Fairy Hanny

Christmas

I was getting close to quitting any idea of being a writer. I have three books on Amazon but few sales. I was walking on the beach today in Hawana, Oman. I have outline plans for at least 9 more books and so I decided i should keep going.

Then when I got home I found this in an email;

“You have the strength to look beyond every reason your mind comes up with to make you believe nothing will ever work for you.

Abundance will find you.

Be open and ready to receive.

Despite all the “never”, and “impossible” that pops up in your mind, you have to keep showing up and focus on creating moments of healing.

Reframe your definition of the ‘right time’.

Society’s timeline or other people’s journey shouldn’t be your yardstick.

What may be the right timing for one person may not be good for another.

Honor the pace of your unique journey.“

5. Camels and Goats

It still makes me smile when I see the road sign indicating Beware of Camels! On my way into the city I have to travel along some back roads and a long dual carriageway, all surrounded by open land. The local farmers have various herds of camels that seem to just wander freely around the area, though I am sure there must be some kind of stables for them at night.

Anyway the camels literally just roam about, eating whatever green stuff they can get hold of, and that includes just randomly crossing the roads. It’s always interesting when you notice the cars ahead slowing down and putting their hazard lights on because there are camels in the road!

Yesterday they were all out, camels, donkeys and goats!

Which reminds me, some of my errant year 7 kids were back in today, having taken a few days off last week as they thought school finished with the last exam. Marvin and Soft Lad are always a source of amusement, whether they mean it or not. They sit next to each other and have done all year – better to keep them like that as they are both incredibly weak academically, though Soft Lad has the odd flash of inspiration. Anyway Soft Lad is right-handed and Marvin is left-handed, but they insist on sharing a desk with Marvin on the right and Soft Lad on the left. So they are always bumping elbows when they write. I have been telling them to swap places since September last year, however they forget and end up with a minor tussle every lesson.

Today they came in as disorganised as ever. Soft Lad didn’t have his notebook, pen, or pencil. So I sorted him out with what he needed and got him going. I have no idea where his head was today and it certainly wasn’t in the Maths classroom. He was probably out in the Universe like a space cadet. His paper ended up looking like a collection of Egyptian hieroglyphics, interspaced with scribble and weird shapes. When I asked why he just stared at me, as though I was somehow at fault for having the nerve to question him.

Meanwhile Marvin was looking everywhere but his paper or the textbook. Some of the other kids started to complain that Marvin was staring at them, so I moved to the front corner of the room and said Marvin can now stare at me – and he did.

For some reason Bing and Bong were in school today and they were added to the year 9 group to follow that timetable for the day. Needless to say the nutty twins disrupted all learning for their adopted class. Those idiots don’t need to come to school, they could easily be sitting at home playing with their Nintendo’s.

I had to do a cover lesson with year 8 in a Biology lesson. The topic was The Human Skeleton. I decided to start the lesson with a question – where is the smallest bone in the human body? Well Stubby, an English kid living here with his Dad who works in the Oil Industry, burst out laughing. He could not control his laughter so I sent him out of the room for 5 minutes to calm himself down. Once the rest of the class were working, I went out to chat with him to see what was so funny.

“It was your question!”

“What?”

“About the smallest bones in your body,” he smirked.

“Why is that funny?”

“Because they’re in you thingy!” he laughed.

I was puzzled for a moment. Then I understood.

“Stubby there aren’t any bones in a penis,” I stated in a very teacherly manner.

He glared at me and put his hands on his hips.

“Then why do they say you’ve got a boner?” he asked.

Then I was the one suffering from uncontrollable laughter.

Oh the misconceptions of children!

4. End of term looming.

Well we’ve still got three weeks before school finishes for the summer. However the attitude of many of our students seems to be Exams are over so I’m not coming to school anymore. This is made worse by the fact that next week is Eid and so school is closed for the week; then we have one week back and boom – summer holidays!

Bonus of course is that Screwloose, Princess Bulbhead, and the Bespectacled Toad have all given up. Will I ever have the pleasure of those angry looks from the Bulbhead? Or watch the weird shenanigans of Screwloose? And listen to the endless excuses from the Toad and his Mother? Of course I will because they exist in other year groups too!

I remember at teacher training college completing my PGCE we had a Sociology session with an ex-teacher. Now, bear in mind that my first degree is B.Sc. in Applied Physics, then maybe you might get why Sociology seemed odd to me! Anyway, as we sat down the lecturer gave us all a printout showing Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Imagine a roomful of Physics, Chemistry and Engineering graduates having that sort of thing placed in front of you and then being asked to comment on it.

“It’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” said some bearded odd-bod.

“And?”

We were lost; why had this idiot put this printout in front of us? Was he going to show us the movie? (It would have been on a VHS tape in them days!)

We looked to him expectantly.

“That will be the people in every class you teach in the future,” he said.

It didn’t make sense at the time but after many years of reflection it makes perfect sense.

Snow White is the Goody two shoes that comes along, snitching on all the other kids in the hope of getting in the teachers good books – horrible child. Doc is the smart kid who answers every question before the others get a chance – horrible child. Dopey never has the right books or equipment and spends the first ten minutes of every lesson trying to sort himself out – horrible child. Grumpy is that kid who always just complains about doing any work and constantly says when will I ever use this in real life? I always ask them if this is their real life or are we really living in The Matix? Another horrible child!

Then there is Bashful who is good at Maths but has little self confidence and so only lets you know they got everything correct at the end of the lesson – a nicer child. And then we have Happy, that kid who has two left feet and shit for brains but somehow manages to just enjoy life; if he lost an arm in an accident he would boast that he still has another one. Another kind of nice child! Sleepy will never admit that he has been up half the night playing on his X-Box or PlayStation, who will be backed up by his parents when you say he doesn’t stay focussed in class – Maybe your lessons aren’t interesting enough. A real little horror from an unpleasant home!

Then we have the most annoying kid of all – Sneezy! There is constant noise of bubbling snot, coughs and sneezes without covering his mouth, usually saying he has a cold or allergies or asthma or something. When asked about medicine he doesn’t have any and hasn’t seen a doctor all year. This kid never seems to have the ability to see the link between his sneezing and all the other kids going off sick. Also, Sneezy is constantly asking to go to the toilet.

Of course the original story by the Brothers Grimm didn’t have the same name and it was a little darker than the Disney version, just like working in a school is darker than you are told at Teacher Training College.

So I can recognise another Bespectacled Toad in year 7, another Screwloose in year 8, and several other Princesses in other year groups who feel they are better than the rest of us. Now that the older ones have decided not to come to school any more, I am sure these other little annoyances will pop their heads further over the parapet. I can guarantee it!

3 Flying like lead balloons.

Of course we had to do our test flights. I wanted to go out to the outside balcony overlooking the sports field – actually it is an astro-turf football pitch – but they all complained that it was too hot outside. Back home in England I would be facing the opposite problem with students demanding to have lessons outside because it was too hot inside.

Contrasts.

Anyway, we went to the indoor balcony overlooking the big gym. The paper darts flew much as I expected, straight across and down. Bings’ went furthest and got a big cheer. Then came the ‘aeroplane’, made from a design I leant at Primary school, many years ago. (Actually we called it Junior School in them days, as the Infants school was in a separate building.) I had shown them how to make these planes by making them follow me, step-by-step using my visualiser; this is just a camera on a stick attached to my laptop which is then connected to the big TV screen called a Viewboard – isn’t life wonderful these days. In the end I had to finish the final folds for most of them.

First off went the twins. In both cases their planes went up in a loop, flew back towards us, and landed on the ledge of the supporting pillars, just out of our reach! Bing and Bong wanted to climb over the barrier to retrieve them – I saw a serious trip to the hospital coming up.

Princess Bulbhead machine a loop and a spiral glide downwards and her plane landed at the foot of the wall, just below us. Miss converse had a similar flight pattern, and managed to land about 5 metres away, which got a rapturous applause from the youngsters who had just files in. There were similar flight paths for most of the group, though Salty Salma Salmon managed to produce a nosedive, and the tail fell off the plane launched by the Bespectacled Toad.

Screwloose somehow managed to lose his creations somewhere between the classroom and the balcony. When I asked he just shrugged his shoulders and stared at me with that inane grin. I am certain that if he were at school in the UK he would have been assessed for ODD or ADHD or had a CAT scan to see if there was a brain in his skull.

2. The last few days

It’s the end of year and so to everyone’s deep joy it is exam time.

Some of the students have been really good to me by inventing pointless answers to some of the questions and basically just writing random numbers for answers. One of the Year 7 boys decided that every question requiring an answer with an angle – angles on a straight line, angles in a triangle, angles on parallel lines – the answer always had to be 0.4. It was kind of him to do that, so I just had to write a cross and a zero mark. Easy peasy.

Mustapha Screwloose, the mad kid who should probably be in an asylum, managed to score zero percent on one of his papers. Screwloose often greets me on the corridor with a Benny Hill type of salute, then starts laughing to himself. During lessons he often just sits staring at me with an inane grin on his face, like and Alsatian licking piss off a nettle. There is definitely a mental health issue with the kid but everyone is sort of skirting round it. The Demon in Charge had a look and said Screwloose is not autistic, as apparently the Demon In Charge is an expert on that sort of things.

The School Counsellor also had a chat with Screwloose and declared there is nothing wrong with the boy. I asked about his habit of putting his arms in the air and dipping his head forward like a chimpanzee locked in a small cage. ‘It’s developmental’ she said; just feckin Mental I said.

The members of 11S have been in and out this week. I believe the ‘S’ is meant to stand for ‘Sultan’. However, having watched their behaviour of the last year I think the ’S’ stands for ‘Satan.’ They are at times demonic! One of the funny things is that they don’t have to come to school except when the have an exam, and the little devils just keep coming in every day! I asked about it and got the response that their parents have paid fees and so they expect lessons to continue. Feck me! Princess Bulbhead has never done a full week in school until now! I think she comes in just to torment us, with her screeching laugh and her constant making fun of teachers but speaking in Arabic. She doesn’t realise that I understand body language and so it is obvious when she is attempting to make fun of me.

Also as a group 11S have shown almost zero interest in Mathematics for the whole year, though Bing and Bong continually just say I don’t get it or wat wait wait. Very annoying. Besides, they have goldfish memories, especially when it comes to completing homework – I forget, they say. I think one of them might just scrape a pass.

By the way, Princess Bulbhead got the name because she thinks she is a Princess and treats people like shit; and her head is in the shape of a light bulb.

Anyway I have to keep delivering lessons if they turn up to class. I had they idea of some STEM activities. First was making Towers from creating tubes from scrap paper. Bulbhead sat there with her arms crossed and I was convinced she was about to say I’m not playing. Eventually she took over managing her group and was laughing, joking, and enjoying the task. At the end of the lesson she had to work really hard to get back to her grumpy confrontational norm. Kids.

The next task was making a paper dart. I could not believe how difficult some of them found it to fold a piece of paper in half. Bing and Bong could not fold on straight lines. Marvellous Marwan was totally confused by the instructions, though I think he is just regularly confounded by life as he wanders the school like a toddler startled by a goat farting.

Later this week we will attempt some test flights. It should be interesting!

Buy the Book – This is Peter the Pixy with Piles.

School blog – Intro

So the UK didn’t quite work out how I expected.

Coming home?

Home is where the heart is, so they say. Clearly my home is no longer Liverpool. I suppose realistically I left that ‘home’ at 19 when I went off to the Polytechnic. A new life, a new world, a new set of people; with tendrils still linked back to ‘home.’

And now I am back teaching in the Middle East, a new home and yet another new life. Nobody really cared or visited when I was back on Merseyside. My sons even got to the point where they didn’t even want me to visit them. My sister lived a 15-minute drive from me and visited once in 2 years. I talk a lot with colleagues who have taught and travelled all over the world and we all find the same – when you go home nobody cares where you’ve been, they just want to go on about local gossip and what they’ve been watching on TV.

And I want to say, with throw backs to the good old days – ‘I have travelled on the Marrakesh Express;’ ‘I lived in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan so I have been back in the USSR;’ ‘I met my China Girl;’ and in tribute to an old pub in Coventry ‘I have visited the Alhambra Palace.’

Nobody seems interested.

I’m not quite on the other side of the world, but Oman is not quite East Anglia.

Which again makes me think; all those years I lived in Suffolk and hardly anyone, friends of family, came to visit.

Moving forward, as backward is the wrong direction, I want to introduce the world to my travels and travails in the world of Education. Meet the twins, Bing and Bong and their constant repeat I don’t understand. And Princess Bulb head, too rude for her own good, and thick as two short planks. Little Miss Converse who wears the same shoes every day and creates an interesting pong as she moves along. The bespectacled Toad and his crazy Mother who believes her son is a genius but suffers form bad teacher’s in every possible subject.

And the people in charge, demons, and midgets, who most people wouldn’t follow to the toilet…

Click to read the book!

Holiday poem – August 2005.

There was a young girl called Gaynor Finnegan,

She went walking in Arguineguin,

Paul came out and pulled her in again,

Same old timeshare spin again, begin again?

Fishing

Oh the fish came out the sea,

And turned in to a mammal,

So he had a cup of tea,

And rode off on a camel.

He sauntered on the soft sand dunes,

And it was all so nice,

So he ate a lovely bowl of prunes,

And chocolate covered rice.

He sat down on a bench,

And said that he was bored,

Then he chased a buxom wench,

And turned into a sideboard.

Then the poet came to me,

And claimed to be unstable,

So he asked me for my key,

To feast upon my table.

Swifty’s diet tips.

Wear big clothes.
Eat less.
Don’t eat burnt fish!
Bacon is sane.
Eat banana skin so nobody falls over.
Kale looks good on a model railway.
A steak tastes better and is less chewy than a stake.
Fairy cakes should be ordered by Gnomes.
Fried lettuce burns
Elephants should be consumed one piece at a time.
Eating shellfish is selfish.
It is difficult to follow a recipe in the dark
Recipe books make great door stops.
Celery sticks, so be careful.
Voiding your bowels before a meal is best done in a lavatory.
Chicken is a good substitute for coward.
Oranges and Lemons add colour to a religious stoning.
Earl Grey and Cannabis make a lovely High Tea.
Donuts should be devoured via the end of the alimentary canal.
Raspberries are a great dish for liars.
Raspberry Pi is not edible, even when served with microchips.

Scratchy Leathers.

Things we can wear at home;

“I’ll tell you what to wear!”

She said:

My dread.

Déjà vu in French – Morocco.

Did you know we travelled on the Marrakech Express?

Slowly – lentement Pierre;

Cramped corridor reality.

“Don’t go to the cludgy on here!”

Slowly – lentement.

Driving south – just a little thing from Jimi;

Youthful enthusiasm

Big Lad and Kevin

What an act

How much?

4 and 20

69 and 11

We were still riding.

Later that same day

Limping like a soggy biscuit,

I entered the ladies chamber.

“What do you want?”

What I always want;

Love –

And affection

And a mighty blast of Joy.

You can have all of my love

(The wheels were going round)

And my affection

(She sat alone in the compartment)

The joy left me

(Stuck in the juddering corridor)

I watched as the sun set on some forsaken desert landscape;

“Casablanca!” she said.

“Sacre bleu! Zoot Alors!

Ooh la la!”

They saw me from miles away, glowing pink from my wallet;

“Mister!”

“Teacher!”

“Give me money!”

“Give me passport!”

“Give me love and affection!”

The wheels went by places with names I can’t recall,

Resort stops in my life;

Benny, Siddy, Soukh.

We walked through Doha hand in hand;

It was a mistake – “I wouldn’t say that again Sir,

Not in this country.”

The wheels kept turning, my heart still yearning.

She asked what I was earning,

So I just grinned; gurning.

Ugly Bob is in the same boat,

Though we are on the railway,

Wheels going round and round;

Have you been here before?

“Of course it isn’t sorted yet!”

“I want to catch you in my net!”

Photo by Agoenk Fatahillah on Pexels.com

And here she comes with diamond handcuffs;

“Your next sentence could be your last!”

I avoided the balcony today,

So the mosquitoes (bless their little pointy heads)

Were forced on hunger strike as I decided

My blood is just for me.

Shopping in Magazines;

“Don’t go on your own,

You have to be with me,

Or you will make a mistake!”

Trust forms most of mistrust, so I will go alone;

Again.

To the heart of my soul.

“Are you always chasing our souls?” she asked.

She left me then

Limping like a biscuit

Through the streets of Marrakech

Clacker clacker clacker

Too much beer at the VIP bar none.

The she was shocked by my expletives,

“It must be a real pain,” she said through a mouthful of bread.

“You’ll never get to heaven if you tell me mother words.”

“Do you like my bird?”

I decided to stay at home again;

Travel is good for the soul, she said.

“Travel is good for our souls!” I laughed.

She didn’t understand – lentement Pierre!

The wheels continued round

The sun went down

(we don’t like it round here)

The mozzies dined well that evening.