Fairy Hanny

Paloma bar, Sanur, Bali

Watching the Dancing Queen and the Daydream Believer. Lovely ladies passing in the night. I cant believe the Daydream Believer is 41 with a teenage son. She looks about twenty! Then again, in my travels I have noticed that Asian women seem to age very slowly until they have a year when they go from looking twenty-something to sixty-something. And it seems to happen overnight.

I am approached by a drunken young man with bumfluff and a rugby tash – 15 aside! He wants to know what I am writing about, so I say I am working on lesson plans for the next school term. So he fecked off back to his table.

I watch the local guys with their women. Very patriarchal. Almost primitive relationships. And they wonder why their women are attracted to westerners.

And I recall Freddie Mercury asking;

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

It feckin stinks!

Phuket.

I am sure I will write about this a lot!

They legalised Cannabis in Thailand so the place is filling up with pot heads. That takes me back to my youth when I was a big fan of a band called Gong. They had songs about Pothead Pixies, Flying Teapots and Submarine Captain Capricorn. It was crazy music, filled with bizarre riffs, saxophones and funny sayings.

‘What are we gonna do then?’

‘Eat the phone book!’

Back to Thailand and Cannabis. Morally I could not give a flying fart about people doing that sort of thing. My poison is beer.

However, Cannabis smoke is a disgusting stench. It’s like someone set fire to a piss-soaked mattress. Someone asked me if I’ve ever smelt a burning, piss-soaked mattress, and it reminded me of my childhood, climbing up onto the roofs of the block of garages opposite my home. Then we would jump off to land on old mattresses stacked against the wall. And yes they were piss soaked mattresses. And yes someone did set fire to one!

When you know, you know!

Back in Oman

So there goes 8 weeks of summer!

8 weeks in the same hotel – Sanur Seaview Hotel, Sanur, Denprasar, Bali.

After 2 weeks I thought I’d made a mistake, as most of the restaurants and bars along the nearby beach were closed by 9.30 pm. Then I walked off the other way and discovered Santorini Restaurant, Paloma Resto and Barbarossa.

And Bottle Avenue, an off-licence which stays open until midnight.

Then I settled into a pattern. Breakfast at the hotel or the Repro bar. Sit on the beach reading, or sit somewhere writing. Then a long exploring walk or a swim in the pool for the afternoon. Then a restaurant for the evening, and maybe some more writing.

Writing?

The Fairy Hanny blog is full of reflections from my time here. I sit with a diary/journal and just write about what I see or remember. A lot of my journal bits refer to the dirty bastards who smoke in restaurants and I hate the smell!

My fourth book featuring the wonderful Fairy Hanny is typed up as a second draft – first draft is handwritten with a fountain pen! I will put ‘Fairy Hanny and the Knights in White Satin’ aside for a couple of months while I work on one of my other creations. I have the story of Dr. BQ at the boarding school called St. Nedds; or a couple of Inspector Flaange mysteries. Plus the recollections of working on a farm in Switzerland as a counter to my time in Nuclear research at Sellafield.

I know I will be busy.

And I have to consider retiring next year.

Where to? UK, Spain, Thailand, Bali?

Deep thoughts must be thunked!

I dont to talk about it

Same band playing same songs. Paloma Bar.

They played I don’t want to talk about it. Rod Stewart did a great version live with Amy Bell.

It set me back again.

How many broken hearts in this world?

Jane, Diana, Louise, Sara, Aisha, Nurgul, Irada, Lala, Daisy Daisy, Tasha, Anna, Ramilla… and mine.

It often feels like Be Bop Deluxe – just like Ships in the Night, and I am nearing midnight.

To lighten my mood I tried an old joke with the waitress. I think it was originally a Groucho Marx quip.

‘I still like chasing women, I just can’t remember why!’

No smile or acknowledgement. She just asked, ‘What does chasing mean?’

You know that life has lost its fun when you have to explain a joke.

Like innuendo…

Angie and the floppy disc.

More recollections; why do the evenings in Bali make me reminisce?

I am back at the Paloma bar and the act are playing the classic Rolling Stones song Angie. A flood of memories.

Only 16 and just moved into the sixth form and stated going to the pub, not that it was legal. I think many of the pub staff were just very relaxed about things and were more concerned with older pissheads who wanted to cause trouble. A few kids sitting in the corner slowly drinking pints of bitter was a minor distraction. Of course if the police ever came in we would be in trouble. Back in those days most of us had long hair and bumfluff which made us look older. And young girls can cover themselves in make-up and a 15-year-old can be mistaken for a 29-year-old. I believe the expression we used for such young ladies was jailbait.

So after a school meeting one Friday we went to the Falcon Pub to meet some of the girls from St. Gregory’s – that was the catholic girls school and St. Kevins was the catholic boys school.

I met Angela.

As the evening moved on we started holding hands and then kissed; I walked her home.

I was in love.

We made a few phone calls but never managed to meet up. Then a couple of weeks later I heard she was dating one of the guys from the year above. I was devastated and found for the first time in my life that drinking beer does not numb the pain, it just makes the anger swell. One of my mates, Danny, actually stole a street sign and presented it to me.

The street was Angers Lane.

About a year later Angela contacted me and wanted to meet up. I guess Brian had gone off to University and dumped her. She came to my house and we climbed up into the converted attic. I’d done the conversion by putting down sheets of hardboard flooring and closing down the eaves. It was originally going to be a pace for my model railway but by 16 I’d given up playing with trains (I started again aged 50!).

The Loft, as we called it, had become a place to play records, burn incense and drink beer or cider. The night Angela came round we played Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and James Taylor. We drank a lot of cider and Angela decided she wanted to make up for letting me down the previous year. With too much cider in my body I had reached the state where the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I love the expression Brewers Droop; it was the worse ever experience of losing my cherry.

From then onwards, whenever I see the expression floppy disc I think of that night. And hearing Angie brings it back too!

Paloma Bar and Resto, Sanur, Bali.

Deaking with life… in a bar

I was welcomed as I had been there before! I sat down with a beer and a menu, and then a pissed up Australian decided I was his mate. He sat opposite me and started jabbering about being born in England but moved to Australia when he was eleven and was now retired. I told him I’d tried retiring three times but didn’t like it.

No smile.

Then he decided to call me a Scouse Bastard. Now I know Aussies call each other Bastard in a friendly way so I went along with it and explained to him that I am a Catholic Scouse Bastard.

My mistake. Turns out his father was a Scottish Presbyterian who believed in Ulster being part of Britain and that all Catholics support the IRA. I told him I had been TA Officer working with Army Cadets in the UK but he was too pissed to follow.

Fortunately the bar staff moved him away so I could eat.

Then for some reason I found myself talking with the Bar Owner. She was a kid aged 25! How the feck do you get to own a bar when you’re 25?

Family money?

Crime?

Family money from crime?

Anyway she asked if I believed in Jesus. I said I am a Physicist and find it hard to deal with the logic of religion, despite my Catholic upbringing. I hoped we would move on to another subject…

She quoted a few things from the Gospels, alleged teachings of Jesus. I pointed out the Gospels were written at least one hundred years after Jesus had died, and that the meticulous records kept by the Romans in Judaea showed no record of a prophet known as Jesus. I also asked her if she could show me where in the bible it says that Rape and Slavery are bad things, and did she realise that many of the things it says in Leviticus would probably mean that by now she probably should have stoned a few people to death.

Then I pulled out a few quotes on my Phone;

“If a man lies with a male both shall surely be put to death.

Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Destroy the entire nation. Men women children and babies.

You may beat your slave as long as they don’t die within 2 days.

If a man rapes a virgin he must pay 50 shekels to marry her.”

Her comeback?

‘You’re just old and sceptical.’

It was an interesting night!

Teachers who have a previous career…

Teaching reflections – not in a Physics class.

Why do so many people who enter teaching after a failed career somewhere else, feel they know how to run a school?

I once knew a Headmaster who started out as an accountant, then trained as a Solicitor, became a school Bursar, then was appointed as a Head, having never taught a lesson in his life!

I knew a Physics teacher who spent fifteen years in research then moved into teaching without completing any teacher training. The first thing she said to me was that all Deputy Heads and Heads were dickheads – I was a Deputy Head at the time.

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And an older woman who took early retirement then decided to teach English, again without a teaching qualification. She instantly upset the Head of English and the EAL staff by making out that she knew more than all of them put together. She was another one who knew how to get senior staff on her side through gossip and innuendo. Three English teachers quit because of her – Great Job!

Then we have OFSTED, full of failed bankers, lawyers, accountants and other professional idiots. And they come into schools to evaluate teachers and not one of them has ever spent a day teaching! [rude word deleted].

But the biggest Tw@ I ever met was a guy with a degree in Music who went to be an IT technician in a school in Shanghai. He was sacked for incompetence. The next thing he is a senior teacher at my school, leaching of the narcissistic Head, trying to tell the rest of us how to teach. The best part was when, after a lesson observation with one of my Science colleagues, he said he wanted to give her some feedback. She just looked at him and said, ‘You’re not a qualified teacher so I am not listening’ and walked out of his office!

Magic!

Arrogant idiots

Dunning-Kruger syndrome

I get fed up with stupid people who think they know everything. I see people these days who pick up their phones when I tell them some Historical or Political fact. They feel they have to check what I said. I call that rude ignorance.

It takes me back to a former arrogant colleague I worked with at a boarding school in England. He was ex- boarding school with that silly British accent – they call it Queens English. I’m from Liverpool with my 1960’s scouse accent, which is a little different to what I hear these days in Liverpool!

Anyway, Marc always tried to make out he was better than me – little put-downs, smarmy jokes at my expense etc. The feckin eejit had no idea about scousers and our independence.

So one day we were chatting. I asked him about his school, his university (some low-grade place where just managed to get a pass in politics and history), and the fact that he didn’t have a PGCE so wasn’t really a qualified teacher. He was also living up the Headmasters arse.

It turns out his Daddy was a senior Army officer, so he got his boarding school place paid for by the taxpayer… That opened a door for me!

‘So you used to live off the benefit system?’

Strike one.

I have an honours degree in Physics, still one of the hardest degrees to obtain. I have a PGCE and at the time I was working on my master’s degree.

Strike two.

The I just said, ‘Look Mark, you grew up in this boarding environment and you’re still living the same life. I grew up in the arse end of Liverpool, fought my way through a really rough school where teachers thought you were a success if you passed one O level, got a degree in Physics and have a PGCE and I am a fully qualified teacher. And you’ve done fuck all with your life!’

Strike three.

He avoided me after that…

Return to Redbeard.

Watching people.

Back at the Barbarossa restaurant and bar. This time I see a big group of western men with Indonesian WAG’s. Am I jealous… All very noisy, but thankfully ignoring me.

On the menu for me today was duck breast with mashed potatoes and steamed veg. Fabulous. Also this place has the best beer in Sanur – Summer Pale ale. I cant believe itd the fourth week and I need to extend my visa to 60 days – easy to do online.

For some reason this large group is intimidating and I am reluctant to take out my laptop and start writing. I don’t want anyone to think I am one of those feckin pain-in-the-arse ‘influencers’, trying to grift a meal. I want to shout, ‘I’m writing a book!’.

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Of course there are a couple of ignorant smokers, pumping their stench at the rest of us. Selfish bastards. I still have the desire to stand next to one of them and do a continuous 10-minute stinky fart and see how they enjoy that! It would have to be one of those farts that engulfs the room for at least 15 minutes and the odour should stick to their clothes like cigarette smoke does to others.

Feckers.

Then one of them would say, ‘Bejaysus! Nothing smells like that and lives!’

Meanwhile I would like to inject small particles of carcinogenic pollutants into their lungs in order to balance the equation.

I remember a chat In had recently with one of my students. Jenna agrees that some of us just don’t feel the need to be constantly talking, while others cant shut up for even five minutes. It seems the average person cannot cope with silence. In some ways that constant glib chatter is the bane of teachers’ lives.

The chatty brats try to make out that the quiet ones, the introverts and those with self-control, are somehow outsiders who are not willing to conform. Whereas those with common sense who live mindfully think the chatter’s are bleating sheep.

I catch phrases like;

‘Did you see Corrie last night?’

‘Did you hear about…’

‘She said…’

It reminds me of the quote about gossip from Socrates. The three filters –

Is it true?

Is it useful?

Is it good or kind?

If it doesn’t pass all three then don’t bother telling me!

St. Kevins Roman Catholic Comprehensive School, Kirkby, Merseyside.

Dating.

Though it was actually still part of Lancashire when I first went there in 1968.

Two thousand boys.

Testosterone City.

Fights everywhere, sometimes with the boys, sometimes with the teachers.

Priests with a streak of Sadism.

There was a ritual you had to go through if you had a date with a girl. It went like this – and I will make no apology for having lived through this ordeal many times.

‘Did you go out with some tart the other night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you get your hole?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get your finger?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get your tit?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a queer?’