Porting in June

Sometimes I wish I had my DSLR surgically attached. But I suppose an iPhone can be handy. Taken on the prom at Portstewart on a hardy Sunday night.

Best name for a greasy spoon ever.

We were driving through the centre of London on Sunday when we came upon a quality name for a greasy spoon. If only it were open...

Best name for a greasy spoon ever.

We were driving through the centre of London on Sunday when we came upon a quality name for a greasy spoon. If only it were open...

My Shakespeare 

by Kate Tempest

He’s in every lover who ever stood alone beneath a window,
In every jealous whispered word,
in every ghost that will not rest.
He’s in every father with a favourite,
Every eye that stops to linger
On what someone else has got, and feels the tightening in their chest.

He’s in every young man growing boastful,
Every worn out elder, drunk all day;
muttering false prophecies and squandering their lot.
He’s there – in every mix-up that spirals far out of control – and never seems to end, even when its beginnings are forgot.

He’s in every girl who ever used her wits. Who ever did her best.
In every vain admirer,
Every passionate, ambitious social climber,
And in every misheard word that ever led to tempers fraying,
Every pawn that moves exactly as the player wants it to,
And still remains convinced that it’s not playing.

He’s in every star crossed lover, in every thought that ever set your teeth on edge, in every breathless hero, stepping closer to the ledge, his is the method in our madness, as pure as the driven snow – his is the hair standing on end, he saw that all that glittered was not gold. He knew we hadn’t slept a wink, and that our hearts were upon our sleeves, and that the beast with two backs had us all upon our knees as we fought fire with fire, he knew that too much of a good thing, can leave you up in arms, the pen is mightier than the sword, still his words seem to sing our names as they strike, and his is the milk of human kindness, warm enough to break the ice – his, the green eyed monster, in a pickle, still, discretion is the better part of valour, his letters with their arms around each others sholuders, swagger towards the ends of their sentences, pleased with what they’ve done, his words are the setting for our stories – he has become a poet who poetics have embedded themselves deep within the fabric of our language, he’s in our mouths, his words have tangled round our own and given rise to expressions so effective in expressing how we feel, we cant imagine how we’d feel without them.

See – he’s less the tights and garters – more the sons demanding answers from the absence of their fathers.
The hot darkness of your last embrace.
He’s in the laughter of the night before, the tightened jaw of the morning after,
He’s in us. Part and parcel of our Royals and our rascals.
He’s more than something taught in classrooms, in language that’s hard to understand,
he’s more than a feeling of inadequacy when we sit for our exams,
He’s in every wise woman, every pitiful villain,
Every great king, every sore loser, every fake tear,
His legacy exists in the life that lives in everything he’s written,
And me, I see him everywhere, he’s my Shakespeare.

http://myshakespeare.worldshakespearefestival.org.uk/gallery/my-shakespeare-by-kate-tempest/

The centre of the known universe

These markers used to line the roads recording the steps of the lonely Ballymoney pilgrims making their way for their annual holiday in Portrush. Every mile they could knock 1 off the miles to go side and add 1 to the miles travelled.

They're not very practical for the cars that make the journey now at 60mph.  I'm not sure how much information can be gleaned from a 1ft block of cast iron sitting in a hedge at that speed.  I can sort of understand why they were replaced by 10ft sheets of reflective metal on posts. 

They were beautiful though.

in this ever changing world in which we're signing

When is it too late to be working on your signature, your autograph, your mark?

I only ask because I had a free period today and was planning on using it to sign off my year twelves’ coursework. Over the course of an hour my signature changed dramatically - not just the style; even the content changed. I went from Sam, to Samuel, to S, to SJ. I settled on SJ; it has gravitas.

I’m in my thirties. Should I still be developing my signature at this late stage in my life? By now my abiding identity should be firmly ensconced in my psyche. It actually worries me that I am still experimenting with this. Will my bank recognise my new identity? Will programmes from shows I’ve performed become less valuable due to my autograph being outdated?

Of course it’s not the first time it’s changed. I would be surprised if any of you had the same signature you had as a teenager. As I look through these coursework cover sheets I’m hoping most of my year twelves will have a revisal before they reach adulthood – some of their’s are shocking; like a parrot with a drink problem wrote them in a bit of a rush.

Personally I’m hoping this latest incarnation will be my last (for a while.) I have quite a lot of signing to do in the next few months – in work and beyond the school gates. Hopefully I can keep the same design until that’s all done. My credit cards are coming near replacement dates – so it would be nice to have a fairly common theme for each of them. I have sold a photograph of some trees and the buyer wants me to sign it. It would be terrible if I can’t decide how it should look for that. I can’t afford to make twenty copies of the print to experiment on.

It’s not just me who will be affected. One of my pupils is on report for bad behaviour. This means he carries round a piece of paper and receives a comment on his behaviour and work in every lesson. I commented and signed his page this morning – and then I had him again in the afternoon. He noticed the variation in my signing but said nothing – just left looking confused. That’s ok then – that makes two of us.

stress

I'm stressed.

How do I know I'm stressed? Let me count the ways:

1. I'm wearing mis-matched two piece suit. Now, not everyone matches their suits I know. Some go for a different colour jacket/trouser combo - but both parts of my suit are designed solely to be worn with their natural partner. Trust me. Charcoal jacket + Navy trousers = social ostracisation. I may have got dressed in the dark this morning but there is no excuse for this kind of faux-pas.

2. I walked into Cafe Nero and forgot what I wanted to order. I've ordered the same thing for going on three years and I forget what it is today. I just stood there wondering why I was in a coffee shop.

3. When I do order the barrista asks if I want it in a paper or china cup. This leads to a flurry of "paper.. china.. paper.. to go.. for here.. paper.. no.. china" until she eventually gave up listening to me and put it in a china cup regardless.

4. I have just mixed my tenses - switching from past to present to past. This is something for which I would berate a student and yet I here I am making basic grammatical error after grammatical error.

5. My school is holding a de-stress workshop soon and I am actually considering attending.

Why am I stressed? As is often the case it is a combination of factors. This is always the busiest time of the year for me. I don't know about the rest of the world - but teachers in Northern Ireland find themselves stretched in five different directions this time of year. On top of that there school inspectors assessing the school at the moment. I won't say much about my opinions of ETI inspectors; there isn't time and I'm not in the right frame of mind to be objective - suffice to say that I recognise it has to be done; I just don't like the way they do it.

I think I could safely say that teaching today is not what most people think it to be. It is certainly not what I thought it to be when I started out (so idealistically) all those years ago. It saddens me but I can't help thinking that society more and more adjusts itself to take account of the lowest common denominator often at the expense of everyone else. Take the analogy of car tax. Because there are people out there who are willing to commit fraud the rest of us end up paying higher premiums. In teaching because there are teachers out there who don't care about the pupils they work with the rest of us have to jump through hoop after hoop to make sure we are doing our best for our pupils. A worthy goal - but the irony is that often we are so busy working towards producing the paperwork, results and figures to prove we are doing our very best, that we don't have time to really get to know the people we are meant to be doing our best for.

So much of my job has become tracking and assessing and filling in spreadsheets and carrying out follow up checks and ... ... aghhh!

The thing is I know assessment is important. I know that we need to be aware of the progress achieved by what we do to inform the way we do things. I know that our teaching should take account of the individual pupils' needs and that assesment should there to drive the learning, not the other way around... just sometimes I wonder...

I realise all of this is a truism but right now it is affecting my state of mind. I'm doing my very best to avoid it adversely affecting the way I teach - perhaps at the expense of the rest of my sanity. If that's the case wearing the wrong jacket with my trousers in a coffee shop - drinking... actually I'm not sure what it is I actually ordered - is a scarifice worth making.

Teaching the days of the week.

I love my cleaner. I really do.

She takes the chaotic wilderness that is my classroom at the end of the day and turns it into an oasis of calm and order. She makes my board shine as if it has never been used. She even writes the following day's date in the corner so I won't have to bother in the morning.

She has taught me things I thought I'd never know about cultures I never thought I'd know about. She has impressed me with her knowledge of current fitness regime trends, capital cities of the world and recipes involving broccoli.

She is beautiful, caring and deeply complex - a fascinating human being.

I love her dearly - and I know that English isn't her first language - but I do wish she would learn how to spell Tuesday.

Murlough, Co Down

Tough as it is for me to admit, this place comes close to being as beautiful as the north coast.

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You don't fatten a pig by weighing it

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Bible Belt (Portrush) #1

getting out there

I've decided I have to start getting more serious about photography. And if I'm going to start getting serious then I'm going to have to start getting better, which means more practice. I reckon, with a pro-consumer SLR, a handy little compact, a couple of professional DV Cameras and a camera phone, I should be taking photos everyday. That's exactly what I intend to do. Good, bad, horrendous - high def, low def, no def.I also think I need to start making these photos available for the world (that's you) to see, comment, sneer at, steal, print, parody... So I am going to start doing that right now. I got myself a little web thing called Posterous that I will be using to distribute my photos across various social networking platforms. If I annoy you with a constant stream of mediocre images then I apologise. I'm hoping the odd glimmer of gold in the pan will make up for the tonnes of grit.
Regards, Sam.