Class Dismisssed
Tomorrow I return to lecturing television production at college. Only on a part time basis, and still keeping on all the other work I do. Gosh, now that it’s down in black in white I wonder what the blazes I am doing. All this work AND the resignation of my trusty cleaner could mean a Toxic Hazard sign appears on my front door before the month is out. No matter, I need to do it. I miss them pesky kids. I’ve missed college ever since I left over two years ago, it was part of my identity.
Bizarrely with a two year hiatus from something that became second nature to me, I am actually quite nervous. Working with students means anything can happen. I cast my mind over incidents that happened over the years the last time around. The male student that couldn’t handle doing a role play situation and pushed me over to get out of the room when one of his friends sniggered when he got tongue tied, or the time another girl student slapped a chap’s face in the studio gallery when he told her what to do. As the years go on you become able to handle almost anything, and compared to schools you don’t really have much in the way of discipline issues on the whole.
However you are never immune from making an absolute tit of yourself in front of a class.
About a few months into my time there as a full time Media Studies lecturer the Twin Towers were attacked. Of course as media students after a period of few weeks we looked at the news coverage and one afternoon we were discussing the common pattern that the television news coverage was taking in terms of the type of footage and media used.
“Right, you are compiling a television news report based on the newspaper article you have in front of you.” I said. “What material do you need to take into the edit suite with you?”
Some-one shouts out “Towers and the planes going in”
“Yup, the actual attack. What else?”
“Photo of Osama Bin Laden”
“Yes, and who else”
“The bombers- those mugshots…” someone shouts.
“And the dodgy video that Bin Laden released” another person ventures.
I’m frantically writing all this up on a board as they shout it out. “Yes, that’s all going in. What about the political angle. What are you going to show there?”
“George W Bush.”
“Yes,” I say turning to write the name ‘Bush’ up on the whiteboard. “You’ll show them a bit of Bush.”
One second… two seconds..three. I sigh and turn around to face them. The entire studentage is falling about laughing.
Class dismissed.
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Carry on up the Khyber
PROMISE TO ALL: An embargo on this kind of thingwill be in effect from the 9th of July
And then I remembered why I started the Misssives in the first place. It was to record my travels. I wanted to let my friends and family hear all our holiday/travel stories without having to: A: Actually speak to them
I solemnly make this promise to you: whilst in India I will not go all spiritual and hippy trail on you, I will not sit in the Lotus position even once, I will not adopt a brown baby like Madonna or Jolie, and I will most certainly not ever utter the words, “This place is magical”.
B: Be arsed to send postcards
C: Clock up international phone charges
*Finnish cuisine can be summed up by the dish “Egg Butter”. Fact: Egg butter is the reason the Russians or the Nazis didn’t invade Finland.
Meanwhile over on hot new blog (hint hint…) Spontaneous Production, I’m telling people to stay out of the cinema. Click here
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From Hull to Rotterdam via Hades
Little did Leo realise,he would spend the rest of the night
holding Kate’s hair back
The Flying Martinis are off once again. Except this time we’re not flying. We are, in the words of craggy-faced, fake-Scotsman, brunette-shunning, lothario Rod Stewart, sailing.
Cross the water, cross the sea to the Netherlands, as it happens. I am really looking forward to it. At least I was until French workmate’s response to me telling him that I was going on a caravanning holiday to Holland was a simple and deadpan,
“God, that sounds terrible”
We leave on Saturday departing from Hull, as sailings to Holland from the far closer Rosyth are twice as expensive for no good reason. Maybe the expensive air and ferry fares in my country are a ruse to keep us Scots firmly within our borders. We do have a tendency to kind of take over. (Waves) Hello wee Gordy from Fife!
It has occurred to me that I haven’t been on an overnight ferry for a very long time indeed. There is a good reason for this. And that, my friends, is the theme of today’s Misssive.
At age sixteen my childhood friend Helen and I are allowed to go on our own on holiday to visit our other friend Julie whose parents have taken her to live in the Hague. We arrive in Hull 10 hours too early for the ferry and spend the day being skittish and nervous of other people as we are only 16 and from the sticks.
That night we board the ferry and we excitedly find our “couchettes”. Couchettes are wipe clean (and this is important, folks!) armchairs set in rows in a large lounge area. They are not designed for comfort in any way. But they are the cheapest option for wee lassies on a budget.
The journey is underway and after skittishly checking out the vessel for teenage boys, who we may lust after but won’t approach, we make our way back to the couchette lounge to play cards. Outside the rain and wind lash the boat, “Poseidon Adventure” style. The boat starts to lunge.
As darkness falls and the storm outside gets worse, we begin to upset the Dutch gentleman behind us. He apparently cannot stand the excited chatter of annoying girls and complains bitterly to us every five minutes. He is a pain in the arse. So, when he starts to vomit loudly and constantly into a plastic bag, we laugh our asses off. He is well aware of our mockery and scowls at us in between gagging.
“Yaaaaaaarrrghhhhh!”
“Heeheeheeheheheeehheheheheheee!”
“Yaaaaaaaarrrgghhhhhhhh!”
“Hahahahahahaaa! Heeeheheheheee!”
Within 15 minutes it seems that everyone is vomiting and plastic bags are becoming a real commodity. The waves are crashing over the front window of the ferry and at times it feels like the boat is on its end. Despite the hurly-burly, we are still laughing our asses off every time our Dutch friend retches. Sixteen year old girls can be right bastards.
Then it hits us. Repeatedly. We are both sick as dogs for 8 hours straight. We can’t even make it to the bathroom, as we will get flung all over the ship. We do try, but some near misses with falling in the vomit of the many people who tried before us, forces us back to our seats. The couchette saloon becomes the Vomitarium. The walls are spattered with it, the couchettes are covered in it and the floor is swimming in it. It is absolutely vile. Projectile doesn’t even cover it.
The only thing to do is try and sleep on the plastic couchette, clutch your plastic bag and threadbare blanket, pray and wait for morning.
When morning arrives, the place looks like the pits of Hell, the passengers look like the residents of Hell, and our Dutch friend is silent. As are we.
It is 7am, the Tannoy bing bongs,
“We would just like to remind all passengers that the restaurant will be serving breakfast until 9am”
*Collective heave!*
I was a teenage Pornmonger (wait til the Googlers see THAT one!)
In 1989 I lived in Cologne in Germany for a year. I was 18/19, and worked as an English Language teaching Assistant in a grammar school in the outskirts of the city. I had, when all is said and done, a pretty good year. I met lots of great people, did lots of great things and generally had a bit of a laugh at the expense of the, as it was then, West German government.
The fact that I had to show up for five and a half days and work at a grammar school, was only a minor inconvenience. The fact that most of my students were the same age as me caused a couple of problems. I may tell you about the more obvious one some other time…..
However, today I am reminded of one particular problem as I read a news item today on IMDB about a teacher who showed the film “Brokeback Mountain” to her high school students. The female teacher is being sued by the grandparents of some of the teenage kids, as the film contains scenes of homosexual lurve action. Here’s the link, if you’re interested in the details. it’s four or five stories down the page:
http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-05-14/#3
Well, been there, done that! I showed “My Beautiful Launderette” to my Year 8 class (18 year olds). Here’s a quick summary for those of you who don’t remember or maybe haven’t seen “My Beautiful Launderette”.
The film stars Daniel Day Lewis and Saeed Jaffrey and is set in Thatcher’s Britain. It concerns the dealings of an Indian ex-pat entrepreneur (Jaffrey) and his nephew (Gordon Warnecke) whom he places in charge of his latest business acquisition; the launderette. Behind the scenes Uncle is trying to marry off Nephew to other Cousin, unaware that Nephew is getting it on in the back room of the launderette with local skinhead sexy-pants, Daniel Day Lewis.
My reason for showing the film? Well it was, your Honour, entirely innocent. I had, in consultation with the head of English, decided to deliver a project on British culture in the political climate of the eighties. Up until that point we had looked at music, specifically the more intelligent lyrical efforts of “The The”, “The Waterboys” and “The Smiths”. We had watched some excellent TV programmes, like “Boys from the Blackstuff”, “Edge of Darkness” and before-it-got-shit Brookside (it used to be great, honest!). Basically it was a thinly veiled ruse to play music and watch telly and chat about them afterwards.
I decided to show Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears “Launderette” because it was about multicultural eighties Britain. Oh… and it was cracking, to boot.
The students loved it….until the English Head walked into the class just before the gay sex scene came on, cueing the longest five minutes of my life. After the scene got going he switched off the TV.
MisssyT, as I was then, was summoned to the Headmaster’s office the next day. Early. He was the only person that called me Fraulein T. Everyone else used my first name.
I was to have all video privileges suspended indefinitely. I would consult my Mentor (teacher in charge of me) on everything I gave out to the students. I was made to feel like a porn peddler. I tried to put it in context. He wasn’t interested.
The next week the students asked to see the end of the film. I told them that we couldn’t and I wasn’t allowed to show any more films. They were a bit fed up about it, but not enough to ask their headmaster for an explanation, or fight my corner. It was only school after all, and watching a video was better than doing real work. But if real work had to be done, they would get on with it.
I saw the film a few years ago on telly and was surprised at how tame that scene was. Perhaps I should be glad that it was 1989 and not 15 years later when I would’ve had “Queer as Folk”, “The L Word” or “Sex and the City” to choose from!.
Apparently the year I left, the headmaster had opted not to take on an English Assistant for the foreseeable future.
I must have hit a nerve…..
In Praise of the Doctor
Let’s start with a cliché.
What goes around comes around. There you go.
However I’m not talking about karma, I’m talking about trends. I am absolutely delighted at the return of leggings for example. I spent my teenage years (and a good deal of my twenties ) in the things. For the last two years I have been desperately trying to find a cream pair to go under my favourite green dress so that I can wear it in winter too. I couldn’t find any until now. I’m now spoilt for choice. I have a good old fallback black pair and a black and silver sparkely pair which are ace.
But I’m not going to spend this whole blog talking about clothes like gurl. Today it occurred to me that I’m seriously going to be having a wee eighties moment at the end of the week. 
You see my husband’s band, the Lorelei are playing with grebo guru Miles Hunt of the Wonderstuff (above) at the weekend* And not only should I wear the leggings for it, but I should (at least at home when no-one’s looking) try and find my Doctor Marten boots. My darling DMs that were given to me by my mate’s brother when I was 14, and lasted me about 10 years, during which time I must have worn them nearly every day. I went to Uni in them, I went to East and West Germany in them, I went to New Orleans in them, I slept in airports and stations in New York, Belgium and Berlin in them.
I danced to new wave, punk, madchester, hip hop, acid house, rave, grunge and disco in them. Christ, I saw Nirvana and The Smiths in them (twice, both). I spilt beer, vodka, wine, punch, paint, vomit and cider on them. If I reach old age and have great feet and insteps then I owe it to them.
I met my husband in them (he wasn’t in them, I was). I used said wonder footwear to climb a human pyramid at a gig and once reaching the top spotted long haired lovely lead singer looking at me. Reader, I married him. (not in the DMs- Mum would’ve killed me). Now I couldn’t have feasibly climbed that pyramid in a pair of silly stilettoes, could I? Think of the ramifications of him never seeing me on the pyramid. We might never have met! There might not be any Flying Martinis to speak of! Aaaargh! It’s like that Ray Bradbury short story where the guy goes back in time and crushes a butterfly in the stoneage and then when he comes back to the present his entire world is changed!
Do you see how important these boots are?
So leggings might be back but DMs aren’t. I have to find them, I couldn’t have thrown them out. I can’t imagine ever doing that, so they must be in the house somewhere; all neglected like an old favourite dolly languishing under a bed, like in Toy Story.
Now I probably am not going to wear DMs on Sunday as I’m not that sad, but take this as a rallying call: Let’s bring Doctor Martens back!
*************************************************************************************
*See the Lorelei and Miles Hunt of the Wonderstuff at carriages in Insch on Sunday 13 May at 7.30. Tickets: £10 Advance, £12 on the door
Available from: Hardstone Music
01467 681644
enquiries@hardstonemusic.com
http://www.thelorelei.co.uk/
Doris, Sixteen Year Old Misssymartin, and me
Year Old Misssymartin, Doris Day and Me
When I was just a little girl I asked my mother, “What will I be?
Will I be a top journalist, covering breaking news all round the world?
Will I be a defence lawyer going to the wire for my client in every case?
Will I be a writer of non-fiction travelogues that would make people long to follow in my footsteps?
Will I be the first female Director General of the BBC?
Will I be the first Prime Minister of Scotland?
Will I win the Eurovision Song Contest?
“No, you’ll be writing offshore training modules”
Que sera sera…etc.. Thanks Doris.
(Check out how I make no attempt to make that rhyme or fit in with the tune of “Que Sera Sera”. I’m tired and should be in bed. )
Started the freelance job today. Worked til my brain exploded and then scraped it all back into my skull and drove home checking out new Minis on the way to keep me going. Still grimacing wildly at the drivers, by the way.
Funny how life turns out. I wonder what the sixteen year old MisssyM would have to say about all this. I think about that sometimes. I think I would be astonished that someone agreed to marry me for one. I was never very confident on that front. On the career front I think sixteen year old Misssy would be a little confused. She may even be disappointed. In fact I know she would.
Last week some BBC ladies came to speak to my students and very nice they were too. When I was about 20 I would’ve been peeing my pants in excitement at the prospect of getting a foot in the door at the Beeb. Certainly, the general feeling that I got from the women was that people should be peeing their pants in excitement to get in at the Beeb. (Personally, I think anyone wanting to work in telly is better off scoping out the indies, as they make all the programmes these days).
However, I felt completely numb to it. Instead I was excited for my students…and even a little worried for them. What was really on offer here? Unpaid work, digitising and logging tapes for hours on end? The occasional running job, getting coffee for Sally Magnussen? Answering the phones on “Children in Need”? If you’re lucky in five years you might get a researcher’s job on some farming programme that is broadcast on a Sunday afternoon?
Even to get in to do these poorly paid, bottom rung of the ladder running jobs you’d have to jump through a million hoops, “Apprentice” style, to even get shortlisted. Fighting for floor space in a group exercise with some over-confident, over-bearing wannabes that would stifle your every attempt at being heard above them *Shudder*
It’s fine for those who want in…and maybe that was me fifteen years ago, but thank God it’s all over! Something has made me stay in Scotland and take a different path into teaching and writing/producing commercial and technical stuff and it doesn’t bother me anymore that what I said I’d do on leaving school hasn’t happened. Because other things have.
So for now, it’s procedural training, offshore safety and risk assessments for me. Last year it was programmes for schools. You can’t say my life isn’t varied, I s’pose. And I’ve only had to sell a bit of my soul to Satan…..
By the way, you’ve not heard the last of Sixteen year Old MisssyM. She and I have more conversations to have.
Sixteen Year Old Misssymartin, Doris Day and Me
Will I be a top journalist, covering breaking news all round the world?
Will I be a defence lawyer going to the wire for my client in every case?
Will I be a writer of non-fiction travelogues that would make people long to follow in my footsteps?
Will I be the first female Director General of the BBC?
Will I be the first Prime Minister of Scotland?
Will I win the Eurovision Song Contest?
“No, you’ll be writing offshore training modules”
Que sera sera…etc.. Thanks Doris.
(Check out how I make no attempt to make that rhyme or fit in with the tune of “Que Sera Sera”. I’m tired and should be in bed. )
Started the freelance job today. Worked til my brain exploded and then scraped it all back into my skull and drove home checking out new Minis on the way to keep me going. Still grimacing wildly at the drivers, by the way.
Funny how life turns out. I wonder what the sixteen year old MisssyM would have to say about all this. I think about that sometimes. I think I would be astonished that someone agreed to marry me for one. I was never very confident on that front. On the career front I think sixteen year old Misssy would be a little confused. She may even be disappointed. In fact I know she would.
Last week some BBC ladies came to speak to my students and very nice they were too. When I was about 20 I would’ve been peeing my pants in excitement at the prospect of getting a foot in the door at the Beeb. Certainly, the general feeling that I got from the women was that people should be peeing their pants in excitement to get in at the Beeb. (Personally, I think anyone wanting to work in telly is better off scoping out the indies, as they make all the programmes these days).
However, I felt completely numb to it. Instead I was excited for my students…and even a little worried for them. What was really on offer here? Unpaid work, digitising and logging tapes for hours on end? The occasional running job, getting coffee for Sally Magnussen? Answering the phones on “Children in Need”? If you’re lucky in five years you might get a researcher’s job on some farming programme that is broadcast on a Sunday afternoon?
Even to get in to do these poorly paid, bottom rung of the ladder running jobs you’d have to jump through a million hoops, “Apprentice” style, to even get shortlisted. Fighting for floor space in a group exercise with some over-confident, over-bearing wannabes that would stifle your every attempt at being heard above them *Shudder*
It’s fine for those who want in…and maybe that was me fifteen years ago, but thank God it’s all over! Something has made me stay in Scotland and take a different path into teaching and writing/producing commercial and technical stuff and it doesn’t bother me anymore that what I said I’d do on leaving school hasn’t happened. Because other things have.
So for now, it’s procedural training, offshore safety and risk assessments for me. Last year it was programmes for schools. You can’t say my life isn’t varied, I s’pose. And I’ve only had to sell a bit of my soul to Satan…..
By the way, you’ve not heard the last of Sixteen year Old MisssyM. She and I have more conversations to have.
