messages from the past

"It's incredible." I hear you cry, "He went away at 5am on Saturday morning to live in a tent with no electricity, let alone wifi signal, and yet he's posting more regularly than he ever did when he was sitting in a classroom with constant internet access. Comment c'est possible?"

I love the 'scheduled' thing in blogger. It's great. I can type up posts weeks in advance and it looks like I'm being regular. Ingenious. If only I planned my lessons this far in advance I might have a permanent job by now... There's a thought. Imagine if I could prepare my lessons in batches and deliver them the way blogger delivers these posts. I could spend a weekend throwing lessons together, set the timer, and go on a road trip for the rest of the week while my pupils are drip fed the learning that will get them through the rest of their life. Genius!

I must patent this idea now!

Camp 2008

Am somewhere near Leeds living in tents with the BB for a few days.

Normal service (whatever that may describe) will be resumed as soon as I return - or a few days after. I'll have a lot of work to catch up on, and I may need some sleep, and I'll have run out of things to talk about...

end of an era

Isn’t it sad when things from your childhood disappear? Behind this fence and these signs there is a nothing. A nothing where there once stood a bland looking warehouse of a building. Where there is now a white painted wooden fence there used to be a huge, yet unimpressive, rectangle of grey only brightened by a massive sign advertising bingo. And I loved it. It was Coleraine Cinema.

Long before the Jet Centre, with its polyscreen convenience, came and went and came back again Coleraine had a large single screen auditorium slap bang in the centre of town. It was dank, it smelled of stale smoke and your feet would stick to the carpet as you walked down the aisle; but the seats were plush, the screen was huge, and I loved it.

It was where I had my first movie experience. If I remember correctly the first film I ever saw was Herbie Goes Bananas back in 1980. A terrible film to break my movie virginhood but I went through the entire experience unblinkingly and with my mouth open – I was hooked.

The cinema in Coleraine closed down years and years ago. They put up a bigger complex on the edge of the town with more screens, and better sound, cleaner floors, and minimal personality. The old building became a bingo hall and then briefly an amusement arcade. But in recent years it has lain empty, dormant, awaiting the end. I didn’t mourn at the time – if we wanted the traditional picture house experience we could always go to the Portrush Playhouse. But yesterday, when I looked above that white fence and saw the nothing I felt sad, maybe even heartbroken.

I’ve been so wrapped up in other things that I didn’t notice the fence and the signs go up around the building. Nor did I see the machinery move in. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt such loss if I watched the building gradually go. Or maybe not – maybe it would have been worse to watch the once proud edifice brought slowly to its knees. I don’t know, but I do know that, however pretty the apartments they will inevitably put up in its place, they can never replace the memories and the love I have for the old cinema.

four more hours

A pupil has just looked out the window at the grey skies and remarked, “I can’t believe it’s almost summer.” I can – and I can’t wait. And I only have a couple more hours to survive.

This is my last day at CHS. I have mixed emotions really. I’m exhausted, so relieved to have some time off; I don’t have a job for next year, so apprehensive about what the future holds; I may never see a lot of the people here ever again, so there is a touch of sadness; oh, and a little bit of guilt. You see although I said it’s my last day at CHS it isn’t actually the last day of the school year. Ridiculously we are expected to come in for a single day next week. They are having a half day on Monday to finish everything off. I’m down to supervise the party – I won’t be.

I will be in Leeds on camp with a bunch of immature teenagers and two other, even less mature, leaders. While I am supposed to be standing imposingly in the corner of an assembly hall I will probably be living in a tent.

I will let them know that I won’t be able to be at school on Monday so they can arrange appropriate cover (maybe hire a couple of heavies to take my place) but every time I try they look so hurt at the suggestion that I would even consider missing my last ever day here. I hate the hurt look – I’m a pushover sometimes. Apparently the English department are planning an informal get together in my honour. I feel terrible that people are being so lovely while I am slinking off into the darkness.

But I think I’ll find the time to get over it while I’m relaxing with a couple of dozen good books over the summer. Au revoir CHS, et bon chance.

wimbledon 2008

I am so happy. Wimbledon starts today. I love Wimbledon. I love tennis. As a child I would spend literally hours batting a ball against the wall of our boiler house. I lost so many tennis balls on the flat roof that my brother invented a ball retrieval system to help me out – true brotherly love.

I wasn’t bad at tennis when I was a kid. In fact I like to believe that if I’d kept it up I could have been pretty good. But I didn’t – and I’m not. I’m not bad at putting the ball where I want it to go – it’s the running to the other side of the court to reach the return that I haven’t quite figured out.

At my last school I was working with my boss one day. I can’t remember what we were talking about as we worked but I do remember saying that I sometimes wished I was Roger Federer. “Sometimes I wish you were too.” She replied. Obviously she hadn’t thought it through – if I was the best tennis player in the world I would hardly have been spending my Tuesday afternoon computerising her pupil action plans. Then what would she have done? – huh? huh?

Wimbledon fortnight is one of my favourite times of the year. Along with the milk cup it is one of the very few things that my father and I bond over. During this fortnight we can often be seen slumped in armchairs in the small hours watching highlights of some obscure mixed doubles match. I remember the joint sense of lose we felt when Gabriella Sabatini announced her retirement. A tragic day in the Campbell household indeed.

It’s just a shame that the Brits are producing so few world class players. It seems we can only manage one a generation at the moment. Of course it’s nice that the whole country unites behind Andy Murray (well, except me – I still think he’s a whingeing teenager) but it would be even better if the country was split by a world class rivalry. What life would be like if we had our very own british version of Connors-McEnroe.

Dreams, only Dreams. In fact it doesn’t look like improving much any time soon. At the moment Tim Henman is ranked as the 6th best player in Britain. Our 6th best player is a retired player who claims to have picked up a racket only a handful of times this year! Hardly a glowing assessment of men’s tennis in the UK. There is some talk that things are better in the women’s game, that there are large numbers of talented players moving up through the ranks – I hope so, I really do. In the meantime my ex-boss and I will have to watch the extraordinary Mr Federer do his thing.

ping pong politics

American politics. Wonderful. Mainly because it allows us in this little country to ignore the farce that is politics over here. We can overlook our first minister's wife and her discriminatory comments on national radio and instead be entertained by the circus, US style.

I try not to comment on american politics too often - Mainly because, let's face it, I haven't a clue what I'm talking about - but I was amused to hear the problems both candidates are having of late. It is ironic that the religious leaders being courted to win votes are turning out to be political liabilities, no?

John McCain is obviously trying to out-do Barack Obama's Rev Wright issue. Why have one problem pastor when you can have two? Earlier in the year he accepted endorsements from John "Hitler was sent to help the Jews" Hagee who, I believe, once described the Catholic Church as a whore. Another former supporter, Pastor Rod Parsley described Islam as “the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil,” and that Islam is an “anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world.” McCain distanced himself from both of these men, and will undoubtedly lose some evangelical support for doing so.

Hopefully the incidents on both sides will force the agenda off religious posturing and onto real issues. I really do hope so for I am very concerned about the example these public religious leaders are setting. You see I don't recognise the aggressive, confrontational, suspicious, hate-filled rant spewing that seems so prevalent. Of course as a Christian you have to stand up for what you know to be the truth - but there are ways of being assertive that don't involve insular paranoia. If I were to offer advice it would verge dangerously into overly simplistic waters – Don’t put your faith in religious leaders, no human is perfect. In fact don’t try to win religious votes by courting pastors at all – win them by incorporating Christian values into your policies. If you are going to follow anything surely it should be God’s teaching, not Pastor Parsley’s.

Personally I would like to see a separation of Church and State when it comes to electioneering. That is not to see that I think that candidates should suppress their spiritual beliefs – I feel it is important that the people in charge should have a working faith. I want the Church to step away from the political system because, by getting involved, it appears corrupt and divided, and the Church should never be either of those.

Instead of the candidates batting religion back and forward maybe they could follow the Chinese and Japanese leaders’ example and bat a ball about. Apparently the two countries’ relations were greatly enhanced when the Chinese President, Hu Jintao , took on two Japanese Olympians at table tennis. The Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, had planned to play against him but decided to “chicken out” Now that’s diplomacy.

Can you imagine if Obama and McCain fought out the presidency on a ping pong table – best of five. It would save a lot of time, money and make for scintillating viewing. And best of all Florida would have no say in the result!

reasons why i'm single (part 1 of a 78 part series)

I’m a people watcher. I watch people and come up with back stories for them. I find it amusing. Amusing, but not always accurate.

You see, while I like to believe that I am good at reading people, I have one fatal flaw – I can never decipher signals that are aimed at me.

It’s a long term issue. I remember years ago spending most of the summer with a group of friends. There was one girl in particular who was an outrageous flirt. She flirted with the guys in the group, she flirted with the guys we met up with, she flirted with the guys we passed on the street; it seemed to me that she would flirt with anything with a pulse. What irked me incredibly at the time was the fact that she never flirted with me. Not once.

I gave her every opportunity. We drank reservoirs of coffee together, walked miles of sandy coastline, took long drives through beautiful scenery, we had three hour conversations - mainly about guys and what she was looking for in one – I had become the dreaded “friend.”

Well, after a couple of months I headed off to university in Scotland and our three hour conversations became thirteen page letters (obviously this all took place before email jumped off nerds bridge into mainstream culture) I remember, having read a letter in which she described herself as an outrageous flirt, plucking up the courage to ask why she never flirted with me. The reply, a week later, was incredulous. She, I read, had spent eight solid weeks flirting with me. She had overcome a dislike of coffee, battled wind exposure on the Atlantic coastline and overdosed on travel sickness pills for three hour drives on tiny winding roads. She had described as many of my qualities as possible as the qualities she desired in a man. She had taken every opportunity she could to put her hand on my arm, brush the back of my head, stare deeply into my eyes…

I felt a bit silly.

A decade later and I still haven’t learned. One of the baristas at Starbucks left recently. I know some people who know me just sighed and raised their eyes heavenward at the mention of a barista. I am always making emotional attachments to baristas and waitresses. I think it goes back to my Tim Horton days. Anyway, on her last day working before taking a few weeks holiday before returning stateside we were chatting. She was telling me about all the things she was going to miss about Northern Ireland, she said that she was going to miss the food – how she had put on a pile of weight.

Now you know and I know that was a signal for me to tell her that she didn’t need to lose weight – actually she really didn’t. You and I both know that she was waiting for me to compliment her so we could begin trading compliments. We both know that in all the months I had been chatting with her, the fact that she had been laughing at all my attempts to be witty bore no relation to how funny she actually found me. If I asked I bet you’d be able to tell me what the prolonged eye contact and coy smiles actually meant. And you and I both know that I was completely clueless of all of this at the time.

So when she said that she had put on weight what did Mr Charming reply?
“Ah, don’t worry about it. You’ll soon lose all that.”

I know you’re sighing and shaking your head in a resigned manner – I know I am.

bout'ye

I may be something of an anitisocial loner but working with hundreds of people everyday I find I'm getting quite good at speed-evaluating them. I make rapid judgements on the way they look as they approach, lightning appraisals from the way they greet me - eye contact, handshake etc- breakneck conclusions from their voice, I analysis the way they talk to others, the way they stand, where they stand... I'm a people watcher - it's what I do.

Generally I get on well with the rest of the staff wherever I work. I may not always fit in but my polite helpfulness (no, really) generally gets me away without making too many enemies. But there's one thing I take pride in - I like to think I know them more than they know me. As I cast my gaze around the staffroom I categorise each of them and work out what they have for breakfast, what type of car they drive, what soaps they watch, what they would do if they were given ultimate power...

But there is one man I cannot work out. I always seem to arrive to work at the same time, I pass him three or four times in the corridors and we eat lunch together. Everytime we meet, in whatever capacity, his side of the conversation is identical.

"Hi Sam, What's the craic? Keep er' lit boy"

No matter if we passed one another two minutes before he says the exact same thing. And he looks at me as if expecting a reply. He awaits my answer with interest.

At first I tried to come up with something erudite and original each time but, I have to tell you, after a few months I began to struggle. Now I manage something between a grumble and a murmur that I can tell, by his eyes, he finds disappointing.

I've watched a lot of 'Cheers'. If he asked 'What's up?' or 'What'cha up to?' or 'What's new?' or 'What's the story?' or 'How's the world been treating you?' I'd have any number of Norm-isms to fire off (the temperature under my collar; my ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall; terrorists, Sam they've taken over my stomach they're demanding beer; the Bobbsey twins go to the brewery... let's cut to the happy ending; like it caught me in bed with its wife - just for the record)

But how do you respond to "Keep er lit boy."

All answers welcome. I need all the help I can get.

out of ten

I love marking exam papers – I really do. Sure it takes up far too much of my life at this time of year, and sleepless nights really start to hurt when you get to my age,

But

If I were to give a single reason right now, if you were to ask why I am teacher, if you pressure me and hold my arm tight behind my back right this instant, if you beg me to give you just one single explanation… I would say that the reason I teach is to be able to read some of the incredible things pupils write when they don’t know the answer to an exam question.

The best examples are the ones where the pupil has a genuine guess. Ironically when a someone is trying to be funny in an exam they rarely are. The genuine shots in the dark are the comedy gems that make me a rich man.

As a history teacher I used to love reading all the amazing reasons why the Germans lost the first world war. I also loved it when they got their bands mixed up and explained that Kasabian started the war by being shot. Ah, the best war comedy since Dad’s Army.

This year I am an English teacher. An English teacher with a range of names it seems. On the front of the papers I was called everything from Mr Cambelle, to Camble, to Cambpell, to Cambell, to Cabell, to Miss Scott (I have to have a quiet word with that particular pupil)

In the year eight writing task they were required to write a letter to a friend relating their first year at the school to a friend. I always think tasks like this are risky – you’re leaving yourself open to a world of criticism if you ask a pupil to express opinions about the school. Some of them don’t even mean half the scorn they spew.

Still, it also leads to much amusement. Most of which I can’t relate here without leaving myself at the mercy of libel laws. I can share a few of the comments pupils made about me in their essays:

I like all my teachers, specially Mr Cambelle. He is funny sometimes but you need to get him in a funny mood.

My English teacher is Mr Campbell. He’s funny but sometimes cross. He’s REALLY tall.

Mr Campbell is way bigger than me.

Some of the rest were less complimentary – did they not think I’d be reading them. It’s really given me an insight into how the average twelve year old sees me. I had no idea I had such mood swings, I had no idea I was seen as some sort of giant and I had no idea that I was being funny – I gotta work on that one.

my first 21 years

I was surprised to read in the Metro today that:

Andy Murray has launched a stinging attack on his fellow British tennis players, accusing them of being too pampered and lacking the hunger to succeed.

Actually that wasn't the thing that shocked me. Andy Murray having a gripe is hardly front page news. The surprising thing is the source of the story - Andy's autobiography, Hitting Back.

He has an autobiography? He's, what, 12?

Okay I exaggerate but I just feel a bit perplexed at the spate of young sports stars and celebrities publishing their life stories before they've really begun to live. Twenty-two year old Cristiano Ronaldo has his memoir, Moments - although from what I've seen it's mainly pictures; Charlotte Church (also tenty-two) fills her Keep Smiling with terms like 'lush' to prove it wasn't ghost written... many of my pupils obviously use her writing for inspiration; Britney was only nineteen when she got her mom in on the act to co-write Heart to Heart, Twenty-six year old Billie Piper's Growing Pains is surprising good but i just wish she'd waited a bit longer (I suppose a bit like how she feels about her marriage to Chris Evans.) Do they feel they have to rush them out while they are still in the public eye - clinging to celebrity like a tick to a stray dog.

Footballers are the worst. The list is endless: Stephen Gerrard (Gerrard), John Terry, Robbie Fowler (Robbie Fowler: My Autobiography), Ryan Giggs, (Giggs: The Autobiography) Rio Ferdinand (Rio: My Story), Ashley Cole (My Defence), Frank Lampard (Totally Frank), Didier Drogba (Didier Drogba: The Autobiography) You have to love the imaginative titles.

Wayne Rooney has a £5million deal to write a SERIES of autobiographies. No footballer is more than one book interesting.

I have to admit that I started my biography when I was eleven. It's called the Slimey Git and the Zombie. Someday I'll tell you why... but not until I am at least 50 and I'm ready to publish.

No I will not be reading Andy Murray's little offering. Truth be told I wouldn't listen to his whinging if he was ninety - although at ninety he may have learned not to whinge.