This cannot be allowed to happen.

It's a disgrace. I want you to write to your MP, your MEP, your MLA, your congressman... whatever applies. We need to organise rallies, petitions, non violent civil disobedience immediately. This is just wrong and someone needs to do something about it - it's time to make a stand.

Could someone tell me why anybody out there would possibly think it was a good idea to change the name of Campbell's Soup to Bachelor's.

Bachelor's!

Bachelor's make Super Noodles; they make Cup-a-Soup; Pasta Sauce... they do not make canned soup. There are iconic brands out there. Think of biscuits and you think McVities; think cereals and you think Kellogs; think ketchup - Heinz; think of tinned soup... who did you think of? Bachelors? A brand being iconic doesn't make it the best; but it makes it iconic. I'm not suggesting that the soup will be any different taste-wise. But it won't be Campbell's.

Did Andy Warhol make a print of Cup-a-Soup? Would a pop art image of a supper noodle wrapper be as striking, as iconic as the tin of Campbell's Soup?

So I think you'll agree that changes (back) need to be made - as a matter of urgency. Do we really want a future where dried real food succombs to the might of the army of dried food. I'll leave it in your hands.

The Mr C retreats to his cocoon to reappear months later as... Mr C

Where has he been? Months have gone by and this blog has remained mute.

I wish I could say that there has simply been nothing to write about - but truth be told quite a lot has happened personally, locally and internationally since I last put finger to keyboard. The world has been awash with educational, environmental, and ego-centrical happenings. Teachers have been suspended for slipping some of their own rather personal video footage into class presentations, teachers in Ireland have been faced with rather stiff pay cuts to help bail out the rest of society, politicians have been wallowing in mires of expense account funded self pit, some have managed to take their minds of it for a little trip to Copenhagen to discuss how we're all doomed. All lot has happened - and I have remained silent.

Well, no more.

I have returned to add a few more pennyworths. Obviously the two people who read my blog have long since lost interest and have moved on to reading worries of a haberdasher .com or something of a similar elk and I will have to try and appeal to a whole new set of readers.

Maybe I should take this opportunity to change the focus of this blog. I could write about anything I wanted. What would appeal to the masses? Maybe I could write about reality TV - I could dedicate this blog to the X-factor... except it has come to a conclusion and I am proud to say that I didn't watch a minute of the coverage - why bother when the papers tell you all the best bits anyway.

I could write about gardening. Except for the fact that my greatest achievements in that field have been to kill off practically invincible plants. When plants and shrubs picture me they see me in a hooded cloak carrying a scythe.

No - I will do what i do best and write about what I should write about. Why change the habit of a lifetime? (or at least the three or four years I've been blogging anyway.) If anyone has contact details for my readers could you give them both a call and let them know I've updated.

Thanks.

word of the day (part 4 in a 73 part series)

serendipitously seren·dipi·tous·ly (sēr’ən-dīp’ī-t-əs-lē) adv. lucky in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries, having or bringing good fortune; The word comes from the term serendipity, a noun to cover the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident, the fact or occurrence of such discoveries or an instance of making such a discovery.

Another word that made me smile. I just love the sound of it. Did you know that the word Serendipity was formed from an old word meaning Sri Lanka, Serendip? The English author Horace Walpole used it in a letter in 1754. It was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."

Someone should have pointed out to him the perils of ending a sentence with a preposition

and just like that - phsssh - it's gone

Summers seem so tender, with weightless afts spent watching waves
Caress the beach and gentle breeze make aspens sway.
Summers seem so life eternal, so everlasting;
Till back in room K2,
With pen in hand,
They seem to last but just one day.

Every year I say it – and every year it seems a little truer – but summers get shorter all the time. I remember the summers of my youth. Lifetimes they were! We did everything it was possible to do on this earth back then – and had time to spare.

Glorious they were. Walking through the country roads to friends' farms – jumping from great towers of hay bales, landing on a pile of loose hay on the ground twenty feet below. Spending days by streams, below bridges, racing tiny speedboats made from broken twigs or leaves. Eating berries from the hedges as we went. Planning great bicycle journeys that would open our minds and broaden our horizons and make us men. Summers back then were real summers. At least in my slightly rose tinted memory they were.

Now summers are solely a time to recharge. They have ceased to exist as entities in their own right and now I look on them only as a break in the school calendar. How I long for the time I used to see school as something which existed simply to separate the holidays. This year it felt like it was already August by the time I had locked my classroom door at the end of term. July just sort of disappeared. And August was over in the blink of an eye. If you were to ask me how I spent it I would um and ah for a while, look around the room for inspiration, clear my throat and say, “Did I ever tell you about the times we used to jump off bales of hay and play pooh sticks at the bridge…”

So here I am, at my desk, about to see my form class for the first time in six weeks that that have gone by like six minutes - like a train that has forgotten to stop at the station.

Truth be told it’s good to be back. Back to the grindstone, routines, challenges… etc etc. Don’t tell my pupils but I miss them when I’m away from work. It’s not a dislike of teaching that makes me long for the heady days of my youth. I wouldn’t want to lose the joys that exist from September to June. I just want my Julys and Augusts back. Please.

a selfish moment

Allow me a spot of self indulgence if you would. Excuse the unapologetically selfish tone of this entry – and pardon me if I offend. But I am royally annoyed today.

I teach a lot of pupils. Hundreds of the little blighters. And every one of them is unique – for better or for worse. In an average class of about thirty children I will have about thirty personalities, about thirty different ability levels, about thirty different learning styles. And I do my best for each and every one of them. But sometimes you have favourites. The ones who will brighten your day by popping a piece of work in front of you that will make the day a good one. I may have to look a bit harder to find them this year.

I’m happy for them – really I am. It’s in their best educational interests I’m sure – they will benefit greatly. It’s just I can’t help feeling a bit…

Today I learned that my year 10 class will be four pupils smaller than it was last year. Actually that’s not true – I have lost four pupils but they will be replaced by others so it won’t be any smaller – it just feels like it will.
My four best students have been headhunted.

Last year I really struggled with that class. They were hard work, there were times I was pulling out my hair in handfuls and I nearly always had to have a sit down to recover after the lesson – but we got there. Better than that we actually did pretty well. Four girls in particular did extremely well.
Over the summer another school contacted their parents and offered them places there. A grammar school. Of course the parents jumped at the opportunity – I would probably have done the same.

But the underhandedness of the whole thing makes me feel a bit uneasy. Usually where this happens it’s because the existing school recommended the move and arranged it with the other school. In this instance the new school found they were slightly undersubscribed for year 10 - obtained the pupils’ grades, contacted and arranged the move before we knew anything about it. In footballing terms it’s called ‘tapping up’ and it leads to things like Chelsea being banned from the next three transfer windows.

I don’t blame the parents or the pupils. In their situation I would find it hard to do any different. There is an argument that they have clearly thrived in our school so there is a risk that the change might not be completely advantageous, that their progress may actually not be as good in a different setup – but honestly I think these particular pupils have the ability to do extremely well in the grammar school.
I am, however, far from happy with the other school. It’s not even in the same town as us. Could they not have carried out their little cream skimming exercise closer to their own backyard?

I’ll miss them dreadfully. In a class of thirty pupils they stood out. They enjoyed English class and I loved reading what they would come up with

I know I should be happy for my ex pupils; be proud even that I played a part in their advancement. But right now I feel a little dejected. Yes they will go on to do well. And all the credit for their success will go to their new English teacher and all that hard work I put in won’t be given a thought. Instead I get to struggle with the rest of the class without the benefit of those occasional moments of inspired writing.
Hey, even teachers are allowed to be self absorbed and selfish sometimes.

a quiet as a church mouse

School with no pupils. It’s a strange, wonderful place. The corridors are empty, there are no PE bags hanging in the cloakrooms. Everything is eerily quiet.

In Church we have it drummed into us that a Church is not a building – that it is a collective of people meeting in God’s name.

Well a school is not a building either – and it’s not a work place (although it certainly feels that way usually) – it’s a group of people meeting to learn. The building, and the teachers, are just there to facilitate that learning.
Across the country teachers are returning to their classrooms a week before their pupils. They are preparing for the year ahead, doing a spot of classroom decoration, discussing action and development plans, deciding focuses for PRSD, welcoming new members of staff, enduring INSET…

This is a strange strange place when it’s quiet. It feels somehow wrong. Something’s missing. Without the pupils it has a dormant feel – an empty, hollow, shell of a building. A church without people is just a building – but it can be one impressive building; architecturally, aesthetically. An old empty church building has to be the single most emotive space possible . A school without pupils is just a collection of empty rooms and corridors – and I love it.

as fast as a speeding bullet

Doesn't life move quickly these days? Sometimes it feels like we are so obsessed with getting things done that we have forgotten how to enjoy doing them. Sometimes, I think our modern living blinkers are masking the glorious technicolour world around us.

I'm on a train at the moment - doing a train journey I haven't done since I was a very young child. The route takes us through some beautiful countryside, beside the mouth of the mighty Bann, along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, under Mussenden Temple and past Downhill beach to the point where the shores of Lough Foyle become the banks of the River Foyle. It is a particularly beautiful journey. Not that anyone seems to notice.

I'm surrounded by people on laptops studying spreadsheets and filling out reports; all around me people are on the phone to their office, to their husbands, to their friend Pat who moved away ten years ago to marry an english man and so doesn't know the tragic events in Stranocum this week or the trouble anticipated at the band parade in Rasharkin tonight.

I don't blame them. The pace of life orders that we see journeys, not as events, but as wasted time. Time that technology can harness and make useful. It makes me yearn for the time when people used to dress up for a flight in a plane, a time when whole families would get on the train and head for the sea. Days when the journey was part of the experience - not an inconvenient means to the end.

So, as we pass through God's beautiful creation, I smile wryly at all those around me who seem oblivious to it... And I spend the journey typing a blog about it on my Blackberry.