Being Me

A short play entitled 'Fran goes for an MRI scan' 'MRI, sweet?' 'Yes, my appointment's at 2. Er, honeybun.' 'No, I mean are you here for the MRI suite?' 'Ah, yes.  I'm having a scan of my knee.' ' Could you sit over there, please? We'll call you.' 'What will you call me this time? Coochy-coo?' [10 minutes later.] 'Do come through. Are you wearing anything metal?' 'Is my gold-encrusted underwear a problem?' 'You might need to remov -' 'It was a joke.' 'Any metal plates in your mouth?' 'No, my smile is always as big as this.' 'Is your bra wireless?' 'Yes, and I can print from it without using a USB connection.' 'Are you wearing a watch?' 'It's 2.05. Glad to be of help.' 'Please take the watch off and lie down here. I'll give you some headphones because ...

The Gas Man has Beeneth.  He came today to check our gas appliances and it was my day off work so I was here to let him in. Only people of a certain age will understand that cultural reference to Flanders and Swann singing 'The Gas Man Cometh'.  If you've never heard it, it's only 2 minutes long and it's very funny. It's all about what happens when you have people 'in' to do jobs and things go wrong. By the way, that's the first time I've ever learned to post a video link into a blog post, As I've now written 560 posts according to my stats, I don't think I could ever claim to be a fast learner. Talking about technology, I suppose the modern equivalent of The Gas Man Cometh would be The Computer Man Cometh. 'Twas on a Monday morning I rang Computer Man. He said, 'I am an expert. I'll help you if I can.' But he couldn't come 'til Thursday. I tried hard not to mind 'cause I had to use a notepad...

I'm teaching the great Irish writer Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' to sixth formers. A telling line in the play is when one character, Estragon, says, 'There's no lack of void.' After reading this line on Monday, we discussed how the characters in the play (and people in general) 'avoid the void' with useless, repetitive activities to distract themselves from how meaningless their lives seem. Estragon and Vladimir play silly games, swap hats, insult each other, sing nonsense songs and engage in faux-intellectual conversations, just to pass the time while they wait for Godot. (Spoiler alert: he doesn't arrive, folks.) I guess if Beckett wrote it today, he'd have Vladimir and Estragon playing Angry Birds on their phones, joining in with #ruinasongtitlebytakingawayoneletter on Twitter, and checking Facebook to see if anyone had a ham sandwich for lunch. I told the class I thought my title for the day's lesson 'Avoid the void...

I love the @VeryBritishProblems tweets.  They always make me laugh. There's even a book of them you can get from Amazon which is all about your little British awkwardnesse s  and there's a Facebook page. There's no need to miss out on the 'Yes, I do that' moments.  There's comfort in knowing you're not the only one who says sorry to people who bulldoze into you in the street because they weren't looking where they were going. Tonight, one tweet said, Missing the opportunity to correct someone, meaning you now have a brand new first name. #VeryBritishProblems And that reminded me. We had an after-school training session with a visiting speaker at my school some months ago.  There were at least thirty other teachers in the room. A colleague came up to me while we were busy doing group discussion and said, 'The trainer needs a fast typist to write up the notes as the groups give feedback. I've volunteered you.' Aren't people kind? ...