My Secret Garden

Ok, I've kept you guessing for a day but now I have to come clean and tell you all the answer,

now the tag was 'impossible quiz' which meant that actually no-one was going to get it though la spice and brokendown angel got very close, and if I had to single out a winner it would be to blog lands very own little spice rack as she saw that it was something to do with people trying to change their destiny so bravo to her and everyone else who took part.

Now the real answer is that I talked about each one in my last therapy session! (Followers of CBT look away now in horror at the digressions that my wise and lovely Sue lets me get away with.)

I acted out the sketch where Ted tells Ralph that he doesn't have to hold him quite so tight when he is on his motorbike and Ralph, after having been in Seventh Heaven clinging to his secret beau now makes every effort, decent man that he is, to not touch Ted at all.

My goodness doesn't Ralph look like David Cameron!

The Monkey's Paw came up in a discussion on, well done Brokendownangel, on being careful what you wish for. So I told her the story as she did not know it, and if you do not know it you can find it here
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/mnkyspaw.htm

And Maria, well I was discussing, pretensious git that I am (how do you spell that bloody word) Herman Hesse's 'Narciss and Goldmund' which I haven't read for many years but centres around two monks within a monastery one austere and well suited to what he does the other a wild spirit who can only be liberated to be his true self by leaving Holy Orders behind and embracing the outside world. Luckily, the austere one recognises what the other needs and allows him to leave......

And I suddenly exclaimed

"That's also the plot of The Sound of Music" and sung a quick rendition of 'Climb every mountain."

Clearly, I am having too much fun in therapy..........

My time has come and gone so I can simply watch now with only the faintest hint of regret and an easily suppressed desire to lace up my boots and be out there again.
The floodlights are switched on and there is a slight buzzing sound as the filaments heat up and during that time the pitch is lit by an unearthly light which casts little shadow and seems to come from the earth itself. It almost feels like moonlight and during that brief moment, I imagine that, amongst the young muddied men out there now bantering and running, booting the ball high into the night sky and jeering at anyone who drops it, there are also the ghosts of those who once graced this pitch. These ghosts leave the faintest of traces in the air as they run and their voices are almost, but not quite completely, lost. Perhaps, they can only be seen and heard by the living ghosts, ghosts such as myself, who can just discern their younger and better selves as they enact the set plays that we once did in order to outwit the opposition, the same set plays that the adults in the top half of the pitch are carrying out and the same set plays that my son's team perform close to where I am stood. The same move probably carried out since rugby began, number 8 picks up at back of scrum, commits opposing scrum half, feeds scrum half who at pace commits opposition winger and the final pass goes out to winger who should, but never is (!), be free to run.

Myself, and two of the coaches watch our sons' play, two of the boys in their father's position and mine thankfully not and with a smile of pride we imagine when the team sheet in the club house will again contain a Daniels, a Mace and a Knight.

We try not to imagine that our sons' time will also come and go and that one day their ghosts will join those of their Fathers illuminated briefly by the moonlit glow of the floodlights.

OK,

What links,

The Fast Show's Ted and Ralph,

With W.W Jacob's 'The Monkey's Paw'

and Maria from The Sound of Music?

Any ideas anyone?

From my archives,

I was listening to Radio 4 on the way into work and there was an interview with Daniel Barenboim who is this year's Reith lecturer. At one point, in what was a fascinating interview, he said that he had a 'compulsion to create with sound'. I thought this expressed a profound idea which is that for some people there is an urgent need to make sense of the world whether that be through sound, light or science. Now not everybody who feels this compulsion is blessed with the same talent but that does not make the urgency to express any less piquant. I remember viewing the film 'Amadeus' and seeing it as a tragedy, not for Mozart, but for Salieri. Both were visited with the same compulsion to create but Mozart was the greater talent yet of all those that appreciated Mozart only Salieri was cursed with appreciating how great Mozart's talent was and how relatively mediocre his own was. And of course in Salieri's eyes how could such beauty be created by such an impure vessel? Nowadays, we share Salieri's horror at someone 'immoral' also being talented but unlike Salieri we feel as if their poor behaviour actually detracts from their talent.

The power of music fascinates me. I am regularly moved to tears by it but it is not the lyrics that have this power but the sheer sound of it. How does it have this affect? Why does it have this effect? Why me and not others? As a student music was so essential to me that it helped me to cope with the pain that I was feeling because it expressed that pain. Or perhaps its power is darker that I was seduced by it and led into a darker view of the world than I would otherwise have had?

I cannot express how I feel through music. I can remember being about twenty two sat down with my guitar, completely frustrated, totally unable to express how I felt with these six strings. I did not want to learn other peoples songs and court favour with others by strumming around the campfire I wanted to say how I felt and I just couldn't do it! Many years later listening to Bjork I saw that it was possible to express how I felt but you needed to be a playful, Icelandic pixie in order to do that.

I have rediscovered photography recently and it tells my story in a way that I cannot achieve through sound. So my compulsion to create will be expressed through light and the alchemy that occurs when this light reaches the film.

I guess all of us have a compulsion to create with words........

Otherwise why would we blog?

When I was a student I roomed with a young man from Sheffield who as a devout Socialist proposed that because the masses were so stupid, the evidence for this being provided that they had voted in Margaret Thatcher, that they had forfeited the right to vote. Decisions should only be made by an intellectual elite who, of course, knew best and therefore what was needed to be done. To enter this elite, and prove your intellectual merit, you had to think like him because he was self evidently right. In order to achieve this logical state of affairs there would need to be a Revolution and stupid people like my father who had voted Conservative would need to be shot. Silly liberals like myself who defended everyones right to vote on the grounds that no one group of people can have full possession of the correct way to govern would also, regrettably, have to join the Fascists up against the wall but then, after all the ends did justify the means and to quote W H Auden sometimes murder was necessary. When argued with he would play his trump card which was to prove that he spoke for the romantic but ignorant masses because he came from up North and was therefore a true member of the Proletariat. This despite the fact that both parents were teachers and his Dad actually a Head Teacher. I clearly had no right to comment as I was from the South and therefore a leach on Britains industrial heartlands which made me a member of the Middle Classes despite my Mum being a lolly pop lady and my Dad being a wages clerk.

As an avid reader of George Orwell I had come across the great man's denunciation of this rancid totaltarian tosh before when it had been widespread in the Thirties and I guess in the early eighties it was entering its last and I hoped dying phase so it saddens me to see, again, such views being advanced on blogs.

Now democracy is far from perfect, of course some people are ignorant and sometimes the media can be deceptive but as a system it is so much better than any of the alternatives> Those that think that we would be better governed by a self appointed elite should maybe check what the likes of Vaclav Havel thought about being ruled by that particular system. Democracies make mistakes but they also don't tend to have gulags either.

Last night I dreamt that I was in a sunlit room with a large window that overlooked a beautiful garden.
I jumped through the glass of the window and then ran across the garden, laughing with the sheer joy of being able to run so fast and then I took off and flew! Higher and higher I flew closer and closer to the sun and then, for a brief moment, I was full of its warm and golden light and my body became, for once, completely relaxed and it was the most wonderful of experiences and then I simply atomised and briefly lit up the heavens. There was no pain in this and again it felt wonderful.

I was walking through a local churchyard when I saw carved on one of the tombstones the simple refrain

"He Lived."

My first thought was that I hoped that the stone's carver had got his tenses right,

And the second was that, hand on heart, I don't think anyone could say that about me.

Well it's near the end of my 25th year of teaching. Our year 11's have gone, our Year 10's are on work experience and everyone else is doing exams.

Leaving me and my Department with lots of time on our hands.

You must have, by now, worked out that I take work terribly seriously and therefore would be using that time to set targets, maximise potential and facilitate change.......

but you know what they say about the Devil

So I thought I'd introduce you to soem of the prep room games...

Game one involves table tennis bats (I've just thought of Phoebe from Friends here and come over all peculiar!) Everyone has a table tennis bat, the ball is batted around the prep room like keepy uppy until someone misses the ball and has to retrieve it when every one fires elastic bands at them.
There is no winning or losing here just the sheer joy of scoring a direct hit on someones backside with an elastic band.

For game 2 you need a small member of staff and one of those wheely ICT chairs and a broom. In teams of three propel said small person on wheely chair along corridor. Person in front uses broom in the manner of curling. Object of game is to propel small person into bottom prep room the nearest team to achieving it is the winner.

Game 3. One of my managers refers to mistakes as dropping a bollock, he also constantly refers to unpicking problems. The place of the bollock is an over ripe orange which is thrown around the prep room at high speed. When the bollock is dropped then some knotted string around your neck has to be unpicked, the loser is the first person with unknotted string. Variations on this game can involve throwing and catching the bollock with one hand only. As an added bonus the bollock can burst at any time covering said player in orange juice just before they have to teach a lesson.

If Your Blog was a film which would it be?

If Your Blog was an actor/actress who would it be?

If Your Blog was a book which would it be?

If Your Blog was a song which would it be?

If Your Blog was a city which would it be?

If Your Blog was an animal which would it be?

On My Nanna's Dressing table was a photograph of her son, My Dad, taken over seventy five years ago. It is a formal shot, taken by a portrait photographer with him in his scout uniform saluting the camera.

And I look at the frail,old man that he is now, kept alive solely by my Mother's Love and wonder how they could be the same person?
He shares not a cell with the rather earnest little boy of the photograph, each atom long replaced and spread to the Four Winds and he no longer thinks in the way that he did then and his memories, like all of ours, are as malleable as clay and as unreliable to build from.

What do we share with our former and future selves? How are they us? How is the baton of being who we are passed on from second to second from cradle to grave?

As I have said, mamy times, I do not believe in an after life but if that most seductive of myths is true then I hope that his own Mum, my Nanna, is waiting to take his hand when he leaves this Earth and lead him back to his boyhood when he was, I think, most happy.

On my Mother's dressing table is a picture of my eldest daughter, it is an informal photograph taken by me and she is in a party dress cuddling my Mother and smiling at the camera. By the photograph is a poem that she wrote to say that my Mother was the person in all the world who made her feel happiest.

Clearly my Mum is a remarkable woman.

A little story from my archives

I visited Kynance Cove at the weekend with my wife, my son and a good friend who happens to be a former pupil of mine (circa 1988) and his girlfriend. It was a little awkward for my son as he was in the company of adults all day and before we left we asked him what he wanted to do so that he would have something special for himself. He said he wanted to scramble on the rocks. So I led him and my friend along the rocks. We started by judging the right time to leap into a gully and scale a little cliff while avoiding the sea as it flowed in and out. The little cliff was quite difficult to climb and I offered my son my hand to pull him up but he was determined to do it all himself.
Onve over the cliff we followed the rocks out until we reached a narrow crack in the rock and behind it was the most gorgeous rock pool, deep and teeming with life and totally inaccessible apart from by scrambling. A little further was an even more magnificent rock pool joined to the sea by a natural arch through which the water spiralled and foamed forming patterns of spray in the deep blue of the water always slightly different but always of similar form. There were shoals of fish there and rock to bask on. I thought of my daughters both mermaids who would love to swim here and discover its hidden depths with their snorkels.

You do not have to travel the world or be pushed to your physical limits to be an explorer, there is great beauty and adventure to be found close by you, you just have to be prepared to play a little and run the risk of getting your trousers wet.

The Bates Motel

So don't say

That you haven't been warned!