Dogs can't make bread - but they can knead it.

Last night, I went to the Cardiff International Arena to see Eddie Izzard.

Great journey by the way - actually set off properly at 4pm, took my parking ticket out of the machine at the car park entrance at 6.50pm. The show started at 8 - perfect timing!

There are two big video screens each side of the stage which were showing Eddie's live twitter feeds against a background of live shots of various people in the audience. This was a great idea. As the auditorium filled, more and more people were tweeting him. Some were telling jokes, others were saying how much they'd enjoyed previous shows; there were the inevitable hello's! and birthday/anniversary mentions, and a selection of highly amusing ones explaining what the venue toilets were like from the inside. This all helped to create a convivial atmosphere, and build a sense of anticipation. One personal gripe though - why didn't mine come up? Is it because I protect my updates? Anyway, back to the gig....

I've been thinking a lot this morning about what Eddie actually did for two hours. His 'routine' (for want of a better word) was set against a narrative of why he doesn't believe in God, and a history of Creation. A highly condensed history, with a few 'facts' that I'll have to check out on Wikipedia later (such as the one about the reason the ancient Egyptians were wiped out was because they were involved in a series of chariot crashes, caused by a build up of bugs on the windscreen). And of course such a backdrop is a rich source of material provided you tread with a little care and try not to alienate or seriously offend anyone. Which he did, very skilfully.

What he actually did was impressionistic in the sense on Monet, and stream-of-consciousness in the sense of Virginia Woolf. Like Monet, each word, phrase, gesture, was a brightly coloured jewel that was well crafted, but really came into its own when you stepped back and looked at the whole picture. Nothing quite firmly delineated, but overall a complete representation. All this was added to the employment of that exquisite linguistic shorthand that Ms Woolf used to such great effect. The line from Mrs Dalloway that has always stuck in my head is the one about "...the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung." The picture is complete - Thelwell-style ponies being ridden by teen-aged girls, riding hats looking too big for them, trotting along together, nattering; the ponies eager for a canter and an opportunity for a little mischief should the chance arrive; closely-cropped, springy turf; upper-middle class England in the 1950's, plummy accents and parties - all this from a few words in a novel. And with a few well-chosen words (or even sounds) and gestures, Eddie did the same. At times, I found myself not laughing, but mentally completing the picture he was painting for me. And then of course I also laughed like a drain.

So what he actually did was tell a story, do some impressions (Sean Connery was very good!), a little character acting, a couple of anecdotes, some ad-libbing, and deliver a familiar story in a comic way.

The Egyptian weather forecast was brilliant (even though I knew how it was going to be), and the piece about the Romans and Latin was also superb. Six minutes in Latin, six seconds in English after we dropped all those ridiculous endings.

But I would be hard pressed to give you a single line from the show.

And that's why I can only explain it using references from literature and the art world. What was evident, though, was the amount of practice and rehearsal Eddie must have put into that performance. It was actually very complex, but he delivered it in a way that made you believe that he was having a very personal conversation with you and really just making it up as he went along. And that's the result of a great deal of hard work.

I absolutely loved him.

Oh, and ladies. He is gorgeous. No high-heels last night. I guess after all those marathons his feet must still be wrecked. But he was wearing some very sexy black cowboy boots with low heels and metal bits on the heels and toes. And he was in make-up.

I would.

Finally, dogs can't make bread - but they can knead it. Got no thumbs, see?

Just a Job

I finished my lost post with the idea that teaching is 'just a job'. And compared with my health, it is.

But of course, it isn't just a job. It's a job I used to love, but for various reasons including the increasingly impossible workload, I'm in danger of falling out of love with it.

A Miserable Week

I've had a miserable week. I knew at during the last two weeks of the half-term that I would be going down with something. All the signs were there - tiredness, being short-tempered, and eventually collapsing into tears at the end of the day.

It was no surprise, then, when as soon as the first Saturday of the holiday arrived, I felt as if there was a bowling ball sitting on my chest, and I didn't have an ounce of energy to do anything other than get up and see to my animals.

And now it's Thursday night, and although I am now suffering from 'nothing more' than a heavy cold, I still don't have any energy and am forced to make an appointment to see the Doctor tomorrow. I don't think I'll be fit enough to go back on Monday.

I think that most people realise how hard teachers work. But I've always maintained that English teachers work harder than most. Here's why.

At Key Stage 3 (Years 7-9), I have six separate areas to assess with regard to a student's speaking and listening skills. Then there are five in relation to reading, and eight for writing. So, that's nineteen in all. And each one of should be formally assessed at least three times during the course of a year. The students need to know that they're being assessed, given the opportunity for feedback and target setting, and the chance to improve. So, that's a total of fifty-seven assessment 'opportunities'. Per student. Multiply that by a class of twenty-five students, and then take into consideration that I have a total of 39 students full-time, and I'm sure you begin to see the point I'm making. I also have two classes that I am 25% responsible for, so that's at least another 30 assessments over the year.

But of course it doesn't end there. That was just English at KS3. On top of that, there's Key Stage 4 - the GCSE students. Now I don't have an English Class, I have two Media Studies classes instead. The Year 10's have to produce three pieces of coursework this year, and be prepared for an exam. There and twenty-five of them. Then the year 11's have to produce one substantial piece of work, be prepared for their exam, and catch up on the work they've missed.

My school has a six-lesson day. I have five lessons during the week 'free' for planning, preparation and assessment. Incidentally, that's one more than most teachers because I am a post-holder and get one extra 'free' lesson in recognition of the extra work this entails. Yep, I can see you nodding your head in sympathy, it's not nearly enough.

Of course, the school day finishes at 3.10pm, so I can do it then, right? Well, when I'm not meeting a colleague to discuss stuff, I do. Then there's reports, paperwork arising from the day etc. etc. And I still go home and work in the evenings, planning what to do in the twenty-five lessons out of thirty per week that I have to 'deliver learning opportunities'.

So, when something else happens, over and above everything I've told you above, it really is the proverbial straw. Barely-controlled stress levels rise, adrenaline and cortisol in released, and is it any wonder that I'm at the end of what should have been a relaxing break, feeling as if I've never actually had any time off at all?

So, if the Doctor wants to sign me off for another week, and I feel deeply guilty at the prospect of another week at home, I will in fact grab that sick note with both hands and chant the mantra 'it's just a job'.

Because, actually, that's all it is. Just a job.

Make progress in ten minutes...

Do children today have it worse than those of us born in the 1960's? I have no evidence to base this on other than my own observations but yes, I think they do. At the very least, they have greater access to chemicals via the sweets, crisps, general junk food and so-called 'energy' drinks they consume. The salt, empty-carbohydrate-rich and E-numbered diet has an adverse effect on their attention span, energy levels, and general health. I know it, it's well documented scientifically, and they know it too.

Lets move on, then, to the cost in monetary terms of all this. I come from a working-class background. My father struggled to (eventually) afford a mortgage and the associated bills. The house was never warm (we had that dreadfully expensive night-storage heating system, the one with the radiators the size of Sherman tanks, filled with bricks), and the carpet was threadbare in places. I remember lying in the bath, covered in as much water as possible, because it was bloody freezing once you exposed your wet skin to the air. I was given enough pocket money once a week to buy a bag-full of sweets at the school tuck shop. As I got older, I was given dinner money that was either spent on dinner or, as I became a sophisticated teenager (or so I thought), it went on other more important stuff and I just bought an apple. The point is, money was limited. Yet now I see, everyday, kids with several pounds EVERY DAY to spend on junk. And I know that a lot of those kids come from families on benefits. So why do they have, proportionally, so much more money? And then of course some of them have money for cigarettes as well...

And on now to the thorny subject of authority. When I see a policeman walking the street (and it's never just one, they're always in pairs), I stare. I stare because, frankly, it's a rare sight. And because when I do see them, they're obviously going to make a house visit. And when I look round, I can usually spot the police car parked somewhere. Now I know that your basic, (sometimes) working salt-of-the-earth peasant class has always contained an element for whom the law is something to be ignored and, if possible, outwitted. And I also believe that it was accepted that, if you were a law-breaker yourself in whatever capacity, you wouldn't bother contacting them if YOU were wronged. You knew you had to live with it, deal with it, or whatever you needed to do in order to co-exist with your chosen community. You knew that they knew who you were, and that they knew all about you, your family, everything, and would act accordingly. In short, you, and they, knew the 'rules'. Not anymore.

There are no community police. Policemen and policewomen do not live in the community they serve. Of course, there will be exceptions, but generally I think I'm right. There is little respect for authority, and I would say none at all in some elements of the community in which we all live. As an aside, this lack of respect has also worked its way vertically up the social ladder. Yet everyone knows their rights. Little Chaz can torment his neighbours until he gets thoroughly bored and they move (or worse) but let anyone actually lose their temper with him or lay so much as a finger on him, and his mother (or some random male that happens to be living in the house at the time) will dial 999 without a second thought, because s/he knows his/her rights. And the Police have to act. What a message to be sending out to the next generation. Under the age of 10? Get on, son, the law can't touch either of us!

And finally, the family. Now I don't believe that adults should necessarily stay together 'for the sake of the children'. Life just isn't like that, and as someone with distinctly hippie-ish tendencies, I'm not at all convinced that as a species we were meant to mate for life. I think the whole idea of marriage and lifelong commitment is nothing but a way of controlling society, exercised by those organised gangsters officially known as 'the Church'. But I digress. The decision to allow a child to be created is not to be taken lightly, even when living in a social welfare system like ours, although for some unfortunate individuals it's wonderful that it's there to help them. It's what it was designed for, after all. While it's not always possible to model a 'traditional' family unit to our children, it is possible to model adult, civilized and considered behaviour to our youngsters. And in so many cases, it just isn't happening. Itinerant males, fathering offspring like tom-cats, are nothing new, but where's our pride and self-respect? Where is civilisation, if we can't recognise the difference between right and wrong - and I'm addressing both sexes here - and make an attempt to do the right thing? There have always been problems with families, and 'problem families', but I think the difficulties have spread disproportionately.

So, what's all this got to do with making progress in ten minutes? Well, I'm a teacher. The new OFSTED guidelines indicate that, in a 'good' lesson (and it must be 'good' - 'satisfactory', in spite of all you may think you know about the meaning of the word, just isn't) must show most of the students making progress within the first twenty minutes of the lesson. Or at least, that's what my Head says. And that really means that by the end of the first activity, which is usually between five and ten minutes, they must have made progress. And yet the only way I can see that happening is if I play a memory-based game. Ooh, maybe they mean an old-fashioned spelling test? And every one you get wrong you have to write out 100 times, as I had to do in the good-old-days?

Okay, I accept that some children have a short attention span. In fact, even given everything I've said above about junk food and e-numbers, I think there's nothing new there. Boys in particular have always found concentration difficult, it's just that in the past they were either too terrified to show it, or were probably resigned to the beating that would inevitably follow when they failed to write neatly / got a sum wrong / couldn't read aloud or whatever. The skin on their bottoms was probably thickened and numb already. No, we as responsible educators have to take that into account and plan a range of activities to suit all learners, but, and here's my point, NOT IN EVERY LESSON.

Today's children have so much to cope with as a result of their everyday lives, only some of which I've written about above. Of course, they need short focused activities that they can do well in and use to feel good about themselves. After all, that's part of my job. I have to set tasks that are challenging, yet allow them to succeed, thus boosting their confidence and earning goodwill for the next part of the lesson. Goodwill is more important than anything in the classroom. But every lesson, all the time?

Short activities have their place, but do nothing to foster the deeper learning experience that so many youngsters need. They need time to explore, think, digest their learning experiences, and make connections for themselves. And eventually, of course, they will have to concentrate for a lengthy period of time when they do their exams. Asking a teacher to demonstrate student progress in such a short time is the educational equivalent of the instant gratification of a cocaine hit.

Feels great, you're on top of the world, but the come-downs get worse and the highs are never the same. And, when exam time comes, lots of kids may just be blowing their septums into a paper hanky. Where will OFSTED be then?

Viva Las Vegas!

I knew what to expect. A huge Disney-land style city, bright lights, masses of casinos that would suck your money right out of your wallet or purse without you even feeling it, vast plates of food (burgers, fries, maple syrup) and lots of obese Americans talking loudly.  Police everywhere, cars, dirt and heat.  Lots of Elvis Presleys and showgirls on the streets at night. Throbbing music and ticket-touts everywhere.

Well, I was very, very wrong.

Of course it’s a purpose-built city that springs out of the brown desert like something from a science fiction novel.  But it’s small.  You can easily identify every hotel because that’s all you see. Modern Vegas – the strip – is really just one long street.  Ok, the hotels are huge, Caesar’s Palace can take you all day to walk around, but they’re all together and close enough to see on foot.  Or there’s a monorail if you prefer.

Of course it is a huge themed-park for adults. The sheer scale of it, and the attention to detail inside the hotels will just make every electrical impulse in your brain switch to overload.  And it’s spotlessly clean everywhere.  The police are there, but discrete, and the locals walk.  Yes, they walk.  And they’re normal-sized and no louder than anyone else.  The plates of food aren’t vast and you don’t have to plan a diet when you come home.  Unless you want to of course.  Because it’s there if you want it, but easily avoided if you don’t.

Then there’s the original, downtown Las Vegas.  Fremont Street.  A $20 taxi ride will get you to the Vegas of popular culture.  The lights will blind you, Vegas Vic towers over you with his neon cigarette and his neon cowboy boots.  So many traditional light bulbs, midnight is brighter than midday.  The whole street is covered over, and the ceiling turned into one huge computer-controlled video display.  While watching an animated show to accompany the song ‘American Pie’, a space rocket ‘flew’ overhead from one end of the street to the other, complete with the deafening roar of the afterburners.  But it’s still just one street. 

And the gambling? You can if you want.  Watch a roulette game, play that game where Demi Moore received that proposal, or do the slots.  You choose.  Choose wisely, and you can have a lot of fun for quite a while for just $20, with the added bonus of a reasonable chance of walking away with a little money.  I did.  Twice.  But you won’t feel under any pressure.  You can just watch, soak it up, for 24 hours a day in your shorts and t-shirt if you want to.

The hotels on the strip are staggering in their re-creation of a fantasy world, and second to none in their service and comfort.  They are luxurious.  The downtown Fremont Street Experience can only be summed up in one appropriately American word: awesome.  Play here.  Stay uptown on the strip, but play here.