The delight of indecisiveness

So.

 

Yes.

 

Maybe. Not sure. Perhaps, with a positive attitude and a following wind. Maybe, all things being equal and the ducks lining up nicely in a row.

 

I’m trying to decide whether to resurrect an old business endeavour. On the one hand it resulted in a little bit of extra cash (which was of course ploughed immediately back into the business with not a single penny taken out, Scout’s honour, learned gentlemen from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) but on the much larger other hand it took up every spare hour of every day and night and resulted in exhaustion, angst and a resigned disillusionment in the sometimes unpleasant antics of my fellow man.

 

But. But, but, but. I did used to enjoy it, I have to admit, and I don’t much like what I do now, and despite the occasional awfulness of a handful of clients the vast majority of them were quite pleasant to deal with, said the occasional thank you and quite liked what I did.

 

I speak, in case you haven’t yet wandered off bored, of photography. To wit, I used to go to peoples’ houses, take photos of them, and sell them the prints. Some, if asked, might say I was quite good at it (I couldn’t possibly comment), and there was a slight dribble of mild public fuss when I announced I was going to stop, so I suspect I could pick it up again, particularly as I singularly failed to sell any of my equipment after I did stop, much to the fragrant Mrs Branza's frustration. It’s not the ‘will anyone want me to take photographs of them?’ question that vexes me, or ‘will I have the wherewithal to do it?’ but ‘do I really want to be bothered with it all again?’.

 

This all stems, of course, from me wanting to tell The Annoying One where to stick it. But freedom is difficult to come by because I’ve no idea what else to do. There are some things I’d like to do, but either I’m coming to it too late (commercial flying would be lovely, but I’m resigned to the fact that I’m simply too old to go down that route now), or it would be too expensive (I refer you to my previous example), or it simply wouldn’t pay enough (novelist? wonderful; the next JK Rowling? unlikely), or it’s plain pie in the sky (form a band, win the Mercury Prize, fame, fortune, cool dad status assured). So, after months of trying to come up with a suitable single alternative I’m slowly coming around to the idea that perhaps it’s the rural community model that I should be adopting here.

 

A few years ago we went off for a long and drunken weekend to the Whisky Festival on Islay. As communities go, that’s about as rural as it gets. Amongst the drammies, mirror like waters and winding hikes around road hogging sheep to the next distillery, we'd often come across the same people again and again, but in slightly different roles. A chap we first met in the morning as our taxi driver would crop up again as a chef at dinner. We’d say good morning to the lady who ran our hotel and then walk past her later as she led a party of schoolchildren along the road. Being such a small knit community, everyone had to pitch in and often would have at least two jobs, if not more. There was no such thing as a career out there. People would have their little business – say, running boat tours – while at the same time helping out in a shop or a farm or a restaurant.

 

I quite like that idea. I’m chronically indecisive anyway, so the prospect of not having to stick to one thing but rather do several is quite appealing. Take the occasional photograph? OK. Write the odd article or blog? Righto. Write a book? Will do. Do a few hours in the local off licence? Marvellous. All adds up, all stops me getting so bored that I want to murder people with spoons.

 

We’re an odd species. We have this odd view that about the ‘correct’ way to live. To misquote Mr Welsh, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electric tin openers. We’re conditioned to expect that because everyone else does it a particular way, we should all do it that way. But popularity doesn’t make idiocy any less idiotic; you only have to spend five minutes in front of the X Factor to know that. Just because we generally all expect a career to be the pinnacle of success doesn’t make it so.

 

I came across another Alan Watts gem the other day, a discourse on success. Life, he said, is like music. There is no ‘meaning of life’ or ‘purpose of life’. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Our obsession with school, university, work, the unalterable rise up the greasy pole with the single clear purpose of achieving success is a little like only attending a concert to hear the very last note. It’s not about the climax, it’s about enjoying the entire performance.

 

 

It’s all happening a little slower than I was hoping, but I think I’m still on course to start enjoying the performance. I think I will start taking those photographs again.

New beginnings start here

So, La Child walked out of school today knowing that it was quite possibly the last day she'd ever have to set foot in one. 'How do you feel?' we asked her. 

A shrug of the shoulders. 'Meh,' she replied, 'don't care. Spain tomorrow!'

So much for the tears, the wails and the much gnashing of teeth of everyone else. To be fair to her, leaving this school and not going to another hasn't ever been likely to be an issue for her. Leaving one place for another has never been an issue, whether it's been a case of moving school or house (and we've done plenty of both). La Child isn't someone who finds it hard to tear herself away from things. Well, other than perhaps books. 

So this is it. The start of a whole new journey. An adventure of frighteningly large proportions. To a certain extent there's a cushion, a safety net provided by her age and abilities: if it doesn't work out, then it's easy enough to put her back in the system in a year or two without any real harm to her education, and if anything it'll give her an experience that few children have the chance to enjoy. 

No ties, free from high fees, no longer being restricted to term dates, or a particular area or country... I honestly don't think we've even begun to truly understand the freedom this is likely to give us all, or the opportunities that this is in fact going to give La Child. And I have to say, I am so ridiculously jealous of her.

My last post was all about missed opportunities and, deep down, the weight of expectation. If we achieve nothing else, then I want to ensure that La Child feels no weight whatsoever. Whatever choices she eventually makes, whatever she ends up doing, I want there to be no possibility at all that she may be swayed by what she thinks we want for her. 

I've made a thing, ever since my very first post, of not really knowing what we're going to end up doing, or where we'll end up, but that's only half true. I know where I want to end up. I know what I want to do. I want to fly. I want to make flying my life. I've always wanted to make flying my life, but the weight of expectation has always intruded. When I was 17 it was the hopes and aspiration of my parents that stopped me. I don't mean to say that they would have been anything less than 100% supportive if I had chosen flying over university, they would have been wonderfully supportive, but I knew that deep down they'd be a little bit disappointed and I didn't want them to be. Then when I started working it became an overwhelming feeling that I had to make a go of the law, that I had a career, that I've come so far with it that of course I should continue. Flying could be a hobby, a weekend diversion, it needn't be serious. Then La Child was born and the pressures shifted slightly to a need to support her, to pay the bills and the school fees. A need to give her time, something that a flying career (and the training needed to get there) would prevent me from giving her. 

Now, though... Now life has taken an entirely new path. La Child is no longer at school. La Child is a little bit older, and I can afford to spend some time doing other things. La Child no longer requires an expensive private education, so we've no longer a need to live in an expensive area near an expensive school within commuting distance of a well paying job.... We've been through all this before. Now suddenly the opportunity to finally have a go at actually achieving a long standing dream presents itself. 

There are barriers, of course. I'm older than your average newbie pilot. My eyesight's not the best. I need to sit the exams again and pass flight tests. I need to pass medicals. Houses need to be sold, lifestyles need to change. But today marks the start of what could be the very beginnings of the process, and I have to say I'm really quite excited about it, even if La Child seems entirely nonchalant. 

We're off for a two week break to Spain tomorrow. Time to talk, and plan, and look forward with a ruddy great big smile on all our faces.

Cake or Ofsted Report?

This. A thousand times, this:

“Too many non-selective schools are failing to nurture scholastic excellence. While the best of these schools provide excellent opportunities, many of our most able students receive mediocre provision. Put simply, they are not doing well enough because their secondary schools fail to challenge and support them sufficiently from the beginning. I believe the term ‘special needs’ should be as relevant to the most able as it is to those who require support for their learning difficulties. Yet some of the schools visited for this survey did not even know who their most able students were. This is completely unacceptable.”

So spake Sir Michael Wilshaw this morning on the release of the Ofsted report into the treatment of the most able students in secondary schools.

Sir Michael isn’t the most popular man in the world; Chief Inspector of Schools in England, head of Ofsted, seen as many (particularly teachers) as a bully with a hard-line style and an unforgiving approach to standards, accused of instigating a period in which teachers feel alienated and in which morale is at an all time low.

But. When someone says something that makes sense, one should always acknowledge its wisdom. And by Jove that quote up there makes a lot of sense. I’ve argued for years that gifted children are every bit in need of special needs provision as are children with learning difficulties. Gifted children come with a whole host of issues: they can be relatively mild (short attention span, very little patience, poor empathy, problem with authority, quick to boredom, constant bloody questioning) or really quite serious (dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, aspergers, acute and debilitating sensitivity to noise or bright lights). And because of these issues it’s not always obvious that they’re gifted. There’s even a term for it: ‘dual exceptionality’, where a child is gifted but also has some form of special need. What happens is that the disability shines so brightly that it blocks out the light of the child’s other abilities, and either the disability is all and the child is incorrectly identified as needing SEN support, or the child’s other abilities compensate for the disability such that they appear entirely average and receive no support at all. That of course makes it difficult for schools to identify them, but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t try.

Some teachers have responded by saying that the problem isn’t in fact non- or mis-identification of the most able pupils, it’s that teachers simply don’t have the time or the resources to deal with them (this blog by @Bigchris_BRFC gives you a pretty good feel for the sort of environment some teachers are operating in). Class sizes are too large, abilities too mixed and disruption is rife, either because of bad behaviour or because of the need to deal with often quite serious special needs within mainstream schools. If we want teachers to spend more time nurturing the most able pupils, they say, then give us the time, the space and the resources with which to do it. 

That’s not an entirely unreasonable response, but neither is it the whole story. Non- and mis-identification remains an issue. The current method of identification is simply to look at the pupils who scored in the top 5% of the Key Stage 2 SATS, but that misses those with any form of dual exceptionality, and frankly therefore misses most gifted children.

My daughter, as wonderful as she is, is intensely frustrating sometimes. Because I know her abilities, because I know full well what she’s capable of, it annoys me to distraction whenever she decides not to bother showing anyone else. Even her current school, which is the first in a long line to even get close to providing good support for her, doesn’t really know what she can do. An example: my wife spoke to La Child’s class teacher the other day to ask roughly what level she was at (we’re going to be home schooling her from September, so we need to know roughly where to start her). ‘Oh,’ replied the teacher, ‘she at about a level [x] for literacy and similar for reading.’ Wife thanks teacher, teacher wonders off, La Child suddenly looks around furtively and then says in a whisper: ‘Actually, I’m probably a fair bit higher than that. I don’t really try very hard at school.’

How do you deal with that? How do schools deal with that? I can tell you how they won’t, and that’s by fiddling around with the curriculum, insisting on ‘rigour’ and assuming that the gifted kids will be the ones performing the best. They won’t be.

In truth we need to take a long hard look at what we want our education system to do and decide how best to help teachers do it. As long as we carry on tinkering here and adjusting there and constantly blaming the teachers for, well, everything all we’ll ever achieve is to alienate an entire generation of teachers and waste several generations of potential. Now that is completely unacceptable.

Zen and the art of positivity

I'm feeling cheerful today. Don't really know why, just have a feeling of positivity about me. Perhaps it's because it's sunny (highly likely to be because it's sunny, in fact; how depressing our usual grey backdrop is), maybe it's because I know that The Annoying One is away next week and the office will be so much calmer and more pleasant without him, maybe it's because I have a particularly good tune on the go. Maybe it's a mixture of all three, maybe it has nothing whatsoever to do with any of it. Don't know, don't really care. I'm feeling less-than-depressed today, and that's good.

I quite like feeling like this because it means I actually do stuff. When I feel my usual self I tend not to want to do anything. Why is that? The more bored you are, the less inclined you are to pick yourself up and do things, even if things need doing, even if doing those things might make you less bored. Is it because actually those things themselves are inherently boring? Can't be, not everything is inherently boring. Or is it because the fog in front of your eyes is so impenetrable that the synapses in your head marked 'that'll be interesting' just don't fire? Whatever it is, sunshine, good tunes and the knowledge that I'll soon have a week off from having to deal with The Annoying One conspire to make Marcos a happy chappie. Let's strip naked and rejoice!

I do have one regret this morning. I’m a bit of an avid photographer. Like to take photos of stuff. Been doing it a while, and have a very large and heavy professional looking camera that makes me look as though I know what I'm doing. Every now and again I think to myself ‘really should carry my camera around with me.’ The only problem is that it is very large and heavy, and carrying it about is a bit of a pain (even if I'm not already carrying other things, which I often am), and this morning despite the weather being glorious and sunny, and the sky being blue, the grass being green and the conditions being bloody marvellous for a nice bit of photo taking action, I took one look at the thing and decided it was too much like hard work. Left it at home. Now of course I'm sat on the train on the way into work and getting more and more frustrated at myself by the minute as I realise what a complete tosspot I am. Lazy, weak willed, slothful. Allow opportunities to run past me with barely a look. If my headstone has an epitaph it's likely to be "Fuck it, that'll do."

Happiness doesn't last long, does it? Feeling quite fucked off now.

My life is full of little regrets. When you look at them all individually they don't amount to much, but add them all up and they lead inexorably to a deathbed revelation of despair and futility. Well, perhaps that's a bit strong. Didn't want to use 'regret' twice, you see, but it's probably more accurate: a deathbed revelation of utter regret at missed opportunities. For example, I once spent ten years learning how to fly, on and off. Ten years. Got quite good at it in the end, could fly in the end. Spent thousands of pounds on lessons, amassed about 60 hours of flying time, got as far as doing my QXC (qualifying cross country flight, for the uninitiated: a solo cross country flight from Stapleford in Essex, to Leicester, to Cambridge and back - in fact got lost on the way to Cambridge, that was a sphincter puckering moment), sat and passed five of the necessary seven written exams...and then stopped. I felt I had my reasons at the time, of course. The Child had just been born, money was tight, flying was taking up rather a lot of my time... but it's all utter tripe, really. All that time, all that money, all that effort, tossed away because deep down I'd grown tired of it and was secretly a little bit nervous at having to take the flight test.

Or playing the piano; spent years learning how to do that as well, and I really was good at it. Did my grade exams, was playing grade 8 and diploma pieces with ease, liked nothing more than to spend every waking hour tinkling away, practice wasn't a chore at all. Performing was a joy. Even got to perform my own pieces at the Queen Elizabeth Hall once, and believe me there’s no drug that can quite replicate the feeling you get when you soak up the applause of a thousand people. Then what happened? Life got in the way again. Exams took precedence. Going out with my friends took precedence. Not being arsed took precedence. Truth be told I got bored with it. I thought I'd take a break and come back to it, except of course I never really did. Now, years later, I can still play the odd little thing but not like before. All that effort, all that time.... Patterns do tend to repeat themselves, don't they?

I get bored, that's my real problem. I flit. My father was the same. He'd get really into something, spend a fortune on it, think of nothing else  and bore us all senseless for months, and then one day simply wake up and decide he didn't like 'it' anymore. Maybe I've got it from him then, this mad passion about something, this intense desire to do something, to become good at it, and then a sudden overwhelming boredom with it as soon as I have become good at it. Maybe that's why I've suddenly decided I loathe my job. Spent years on it, a great deal of effort, got quite good at it....and now I'd quite like to give it up and live in a cave somewhere.

How do you cure a problem like Marcos, eh?

Despite appearances, I am actually still quite positive. The urge to walk out in front of traffic was still there this morning (‘come on then, you feckers, prove you’re paying attention,’), but my usual desire to maim my fellow commuters with a blunt plastic coffee spoon just wasn’t. Positivity, see.

Ninja!

I ask you. A man with an avowed intention to give it all up and go and live on a commune somewhere, and then he only goes and gets himself an interview for some fancy arsed corporate job. “I hate the City!” he wails, “I need to get out!” and then off he promptly trots at the beck and call of the first besuited headhunter that happens to walk past.

I mean. Really.

I did ask myself what on earth I was doing and waggled the fickle finger of frustration, but then I reasoned to myself thus: it never hurts to talk to people, it’s only meant to be a short term thing anyway (three years or so), we can't just stop paying for stuff, and, well, yes it is quite an exciting role, and a wonderful opportunity, and, oh, well, they asked me. And of course having now been for the interview I’m fairly certain that they’re not actually going to ask me to do the job. In the spirit of détente I accepted that explanation and went for a drink.

Maybe it’s fear. Terror of the unknown. Scared that maybe the grass won’t be greener and I’m better off staying where I am, even if where I am happens to be stood ankle deep in mud and slowly sinking further. It has a name, you know, this hesitancy of mine. It’s a medical condition: Betterthedevilyouknowitis. From the Latin for ‘too lazy to act’. Disillusionment breeds sloth. Or is it sloth breeds misery? No fair, no foul? No jam, no bread, or something.

What a depressing day. Here, have some French ninja cats while I go and make myself a cup of tea and stare out of the window wistfully for a bit.