my son, something he would not have endured back home. On the plane coming down I heard a teenage boy say 'I can't wait to get back to the Falklands'. At the time this surprised me having only ever been around over stimulated teenagers. Now I can appreciate that for someone who has grown up here much of life in the UK must appear truly ridiculous and deeply unfeeling.

Not to say that I have completey assimulated. I am finding it diffiult to make my choice from the Narrows menu, I peer myopically at tomatos in The West Store wondering which of the four available would most suit my needs. The Heir and Spare took 45 minutes to chose a DVD from a relatively limited collection but most of all I am betrayed by my middle class insidious need for several dustbins.

For years I have been indoctinated with endless agitprop about the need to seperate my refuse into suitable recepticles for recycling or else it will quite clearly be my personal fault when the good earth veers horribly off its axis and all of humanity into oblivion with it.

In the UK I had 5 different areas for waste. My black bin - generally considered to be evil as it contained general waste which is much to be frowned upon. The blue bin for cans, bottles and other plastics, the brown one for composting and garden waste, a sack for newspapers magazines, paper etc and a kitchen pot for potato peelings (unecessary I found, potato peelings are not a feature of Balti Towers delivered meals). Then there was the weird fella from Swad with the van who went round demanding recyclable household items like fridges and stuff. I met numerous people who had fallen foul of him. No sooner had Curry's dvered the latest washing machine but he'd whipped it off the porch and onto the lorry leaving nought but the packaging which he didn't even bother putting in the blue sack as he drove off at top speed cacking wildly, exhaust from his thieving lorry polluting the lungs of indiginous bird species - THE BASTID!

All of this anietry was witnessed at its zenith, as one might imagine in Brighton. Last year I was at an interview in a school which I quickly realised was actually the model for the school in 'kidulthood'. By mid morning I was desperate to get out as everyone was clearly certifiable, but the senior leaders had locked me in a staffroom with a woman sporting a very noticable twitch and a lot of unusually remarkable conspiricy theories and a geography teacher wearing hemp trousers. Both of them sat extremely close to me proffering houmous and questioning me most earnestly about my political affiliations and views on pedagogy.

The georgraphy teacher explained that he was aiming for a carbon-neutral existance and as such only ate out of skips, made his own clothes, had a thunderbox in the garden and used no electricity apart from his alarm clock.
'Why' I asked 'don't you get an alarm clock with a wind up mechanism? Then you wouldn't need to use electricty at all.' Several moments of silence passed before the geography teacher, a tad green about the gills, stood up and silently left the room. I later discoovered that the following week he was arrested when acting as a human shield at the blockade of an oil refinery. I am unsure as to whether he replaced the alarm clock.

As I was the only candidate, and it was quite obvious that frankly they would have appointed anyone with a pulse, I was offered the job. I managed to wriggle out of it. And thank the Lord in His mercy for such release! Otherwise I would be sitting in a Tapas bar in Brighton right about now worrying about 'my relationship' and whether my kids needed primal scream therapy. Probably wearing last year's shoes.

So while it might feel horribly recidivist not to be separating my refuse, I am secretly quite relived that such torpor has been removed. In any case in the three weeks I have been here I have only produced four bin liners of rubbish. I put this down to the fact that Exportation red wine comes in two lite bottles, no junk mail and a need to eat everything on the plate as food is less available and more expensive.

My guru Laura Ingalls Wilder admits that her life took a turn for the worse when she first laid eyes on a Sears catalogue. She became aspirational and dissatisfied. A former student of mine once refused to accept freebies from Derby University recruitment day as she said they were a waste of resources and would only end up in a landfill. Respec' to both of em I say.

Right! I'm off to photocopy 600 workbooks, if only I can decide which book to study...Hmmm, decisions, decsions...

Borah Out.