Smeg

When I was about ten years old, my brother taught me how to fix a wardrobe door. The procedure involved swearing at the wardrobe. Then there was swearing at the screwdriver. Then there was swearing at anything else that came to hand. Perhaps he was swearing at life itself. He was a sailor so he was used to a working environment where swearing was hardly noticed.

As a pupil, I knew two things. One was that teachers did not swear and the other was that the staff room was out of bounds: even to open the door was taboo.

As a teacher, I was to realise these two things were linked. Teachers did not swear in the classroom. Pupils did, a lot of parents did but let a teacher say 'damn' and they would be damned.

Inside the staffroom, I learnt some of the most vehement and imaginative swearing I had ever encountered. This was led by the PE staff but they were not alone.

Other people have dealt with the issue of swearing by inventing terms of their own. “Blessed” is often used as a euphemism. Grant and Naylor came up with the word “smeg” to get round the BBC's sensitive ears. The Sci-Fi writer Larry Niven came up with “tanj” which is short for “There ain't no justice.”

So swearing is quite an issue. Knowing a lot of adjectives and adverbs is one cure. I once suggested to a pupil that he might improve the following piece of writing by varying the adjectives:

“It was a nice day so I thought it would be nice to go for a nice walk. I went to the park. It was nice.”

He came up with, “It was a bloody awful day so I thought it would be bloody awful...etc.”

Apparently, Dad said it all the time.

I believe teachers can learn to set a good example and use language in a creative way which makes the meaning clear without resorting to swearing. Then go into the staffroom and relieve their feelings in any way they deem appropriate.

Little Hitler

School uniform has been a vexed issue for many years. Most people accept that sixth formers (pupils in years 12 and 13) do not wear uniform and there is no falling away of academic achievement as a result.

However the situation at a school “somewhere in Sussex” was that the staff were being expected to wear uniform. From a trade union perspective this is quite straight-forward. The contract of employment did not specify uniform and that contract cannot be arbitrarily altered.

The staff response was very effective. They took to saluting the little Hitler who suggested the change and the individual was embarrassed into dropping the idea.

Lock up politicians for lying?

#thei newspaper reports massive public support for a law banning politicians from telling lies but have they considered how overcrowded the prisons are already? #tory #labour #lies

Freedom Come-All-Ye

Freedom Come-All-Ye

Traditional Trade Union and protest song from the 1960s

Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin
Blaws the cloods heilster-gowdie owre the bay
But there's mair nor a roch wind blawin
Thro the Great Glen o the warld the day
It's a thocht that wad gar oor rottans
Aa thae rogues that gang gallus fresh an gay
Tak the road an seek ither loanins
Wi thair ill-ploys tae sport an play

Nae mair will our bonnie callants
Merch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw
Nor wee weans frae pitheid an clachan
Mourn the ships sailin doun the Broomielaw
Broken faimlies in lands we've hairriet
Will curse 'Scotlan the Brave' nae mair, nae mair
Black an white ane-til-ither mairriet
Mak the vile barracks o thair maisters bare

Sae come aa ye at hame wi freedom
Never heed whit the houdies croak for Doom
In yer hoos aa the bairns o Adam
Will find breid, barley-bree an paintit rooms
When Maclean meets wi's friens in Springburn
Aa thae roses an geans will turn tae blume
An the black lad frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o the burghers doun.

English translation

It's a rough wind in the clear day's dawning
Blows the clouds head-over-heels across the bay
But there's more than a rough wind blowing
Through the Great Glen of the world today
It's a thought that would make our rodents,
All those rogues who strut and swagger,
Take the road and seek other pastures
To carry out their wicked schemes

No more will our fine young men
March to war at the behest of jingoists and imperialists
Nor will young children from mining communities and rural hamlets
Mourn the ships sailing off down the River Clyde
Broken families in lands we've helped to oppress
Will never again have reason to curse the sound of advancing Scots
Black and white, united in friendship and marriage,
Will make the slums of the employers bare

So come all ye who love freedom
Pay no attention to the prophets of doom
In your house all the children of Adam
Will be welcomed with food, drink and clean bright accommodation
When MacLean returns to his people
All the roses and cherry trees will blossom
And the black guy from Nyanga
Will break the capitalist stranglehold on everyone's life

11298 downloads of my worksheets from the TES

They refer to me as "h" because I gave my name as H Elpline2.

That is a lot of downloads.

Rebus2

 Sid Vish without the gnu and us = SidVicious

Last Tango in Paris

The ten ant of Wilde fell Hall = The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Rwanda is not the Congo you know

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/question-time-audience-stunned-as-minister-chris-philp-asks-rwanda-is-a-different-country-to-congo-isn-t-it/ar-AA1nG8Ck

Policing minister Chris Philp appeared to confuse the countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Question Time.

An easy mistake to make. They are both foreign countries forsooth.

One word description of OFSTED

The government has kept its policy of "one word assessments" of schools by OFSTED. The somewhat insulting premise is that parents cannot understand more than one word.

As for OFSTED, I think it is a toss-up between ‘ignorant’ and ‘bullying’. 

And the government? ‘Inadequate’ would do. 

222 players on Puzzgrid

I presented this grid to my family on Thursday and then put it on Puzzgrid. As you can see 222 people have played it. Cor Blimey

Not Nice

"It was a nice day so I thought it would be nice to go for a nice walk. I went to the park where a lot of nice people were walking their dogs. It was nice."

You can believe me or not, just as you choose. This is from a piece of writing a pupil handed in to me. I have used it since as an exercise in finding alternatives to the word "nice",

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Classroom-Teacher-Manual-advice-teachers/dp/1973773074

Gratitude

One way to master the complexities of logarithms is to sit in the back row of the class and make farting noises.

This was the strategy of a child who I found was called Jack Carter.

"Are you sending Carter to the sin bin,  sir?" 

From the air of anticipation in the class I guessed that Carter usually made a fuss about this.

Instead of sending him out, I focussed on explaining the lesson to him. The others were listening.

When the bell went, he said, "I quite like the sin bin actually."

I was overwhelmed by his gratitude.

58 Farm End

This is a first-class murder story. The characters are well-drawn and interesting and their relationships drive the plot.

As for the murder there are a number of red herrings and I was certainly surprised when the actual murderer was revealed. It keeps the reader guessing and speculating all the way through as suspicion switches from one character to another..

The details of life on a farm provide a backdrop to the story and it is set in the vicinity of Worthing which is an added attraction for those of us who live there.

I bought the paperback in Natty Noos in Horsham. There are also Kindle and Audible versions.

Intolerable

Sunak said the action of the Israeli Defence Force was "intolerable".
Was it intolerable enough to prevent the sale of arms to Israel?
Of course not!

As of 20 March, at least 196 humanitarians have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since October 2023, according to figures compiled by the Aid Worker Security Database (AWDS) – the aid community’s main source for tracking attacks on aid workers. Data for 2023 and 2024 is not yet finalised, and the numbers are likely to rise, researchers say.

It is apparently impossible for Israel to feed Palestinian children who are starving but it is possible to bomb them.

The Israeli Defence Force is engaged in crimes against humanity. So are the Israeli media. For them the genocide in Gaza simply does not exist.

The Legend of Loof Lirpa

In 1793 the health ministry of Norway was tasked with measuring the feet of all the citizens. The runaway winner of the contest was a little-known man called Loof Lirpa.

His picture, alongside a picture of his feet with a normal-sized pair of feet for comparison, appeared in the newspapers of the day, there were two. The King awarded Loof a thousand Kroner which could be expected to keep him in comfort for the rest of his days.

In those days there were no shoe sizes so Loof had to have his shoes specially made. Fortunately his father came from a long line of cobblers.

Loof decided to set out exploring. The first country he discovered was Denmark. Norwegians had heard of Denmark but hitherto they had thought of it as a mythic land inhabited by giants. Danes are similar in size to Norwegians and in fact Loof, with his prodigious feet, was regarded as a giant by them. He was introduced to the King who told him of another land which the Danes greatly feared. In modern times it is known as Sweden.

Loof walked to Sweden where he found that the land of Abba was in fact a rather peaceful place. In fact he married and raised twelve children in Sweden. There was a mistranslation of his writings about Sweden which were published posthumously forty years later. From this people in Norway got the impression that far from being a pacific nation, Sweden was in fact in the Pacific.

He was mourned in Sweden, Denmark and eventually in his native Norway.

Note – as this is written in English, I have followed the tradition of spelling Loof Lirpa's name backwards.