187 It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

Tuesday, April 12th this year was a significant date for me.  It was fifty years ago on April 12th, 1972, that I began teaching at Creighton School, a comprehensive school in Muswell Hill, North London.  For the two and a half years before then, I had taught in a secondary modern school in Lowestoft.  The students in the two schools were quite different.

I like to think that although I may have changed physically only slightly over those fifty years, I am still pretty much the same person that I was then.  Sadly, something happened today that proves I am not.

After a shower this morning, I ironed the collar of the clean shirt I intended to wear - a good thing about winter and early spring is that when wearing a pullover, it is only the collar of a shirt that needs ironing.

Then, I took the three pills I must have every morning and that was followed by a fiddly five minutes, popping pills from their sachets to refill the empty, partitioned pill container with another week’s supply.  Whatever happened to pills in bottles?

I realised that today is Tuesday and that means that the rubbish must be got ready for the refuse collectors tomorrow.  I went back to the bathroom to collect the bag from the small bin there.

The doorbell rang.  I heard Caroline unlock the door and then the voice of a neighbour greeting her.  I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I was aware that Caroline had invited her into the house.

I put the contents of the two-bedroom waste bins as well as the bathroom bag into a larger bag. Then, I set off downstairs carrying all the rubbish and an empty cup with the sound of a conversation becoming clearer with every step. 

I was about to go into the living room to say hello to our neighbour when I realised that I had forgotten something:

I wasn't dressed.  I was stark naked!

The first class I taught at Creighton was a fifth-year (Year 11 in today’s parlance) geography class.  In 1972, children could leave school at the end of the school year after they had become 15.  Consequently, in theory, those who stayed on to the fifth year were keen to study for either a CSE or an ‘O’ level exam.  I quickly discovered that some were less keen than others.

The lesson was going entirely as it should until after about 15 minutes, the classroom door burst open and a really scruffy youth holding a guitar stood in the doorway facing me.  With a theatrical flourish, he struck a loud chord and roared,

“Hi…I’m Steve.”

Things were calm after that but with about 10 minutes of the lesson left, I noticed that a girl sitting at the back of the room was engaged in something that was nothing to do with agriculture in East Anglia.  

She was sitting with her neck resting on the back of her chair, staring at the ceiling.  While sitting like that, she appeared to be gently massaging her scalp.  As I approached, I could see an empty paper packet that had been torn open and traces of white powder on the desk. 

“What are you doing?” I asked.  She ignored me.

“Sit up please and tell me what you’re doing.”

Eventually, and with a huge sigh, she dropped her hands, lifted her head, and scowled at me.

“What d’yer think I’m doing with dry shampoo?  I’m washing me bleedin ’air.”  *

At lunchtime, I went into the staffroom intending to ask someone the whereabouts of the canteen.  Keith, a young science teacher, realising that I was somewhat uncertain, asked if I’d brought any lunch.  I told him I hadn’t.

“Let’s go to the pub?” he suggested.

We walked the short distance to The Alexandra on Fortis Green where I had shepherd’s pie costing 27½p.  It was just a year after decimalisation, and it must have previously been five and six.

A couple of months ago I rang Keith, whom I still see fairly often and asked him if he knew of the significance of April 12th.  Of course, he didn’t.  After I had reminded him, he agreed it was worth a celebration.  Unfortunately, The Alex was knocked down some years ago and so it (and the blue plaque marking its place in the history of Muswell Hill), has gone.

Instead, we went to Searcy’s at the top of the Gherkin building in London.  I had shepherd’s pie again, but it was £30 this time and nothing like as nice as the Alex’s.  Much too salty.

This is Keith and me in a staff photo in September 1972:

And this in 2022:

The bugger’s hardly changed!

*****

* Washing hair during a lesson is pretty bad but something much worse happened in the classroom adjacent to mine two or three years later.  It’s a difficult thing to write about.

The bell had rung for lunch and as I walked past that room, the teacher saw me and beckoned me in.  He asked me about something or other, but my attention was fixed on a girl who was still there at the back of the room.  She appeared to be fast asleep with her head on the desk.

“She’s been like that for 20 minutes,” he told me.  “It’s been great.  No interruptions.  I suppose I’d better wake her up now.”

He called her name and shook her by the shoulder but there was no response.  Then, we saw several opened packets strewn around the floor under her desk.  

She was unconscious, not asleep.  

The teacher rushed down six flights of stairs to the general office to telephone for an ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, she was driven away to hospital where she was treated and survived.  For years I resisted the temptation to inform the teacher that I had taught some pretty poor lessons too but never one that drove someone to attempt suicide.

We never were told what had driven her to such an awful act and as far as I remember, she never returned to school but three or four years later I was told that she appeared as the centrespread of Mayfair magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

186 What Nonsense

A few years ago, thinking that it would increase my vocabulary, I got into the habit of making a note of any new word I came across.  Recently, I added ‘valetudinarian’ to my Word List.  

When I began this procedure, I imagined that my vocabulary would expand rapidly but alas, it hasn’t.  When I scrolled through my list of about 60 words ranging from ‘aleatory’ to ‘xenodochial’, I found that I couldn’t remember the meaning of most of them.

How disappointing but I think it must be an age thing.  I wish I’d started that routine when I was much younger because there is a word that I found some 50 years ago that I do still remember. 

I never had the opportunity to use that word until, to my surprise and delight, I found that it was the answer to a clue in the Times Concise Jumbo Crossword.  

When I unearthed that word, I was a student working at the Birds Eye factory during the summer vacation.  Attired in white overalls with natty yellow epaulettes, I was a member of the Quality Control team. 

One of my work colleagues that summer was a young woman who had just completed her second year at Oxford.  Her knowledge and understanding of just about everything was so formidable that I was very wary of ever disagreeing with any fact she quoted or any opinion she held - she always seemed to be correct and a twelve-hour shift passes very slowly if the atmosphere is tense.

One afternoon, while putting pea samples into a ‘tenderometer’ to determine whether fields were ready for harvest, we were trying to think of words that were neither rude nor offensive to use instead of ‘nonsense’ as in, “You are talking nonsense.”

That evening, and now I can’t remember how, I found a word I had never come across before and, as during the forty-minute conversation that afternoon she hadn’t mentioned it, I assumed it would be new to her as well.  

Today, with Google, a task like that is quick and easy but all those years ago, any research to score a cheap point took time and determination.  I had both.

The following morning, I waited patiently.  The shift started at 6 a.m. and it wasn’t until our first break that I had the opportunity to say to her, “You’re talking pshaw”.

“What?” she asked, incredulously.  “Pshaw?”

“Yes.  It means rubbish,” I smirked, even though the expression on her face was rapidly draining my confidence.

“Oh dear,” she said quietly.  “Yes, I do know what it means and you are quite right that pshaw can mean rubbish or nonsense, but it is a word that is never written.  It is only ever spoken as an exclamation of irritation when someone wishes to indicate impatience…...or scorn,” she added after a meaningful pause.

“Also,” she continued, obviously enjoying my discomfort, “it’s been virtually obsolete since the mid-nineteenth century.”

We worked in virtual silence for the next 9 hours and a couple of days later, she was moved to work on the cod in breadcrumbs line.

*****

Expression of impatience (5)	P S H A W.
Aleatory  adj	depending on chance, random
Valetudinarian  n	a person unduly anxious about their health
Xenodochial  adj	hospitable, friendly

 

185 The Accent is on Confusion

When someone speaks, their accent may cause problems. 

I was teaching about different types of farming to a first-year class in a north London comprehensive school when I was asked how to spell “heifer”.  I slowly spelt out H E I F E R.  When looking at their written accounts, a few of them had written:  H  E  A  F  E  R.

“Some of you spelt it wrong,” I told them.  “It starts H  E  I.”

“That’s what I put, like you said,” one of them told me, indignantly, while the others nodded in agreement.

The problem was that to some of them, my pronunciation of the letter “i” sounded just like the way that they said the letter “a”.

When we lived in Cayman, I often had problems understanding the Caymanian accent.  In 2010, I wrote here about when we had trouble with our television aerial.  I phoned and I was told that Mr Antennae would come to fix it.

“Mr Antennae? That’s funny,” I said.  “Does he see more than one then?”  

“More than one what?” the woman asked.

“Well, antennae or aerials,” I said, beginning to realise that it probably wasn’t as funny as I had first thought.

“Yes,” she said.  “That’s his job. That’s what engineers do.”

“Yes, I know they do but isn’t it funny that his name is Mr Antennae?”

“Why?”

“Well, I think it’s called nominative determinism.  People do a job that fits their name like someone called Paul Flight who’s a pilot or a Tom Lamb who’s a shepherd.”

“So, what’s that got to do with Mr Antennae,” she asked, sounding irritable.

I was desperate for her to understand why it was funny and so I said, “Spell antennae please.”

“A      N     T      H      O      N      Y”

“OK. Thanks.”

Speaking with a standard English accent doesn’t always mean you will be understood either.  I’ve also told you before (2016) about a problem that Caroline had in Miami when she tried to buy a bottle of water.  It was lunchtime and the place was crowded.

“Could I have a bottle of water please?” Caroline asked.

“Huh?” said the assistant. “Say wah?”

“A bottle of water please.”

“Wha’sat, honey?”

“A bottle of water.”

“Honey, we’re kinda busy.  What d’yer want?”

Caroline, remembering that around 70% of Miami is of Hispanic origin, asked for “agua”.

“Agua!  Okay!  A boddle-er-wodder.  Why didn’t you say?”

I was once with a group of people, one of whom was a woman from Yorkshire.  She seemed to spend the evening dropping the names of the well-known people she met while working.  

“Have you ever met them?” someone asked her when a well-known television couple was mentioned.  

“Yes, I’ve been on there but,” she told us.

That made no sense at all to me and so I asked, “There but for what?”

She gave me a disdainful look.

Her partner, who must have been accustomed to translating from Yorkshire into English for her, murmured, “She’s been on their boat.”

There’s an afternoon television game show called Lingo in which people are given the first letter of a word and then have to find that word in 5 attempts.  It is similar to the game “Wordle” that you might play on your phone or iPad.

Competitors will say the word and then, to eliminate any ambiguity or confusion, give its spelling.

I am possibly a little strange but I’m always looking for swear words that will fit.  I became aware of this quirk by an incident in the programme some weeks ago.  The player was told that she was searching for a 4-letter word starting with “S”.   

She said, “S T A Y” and found that the word she was looking for did have a “T”,  but it was not the third letter.  "S O O T" was her next try and that was wrong as well but the “T” was now in the right place. 

“S H I T”, I thought to myself.  “Go on, say shit.  Please say shit.”  Of course, she didn’t.

“S H U T” was her next attempt and that was right.

Today, my Lingo wish seemed to come true.  The television was on, but I wasn’t really concentrating as I was trying to do a crossword at the same time.  A young woman from Ballymena in Northern Ireland had to find a five-letter word that began with the letter “S”.

Suddenly, I was giving my full attention as I heard her clearly, loudly and confidently say, “shite”.

Before the host could interrupt and tell her to watch her language, she spelt it aloud and with a strong Irish accent, she said:

S    H    O    U    T

184 The Hell That Is Scrabble

I hate Scrabble.  I refuse to play if ever someone suggests a game.  

Even though I always lose, that’s not the reason I won’t play.  I really am not a bad loser.  Goodness knows I’ve had enough practice!

I always seem to lose at any board game I play.  I haven’t won a game of monopoly since 1993 and I have never won a game of Cluedo.  The nadir was my 6-year-old grandson consistently beating me at Guess Who last Christmas.

When I was a kid and played Scrabble with my friends, it was quite enjoyable but I remember that it all went wrong when Paul, who had recently moved to Suffolk from Newcastle, put down GAN.  We said it wasn’t a word, but he insisted it meant the same as “go”.  

Consulting a dictionary just made matters worse.  According to the dictionary, GAN was not there as a synonym for “go” but it was a Chinese dialect. 

“So, it’s OK,” said Paul.  “I can use it.”

“No, you can’t,” we all yelled at him, insisting that you had to know the meaning of any word you put down.  

“Where does it say that in the rules?” asked Paul.

“It probably doesn’t, but would you let one of us use 'squit'?” someone asked.

“That means what you’re doing now – talking a load of old squit.  Rubbish or nonsense.”

Paul grabbed the dictionary.  “It’s not there but ‘squits’ is and it means diarrhoea.  So, no.”

After that, Scrabble was never the same again.

I was reminded of my antipathy to Scrabble by a recent feature in The Times puzzle page that consisted of a Scrabble problem.

The article featured a point in a match between two contenders in a Scrabble competition.  Readers were shown the layout of the board and the letters in the rack of one of the players.

We were asked to determine the play he should make that scored 24 points and at the same time, severely restricted his opponent’s immediate scoring opportunities.

When I looked at the board, I assumed that some mistakes had been made.  Of the 23 different words on the board, there were only 8 I had ever heard of before and I wouldn’t have allowed 2 of them to be used in a game of Scrabble that I was playing.  

These words below must all be legitimate in Scrabble as the article stated that all words were featured in “Collins Official Scrabble Words”.

Maybe my vocabulary is limited compared with other people’s.  Here are the 15 words on the board that I have never come across before:

AE, BRR, DAWT, EN, ES, FAE, GAE, KAE, KAT, OOT, OUPA, QIN, RUANA, XU, ZINE.

Only 5 of those words appear in my dictionary but I researched and here are the meanings of them all.

AE	Internet domain name for United Arab Emirates.  Why is that allowed?
BRR	BRRR is a reaction to extreme cold.  Maybe BRR is just a bit chilly.
DAWT	A Scottish variation of daut*. And we all know what that means.
EN	A unit of measurement in printing that is equal to half an ‘em’.
ES	The chemical ‘einsteinium” and the internet domain name for Spain.
FAE	A Scottish word for ‘from’.
GAE	A Scottish word for ‘go’.
KAE	An obsolete Scottish term for a jackdaw.   Ridiculous!
KAT	Is a variant spelling of ‘khat”.  Obviously.
OOT	American abbreviation for ‘Out Of Town”.  American?  What!
OUPA	From Afrikaans, an affectionate South African term for a grandfather.
QIN	A Chinese dynasty from the 3rd century BC.
RUANA	A woollen wrap resembling a poncho.
XU	A Vietnamese monetary unit that is one-hundredth of a dong.
ZINE	A fanzine.

It appears now that Paul was quite right all those years ago.  If GAE is allowed as a Scottish variant of ‘go’ then surely, GAN must be as well.

Based upon these ridiculous, allowable words, here’s a tip for you if you play Scrabble again:

Just before you start, tell your opponent what a twontx day you’re having and that you hope the ugats in the town centre have skulted before, later in the day, you arzz collect the amelerants and lofs you ordered from John Lewis.  

That’s why I will never play Scrabble.  I really don’t mind losing at all but how can you possibly enjoy playing a game that by its very nature, is wide open to interpretation and probably, will lead to an argument?  

*  You were right.  Daut means “to stroke, pet or cuddle”.

133. Enjoyably Wasting Time

I don't know how it's happened but this post from December 2016, has suddenly appeared here and so if you think you've read it before, you're right.

TW 6-1-22

Around about 10 o’clock every morning, I start thinking about what we are going to eat in the evening.  I have responsibility for food because Caroline works and I don’t.  There are always three alternatives: eat out, buy a ready meal, or cook. 

I like cooking.  I’m no good at it but I rather enjoy everything that goes towards the outcome and sometimes I enjoy eating the end result as well - but not often.  Other people usually seem to enjoy what I’ve cooked more than I do.  There may be some psychological influences going on there or people are just being polite?  I suspect it’s the latter.

Eating out is the simplest and easiest option but it is expensive around here and not something to do every day.  When we lived in North London, we were within walking distance of tens of restaurants and maybe, it was the fierce competition caused by the high density of restaurants, that kept prices low. 

There are no cheap, independent restaurants in this area the way there are in London, just chains like Giraffe, Prezzo and Nando’s.   The days when we would pop out at seven and be back by eight because we had nothing in the fridge have gone. 

Every time we go to a restaurant nowadays, it is an “Event”.  Of course, the event is usually nothing more momentous than the fact that it is a Friday night, but our social life is such that Friday night is quite an event for us. 

I spend most midweek afternoons preparing food to be eaten for dinner that evening.  I made Prawn Caldinho the other day.  First, I had to marinate the prawns.  I had to grind the cumin, coriander seeds and peppercorns to a fine powder and then pound garlic cloves to a paste. After the preparation and cooking, I was left with four dirty pots that had to be washed up and put away. 

It was very nice but it took me more than two hours in all to prepare and cook.  Much simpler and easier to pop a ready meal into the microwave.  I have never had a ready meal from a supermarket that I didn’t enjoy. 

A King Prawn Masala ready meal for two costs £3.30 and it is really good.  As I said at the start, I only bother cooking because I enjoy it. 

I know that many people disagree, but growing your own food seems a particularly daft thing to do.  A couple of years ago, my brother, who appears to have turned horticulture and plant husbandry into an obsession, gave us a cucumber plant.  Cucumbers need to grow in soil that has to be kept moist.

We were supposed to go away for a few days but we nearly didn’t because we were worried that the cucumber might suffer from neglect.  We went but only after my son offered to stay at our house for the time we were away and water the damned thing.

What a to-do!  Look at it: prickly, stunted and thick-skinned.  We looked after it like a newborn baby on life support and at the end of it, all we “harvested” was just one cucumber.  Why bother?

Last March, we planted potatoes.  At least they don’t need nurturing while they grow but what you dig up is nothing like the potatoes you buy at Waitrose.  They are caked in mud for a start!

A few years ago, I spent an October afternoon making date pickle. That is not cooking.  There is virtually no preparation necessary apart from chopping the ingredients.  Mixing is the only technique required.  If you can measure weight and volume, it is impossible to get it wrong and it is worth doing because I’ve never seen it for sale in a store.

The first year I made date pickle, I didn’t know that you could buy pitted dates and I spent two hours removing the stones from two kilograms of them.  I also had to buy several ingredients that I'd never used before such as sumac, tamarind paste and asafoetida (on its own, it smells as its name suggests it might, but it adds an oniony flavour with no odour).

The date pickle I make in October is perfect by Christmas and two kilograms of it lasts a year.  It would all be gone earlier if Caroline liked it but she doesn’t and so I eat it all myself. 

“Why not make a normal pickle?” she suggested.  “Something that I like.”

I bought ingredients to make four kilograms of “Classic Pickle” and at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, I began.  Apples, onions, beetroot, turnip and swede all had to be peeled and chopped.  Tomatoes had to be skinned before chopping.  It took hours!

I don’t know whether it’s an age thing but my eyes have recently become extremely sensitive to onions.  The moment I start to remove the peel from an onion, my eyes hurt.  It never used to be that bad.  In the end, I had to admit defeat and Caroline finished the job. 

She only moaned about it for about a week.

Unlike date pickle, these constituents of “Classic Pickle” have to be softened for an hour by simmering and it required regular stirring.  As the pan was cooling, I could see I was going to need more containers and so I went out and bought eight Kilner jars.

This pickle is fairly bland but it tastes good and goes particularly well with cheese.  It is unlike any pickle I’ve ever tried before as it doesn't have the sharp, vinegary tang of shop-bought pickle.

I’m making a rather special dessert for Christmas and I need glacé clementines.  I found that I could buy them online but the smallest quantity available is 1 kilogram.  I only need 100 grams and I wasn’t prepared to spend £12.99.  So, I spent 95p on three clementines and glacéed them myself.  It was very easy and they taste pretty good.

Is it worth it?  Making the glacé clementines and date pickle certainly is - but making the classic pickle most definitely was not. 

Branston Pickle in a supermarket costs around 35 pence per 100 grams.  The ingredients that I used cost £25 and so that works out at 62p per 100 grams.  However, if you add in the cost of the eight jars I had to buy at £2.99 each, that puts up the cost to £1.22 per 100 grams.  

But it doesn’t end there.  The value of my labour has to be worth the minimum wage and so that’s another £45.  I ignore the cost of the electricity used over six hours from the first peel to closing the last lid.

Consequently, to make my home-made pickle cost £2.50 per 100 grams.  A 360-gram jar of Branston Pickle is £1.29 in a supermarket. That low price shows the advantages brought about by economies of scale.  Making your own pickle really is not worth the bother. 

I will sell a 400-gram jar of my pickle for just £9.00 and that is a saving for you of 10%.  However, you can have one for £6.00 - but I would like to have the jar back, please.