Those who can, do. They who can’t…..

I haven’t formally taught in a classroom for almost two years but, the previous 36 of busting my board-pen, I feel, qualify me to have a go at defining why the hell teachers do it. And why it’s fabulous when done properly and how torrid when not. Teaching is obviously a tango, a team of two involved in the steps. For it to function well and glide smoothly with minimal slip-ups, both the teacher and learner must be fully involved, in sync, paying attention to the steps and rhythm of the groove.  I take you this way, you follow me, you react that way, I adapt myself to your steps and pace. And when the dance ends and has been a success, the results are plain to see. The dancers beam at one another with mutual gratitude and respect, the audience (happy parents) applaud, and the judges (senior management and governors) are satisfied that they encouraged the dance in the first place. Job done. But, my God, what very few people get to see are the preparations involved, the behind-the-scenes rehearsals and hours and hours and hours of relentless chopping and changing to prepare the dance for optimum impact and a bit more than a 4 from Craig.

When I qualified back in the days of cave dwellers, we did not use technology to enhance our lessons. I had a board-pen (I did actually use chalk at one point so maybe it was pre-caves). I don’t remember even having access to a photocopier. There was a bander machine and carbon copy sheets you could spice up by using four different colours so that your worksheets looked marginally more attractive to the discerning, stimulation-hungry, youthful eye. I made crate-loads of flashcards and over-head projector acetates and bought fancy rainbow pens so I could twentieth century pimp my language games. And I read books on methodology and created box games and amassed no end of ‘authentic’ materials to be used to book hotel rooms, order albóndigas en salsa de tomate and catch the train to Madrid. Authentic. That was the buzz word of the time. Tedious, impractical O Levels were being dumped and GCSE was to introduce students to the real world of language. Forget your never-ending grammar lessons and vocabulary lists. Language was to be about the real world. I loved it. The drama, the real foreign noisiness of it, the jumping about the classroom trying to explain in the police station that you had left your bag on the bus or to the hotel receptionist that there was a dead mouse under your bed. It was fab, completely exhausting but I could not have been happier. Of course, what this new approach did not tackle properly was the fact that teaching kids a phrasebook is no way to produce a linguist. Your average bod might be able to ask where the post office is but beyond that, and more importantly, understanding the response, is no guarantee. My take has always been a blend of both. Get them talking till their throats hurt but give them the grammar tools to build the language independently. It is also a much better brain work-out. The stuff we teach them should not be on temporary  loan to be regurgitated in an exam, it is for them to own permanently. A fantastic, life-long skill.

And talking of brains, I am entirely convinced that the BOYD movement (Bring Your Own Device or perhaps better put – Distraction) has done very little to enhance a pupil’s ability to think, deduce, imagine, analyse and create. Oh yes, they can easily bypass the school’s firewall system because, well, they are clever little suckers and many attempts by schools to provide on-line safety, under law, to ensure that children under the age of thirteen cannot access social media platforms, means that schools are constantly battling to keep up with the razor-sharp wit and tech savviness of those in their care. Never has there been so much bullying, and I don’t mean the ‘your mum’s fat’ bullying, I mean the insidious, paranoia-inducing, friendship-crushing, personality-disordering, loathsome-rash-spreading viral cruelty that a single text or inappropriate picture can unleash on a beautiful, young mind. The food chain of form tutors, heads of year and senior management line up on a daily basic to pick up the debris of mobilephoneitis. Ban them in schools. They are the work of the bloody Devil. Yes, I may be a dinosaur but I am a well-meaning Antiscreenasaurus who just wants kids to look up and smell the board-pen. Well, maybe not smell it but at least rest their eyeballs from the constant flash-bang-wallopry of unnecessary fruit machine life. And I am sorry but if you are going to tell me that kids will now only respond to mega-stimulation, then you are missing the point. It is the over stimulation and the development of new diseases caused by uncontrolled and unconscious use of technological devices that is stunting their capacity to learn. And those who poopoo the use of a pen, well, here I despair. Writing with a pen leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall, leading to a better conceptual understanding of material. Gadgets are the new nicotine choking our youngsters’ minds. I am a firm believer that the teacher is the main resource in the room and should be able to Mary Poppins a lesson from a piece of paper, a whistle and a maraca unless it’s the end of term and you’re too knackered to string a sentence together.

In my embryonic years, Differentiation was also the stuff of we-can-do-it dreams. Streaming/setting has enjoyed a very hornet-nesty past and mixed ability teaching had to be the way forward. Yet how do you teach a group of Year 7s  the same lesson and guarantee that pupil A who can’t tell the time at all on an analogue clock in their mother tongue and pupil B who is heading for NASA and can record the hours and minutes by looking at the sun or smelling the air, will grasp the same content, firstly, in a different language and secondly and more importantly, remember it for the next lesson? It is exhausting even recalling the steps I took to ensure that each pupil in my lessons got their pre-euro pesetas’ worth. I would have felt a complete fraud if I had failed even one.  I had a cooking buzzer that would go off at 15 minute intervals to move four groups of eight from one activity to the next, reading, speaking, writing and listening tasks all prepared separately with incorporated levels of difficulty. We used a cumbersome Coomber box with eight sets of headphones which never got tangled of course (!) and a Spanish assistant or myself leading the speaking group with a practice clock, plastic fruit props or a suitcase full of goodies from the Early Learning Centre. I should have bought shares in that place given that much of my pittance salary found its way into their till. Fifteen minute slots. Brrrrrrrring!  Vamos! Uno, dos, tres…… they had until diez,  sit, start. It worked like clockwork but only because I had trained them like performing parrots. It only wobbled when a new pupil arrived with no English half-way through the term or when a scrap broke out because ‘she called me a slag, Miss’. Could/can teachers truly differentiate their lessons to provide each pupil with a personalised programme of success? I suppose a teacher can/could/would if the day were twice as long and they had a bionic body and brain that could cope with the demands and stress of it all. What constitutes success anyway? One of my major breakthroughs came trying to teach a less able group how to talk about sports they enjoyed and practised. We jumped about and mimed swinging rackets and scoring really belting, top right corner goals and sang sporty songs penned to the tune of Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel and chanted and marched in time around the room and finally, my lovely lad (I do remember his name but the world is a handkerchief in Spanish, i.e. small) finally produced ‘mee gangier naggickaction’. I have never forgotten it. Bravo, tesoro mío. You’re…. you’re so close. Casi, casi. A couple more cracks at it and you’ll have nailed it. Me gusta la natación. I like swimming. He had sunk but that was a Channel crossing for him and me. We were both very buoyant that day.

Schools have changed in so many ways since the ‘Dark Ages’, as some would call them but I am not convinced that Enlightenment covers what we have today. Progress comes in many guises. At my first teaching post, you could smoke in the staffroom. It was disgusting. It was finally agreed that smokers would at least sit in one corner but it was still gross.  I count among my early achievements the lobbying which led to having it banned where we drank our cuppa at breaktime. Having a big mouth means people push you from behind to start the fight because they know you will speak up for them and do their fagging.  Most people loathed the smoke and the stink but the die-hards who had been on the staff for a hundred years and who made up the majority of the puffing billies were not happy one biddy bit. Any change would have meant them hiding in the maths office to get their fix which thankfully for us, yet regrettably for them was what resulted from the vote.  It also meant that I was black balled by the smokers but lauded by the antis. One step forward for non-smoking teacher-kind. In stark contrast to this progress is the now relentless, nowhere-to-hide ‘contactableness’ of staff. I look back with glossy eyes, thinking about my beloved pigeon-hole which I would check when I arrived in school, then at break and once again when I left at the end of the day. Hand-written messages, some run-of-the-mill (we are out of board-pens in the stockroom), some ‘trivial’ (fancy a drink after work on Friday?) and some more pressing (need to talk to you urgently about pupil X) but not so pressing that you had to find two more days in the week to deal with them. Email has undoubtedly improved communication, but it has ruined the teacher’s day and peace of mind. The working day and the holidays are no longer the protected time or space of any teacher because it is like being on call at A and E. To some demanding pupils, marking a revision essay is a matter of life or death and you are the antidote, the bandage, the bleeding red pen they now crave. You are their lifeblood, and they will suck your veins dry like an insatiable Dracula because that’s what you’re there for, isn’t it? So what if it is the middle of the Easter holidays!

And what of school trips? Well, these have now become the stuff of nightmares.  In the days before hyper-helicoptering parents, risk assessments, GDPR, crisis management, wide-spread food allergies, mobile phones and social media, to name just a few of the positive developments regarding our children’s safety and well-being (?), a trip was arranged, pupils were invited, you took them, you brought them back in one piece and everything was hunky-dory. Staff signed up because a week’s skiing was beyond the average teacher’s pocket and you might never get the chance again. A craic. Kids in ski school in the morning, on the slopes with us in the afternoon, supper, bit of a disco, bed. Glorious. Then a cheeky beer in the bar to make sure nobody went walkabout, which of course they did. However, every problem was solved with minimal fuss and very little paranoia. Hannah necking between the sheets with a fourth year from another school, George trying it on with the vodka because his mum had told him to bring a couple of cheap bottles back, Christopher blocking the girls’ loo with an almighty poo on the last day room-check as the coach waited for us to depart, sugar-highs from too many sweets smuggled in their luggage from home. Sounds stressful. This was nothing. Common sense, good humour and a stern tongue lashing sorted everything. I never once felt nervous, out of my depth or concerned that I might lose or kill one of them though I could have throttled a couple quite easily. To run a school trip in the current climate is a major military operation of gargantuan proportions. The preparation involved is akin to cabinet war-room planning although now, instead of a long wooden stick to move the bits about on a big table, it is a digital brain-ache of box ticking and crossing. Anna needs three Epi-pens and don’t forget to check the date on them. The school nurse and heads of year will give you a list to check over all medication details. Four asthmatics, a bed-wetter, a loner with no mates but ‘this will do him good’, a selective mute, a very distressed kiddy whose parents are going through a divorce and aren’t sure they can now afford it, a pupil who has never been abroad and is anxious beyond words, a handful of vegetarians, a few vegans, one who survives on bread-rolls and will not be trying out the local delicacies, a known bully who refuses to share a room with ‘him’, a spoilt kid who has brought too much cash despite being told that there is a limit on pocket-money, the mobile-phone abusers who will insist on using it even on the dodgy streets where pick-pockets are salivating at their touristy gullibility and the girlfriend/boyfriend frictions of he fancies her but she fancies somebody else etc. When did being a teenager become so bloody complicated? How can you plan a ‘simple’ trip to broaden a pupil’s horizons when their normal existence is now so complex? Social media follows every child around like a predatory animal. The everyday potential toxic cruelty of it travels wherever they do and teachers must deal with it abroad and at home where the more solid and familiar foundations at least provide them with some sense of protection. Away from home, children can be naturally unpredictable and hedonistic. Daniel giggled when I saved his bacon from a passing bike as he stepped back right into its path. The cyclist nearly took my arm off but Daniel was too busy cocking about with his mates and flashing his new fridge magnet to bother looking around him. I saw my life flash before my eyes as his solicitor parent nailed my ‘careless’ arse to the wall. And then there’s the admin horrors and health hiccups. Out of date passport may not arrive in time, American dad will not have renewed his visa so one of the staff will have to wait in customs for hours, Soft-Ollies (affectionate term for pain in the arse kid) who will lose his boarding pass and passport in the departure lounge just when we are ten minutes from boarding the plane for home. Oh dear. It is not a British passport. Short straw as to who will have to remain behind with him and sort that shit out. So what if said teacher has her own family waiting at home. And a wallet will be stolen and an emergency contact number will be wrong and some numpty will get chronic belly ache from stuffing their face and somebody will fall and break a leg because they expect pavements to be smooth like at home. School trips for me became a little shop of horrors. I did not sleep for weeks before the impending date and I needed a holiday once back. Thankfully nobody died but INSET on crisis management and how to deal with the press when one in your charge has been eaten by a shark or kidnapped is enough to put anybody off especially if you have your own kids and a mortgage to pay. Sadly, the halcyon days of racing down a piste with twelve hyper kids because it seemed like a fun idea at the time are no more. Now, teachers are like eight-eyed, radar-head-spinning, personal bodyguards to their flock. Taking a register and realising one sheep has wandered off is enough to give any pedagogue the heebie-jeebies. Fear of being fleeced by parents or the press are never far away.  And as for Brexit and exchange programmes and CBR checks, best not go there.

Which leads me nicely on to new teachers or whatever they are now called because the terminology changes so bloody often, it is hard to keep up even on the inside. Probationers, recently-qualifieds, L plate wearers, learners-on-the-jobbers, Teach-Firsters, fast-track-quick-we-need-morers, whatever we call them, they are the bread and butter of every school and they should all have a statue erected to them after the first year and their salary doubled for surviving. Standing in front of your first proper class, and I mean without the aid of the bouncer at the back of the room, is a tough business. You have to be firm, fair, friendly and ferocious all at the same time. If you are a female, you must not have visible hairy legs or facial hair. If you are a bloke, you must ensure you haven’t left your breakfast in your beard because these kids miss nothing. They will let you know if you have worn that dress before and when, or whether your shirt needs to see an iron. And God help you if you have no sense of humour or gravitas or can’t pull a successful one liner from your repertoire to silence the masses as they prepare to follow the pack in the attack. As a recently qualified teacher back in the day, I lived in a tiny studio flat where the wardrobe doubled up as a cupboard and a bed. All very clever, unlike me that day. In the depths of winter, searching for a pair of shoes in a cardboard box, I retrieved them and set off for the workhouse. Standing outside the science lab ready to cover a lesson for an absent teacher, I began to notice the twitching and sniggering as the Year 9 Physics group waited for me to do my ‘I’m waiting’ speech. More giggles. What the hell. I was employing all my techniques of frowning, eyebrow raising and visibly breathing with my broad shoulders. A sweet kid at the front of the line leant in. ‘Miss, look at your shoes.’ One black, one purple. I had another pair exactly the same at home which is what I told them then laughed my head off. Kids are incredible and can be very, very kind. If I had torn a strip off them for being rude, I don’t think they would ever have forgiven me. They need to know that you are human but not that human. When I joined my first school, there were eleven brand-new, off-the-shelf teachers fresh from PGCE courses which were then free. No debt! Anybody who becomes a teacher, nurse or doctor should train for free. It’s the least the government could do to say thank you because you sell your soul to do the job well. On Fridays, all eleven of us would go to the pub during the lunchbreak. It was five minutes from school and we could sink a quickie and be back, rosy cheeked in time for p.m. registration. I think it was the only way to survive double fifth years on a Friday afternoon when they and you would rather have been anywhere but staring out at the real world. It was allowed. We were not told off. We were not prohibited from leaving the school premises. It was our free time to do with as we pleased just like any civil servant. It has now become uncivil servitude. You are at everybody’s beck and call because if you are urgently needed and something awful happens that requires your immediate attention, heads will roll if you are not there to sort it. Now, if there are kids on site, you can’t even suck on a wine-cork to back-pat somebody celebrating their 40^th year of teaching. It used to be a nice anaesthetic at the end of the week. They have sucked the fun out of falling through the door to a sea of thirteen year olds, swinging your file and falling onto your desk. I loved being a new teacher. It was exciting and terrifying in equal measure but, my God, did you feel alive.

Student teachers have a more difficult job. Surviving the bear-pit of a PGCE and doing your placement at whatever school they throw at you means you are potentially a breather for permanent staff who can off-load their worst class on to you. Obviously, this doesn’t happen all of the time because most schools have excellent mentoring programmes and, sensitivity and realism are employed to give the student teacher a decent chance of not being too bruised. However, there are times when either the mentors can be found wanting or too knackered to give the student teacher enough time or the observing member of staff has to step in to sort out a lesson that is heading for disaster. Occasionally, flashing the big S on your T shirt can quite honestly mean rescuing the trainee teacher from a wasp’s nest or, and thankfully less common, saving pupils from a crazy wasp. I once observed the same student teacher twice. One lesson was Spanish, the other was French. She was so linguistically challenged that I could not distinguish one language from the other. Each was also delivered with a broad Glaswegian accent and she clearly didn’t know her rolled r’s from her elbow. It was excruciating. My little winkies sat through the agony, slowly turning to SOS eyeball me at the back of the room with looks of incredulity and despair. One pupil wet herself, she was so distressed. I had to swoop in to save them, to save my own sanity and to rescue the poor student teacher who was all at sea trying to hold her merde together and was in danger of never being taken seriously again. Unfortunately for her, she had no understanding of where she was going wrong and no amount of support and explaining and boosting and encouragement worked. We honestly tried everything. She went on to her second placement at another school after ours convinced she wasn’t doing too bad a job. That was very hard to watch.

It is always very hard to strike a balance between experienced and new staff. Experience costs more. New, young staff are cheaper. Pupils certainly benefit from being taught by a mixture of both, but only if the teaching is good. Being a young teacher does not mean you are better. It just means that you are younger, hopefully still loaded with boundless energy and closer in age and therefore possibly more able to relate to the recipients of your knowledge and guidance. Being a more mature teacher means that you have seen it all and have a barrel-load of responses up your sleeve but only if you understand the earthquaky and changeable nature of the world of those in your charge. Society has developed at a ridiculously fast pace and it would seem to me now that being an excellent classroom teacher is only one of many feathers that you need in your cap. The use of AI, growing misogyny in schools due to inappropriate exposure to porn and general female-bashing, environmental disasters, global warming and general ‘what’s the bloody point’, the long-lasting effects of Covid, pupils’ sexuality and identity and the exponential rise in depression and anxiety amongst our young means that staff must be equipped and ready to deal with an ever-shifting, eye-watering number of problems and concerns in a day’s work. Oh yes, and teach lessons. And that’s the part that I really miss but not so much that I am on the starter blocks ready to sprint right back into it. I miss being called Miss. I miss hearing my name being shouted across a street when a former pupil spots me. I am now too geographically far away from my old stomping ground for that to happen as regularly as it did though students do appear in very unexpected places. On ferries, in service stations, up mountains and on beaches. I miss using my eyebrow to silence a group. It was never a power-play, it was just something that happened that worked so I stuck with it. It was survival. I had my rules and everybody knew where they stood. Teachers are amazing people. Yes, there are duff ones just as with any profession, but the vast majority are in the job out of vocation, this word deriving from the Latin, vocare, to call. Teachers are called upon to do no end of stuff. They are versatile, generous, loyal, energetic and caring. Just remember not to ‘touch’ a pupil in any capacity. An end of year hug, which for me was the most natural and instinctive reaction in the world, is off the cards. After knowing a pupil for seven years and caring for the little buggers like they were your own, sending them out into the big, bad world requires more than a handshake and a smile. The dehumanisation of genuine affection is hard to accept although I reluctantly understand why it is necessary. If you are cynical, do not become a teacher. If you really treasure your privacy, don’t even consider it. Being approached on U6th parents’ evening by your pupil’s father who, unbeknown to you, was the doctor who inserted your Mirena coil that very week, might just be a step too far.  If you love money, forget it. But if you truly love young people, are amused and nourished by their curiosity, ballsiness and wit, then there is nothing more rewarding. I do not regret a single day of my time in the classroom. Not even when the police came and dragged one of my lads out. That was a particularly good day because he was a tedious little shit.  Those who can, do, but those who really can, teach.

Bless you, my son

When our children were born, it went without saying that they would be baptised, and I mean properly baptised, the wash-away-the-sins baptised because they were corrupted from birth and required a good old cleansing from original naughtiness. They would have their  tiny  heads dowsed in cold water by an enforced-celibate man in a gown who would do the pouring of holiness onto their bonces and they would then walk the path of righteousness, smug in the knowledge that they would pass through the pearlies – cheers, Pete, and live happily ever after in eternity far from the clutches of Satan. It went without saying or question because we had both been brought up Catholic, well, indoctrinated like all good Greenies and it would make the grandparents happy which counted for a lot. To my modern mind, attending a Catholic primary (and secondary school as I had done)  could surely not  be as guilt-inducing and sometimes terrifying as it had been in the past. I never did process Sister Rosemary’s blanket punishment of our whole class. Somebody forgot their PE kit. She made us all strip and shower and stood and watched, then made us all get dried with one paper towel each. I slipped backwards, bashed my head and slid front bottom akimbo along the floor. So unfair and I was such a good girl. This kind of punishment was perverse, like the wooden rulers on your knuckles and the Torquemada-like interrogations on Monday mornings to check that we knew what colour vestments the priest had worn at Sunday mass the day before. Choosing to Catholicise our kids did also, in some small part, mean that they stood a better chance of attending a very good, over-subscribed Catholic primary school close to home. Very convenient and one less thing to worry about for parents wanting the best. Job done. So what if they had to spend half of their school day praying! At least they would know right from wrong and any tragedy could be explained away as God’s will. They followed in our holy and perhaps, hypocritical footsteps, hook, line and sinker. Sunday mass, Holy Communion, Confession (I never really agreed with that load of nonsense) and Confirmation. Child one and two did the lot and got the T shirt. Child three refused to be confirmed but by that point I had given up the fight not just for them but for myself also. God’s will, my arse. Far too many bad things and losses had occurred  to ever believe that a loving God would have, in any way, allowed it. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The truth is, I had never been totally comfortable with blindly practising my ‘faith’ because I had far too many unanswered questions. As a Feminist, it never sat comfortably with me that men ruled the roost, enjoying the best of both worlds by wearing the trousers, and the frocks. As a Socialist it ground my gears to see first-hand that the Catholic Church was and still is disgustingly wealthy. My one touristy visit to the Vatican – after all we were in Rome – made my eyes sting. There were bedraggled beggars sitting outside on the pavement with their hands outstretched yet, within the walls of this treasure palace, were housed the most unimaginably priceless goodies, no doubt ransacked, nicked, swizzed, stock-piled, accrued, bought, bribed, whatever, by an institution that basically held its audience to ransom or they would end up dancing with the Devil. There is enough lolly in that place to eradicate world debt or at least to feed every starving person on the planet. From visiting those rooms replete with paintings, busts, sculptures, bejewelled ceramics and golden pots (and that was only the stuff that was on view!), I was more convinced than ever that the Catholic Church had plenty of dosh to be getting on with. Their coffers were clearly bursting. Not so it seems.

Fast forward to 2024. Child one is living in Germany where he has been based for eight years. His phone-call to me last week made me want to grab a wire brush and scrape away every Catholic shred of brain-washing from my kids’ heads. Mum, you are not going to believe this. Turns out that because I am a Catholic (said child hasn’t been in a church for donkey’s years and when he did go, it was only to please me or his Abuelita) and because I didn’t renounce my ‘faith’ when I arrived in Munich, apparently I should have been paying Kirchensteuer to the Church. He had no idea about this tax so carried on regardless, working his butt off and paying all the other tonne of tax that Germans pay in exchange for excellent health care etc which, by his own admittance, he has been very happy with and used. Dig a little deeper though and things become rather more sinister. He doesn’t belong to any parish in Munich yet they knew he had been baptised and confirmed. And how did they know that? Because they, and by they I mean the Catholic Church (great big capital hard C for Kommen Sie her unt koff up), had got their grubby mitts on copies of his baptismal and confirmation certificates from our local Catholic Church records back home. Are these docs all housed somewhere? Are they now on-line? How can such private information be so readily available for the taking? Does the Vatican have access to every Catholic’s paper proof of renouncing Beelzebub? Is there a secret, religious police in Germany that sniffs out the ‘defaulters’? And what of GDPR? Whoever this busy-body detective was, I was fit to strangle him/her with my rosary beads. Why should any hard-working person have to pay towards the Catholic Church unless they choose to? And why the hell does it need any more spondoolies than it already has?

Maybe the Brotherhood is putting its foot down because of the record number of Germans who have enacted the formal process known as Kirchenaustritt. In other words, I’m a Catholic, get me out of here. This is the only way to avoid having to pay this tax if you were baptised. Give up on God and become a dirty sinner again. Or maybe, because times are hard everywhere, the blessed are trying to find an extra few bob to make ends meet?  It is no surprise that people are tightening their purse strings unlike the Church’s strings which are loose and welcoming of the money slipping in.  And why, pray why, are record numbers of Germans turning their backs on this institution? Well, apparently it has a lot to do with a Church-commissioned report in 2018 which concluded that at least 3677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. Only God knows how many before those dates! Half of these were under 13 years of age and a third of them had been altar boys. An independent report in the Munich archdiocese where the late Pope Benedict XVI served as archbishop from 1977-1982 faulted the handling of abuse cases by a string of Church officials past and present including the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. i.e. Mr Pope! I wonder did anybody listen to their act of Contrition in the Confessional Box. Sinful.

I rage at the injustice of such an institution creaming money from the unsuspecting and for what reason? To pay their priests? To pay their solicitors to fight the courts in cases of depravity?  To buy a bit more shiny silver to flash on the altar? My lad is a grafter, and he pays his dues. I came up with every conceivable explanation that he might use to argue his case as to why he should not have to pay this distasteful, spiritual  tax. He didn’t know about it, for starters. He doesn’t go to Church. He has received nothing from the Church for years. His religion was forced upon him when he was too young to make that decision, to all intents and purposes a human rights violation.  Why should the ‘religious’ be penalised by having to pay this extra levy? Do other denominational institutions in Germany tax their faithful or ‘unfaithful’  followers? Does the Church have the right to pry into your personal documents?  It seems beyond explanation to me and a huge travesty.  I suggested my lad engage a solicitor and let them have it! He did and he will let them have it. All €19,000 of it because it transpires that there is no way around it and none of the three solicitors he contacted was prepared to touch his case with a barge pole. Eight years of unpaid, robbing-buggers taxes will be coughed up by my boy, a thoroughly good Sister Ann (she was a beast) rapping on the knuckles as a punishment for not making the rich even richer. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. He will do his penance – four Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and a stick-it-in-your-collection-box act of contrition. Incensed, he has applied for his ‘excommunication’ papers so that he will no longer have to financially support an institution which he does not believe in, which has ravaged many people’s lives and which gets away with no end of other misdemeanors, injustices and hypocrisies. It is hard to get your head around the madness of it all. I, for one, just cannot Adam and Eve it.

Risky Business

Miles, spying through the glass from his office, waited until all of his newbies were sat around the conference desk, green the lot of them but clearly as keen as mustard to impress. He had been there himself and now look at him. CEO of Hunters and Punters Recruitment Agency. Hard work pays and if you want something badly enough, you’ve got to fight for it. Light the fire, run headlong into it, scorch your balls off and cope with the smoke. Nobody gets anywhere in this life by being a carpet waver. Flames, man, flames. The blonde guy was gawping at his phone. Bloody millennials! Call that an ironed shirt? The girl/woman in the pink jacket, whatever, was staring at her watch. Bloody cheek. There’ll be none of that watch-watching on my watch, darling. Tall bloke with big nose was eyeing the white board where Miles had written the words ‘Come on lazy, light my fire’. Was that a frown he noticed? A dissenter? I’ve got your cards marked, mate. You won’t be clocking off at six, if I can help it. Twelve of them, his disciples, were ready for him and he was going to give them their money’s worth today, by God he was. Miles grabbed his mobile from his pocket, exited his office and set off at a pace down the corridor.  He had mastered the art of chest puffing and chin wag and swag. Glueing his phone to his ear and reaching the conference room, he pushed the door open with his free, fisty hand and lunged in, pretending to be on a call.

‘I don’t care how sick your fucking cat is, I want you in here every day. Working from home, my arse. That’s for wimps and drips. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do. Adiós, amigo. Stay at home and stroke your pussy. Results. Results! Do you hear me? Now get that candidate placed and quick. I’m not here to put your fires out. You’re here to light them.

Watch-Starer Lady, (lady? – don’t think so by the look of her, though she may think the pink jacket helps) snorted and sat up to attention. Phone Addict Blonde Boy slipped his mobile into his inside pocket. Whiteboard Cards-marked Man frowned even more then speed-blinked as if he were doing a double take to check where he was. The rest of them shuffled, coughed, gulped, straightened their ties, adjusted their skirts, the usual personal tidying up stuff. Miles wanted them keen. He wanted to iron the creases out of every one of them, including Blondie Boy’s M and S slim-fit shirt, not least of all because their success was his and percentage commission was the poker that stoked his furnace. Dying embers won’t do it. You need to be an inferno in this company if you are going to make your mark. A simple spark just won’t cut it.

Miles poked his finger at the screen of his iPhone and rammed it into his pocket. He huffed, raised his eyebrows, blew out a feigned, frustrated breath and placed his two fat hands on the edge of the long table. A dramatically paused grin and raising of the shoulders, clearly designed to fake a general calming of himself, concluded his belting performance.

‘Sorry about that, folks. I haven’t got time for slackers. Let that be lesson number one. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the pizza oven. If you’re not prepared to let your wick burn till it’s fizzled out, then go and fry your sausages by candlelight somewhere else! If you value your eyelashes, then tough nuts because things can get pretty hot around here, take it from me. Now, let’s get stuck in, shall we. I, as you know, am..…..’

A little cough from the end of the table. A half reluctant arm raise.

‘Excuse me, sir…… Sorry, erm, can I just ask….’

‘Miles. Miles, please. No need for that ‘sir’ nonsense. We’re all hunter and gathering friends here. All on the same first-class train to wonder-lust.’

‘I just wanted to…..’

‘What? Wanted to what?’

Miles was trying to strike the right balance between ‘you’re getting on my tits’ and ‘welcome to the will-always-listen-patiently gravy train’.

He stared at the bloke in the light blue suit. God, that would have to go, to be sure. Inappropriate Suit Man coughed again. You could see the sweat forming on his nervous brow, just like it would be in no time at all under the armpits of that ridiculous, impractical jacket. I need to know you’re sweating your bits off but I don’t want to see it when I’m sipping my Americano and I’m on the blower to a soon-to-sign-on-the-dotted-line client.

‘All this talk of fire… I wonder, would you be so kind as to explain the evacuation procedures should we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of having to vacate the building.’

Sweat-Patch (clearly Posh Bloke) was beginning to panic a little. Was it something to do with Miles slowly crossing his arms to rest them on his after-work-drinks beer belly or his long, deep intake of breath. Perhaps it was the cracking of his knuckles and then the splaying of his fingers at he leant forward like a crazy preacher about to announce the arrival of the anti-Christ.

‘Erm, erm, isn’t that protocol in these kinds of circumcises, sorry circumstances?’

Snooty Suity Posh Boy was clearly not used to sweating. He was not just going indelicately damp but was evidently growing more and more wary of having asked the blazingly obvious but these things needed clarifying. Health and safety was important. That’s what he had been taught at university on his Business Studies degree course. First year, second semester. Everything was about risk and some risks were not for the taking.

Miles fixed eyes with each of the apostles, one by one, like a prison spotlight’s beam surveying the ground, savouring the silence. Matthew, Marked, Lukewarm and Soon-to-be-Gone. There was no place for a dobbing-in Judas on this team. He had targets to reach and gongs to clang and bells to ring. Congratulations, Miles. Your team has smashed it this month. Again. Fireworks. Fire works! This guy who clearly didn’t give a Faulkes was going to have to learn the hard way.

Bob Bob Bobbing

There are fewer, sweeter things to make my heart sing than the sight of a robin in my garden. The little creatures are so damn cute and have come to symbolise far more than a simple reminder of the beauty of the natural world. My mum, our Joan, passed away last year. In her garden she had a metal robin which she had bought to remind her of her Billy who died far too young and left her widowed and a little bit lost. He was the love of her life and she missed him terribly. Mum fully embraced the idea that robins popped into your garden or appeared on a walk when a lost one was coming to say hello, to remind you that they were still there albeit in a different form, to look out for you and to help you to bear your sorrow. Being metal, this robin couldn’t bugger off whenever he felt like it so she could always see him and give him a smile, a wink or a good old tongue lashing when she felt like it. Robins are clever little birds. They come to recognise your face, your movements, your routine and will come back for more if you feed them. They are fiercely territorial and loyal, as long as you provide the nibbles. Mum loved to feed the birds, so much so that they were in danger of becoming flightless. Nothing went in the bin that could nourish a little pecker. When Mum became ill, she asked me to look after her robin. I brought him back to the Lakes when I wasn’t caring for her and I sent her regular updates as to how he was doing. She loved the idea of him getting out and about, the way she had been so used to doing. His antics and shenanigans became the highlight of my day, knowing that she would have a laugh when I sent her the daily report of what he had been up to. He came swimming with me, ran with me on the Dales Way, cycled to Grange strapped to the handle-bars of my bike, helped the builders renovate our house, did yoga, dug the garden, watched the footy, came to the pub, helped on a  litter pick, bought a scratch card, came to choir, volunteered at Bushy Park parkrun, joined me on walks, had a Thai massage, enjoyed a firepit, came to a concert – basically, whatever I was up to , he joined in and Joan bloody loved it. It became my raison d’être when I wasn’t with her, as I tried to come up with new scenarios and double-entendres to make her giggle.

 To begin with, I called her robin JoanBird with the stress on the Joan because it sounded weird saying it the other way. Bird had been my Mum’s maiden name. She was adamant though. He’s a boy. He can’t suddenly become a girl. Then began a long discussion about transitioning and gender fluidity and ‘birds have rights too, you know’ and the fact that her robin maybe identified as a woman after years of freezing his nuts off in Mum’s back garden. I gave in. He became JoBird – stress on the Jo, and he has remained that since Joan put her foot down. JoBird lives with me now, staring out of the window, overseeing Joan’s recently planted rosebush, a wonderfully kind gift from an equally wonderful friend and robins have become part of the narrative of my life. My siblings have added new members to JoBird’s flock. There are three more robins – Little Jimmy, Jessie and Jackie. There is also a duck, Nurse Duckley. JoBird’s mates are reminders for us that Mum is still with us. There is also a real live robin who visits me every morning and I greet him/her (male and female robins are indistinguishable from one another) with a warm, satisfied smile, as if we are in cahoots with one another. Good morning, Joan. Hello, Joan. Have you been on the bacon rind, Joan? And I really feel it. I feel the truth of Mum’s presence. It comforts me, it really, really does.  I hear her laughing and clapping her hands and cussing the squirrels in her garden for nicking the nuts, scoffing the tulips and wrecking her shed. She has not left us. She is just enjoying a rest in another place and the love is the same as ever.  

JoBird has inspired new travels and adventures since Mum passed away. We are continuing the family tradition which Joan began when she lost her Billy and couldn’t go on holiday without taking a little bit of him along. I am not sure we will be able to match the Bullet train in Japan, or the Great Wall of China where she left him but we are not doing too badly. Joan is admiring the views from the top of Timanfaya volcano, taking in the panoramic vistas of the whole of Lanzarote from the best seat in the house, and today I am buzzing as Joan did her first ever parkrun in Rothay Park in Ambleside. She warmed up with me, ran the whole course without stopping and didn’t complain once about the rain or the mud. 5k is a long way and I am dead proud that at 81 she finally got to do one. She was with me every step of the way and I intend on keeping it that way. You will never walk alone, Joan and neither will we. Norwegian fjords here we come.  

In a Stew

Maybe it is the miserable weather, the endless swathes of horizontal rain sweeping across the painfully beautiful landscape, visible through our lovely new, very large windows. Could it be the ghostly howling winds or the short, dark days, grinding their way towards the long-awaited elasticating of sunlight hours. Whatever it is, I cannot be quiet. I am well miffed. And what has caused this miffery this time? A book. A very, very good book which has kicked my ovaries into gear and made me realise and remember so much stuff that went on and that has passed into the annuls of my dreadful non-memory. Rory Stewart and his Politics on the Edge has catapulted me backwards and pulled a lot of wool from my tired eyes. I am awash with ‘OMGs!’ and ‘That explains its’ and ‘Jesus, I didn’t realise that Cameron had appointed Pratty Patel and Liz Blunderbuss to his cabinet.’ Thank you, Rory for delivering what I can only describe as a belting good read and a spectacularly uncomfortable journey into politics as we would rather not know it. Whether we like it or not, politics touches every part of our lives and in a healthy democracy that is why we should all vote and have our ‘voice heard’. How ball-achingly frustrating is it, then, when you read about how popularism has become so deeply embedded in the daily work of government that ticks are ticked because of can’t-be- arsedness, that integrity has been land-slid into oblivion and that political agenda is now a simple by-word for ‘what’s in it for me.’ I am only half-way through the book but I have embarrassingly learned that our Rors was MP for Penrith just up t’road, he knows more about Iraq and Afghanistan than you could shake a walking stick at, he’s a great hiker – sticks always useful, he challenges the ‘it’s just not rights’ (everybody needs a rebel at their side in life) and he articulates beautifully. He is my new head-candy and I am a bit middle-aged woman in love with him for both releasing me from my cringing ignorance about should-have-known-that-stuff and for reminding me that I was not going mad when madness and injustice abounded and went unchallenged and I used to scream at the tele about it.

Rors pulls no punches but I sincerely wish he did and that he had, right on the snout of Boris Ridiculus, Gove the Weasel and Wouldn’t Truss her as far I could throw her. That woman was once his boss. It must have been exasperating trying to communicate with a Cornflakes box. The poor lad must have bust a gut trying to get through the crinkly wrapper and then the cardboard. And as for the Whip. I now understand exactly what it means though I should have guessed from the word itself. Do as I say regardless of whether you think it is the right thing to do and damn your conscience. How the hell’s bells can that be right! Flagellate your principles. Lacerate your ideals. Just get your backside to Parliament when I bark and tick that box that says you back the banning of helping the poor or you totally agree with a reduction in prison staff or you jolly well agree to bombing the hell out of those interfering, pesky foreign buggers. Vote with us or be damned and demoted. Rors understands that it is not rocket science. He sees a clear path, one that makes sense to him. Lots of his colleagues often agree with him deep down but they have to disagree on paper because they will run the risk of having their wings clipped. You must side with the enemy. Talking of enemies, and as a slight aside, Rors informed my deficient brain that Farage is a former pupil of Dulwich School. I wonder if they have ever invited him back to Prize Giving. The private-schoolness of it all is revolting. My darling Rorito points out that there are many ‘normal’ MPs from all kinds of backgrounds in Parliament, but a disproportionate number hail from the bully boys’ clubs. It’s the back patters, the pocket fatteners and the slimy flatterers who have wormed themselves into the inner circle where the big stuff gets decided. If you are not a Minister, then good luck getting anything done because the buck stops with them and, of course, Mr or Ms Whippy who will ceremoniously whip your chocolate flake from your Ninety Niner if you don’t lick the right bottoms.  

And as for percentages, well, never was maths a sadder science. Did you know that in an election, first past the post means exactly that even if it is only by one vote, even if there are ten candidates standing? I knew that but I had never really crunched the numbers properly to truly grasp the ludicrous implications. I understand all about tactical voting even though it feels totally wrong every time I do it. I vote basically to prevent the other ones getting in, not because I trust the side I vote for. Madness. So, let’s say we have ten candidates in a constituency. Candidate A is Angry Angie who wants to ban dogs. Candidate B is Billy Bonkers who believes in enforced vegetarianism. Candidate C is Carol Conservative who…. Well, we all know what she wants though she will probably be into whipping before she knows it if not already. Candidate D is Derek the Dalek who talks to aliens. Candidate E is Eric Ecstasy who wants to legalise all hallucinogenic drugs and have them free on the NHS. Etc etc etc. Ten of them including the must have Labour Linda and Lionel the Liberal Democrat. There are roughly 70,000 people in each constituency. So, imagine that on a really good day, 50% of the locals get off their tushes and turn out to vote. That’s 35,000 potential votes. For ease of calculations and, stretching the laws of probability a little, let’s say each candidate wins 3499 tickettyboos except Derek who refuses to be exterminated. He wins 3509. Go Derek. You are the new MP for Barking even though you only have the enthusiastic support of 5% of the peeps in your constituency. That’s democracy, folks. Derek will head for London, armed with his briefcase and expenses claims form and sit voice- modulating on the backbenches for a few years, scoffed and ignored because he doesn’t fit the mould. D. Who? Voting matters if only to honour those who fought for the right for us all to have a go.

So, Rors, you’ve tweaked my drawers and all I can think about now is how imbalanced this crazy country is and how greasy and sleezy our Parliament truly is when a donkey like Bojo the Clown was once the ass of choice for our ‘leading’ party. I apologise on behalf of the finger-licking nutjobs in Parliament who had their tongues ready to go wherever it took to feed their own egos and hedge their bets and line their fancy suit pockets with nudge-nudge winks and want-to-buy-a-watch connivery. And I am sincerely sorry that you were lied to, deceived, mocked, misled, fobbed off and patronised but happily, never cynicised. In my eyes, you are a true, right-honourable gentleman where others dishonour the title. If the vast majority can’t turn out for a normal election, then how could it have made any sense whatsoever to give Joe Public, armed with bigoted lies and exaggerated tales of European monsterism, carte blanche to wee in the wind and watch the waves crash against our walls? And then Cameron, unprepared to dig us out of the hole he had dug, jumped off the sinking ship when his arrogant referendum went tits up. I don’t think Mr Stewart liked you very much, David and he certainly clarified a few things for me. Cameron really left us in a right old dilly of a pickle, in a complete stew. If only it had been a Stewart. You would have got my vote. Unless, of course, Derek had been standing.

Doom and Bloom

It would appear that the world has gone dog-barking mad. Everywhere you look, listen, tap or flick, it’s a barrage of bugger-me disasters, catastrophes and doom. And January is not exactly the ideal month for delving deeper into the whys and hows of the current Earthly unravelling. January is a grim backdrop to the darkness and bitterness that blows across the continents, all of them, because if it’s not a flooding, it’s a drying up. If it’s not a collapsing, it’s an over-building. If it’s not a melting of icecaps, it’s a freezing of people’s hearts.  It has got so bad that I have given up watching the daily news, preferring to catch snippets and choose whether to respond to them with a grit of the teeth or a shrug of the shoulders. I think we could safely say that if an alien were to land on our suffering planet in its present state, it would turn its back, shuffle back up the ramp and scream ‘Glad I’m not a human, get me out of here.’ And seriously, there are days when I think plenty of us would happily join him/her/it/them given the shitshow which graces and disgraces our eyes every day.

So what exactly has ruffled my feathers so far in 2024, as if 2023 didn’t bring us enough and as if the previous post-Brexit referendum years haven’t filled our lives with plenty of clenched-fist capery. If I say Mr Bates v Post Office, that should be enough to have you all join me in a communal rant-fest. It is simply beyond bad, encapsulating everything on every level that also made and still makes our eyes water. Farage’s antics, Ronald McDonald Trump and his band of merry quackers, the dismantling of the NHS, COVID PPE pocket-lining, Party-gate and Bollocks Johnson’s shameless escape from justice, up-your-bum peer pals, environmental ransacking, and bombing here, bombing there, bombing bleeding everywhere. It is non-stop. But this Horizon debacle takes the biscuit and has made my heart crumble not a little bit. Jammy dodge’ems on all fronts from solicitors to big boss people, right down to those who sent their local post office master or mistress to Coventry because those easily-swayed by gossip and assumption too believed that their long-standing, hard-working ‘friends’ had their hands in the till. We are a bit too fast in this country to assume that honesty and honour by those in charge is a given. Boy, has that been proven a total tray of tripe over the last few years. There are guilty, shameful creepy crawlies just waiting to skuttle out from under their rocks, desperate to find another hiding place in the shadows. I wonder if any mathematician out there has worked out the probability of every postmaster or mistress being as bent as a ten-bob note. A mafia of till dippers. It is a staggering miscarriage of the obvious. So many pockets have been lined, so many vile lies told and so many innocent citizens shaken to bits. Pretty much everybody knows somebody directly affected. Our village’s sub-postmaster has decided to throw in the towel having dedicated many years to keeping this little piece of paradise connected to the world, a lifeline for so many, often the most vulnerable. This is usually the case with most disasters. The weakest pay most dearly. He is a victim like so many others of the unforgiveable, heinous crimes of those in power, the lies, the deceit, the gut-churning accusations that have ripped the innards from so many have pushed him to breaking point and I applaud his courage and totally understand his fury and refusal to continue to ‘dance with the Devil’. Such corruption and toxicity deserves no forgiveness at all, EVER. And please don’t anybody say ‘Clearly lessons must be learned’ because those wrong-doers knew all along what the problem was. Any attempt to turn these greedy, dishonest piggies’ and sows’ ears into a silk purse would be futile and, let’s face it, said purse would be far too small to hold their ill-gotten gains.

So why the frustrated rant because the spring is on its way and we should be looking forward to lovely things like warmth and longer days and daffodils and lambs lambing. I am an optimist after all. Over coffee a few mornings back, a lovely friend, in a moment of gloomy ponderings posed the question, ‘Is there anything good happening in the world at the moment at all?’ My reaction was instant because I truly believe that there is one permanent positive, one guaranteed joy that is pure in its goodness and offers promise and kindness and unquestionable community loveliness for those who belong to this wonderful movement. It is parkrun. If you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, (if you are a friend of mine, you will have because you will be used to my obsessive flag-waving), I urge you to look it up. In a nutshell, people from every walk of life come together in a designated public space every Saturday morning to run or walk a 5k route. It is operated entirely by volunteers. Nobody pays anything. Nobody makes money but everybody is richer by the end of it. Oxytocin is a very powerful drug and the high from being part of this incredible, simple-in-concept yet unifying movement is more intoxicating than any drug you could buy and take. I have met people whose lives have been completely transformed by parkrun. Depression, divorce, illness, bereavement, loneliness, you name it, parkrun helps. Nobody is judged and everybody is championed. There is no snobbery, no racism, no misogyny, no homophobia, no physical or mental barriers. In my local parkrun, there are people who take part in wheelchairs, there are guide runners for the visibly impaired, volunteers who co-run or walk with participants with learning difficulties. Over 500 GPs now prescribe parkrun on the NHS. Parkrun operates within a number of custodial centres with both prison officers and inmates participating together. I can’t think of anything else that manages so successfully and regularly to unite and bond people in the open air, come rain or shine, with such generosity of spirit and compassion.

So, when we are surrounded by the doom, and let’s face it, there is very little escaping it because we are subsumed by news everywhere, it is vital to remember that sometimes, the bloom comes from the simplest of things. A friend’s love, a hug, a post run or walk cuppa, a congratulatory smile, a catch-up natter, a pat on the back for getting your arse out of the bed and putting on your trainers to sweat a few calories out with your buddies. If that isn’t up there as the best weekly antidote to the greyness, grimness, grot and gloom that pervades our lives, then, I really don’t know what is. Parkrun brings communities together and it is bloody great fun.  And by God, we all need as much of that as we can get our hands on.

Let it Snow

Well, shiver me timbers! Whoever or whatever created this amazing world, thank you from the bottom of my very cold cockles. Today will go down as one of the most beautiful I can remember. Snow does that. It brings out the child in every person and the kindness in every heart. Cumbria was gifted the dump of all dumps yesterday. It came as a surprise. The forecast had a couple of flakes in a little cloud at 11 o’clock so we became a tad excited at the prospect of seeing a bit of the white stuff. Rather than an hour’s flurry, however, we were sent quite a bit more than we bargained for. It was a bit of a Michael Fish moment when in 1987 I remember sitting around a Bunsen burner in a science lab with four other teachers. We were the only ones to make it in after the little storm that blew half the country down. Now as then in terms of extremities, Frosty the Snowman rather than Billy Wind came to call and sent Cumbria into freefall.

We had set off to Ambleside to set up the course for Rothay parkrun. No snow in sight when we left but a smattering of dusty stuff when we arrived. It had been very cold everywhere for a few days but this coating looked a bit more wintry than anything we had seen. Not a soul about. The mobile went ping. Parkrun is cancelled. The volunteer siren had arrived too late to warn us before setting off. Grrrr and double brrrr. Never mind. Let’s go for a walk around the lovely white park now that we are here. We delivered the sad news to the numerous trotters who appeared in Lycra and Eskimo suits to run the course. Such disappointment but patient understanding. Parkrunners are an excellent bunch. A truly united brigade. On our stroll, we even walked around Miller field because we could without having to obstacle-course our way through the usual mud bath. And then the little baby flakes began. Oh, such joy. Tiny flicks of not-really snow but gorgeous all the same. Oh, it’s like Christmas is coming. Oh little town of A-a-ambleside. But like Bethlehem, there was no room in the cafes for a coffee and a croissant because none were open. Off home then for the brekkie we missed when we set off at stupid o’clock.

Arriving home, still all trussed up like a pair of turkeys, we decided on another walk as the layers were going to be too much to peel off and, once off, we would never get out of the door again unless we planned on becoming human ice-cubes. Breakfast could wait. Let’s just do a quick loop and gaze at the wonders that winter has brought, like minus 4 and foggy breathing and baldy trees. Up Hall Lane we climbed and began the Craggy Wood circular. And then it started. Good King Wasteland! Those look like proper flakes. I say, by Joan, it’s actually snowing good and proper, like proper plops. I just ate a big one the size of a corn flake. And another. And another. Who needs brekkie! We quickened our pace, half ecstatic at the raw gorgeousness of it all and half worried that we were still a couple of miles from the kettle. Military marching ensued and ho, ho, home we headed.

The house was so toasty I could have eaten it. The underfloor heating melted our toes and we settled down to rehearse our songs for that night’s carol concert in Windermere. At this point, I must deviate a little to confess that unlike other choir members who are well ‘arder than us, we hadn’t set out for Hawkshead that morning to busk around the Christmas market as a warm-up for that evening’s concert. Finally having a home where we can sit without freezing to death or fighting with a non-flushing toilet or cooking on one gas ring for over a year, staying home has become too attractive an option. We are trying to balance the act of selfless, loyal choral service with being selfish, bona fide wall and roof owners. Click went the Dropbox. Out came the lyrics. We were going to Bethlehem, we were harking the herald and having a holly jolly Christmas and we were dreaming of a white one. Dreaming over. Behold in yonder fields where the cattle were lowing, the snow came down by the bucketload and it didn’t stop not even to let the 555 bus into the village and like Mary and Joseph and the soon-to-be little fella and the baby donkey, the village very quickly had no room at any inn for all the poor souls who got stranded on the A591. It chucked it down in piles and heaps and the village was duvetted, not blanketed, proper eiderdowned in tonnes of the glorious stuff. And it just kept coming. Then the pinging started again. I’m just leaving for Hawkshead but my driveway is so icy I’m a bit worried. I’m here but I can’t park because there’s a car stuck. Is the ferry running? I think I’m going to skip it because the forecast says it is set to continue. I can’t drive in this. But the die-hards, the well ‘ards made it and did the choir proud, singing their frozen hearts out and ding donging all over the place. Hats off to you. Well maybe not, best keep your ears warm. And then the pinging continued. We began to feel a mixture of guilt for not having braved the chaos and shown some mettle and gratitude to the baby Jesus that we were not going to have to find our way back from the frozen manger in Hawkshead. We carried on practising, suspecting that surely the concert would be called off but not daring to stop rehearsing, because there is nothing worse than confusing your shepherds and your angels and their flocks and their wings. Then the wiseman spoke. We are finishing early here in Hawkshead and heading back to Windermere so that we don’t get stuck here and can arrive in good time for the concert tonight. The show must go on. But turns out the show didn’t go on. The snow did, however. And like the snow, stuck was exactly what happened. It was an afternoon (and evening for some!) of war-effort I-want-me-mum shenanigans for our singing soulmates whilst we were sat at home, eating a crumpet (sorry!) willing the South Lakes Acappella snowmen and women safe travels afar. Even with plenty of stars to follow in that Baltic clear sky, lots of them had to be put up by kind strangers. Everybody needs a good innkeeper in a crisis and they were all very well looked after. Maybe it was the similarity of name but Celia and Cecilia won the prize for bringing peace and joy to all singingkind by making it home after two nights and an SAS wonder-drive and walk respectively. Hats on to you!

Meanwhile, back in the Baltics, we gazed in wonder at the falling white curtains. And then we realised that we had no milk, no bread, not much of anything really because the planned Aldi shop to load the larder was a no goer now. Wellies on. Let’s hit the Spar and stock up. Who cares if we have to sell a kidney. Needs must. The village looked so pretty. The trees were laden with white scarves of snow, the lamplight kissed the ground and houses twinkled hello as we passed. A total picture postcard of loveliness. £348.17 later. Well not quite but we had four big bulging bags of yummies that would keep us going until hell froze over. There was a buzz about the place. A mixture of glee and panic. And then the real fun started. Outside Spar, I met a friend who had got stuck in the snow in her mobility scooter. Shopping sorted, an escort back to make sure she was safe and a trip to the pub where dozens of people were doing the same, drinking beer and keeping warm. The door kept opening and Yetis with snowy wigs shuddered in, shaking their coats and stomping their boots. A Guinness later and the trudge back through Narnia, a climb to cosy, completed house (what a roof!) and a settling in for the night. Then a text message from Paula, whose horses live in the field next to our house. She was stuck and the girls needed hay. Wellies back on, across the field, piled it high and a trudge back. Oh it was nice to feel useful in a crisis. Social media kicked into overdrive. They were opening the village hall for the stranded travellers. Come on down for a hot drink and a bed to lay your weary head. The human spirit was aglow with kindness. A shout out from a friend to put up a marooned family from Blackpool. Yes, send them here. I wanted to be useful, to be part of the war effort but it was not to be. They decided to chance it and drive home. I couldn’t stop thinking about them and their baby. It was like Mary and Joseph all on a starry night. Then a car stopped at the bottom of our drive, orange emergency lights pulsing through the white glow of the night. Wellies on. Trudge. Nobody in the car. Poor loves. Probably headed to the pub for cover. Wish they’d knocked though they might have needed crampons at this point to get up the drive. Whose idea was it to incline the drive like that? Then I spotted the lonely traveller ploughing his way back to his car. I opened the door. Are you OK? Yes, I’m fine. I stopped to help a couple stuck in an avalanche. No problem. I thought you might have needed help and could have come in for a cup of tea. No, I’m fine. I’m Welsh! Some people really are made of steel. Strictly Come Dancing added to the general sparkly day and the aptly named Survivor, for pudding. The only difference was that they weren’t freezing their rocks off like our poor crooning buddies, some of whom had only just made it home having abandoned cars and walked. More guilt but that was soon put to bed when we climbed into it.

I woke at 6 as usual and there was a numbness, a beautiful deafness of air as the world had been gift-wrapped in a huge snowy blanket. A peek through the curtain at the pitchy darkness, which was usually only broken by the road sign at the bottom of our drive. Except, said road sign was nowhere to be seen. You couldn’t see a sausage, anywhere. I’ll make the tea. Nice hot cuppa to welcome the day. Oh, this is so special. Tucked up with a steamy brew and a thousand tog quilt. When the light did not come on in the hall, I hmmmed. When the kitchen light played silly buggers, I frowned. And then it hit me like a bolt of disabled lightning. We were powerless. No morning cup of the wake-up stuff. Battle stations. Where are the candles? Where did I put the torches? Oh my God, we don’t have a gas cooker anymore. Whose idea was it to go electric? Holy frozen mackerel, the freezer is rammed with all those goodies we bought with our kidneys yesterday and we could be without leccy for days. Days, I tell you. Weeks. Have you seen that bloody snow out there! What is it about this country and snowflakes or autumn leaves or a bit rain that brings life as we know it to a grinding halt. Oh please no. Not the camping gas again! A year of canisters and tripping over the darn things and we would have to go back to being cave dwellers. Except, where was the sodding thing. Where did you put it? I didn’t put it anywhere. You said you were going to store it. Oh yes. It’s in the shed. I’ll have to put me wellies on and go and find it. Crash, bang, slippy, slidy! There was just enough gas left to make a mug of morning nectar. I had insisted on using up all the camping gas before getting carried away on the range-r. The electric one.

There was not much to be done in an unheated, unpowered, only-just-finished house so the wellies came out again. We would go on a fact-finding mission to see if the whole village was cut off from comfort. Turns out only half of it was and we were one of the unlucky ones. Apparently, it happens quite a bit. Must remember not to stock the freezer with lobster and crayfish. There were cars abandoned everywhere and heaps of snow blocking doors and paths. Fat, fluffy (thankfully) sheep knee-deeped their way across the field, there were no buses, no open pub but there was lots of laughter and squealing coming from Reston Scar, the beautiful, steep hill that overlooks the village. And then we spotted them. Red, blue, yellow and orange dots whizzing down the slopes. There were skiers, snowboarders, tobogganers and general merrymakers howling with laughter, grabbing the day by the ski poles and having the time of their lives. It was hard to compute. Our little village, Staveley, was a ski resort. And low and behold off to the right, there were people skiing down Brunt Knott too, down the higher slopes. It was like one of those moments when you see something so wonderful that it makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. People had built igloos and little ones in padded snowsuits crawled in and out. The snow was perfect for play of every kind and the electric blue sky spread a shocking, eerie light across the valley. Staveley? St Averlitz more like it. It even featured on the BBC news that night. It was that curve-bally.

We decided on a loop again only this time the terrain had been transformed into almost unpassable heaps. Tractors, 4 x 4s and quad bikes were out clearing paths so that farmers could reach their livestock and the walking was proper plodding. In some places there was a clear foot and half to get through. This made up for the lack of parkrun the day before but my quads were screaming by the end of it. But what did pain matter when the views were breathtaking, like diamonds and sapphires setting the hills alight. Nothing but bright blue and blinding white. Heading down the now almost accidental piste of road, we were in need of warmth and something hot to eat and drink. Oh my goodness. We ate THE best pie ever in More café which had escaped the power cut and was churning out sustenance as if rationing had just ended. That pie was gold, frankincense and myrrh all delivered at once, steaming on a plate with tangy brown sauce. We ate like we might never see hot food again. Well at least until 10 o’clock that night when they were hoping to have us rejoin the land of power and might. Energised by super-pie, we wellied back to our cave and set to clearing the several paths and driveway which we had only been able to gaze at for a week since they had been finished. Heave, ho, heave, ho, spades and sweat. The builders had finally left the week before and I thought we were done with manual labour. Sixteen months of back-breaking shit-shoveling and here we were again. It is clearly in the genes. An Irish navvy like my grandad. And then for a treat we lit a fire pit and let the flames flicker and flash beneath the holly tree. A cosy, snuggly glow. But wait. What is that I spy. A smoke signal. Was it a message from above proclaiming the arrival of our saviour. Yes, it was. The boiler was blowing steamy air through its vent. It could only mean one thing. The wisemen of Electric Northwest had followed the star and brought us the gift of peace of mind. Be of good cheer, hot bath is here, coldness will cease, warmth will increase. Our plugs were sparking. Our switches were twitching and we smiled at the unexpected joy of that weekend to remember, when humankind was completely amazing, all was finally right with our little world and there was nothing bleak nor too wintry worth worrying about.

The Will to Live

When death comes knocking, we really have no idea how we are going to react. We would like to think that we would be pragmatic and accept the inevitable, especially if we have reached a ripe age and have lived our life to the max. A fulfilled innings. A grateful goodbye to a world which has given us years of love, fun and laughter. My mum often made a joke of the fact that she had reached eighty and would soon be done for loitering, as she put it. In our eyes, she was to live until at least ninety, not only because she had the energy levels of a Duracell Bunny on Red Bull but also because she was so completely into extracting the juice and showed absolutely no signs of slowing down. That all changed at eighty-one. Overnight. She was dealt the blow that knocked the wind out of her – lung cancer does that – and that clipped her wings which, though they were well rehearsed in flying to lands far and wide, still had plenty of hardy feathers ready to flap or float away on some flight or cruise of fancy.

Mum had had breast cancer aged fifty. It was caught early and she made a full recovery after radiotherapy and drugs for the following ten years. Even so, the worry that it might return always sat with her, like an omen on her shoulder. That fear was realised too aged eighty-one because the hand she was dealt turned out to be a triple whammy. She was never a person to do things by halves. Bone, lung and breast. We stared at one another in disbelief and then the inevitable banter started. Don’t blame it on the bonio, don’t blame it on the lungio, blame it on the boobie. After her diagnosis and, not wishing to appear boring, she then managed to break her femur in the bathroom whilst stubbornly insisting that she didn’t need help. The long and short of it was that the chemo and immunotherapy that she had ‘anticipated’ receiving was not to be because her cruelly beaten carcass just couldn’t come out fighting in the end. She sat but mostly lay in the corner of the ring wearing her gloves but unable to swing a punch, a confused adversary. There is nothing sadder than watching a giant being felled. 

I say diagnosed but batted a looks-like-it’s-all-clear guess by an over-important receptionist then a month too late well-it’s-clearly-terminal by a blunt and weary GP and then a game of oncologist ping pong as they dithered over the exact cancer and appropriate response to it, might be a better interpretation of events. Suffice it to say, in the lead up to the final stamp of cancer exacticus, Mum was told that she had possibly broken her ribs from picking up an old man who had fallen, probably had costochondritis, should take this, ought to rest, would do well to swallow that, use a heat jacket, rub this on it, shouldn’t change a lightbulb in the ceiling, howl at the moon and cross her fingers if she were to see Damocles’ sword swinging her way. Terminal cancer slices your life apart. We packed bags and invaded her space for four months, taking from her an independence which she had fiercely defended. Up to that point, Mum had asked for nothing but gave everything. Allowing us to step in was the biggest gift she could have handed us. She saw us arrive with our luggage, shrugged her shoulders and gave us a look of well that’s that then. And she was right. She very rarely wasn’t.

But physical demise is only one part of this dreadful disease. Whilst the battle is raging within, a strong spirit can be an amazing stroke of luck and, when it came to strength, I have never met a stronger person than my mum. Her flesh was weak but her grit took hold and she lashed and thrashed back with the wit and barbed black humour of the most cutting of comedians. Her one liners left us howling. Jesus, if I get any thinner, I am going to end up like an ‘ead in the bed. Mum had already arranged her ‘funeral’ years back. Pure Cremation. No ceremony. Paid for and explained to us with a clarity and kindness which took my breath away. I didn’t have my kids to leave them behind in this world crying in a black hearse. Deep down we suspected she couldn’t stand the idea of missing a good party, but it really wasn’t that. She could not bring herself to die knowing that we would be dressed in mourning, parading through a church and sobbing over a coffin. That thought alone was enough to kill her.

I mentioned missing the party. Mum played a blinder in that last month of her life. After wanting to sleep for hours on end, a course of steroids brought her back to us with a Lazarus vengeance. She decided that every day that she felt half decent was to be lived like her last and that final month was a whirlwind of immeasurable proportions. We shopped for nonsense and had a cuppa and steak-bakes from Gregg’s because we could, a coffee in the nice place overlooking the carpark in Next, bought cushions we didn’t need, bedding we didn’t know we wanted, gifted a dollop of cash to help with a mortgage, paid for driving lessons for a grandchild, ate more Billionaire Magnums than a belly can cope with, stuffed a secret drawer with chocolate for our around-the-bed ‘therapy’ sessions where we would talk about everything from the environment to women’s rights, from marriage to bowel movements, from the wall questions on Only Connect to life as a factory worker in wellies, from having four kids by the time you are 23 to sprinkling Billy, our stepdad’s ashes on the bullet train in Japan and along the Great Wall of China. Oh, and in a plant pot on every cruise ship she sailed on where she had never managed to take him. We took her to the Titanic Hotel where she treated her buddies to posh afternoon tea then back to her place for a tipple and a nibble. We took her to David Lloyd where she had been a member for years and knew absolutely everybody. Of course, she took doughnuts for the girls and sausage rolls for the lads. Her will to live was unbridled, so much so that she began to enact a living will. She had written one but decided that she wanted to enjoy part of the fun of it herself. Instructions were precise and orders were followed to the letter. Put that dress and handbag over there, they’re for A because she can wear them on her cruise. Give B my fancy shoes because they’re practically brand new and cost me an arm and a leg. C can have this, and bag those up for D and take what you want now so that I can see you using it. I want to see our Jess’s face when I give her my gold bracelet. Put that in your garden in the Lakes, Shirl because it will look better there and let’s take those crystal glasses to Woodlands Hospice for the Tipple Trolley because, God help them, it’s shite enough having to be in the place, at least they can have a drink from a decent glass. I don’t think many daughters can say that they would comfortably wear their eighty-one-year-old mother’s clothing, but we did. Mum dressed to please herself and had style and sass. Her wardrobe was all colour and class. We paraded before her in a fashion show and she gave a wise nod. That looks great, that’s your colour, those jeans will go with that top. When she was admitted to hospital with her broken leg, we waited by her bedside when she returned from theatre. Most of what we wore was hers because we thought it would make her laugh. She howled with laughter and cried in equal measure and then delivered a classic Joan. Now I think I’ll have a nice cup of tea, a couple of rounds of toast with all the trimmings and a bucket of water for the horse. Laughter should be prescribed on the NHS.

There are scars on the hearts of all of those who were blessed to have our mum, Joan, in their life. The ‘oldies’ in her building who she had fed roast dinners to and supported for years including during lockdown when she organised sneaky drinkies in the garden to keep them all sane. The devoted and selfless staff at Woodlands Hospice where Mum volunteered for seventeen years right up to her diagnosis. Her David Lloyders who relished her antics and gabs and giggles in the pool. And her cronies of decades and fellow cruisers of old who were partners in holiday crime especially Carole, her best mate and who gave my Mum the best present of all, her son who is engaged to our Carmen, my sister. Then there are those who helped us stay afloat whilst we watched our mum eek out every, last breath. Tracey, Mum’s McMillan nurse who gifted her an extra month of life thanks to super steroids. We screeched in horror when she suggested increasing Mum’s dose. Please, please, don’t. She will want to do a bungie jump or abseil down St. George’s Hall, again! Carles, the dishy Catalán lung oncologist with whom Mum flirted outrageously and who was flattered by her words of good morning, handsome and form an orderly queue, nurses. She might have been eighty-one but she still had a whole lot of Ready Ready sauce. And then, there were the angelic district nurses who came to perform last offices when Mum passed away and whose kindness, respect and gentleness were like a warm blanket to us. And, finally, the lovely gentlemen from Pure Cremation who arrived nine hours after Mum had wished the world goodbye. Soft words and tender smiles because we felt so, so fragile. Don’t worry about anything at all. We will take very good care of Joan. We are taking her to Hampshire where our company is based, in beautiful woodlands, a little oasis where there are deer and birds singing and lots of rabbits. Mum’s last spoken words had strangely included When am I going to see the rabbits? It also made us smile that even in death Mum was going to be travelling even if it was only down the motorway.

There are so many ways I will remember this remarkable woman. There will be a daily reminder in the clothes on mine and my sisters’ backs. Mum had swag and great taste and had always cut a pretty picture in her jeans and pink leather jacket. She was the most un-beige person you could imagine. I will remember her generosity which knew no bounds. Even as she lay in bed, she still managed to shout good morning to the builders outside who fitted new windows in her apartment block, her bedroom included, whilst she was poorly. Unfortunate timing but they’ve got a job to do. God help them. We were under orders to supply them with cake because they were just bloody smashing. Poor unsuspecting Lee, the supervisor knocked on Mum’s door ten minutes after she died to ask if he could take a look at her backdoor frame. He saw my face and left. A huge bouquet of flowers arrived the next day from the company. She had that effect on everybody. Every time I hear Elbow’s One Day Like This, I will recall the morning invite to rise and be counted. Throw those curtains wide. It’s looking like another beautiful day, Mum. Another blessing. Another day on this amazing Earth. Aren’t we lucky. When I see little JoBird in my garden, Mum’s ornamental robin who she gifted to me to look after, I will chuckle at the photos as he followed her final months and made her laugh with his antics. And every time I see a real robin bobbing about in my garden, I will hear her wild laugh and breathe in her over-whelming hunger for life. She had years of appetite left and our world has been starved. I feel hungry every day for one last piece of her.

I held her hand as she took her last breath, and I felt her pulse cease beneath my fingers. Feeling somebody die is shocking. Feeling your mother leave you is completely crushing. She died at home surrounded by her beautiful, homely comforts, in her own bed having dodged the need to be medicated into oblivion which she had dreaded. In her last months, Mum had been able to stare at her lush garden springing to life with floral loveliness during the day and at night sparkle with twinkly lights that she had hung over every fence and in every bush. You can never have too much twinkle in your life, but a star has gone out in mine that is simply irreplaceable. I shall have to go to B and M or Home and Bargain or the Range in Aintree where they now know us by name to see if they have anything shimmery and spangly enough to remind me of her smile and the bright blue sapphire of her eyes. And if they don’t have anything that extraordinary, I will content myself with the sun and the moon and the stars because she was that big and that unique and that shiny.

Vancouver

My daughter moved to Vancouver five years ago. Thanks for that, sweetheart though I suppose it could have been worse. New Zealand was mooted at one point. Not sure what I did wrong or maybe, I just did everything right. Think I’ll convince myself it was the second. I have visited her three times and my recent trip, which was a complete surprise to her, has again left me with more questions than answers. Her partner was in on the surprise. Sneaky whatsapping is great. Would he mind if we just turned up courtesy of some unexpectedly available cheap tickets? Did he think she would mind? They have a wonderful rhythm to their life and it is not always convenient or appropriate or fair to land on somebody’s lap like that. BUT, it was her birthday and it would be hilarious and there was no way she would be expecting it. So a surprise it would be. So much so that after sneaking into her building behind her partner who let us in on the way back from the basement laundry and then tiptoeing into their living room where she was lounging on the couch and then popping my head round the wall and seeing her almost self-combust with shock, surprise was a complete understatement. Her partner had played a blinder. It took fifteen minutes for her breathing to return to normal. Sorry, my darling, but not really.

Vancouver is a truly incredible place. I wish it was awful so I could tempt her back but it isn’t and I can’t. However, like all great places, there is good, there is bad and there is ugly. So the good first, which to be honest overshadows the bad bits. There are soaring, snow-capped mountains to make your eyeballs pop, dense, feathery forests to make your irises wobble and wildlife to give you an overdose of the Attenboroughs. Vancouver is a city on water where the ripples flash and the blue sky clashes bright against the silvery skyscrapers. Wooden, classy, cosy heritage homes with steps up to the front door and all painted in funky colours. No two are alike. It makes for great walking from avenue to avenue. There is, what seems, harmonious living between every race under the sun where kindness and fully-functioning political correctness is the absolute order of the day. There is an outdoor life of endless possibilities which means that there is absolutely no excuse for not keeping fit which pretty much everybody appears to do, every activity imaginable on snow, sea and sand and everybody with all the gear and all the idea. There are clearly defined and recognisable seasons despite global warming, enough sun to kiss your skin and enough cold to guarantee a snowball, enough pink cherry blossom to put a spring in your step and enough golds and russets to set the woods aglow.  Recycling and environmental responsibilities and awareness are in evidence and operation at every turn. Cans and bottles carry a returnable deposit. Not rocket science is it, rest of the world? EVO cars! My God, EVO cars. A city has finally cracked the art of proper car sharing. An app, a click, a door opens, you drive, you park up, pips. And the same with bicycles, both push and electric. They are on every second or third street and they are used regularly to excellent effect. Cheap and clean with none of the nasties. There are gastronomical delights from every corner of the world, cafés, bars and restaurants serving up scrummies and yummies to make your toes curl, all cooked by authentic chefs who know their stuff and whose ingredients are not lorried in in frozen boxes from some processing warehouse. There is a proper work/life balance on view, (laptop café working abounds, what jobs, I know not!) and an unfussy, relaxed approach to self-grooming for men and women. Want or need or just fancy a beard, grow one. Leave it till it touches your chest. And while you’re at it, throw on any shirt and any trousers you fancy. Don’t match? Does it really matter? I don’t think I saw a single pair of high heels when I was there and I know I saw only one pair of thick false eyelashes during the whole trip and she was Irish. It’s all just so natural and uncomplicated. I could go on. Suffice it to say, the place functions like a well-waxed hiking boot. People smile. People help you. People seem very happy indeed to be alive and living in Vancouver. I am not sure that all of Canada is the same or if, indeed, all of the outer-lying areas of the city are quite as utopian but who cares. Living in this shiny-bright, green and gorgeous metropolis is damn near perfect. If I were young again, I would head there. If I had a family of chicks and wanted them to breathe clean air, love sushi and learn to ski on only recently-walking legs, I would drag them there. What a place.

And now for the bad. I can only think of two things. The first. It’s too bloody far away. Roughly nine and half hours flight time and an eight hour time difference. This sends your body clock into orbit and it takes at least four days to assimilate the new pace of life. It’s like being drunk and hung over but without having enjoyed the gin and tonic. As for the time difference, you have to organise your calls and zooms for maximum non-impact. I do not know how businesses operate to deadlines across continents. Just as you remember that you need to remind your builder where you have hidden your keys or he needs to ask you an important question about roof tiles, one of you has just gone to bed or is getting up. The second pitfall is the cost of living. I was almost ejected from a supermarket, suspected of being a journalist or rival competitor for taking pictures of what can only be described as eye-watering ( as opposed to mouth-watering) prices. The exchange rate is roughly $1.70 to the pound. A quick wiggle of the brains told me that a small cauliflower costs £4, a small Boursin a fiver, a farty piece of cheese £9, one little tin of tuna two quid, a small bottle of HP sauce £4.50 and a tin of baked beans…….. wait for it…… $5.89! There was a bit of a Tesco club-card set-up going on. Re-mortgaging might be required if you inadvertently left this life-saver at home. Annie did a little shop the day we were leaving. Three little supermarket plastic bags – I would like to say rammed with stuff but no – set her back 160 bucks. It is now completely obvious why everybody looks so slim and fit. They are all starving to death.

Finally comes the ugly. This is truly sad and shocking but not unlike what plagues other cities, I imagine, in the grip of an opioid epidemic. I have smelled drugs before and indeed puffed on the odd bit of foliage in the past but nothing can prepare you for seeing gangs of people lying, sitting, stumbling, bent double or worse, overdosing in front of your very eyes day or night. There are very specific parts of the city where the down and destitute gather in hordes and feed their addiction day in day out, right out in the open, not knowing if they will see the next day. Ambulances are seen and heard at regular intervals. Firefighters are trained to attend the overdoses. It is commonplace and very disturbing. I have an image in my head of a young girl, eyes rolling around her head, sitting hunched on the pavement, oblivious to her very existence. In a country where cannabis is pretty much legal, it begs the question whether this is to blame in some way. I doubt it. Vancouver is at the epicentre of this public emergency which is driven by toxic drug supply contaminated by fentanyl, carfentanil and other contaminants. 94% of opioid overdose deaths happen by accident because of this contamination and young Canadians aged 15 to 24 are the fastest-growing population requiring hospital care from opioid overdoses. If you avoided these areas, you would never know that just a few blocks away, your sanitised and perfectly beautiful life stood in such stark contrast to the misery of these people. I don’t know what the answer is. Hostels, hot meals, social care are all on offer but when this poison has you in its grip, I doubt you have the will or awareness or physical capability of accepting help. Ugly indeed.

Gosh, this all started so optimistically and so it shall end because to concentrate on the widespread madness of urban living in any city – homelessness, affordable housing, crime etc, would send us all round the bend. Life is hard enough. Vancouver is the dog’s reproductive bits. You walk in unison with your neighbours, you reach out to those who need help (there is evidence of charity everywhere), you provide for every diet without fuss (I have never seen so many vegan, non-gluten, non-dairy options) and you don’t see much litter except for disposable coffee cups which, I am rightly or wrongly assuming, are the fault of builders who, incidentally are absolutely everywhere. Vankers is booming. You might have to sell an organ or two to afford to buy there but new housing is refreshingly abundant. Luckily, my daughter and her partner’s rent is affordable and they have good jobs. They are blissfully happy there and this makes me smile, a lot. Employment opportunities appear to be at New World levels from what I can see. This land of opportunity seems to break the mould in opening its doors and welcoming anybody prepared to work hard. Do that in Vancouver and you are granted permission to explore and enjoy one of the biggest playgrounds in the world. Just don’t go if you have a baked bean dependency.

Rewirement not Retirement

When I handed in my notice a year ago, my explanation was that I was relocating which was true though I haven’t yet made the complete shift, something to do with not being able to turn my back on 35 years of love and life in London. It broke my heart, as is often the case with teachers, to leave behind, in essence abandon, those wonderful kids who I had spent so much sweat and tears nurturing and building and yes, loving. Added to this was the abject sorrow of bidding farewell to my daily partners in crime, my buddies, my idea diggers, my crossword cronies, my belly-laugh brothers and sisters in arms, my dearest shit-shovelling-sharers for whom the going often got tough and the tough had no choice but to dig deep and keep going. I wrote my letter. I met with the Head. He was great and understanding and totally got the relocating explanation which I took great pains to underline. I was not retiring. You kidding me? Only old people retire and ‘give up’ as I saw it and why would I want to give up a job that is so unpredictably challenging and so life-affirming on so many levels? I would settle into my new nest and then poke my beak out to see if any local worms were available for me to wriggle and wrestle with. That was the plan. That was what I told everybody. I am not retiring, I am taking a step away for a little while but I am not pulling up the drawbridge.

Before my lips had even cooled after my chat with the Head, HR in all their diplomatic glory, sent me an email. ‘In view of your upcoming retirement…..’ Well, to say I went ballistic would be putting it mildly. How dare they make assumptions about my choices. Had they seen my date of birth and concluded that I was headed for the slagheap? The Head had not told them that I was giving up teaching. He had toed my line but they had taken it upon themselves to assume that somebody aged 60 and one third, at the time of letter writing, was beyond adventure seeking and ambition. Unforgiveable. Insensitive. Unthinking at a time when that decision took every ounce of resolve I had because I wasn’t entirely sure that I was making the right call. The facts were put straight after a few curt words and a few blushes and I left my professional nest in July 2022 not knowing when I would start searching for a new post, whether I would find one and, more importantly, not knowing whether I would be considered as a viable choice given my experience and expectations. I knew I did not want to compete against embryonic newbies who would come cheap and I certainly did not feel any compunction to have to try to prove myself after years of doing the job more than well with my eyes shut. It turns out that the choice arose sooner than I had expected.

Via a new contact who knew somebody who knew somebody, I was approached by a school ‘desperate’ for a body before the whiteboard. My pride took hold and I immediately slipped into salvation mode. Kids need help. Must act. Can’t leave them without a teacher. Just not fair. It’s not that far away. I can do that. I would need to fetch my car from London and a few outfits that went beyond the rags I had been wearing renovating the house and a bag or two of teaching goodies. I felt positively enthused. Somebody needed me.  That’s how it felt because when you have taught for so long and played a positive and influential role in young people’s lives, it is very hard to become a ‘was’ instead of an ‘is’. I had worn my title as a badge of honour because, let’s face it, it is not a job that is easily done and it leaves scars and frustrations as well as huge highs and satisfaction. It is under my skin. They needed somebody urgently. I offered to visit straight away for chat. That is how I had got my three previous posts. An informal chat because I was in the right place at the right time. And then the fun and  games began. A few texts, details passed to HR, do you have an email address, we would have to get you in for interview, we would just need you on a Tuesday, a bit of French, can you do that and then, please would you mind filling in this application form. They took three days to get the form to me. How desperate were they? I could have popped in and I or indeed they could have said no thank you. But the hoops had to be jumped through and I, in my ‘arrogance’ felt completely miffed that despite knowing I could have walked in and done a good job, I was being asked to prove it. I haven’t had a formal interview since 1988 and I was now to show my suitability on paper. On paper! Teaching is not about bits of paper though clearly it has become that. The on-line form was six pages long. It required every detail of every breath I had taken since exiting the womb. It wanted minutiae of all of the jobs I had done since leaving school, not university but school. Well, if barmaid, warehouse receptionist, post office letter sorter, barmaid again, dog’s body at a removal firm, summer camp assistant, volunteer at a homeless shelter, shop assistant in a sweet shop, English tutor in Spain, bottle washer, bog cleaner, table wiper and all round will-do-anything-for-a-pay-packet were living proof that I could teach children well and not put their sanity or safety in danger then I suppose I would have to write it all down. It would look ridiculous, the dates would be a bit of a wobbly guess and it would take the form to nineteen pages but so be it. It didn’t stop. They wanted the day, date, time, moon phase, place and grade of every qualification I had. Did they realise what they were asking? I can’t even remember why I have walked into a room these days. I have certificates somewhere but it would take me a month of Sundays to find them. I have an up-to-date DBS certificate. I was ready to rock and my red-hot board pen was still warm and I was having to prove who I was and what I could do after years of doing it. I had a long think. I did, in fact, fill in the form and contact my last Head to say that I might be applying for a post and would he mind providing a reference, but, when push came to shove, I pushed back and not without the helpful advice from those who know me best. You know what will happen, don’t you? You’ll be there for one day a week and then they might ask you to do a bit more and you will love the kids and want to give them everything you’ve got and then you will be back to square one, looking for a breather but having your chest sat on again. I withdrew, apologising and making an excuse that the circumstances were not quite right. But now I ask myself, will they ever be again? Some days I really want my badge back. I long to be an ‘is’ again and not a ‘was’ but on others, I feel that I haven’t quite finished rewiring. The retiring sits uneasily on the bookshelf while I sort out my wires, plugs and switches and wonder when I will, if ever, be reconnected up to the grid that was my life source, my classroom.