A Neolithic moment

Avebury


















Before a national curriculum solidified and imprisoned us in a maze that grew progressively more dense with targets like mantraps, history had space to delight curious and open minds, and sometimes the ‘rush’ was unexpected, magical and hard to explain.

In the days before a curriculum dictated that secondary school history would start from 1066, we wrote love letters in Sumerian cuneiform, explored Ley lines and took field trips to Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill. It might sound very ‘New Age’ but St Josephs taught ‘traditional’ history, and balancing chronology and structure with fun.

We also taught family. I still remember how worried I was when my Head of Year’s eldest daughter, Clare Drewett, entered the school. Fortunately for me she was part of a gifted cohort and I still remember the exuberance of those lessons. It was summed up in one particular moment on the top of Silbury Hill.


Silbury Hill















It was a cloudless, blue sky day with Neolithic England spread out below us. And the magic of the moment hit one particular student. She hurtled towards me and I twirled her around and around beneath that blue sky before dropping her next to her picnic. Couldn’t do that today. Never thought of it then. It was just good to be alive in a world humming with insects and the dead all around us.

Avebury from above


















West Kennett Long Barrow, a neolithic tomb.

The Duke of Buckingham's legs

Teaching has much in common with writing, though if you change pov in the classroom, you’re likely to get confused, and I don’t recommend speaking in third person past tense - though if the students noticed you’d know you had their attention - before they came to take you away.

However, success in both professions is based on three fundamental rules:

You have to teach or write about what interests you. If you’re bored by something why should anyone else find it interesting?

You need a strong hook to grab them in the first place.

And finally it has to have a degree of importance. This final rule has wriggle room in fiction. Are any of Dan Brown’s novels ‘important’? Perhaps that third rule applies only to ‘literature’ with a capital ‘L’. In Education 'importance' is more immediate and measured by exams, league tables and once upon a time well paid jobs. It also varies from culture to culture. In the west, increasingly, education is as much to ‘entertain’ as it is to impart hard and useful knowledge.

But down from my soapbox. Once I was young.























And in my experience, teaching often works best when you’re not aware you’re doing it. I remember entering a classroom with a hangover. We were beginning a new topic - Charles 1st - and the lesson plan made no sense.

I turned the pages of the text book we were then using and fixated on the Duke of Buckingham’s legs. They were long and slender, meant for the catwalk or perhaps to be fondled. Whatever the case they dominated the portrait and it was clear the Duke was inordinately proud of them.

My daemon spoke through me. “I would like you to draw the Duke of Buckingham’s legs.” The class looked at me as though I was mad. But it was an understanding class. They liked me; knew I probably had my reasons, and had a good idea what those reasons might be.

Discussion soon followed:

‘Was he gay, sir?”

‘Was he really the king’s friend, sir?” Surreptitious nudges followed by closer scrutiny of the offending legs.

“The king’s father was especially fond of him,” I croaked, wondering where the aspirins were when you need them.

‘Maybe he wasn’t gay – maybe he just had good legs.’ Becky was a girl who preferred the less obvious path.

“Could you be done for it then, sir?”

They were hooked and it took little prompting for them to research the man with the legs, his relationship with the king, and laws against sodomy which Becky thought were gross.

So out of the three rules it is rules one and two that are paramount, though that is not to imply I found the Duke of Buckingham’s legs of untoward interest.

Letting go

I felt a cold knife to the thigh. The band was cutting me off. I was no longer good enough. 'I had other commitments, more important commitments.' Whatever the dressing the band was cutting me off, letting me go.

I’d sensed it for some time, the occasional silences. Now here, in Henry and Lol’s house, it was put into words.

Through a perceived need for ceremony, or because that was all they had in the house, Lol entered the room carrying a silver tray. It held five glasses and a green bottle of Dry Martini. A drink I’ve never had since.

Over drinks and desultory gossip nothing was said. Then Henry led me aside. “They want you to leave the band.” He said it like he didn’t.

I forget my reply.

Then he offered an olive branch, possibly more of a twig. “We want new members, more weight to the band. We want do more and bigger concerts.”

“And with my present teaching commitment…impending marriage.”

“Exactly.” His Viking features eased into an expression of remorse and relief. “You understand…You’d always be welcome to play with us in smaller venues – the occasional ceilidh.”

“You mean leave ‘Devil’s Elbow’ for ‘Devil’s Finger’”.

He laughed as though it was funny.

“No thanks,” I said.

As divorces go it was amicable, bitter-sweet. The band had their interests to pursue and I had mine.

Blogs rarely confess failure. Who wants to read it? Who wants to confess it? Never moan or complain. But Blogs should be truthful, and the truth is that rejection happens to everyone, and always it hurts.

New adventures

When I walked off the plane I felt like was walking into a damp overcoat a size too small, and wondered whether I’d made a mistake in rejecting Sister Katherine Waters’ offer of a permanent job in New York. But then history would have been different.

Customs checked my hand-made octave mandola, and my 1,500 dollar Gibson mandolin, and asked when and where I’d bought them. England I said. He studied my face for honesty and let me through.

It was wonderful to see old friends again, tramp along country lanes with Bernie and Greg; good to have a decent pint…fish and chips. But already I missed the huge blue skies, the sparkling air, the sense of vast spaces that encouraged big thoughts. The dream of a child in a hospital bed had come and gone, and now I felt like a ghost in my own country. The familiar had become strange.

Even stranger was the fact that someone else was sitting in my chair, at my work desk in school. Someone with eyes that twinkled and a smile that could thaw winter. I lost a chair but gained a wife, but no more shall be said of her here. My wife and children have their own voices, their own story to tell or not tell.

And so it ends.

I’ve often wondered what I would choose for my last meal if I knew I was dying later that day, either by order of the state, (Socrates was un-ambitious sticking to a drink) or by more natural means. It felt like that as we hit Washington, the last day of our tour. In this case it was a bit of a set menu, but I dutifully revisited every monument, garden and statue, and remembered that this had been my first experience of America only a year before.

I hate anti-climaxes, the neither-here-nor-there interludes between major events. If I could have done a ‘cut and paste’ job I’d have zipped back to the inevitable in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately there was another night to endure in New York.

What a strange thing to say. But it wasn’t much fun, packing, looking round Ron’s apartment for one final time, saying goodbye to Bob and Tom and everyone else who’d made me so welcome. I met up with Roland at a similar loose-end, and together we crawled the bars of Greenwich village with Carol Bezvidenhoot. I said goodbye to her with a chaste kiss and walked from the Village to Jackson Heights. New York at night is always an interesting experience.

America was a great adventure, but there was a bigger one to come.



One Adventure ends, another begins. I hope this has proved interesting to my beautiful daughter

Nearing the end

I’m finding it harder to write as this particular phase in my life comes to an end. It’s like a man approaching death, and before you say, ‘Michael, you are far too young to be thinking of such things,’ (I hope you all do) I’ve had a morbid mind since the nuns were unleashed upon me in Primary school.

But America was coming to an end, for me at least; you guys still have some way to go. Our next stop was Williamsburg and very beautiful it was too. I remember the long walk from the Information Centre to the ‘Village’, a walk that allowed you to muse on the information imparted by a very professional orientation film shown at our arrival.

Three and a half hours, the time allotted to us, wasn’t nearly long enough, The William and Mary College alone was worth an hour or two. Now it’s a visual snippet lodged in the brain: America’s oldest educational foundation, Christopher Wren inspired architecture, and the alumni of both Washington and Jefferson.

Speaking of Washington















Next we were whisked off to Mount Vernon - Washington of the wooden false teeth fame – his old place. And there I emotionally and physically collapsed. Emotional, not in a blubbering sense, but the realization that I’d become emotionally drained. I couldn’t take any more.

I have no objection to any sober or orderly person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon.’ Washington wrote in a letter* which was very nice of him.

I was sober and orderly but curiosity was gone. If I saw one more costume, one further piece of bone china, even Washington’s reputed false teeth I’d have hugged my sides and screamed. I’d seen too much…and the curry was having its effects too.
I went to where I always go in periods of great angst, a bar. And afterwards slept on the grass.

Tomorrow, Washington, New York and then the plane home.

*letter to William Pearce (November 23, 1794

Jack Daniel's or Jim Beam? A sober reflection

Friday 13th proved uneventful, though Kim was still not speaking to me. Having just passed through Tennessee and Kentucky, Roland and myself debated the merits of their respective bourbons and decided there was only one real way to find out. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of Jim Beam, were duly purchased, and we spent much of the afternoon beneath a shady tree.

First we examined the colour. Jim Beam in sunlight looks like piss, the kind that would earn an approving nod from an urologist but not perhaps from a drinker. Jack Daniels is darker, only slightly so, but sufficient to give that same urologist a degree of concern.

The smell we found difficult to differentiate and we spent several precious minutes sniffing and swirling before finally agreeing that although both shared a similar sweet and sour aroma, Jim Beam’s had the sharper edge. Was that a good or a bad thing? Did sharp mean thin? Further discussion ensued but with no definite conclusion.

Preliminaries satisfied it was time to exercise palate and tongue, teeth relegated to filtering as we sucked and swilled and nodded our heads.

Roland suggested a spit bucket as though we were testing fine wines. He was getting above himself and I reminded him gravely that instead of tasting eight or nine separate and distinct wines, ours was the less onerous chore of sampling just two bourbons. A spit bucket would not be called for though if Roland wanted to spit his out on the grass – away from me – well that was his democratic right.

The afternoon passed quietly other than the occasional clink of bottle on glass, the considered slurp, and every so often an appreciative ‘ummmm’. We drank slowly, sound judgement being the ultimate arbiter.

Hours passed, as we irrigated mouth and throat, savoured that slow, final trickle from oesophagus to stomach until a decision was at at last reached. It was unanimous. Jack Daniel’s was sweeter. And there the discussion continued. Did sweeter mean fuller? Which was the superior drink?

If either distillery would like to sponsor a rematch, this could be arranged, though we draw the line at a Pepsi Vs Coke challenge.

That evening I made curry for the group, with unfortunate consequences.