School's Out For Summer

School's out for summer  School's out forever  School's been blown to pieces

(Alice Cooper, School's Out)

Alice Cooper’s School’s Out is an invocation to freedom. In writing the song Cooper said he wanted to capture the anticipation of the final school bell: that period where time’s remorseless beat reduces to such a point to render six weeks eternal. For a child, there is no greater pleasure in knowing that soon those shutters of conformity will be lifted to reveal a glittering collage of tomorrows.

Well, as someone who works in a school, let me be the first to say that whatever joy a children may experience in breaking up: triple it, add a billion, times to infinitum – that’s what staff experience. I’m aware that unlike children we have volunteered to be there; therefore it stands to reason that the captives would feel more relieved than the captors when the abduction finally ends. However the pressure of holding children against their will, in cramped conditions, without regular access to the toilet is sometimes so great that it’s in fact of great relief when a SWAT team of calendars finally arrive to kick down the door, shine in a torch and shout: “It’s over. We’ve got you surrounded.’ Trust me, the handover of children from teachers to parents is done with no resistance.

So here I am today on the first day of my holiday. I won’t lie: I’m bloody excited. I’ve got plans. I’ve got big plans. Plans to read my way into enlightenment. Plans to write my way into Waterstones. I appreciate I should relax after what has been a long year in a new school. The joy of any new job means you start afresh, your copybook isn’t blotted by past mistakes; the paper is clean, pristine, allowing you the opportunity to write a new success story. The challenge of starting a new job means your achievements are unknown; the paper is clean, pristine, allowing you the opportunity to blot your copybook. A reputation isn’t built in a day. It takes time, energy and effort. This year I’ve begun the backbreaking labour of building something that I can be proud of. And I won’t lie, I’m now grateful for the extended tea break. But for all that, I don’t want to rest – not in the conventional sense anyway. I don’t want to lay back stupefied, consuming culture; I want to have a go at creating it. Short stories, poems, travelogues, funny incidences: I want to write everything down. Because I think I enjoy teaching, but I know I love writing.

At the moment, writing for a living is the stuff of fantasy, not autobiography. Simply, I do not commit enough time to it. I do not read enough to inform a style. I do not write enough to fashion my own. I need to do more. And here on Day One of my summer holiday I begin. I hope that these dreams and ambitions are not the stuff of every English teacher’s favourite Of Mice and Men and destined to go awry. I hope I don’t get seduced by the red dress of Netflix or the sausage curls of Facebook. I hope I don't put a bullet in the back of my productivity. I hope to one day get my own acre of land.

Now, I'm off to holiday in the South of France for a week. But when I get back I'll begin. I promise.

Only Connect

It’s difficult to feel proud to be British at the moment. Our democracy lies in ruins: not so Mother Theresa has been elected as Prime Minister without winning any kind of election; meanwhile, the opposition continue to tear down their own house, throwing the ensuing bricks at one another. As for May’s cabinet re-shuffle, she’s put Cameron’s Kings at the bottom and replaced them with a right Joker on top. Yes, No lie: Boris Johnson, a man who the rest of the world believes has a Pinocchio complex, is Foreign Minister. In the words of that classic British sitcom Dads Army, we’re doomed.

Also in the sporting arena we’ve shown ourselves up yet again. In our national game our players rather aptly froze against Iceland. Yes, Wales reached the semi-final, but isn’t the euphoria of Robson-Kanu’s Cruyff turn diminished when you remember they conceded two goals against England? Imagine conceding two goals in a major championship against England. Those Wales boys shouldn’t have been celebrated on their return home; they should have been bundled into the back of waiting cars, their bowed faces covered like offenders en-route to jail.

National embarrassments, Wales, return home.

For all the sporting and political shame, there is one thing we can feel proud of as a nation: our quiz shows. It is a golden era for quiz shows in Britain. Some of you may point to the age of Weakest Link and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire as the zenith, arguing that these were peak-time programmes that commanded huge viewing figures. In truth though, the former was a cold, hollow exercise in masochism, and the latter's thirteen year history is now remembered for a host’s annoying laugh and a contestant’s tickly cough. Essentially, neither were warm nor friendly, putting too much emphasis on tension and drama, and not enough on good old-fashioned quizzing.

Now, I love a quiz. I especially love a pub quiz. The pub quiz is apparently quite a British tradition – it doesn’t really happen abroad. We Brits don’t just use alcohol as a social lubricant; we use questions too. We’re simply too unevolved to ignite the fires of discourse and debate by rubbing our heads together, instead we depend on short-cuts, social firelighters, to inflame our talk.

"Just what should we call our team."

Me and the girl are also quiz machine addicts. One Saturday we came out The Dickens Museum early (I seem to have inherited my mum's desire to push interests onto a partner: just as she has my dad traipsing round pencil museums and slate museums, I force my girlfriend to go around the homes of dead authors) and had hours to kill before we met out friends for dinner. Knowing that The Rocket on Euston Road has a pub quiz machine, we went in there and fed its belly with 50p pieces. Despite being over-sated with lovely silver, the machine did not regurgitate its excess, meaning we left penniless two hours later, our dreams of future home ownership lying in the balance.

Anyway, the show I wanted to talk to you about today is BBC 2’s Only Connect. Such is Connect’s success that last season it gained an internal promotion and moved offices from BBC4 to BBC2. This was its 11^th season and the first one I saw; I’m now a lifelong convert and will visit its altar until the day some senseless heathen decommissions it.

For those of you who haven’t seen Only Connect, essentially it is the smarts of University Challenge without the smugness. Whereas Challenge is combative- Mensa cards at dawn- Connect is kind, cosy and prone to good-natured joshing. It helps I think that the contestants are older and therefore more self-aware; consequently they wear their intelligence lightly, knowing that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter.

Victoria Coren-Mitchell is also a European Tour poker champion. Fact.

Connect is hosted by the lovely Victoria Coren-Mitchell, daughter to a famous wit, sister to a food critic and wife to a famous comedian. And in her fiendish quiz, she will have her vengeance. The questions are hard in Only Connect, there’s no getting past it. There are some episodes where I struggle to get a question right. But like Challenge the joy lies in that hope you might get one. Now in fact would be a good time to start because at the beginning of the series the questions are easier, you have a fighting chance, by the end of the series even an omniscient deity couldn’t help you.

The show is divided into four rounds. The first asks you to understand what links the four answers. For example, ‘Monday: met,’ ‘Tuesday: drink,’ ‘Wednesday: made love,’ ‘Thursday: made love,’ the answer would be ‘Craig David’s week.’ The earlier you get the sequence the more points you get. The next round asks you to name the final answer in the sequence; this week’s one was

Charlotte I, George VII, William V and … Can you guess what it is? After that is the Word Wall, perhaps even harder than the Berlin one to penetrate. This one plots 16 words that you have to group into 4 categories of four, naming the links at the end. Have a go at doing the one below.

"Bring on the wall."

The last round is the missing vowels round and is the one ‘the girl’ most excels at. In this round, you’re given a category, e.g. House of Commons positions, then have to name the words, e.g. blckrd; ldr f th cmmns; chf whp – did you get any of them?

So if you fancy giving your brain a half hour workout, why not sit in front of the gymnasium and be put through your paces with a kind instructor. Better that than Boot Camp with Paxman.

Only Connect is on BBC 2, Monday at 8.30

B is for Book

Once upon a time in a little primary school some children set out on an extraordinary journey. Millions of children go on this journey, but then they become grown ups and they forget it ever happened.  Since we were born we’ve looked at these strange squiggles – they’re everywhere – but we can’t understand them. This is the story of how we learned to break the code. It’s a mad, bad tale epic in scale. And we’ll be ready – I mean reading. We’ll discover for ourselves a wonderful, magical universe called books.

B is for Book is a beautiful BBC 4 documentary on how children learn to read. It opens with the above narration of Taijah, a precocious 6 year-old child that describes love as 'when you like someone and don’t know what’s going on.’ She then introduces us to her school, which we're informed encapsulates the whole world, playing host to 47 different languages – and two resident chickens. A later shot shows her in a school council jumper – her natural warmth and smiling articulacy a reminder of what we are missing in our own grown-up government.

Taijah: anthropologist and poet.

Over the programme she introduces us to her friends. There’s Sienna who wants to be a teacher, failing that a butterfly. There’s William who lives with his mum and two-year old brother. There’s Maria, a monolingual English speaker to Portuguese speaking parents. There’s Stephan and Nicholas, twins who are similar in appearance but different in manner. The children all live on the Kingsmead Estate, a notorious backdrop for a 1980’s paedophile killing, and a supposed symbol of urban decay. For all of this, the children are thriving in the neighbouring school, enjoying results way beyond the national average. This is down to the hard work of teachers and the supportive atmosphere at home. The investment in these capital children is bearing fruit, and it’s wonderful to see.

The odyssey into literary consciousness begins at the start of term where the Year One teacher explains the challenges facing young readers: ‘Some of the children come in not knowing the alphabet. Not knowing how to hold a book. Not knowing which way to turn it. They’re on a massive journey.’ Initially in the autumn term the children appear overwhelmed by the squiggles that thwart them at every turn. Sienna would rather play with her portable M&M fan than read a book; Stephan’s fear is so great that he ensconces himself under the table to avoid the lurking book monster – and intimidated Maria plays ventriloquist, waiting for other children to say the letters so she can repeat them back as if they were her own. For a short time, it appears that the children will not crack the code, that words for them will lack definition and form, like an eye drop world of hazy distinguishability.

What do these shapes mean?

Fear not though because these are super-children led by heroic masterminds. They will overcome the villain of Limited Recognition and win the day. In the winter term, these children achieve what King Canute couldn’t, turning the tides in their favour. Through the cape of practise, the children grow into being wonderful, expressive readers. It isn’t long before the code is cracked, broken and defeated forever. They now have the means for their imaginations to soar higher than the whole Marvel universe.

As a teacher, I loved B is for Books as it reminded me about the power of reading. William’s mum uses books to teach her child about why his dad doesn’t live with them anymore, and the twins’ parents use them to explain a grandparent's death. Now the children I teach are older, but books still reveal things about their world that they were previously unaware of. For example in teaching Inspector Calls this year, my class has been introduced to trade unionism, socialism and capitalism. Often books can promote issues that the mainstream media chooses to ignore. Creativity isn’t under the same market pressures as fact, which means books can often be more illuminating on the world than newspapers. In a world of quick-hit Smartphone literacy, books need promoting and preserving. Just because we’ve cracked the code of what the squiggles mean, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t now reflect on what those words mean. The journey of reading shouldn’t end with literacy but continue in hot, nebulous pursuit of enlightenment.

Given I’ve been banging on about books, I should probably talk about one I’ve been reading this week. Provided You Don’t Kiss Me is Duncan Hamilton’s memoir of Brian Clough’s managerial career. Hamilton was a journalist for the Nottingham Evening Post and enjoyed unrivalled access to Clough during his heyday. The reason why Hamilton had the confidence of the manager is typically Cloughie: in their first meeting Clough asks Hamilton about what job his father does; Hamilton replies that he was a miner. Clough, one of nine children born to working-class Middleborough, appreciates his story so allows Hamilton to write his. Over the course of twenty years, Hamilton is there by Clough’s side to witness Nottingham Forest’s ascent from Division 2 to Division 1, and winning back-to-back European Cups. Imagine the Nottingham Forest of today winning the Champions League in three years time – that is what Clough achieved.

Hamilton and his subject.

Clough didn’t achieve this alone though. His assistant Peter Taylor was his right-hand man, and left-brain man. Clough was a man-manager phenomenon: he could look at a player walking down for training and know from their body language whether they needed a kick or a kiss. He was a visionary thinker: he could walk into an underachieving club and see the achievement he would bring. He was creative: he wanted his players and staff to be kept on his toes, so would introduce chaos where others sought structure. On the other hand, Taylor was methodical in tracking players, a scout who lived by the mantra, ‘Be prepared.’ They met as players in Middlesbrough where Taylor argued successfully for the young Clough to be captain. Away from the training ground, Taylor and Clough would talk politics with the former educating the latter. Their story reminded me of The Smith’s Morrissey and Marr where two working-class lads came together to form beautiful music – only this time the music was three points.

Taylor and Clough.

What I loved about the book is how seriously it treats its subject. Football is often dismissed as being something insignificant. But how can it be when it is significant to so many people? How can you dismiss something that occupies the thoughts of billions of people? It can be challenged but it can’t be ignored. Hamilton, an avowed bibliophile, writes about football with a poetry that is often denied this great sport; one choice bit I want to share is his reaction to Peter Taylor’s promise that retaining the European Cup was just the beginning, that the best was still to come:

I can still hear Taylor speaking those words, and the moment makes me think, incongruously, of the final passage of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, of the dream so close that Gatsby could hardly fail to grasp. Like Gatsby, what Taylor didn’t know was that dream was already behind him: the pinnacle of his career had been reached at that very hour.

Taylor and Clough would never relive that dream again. After Taylor published an autobiography without the approval of Clough, the two would fall out, split and irrevocably divorce. The two would never individually achieve the success they enjoyed together. It was a painful divorce that the two would come to regret.

The book that destroyed the story.

Given Clough was the consummate self-publicist, I’ll leave you with one of his quotes that shows his twin gifts: God-like genius and human volatility.

‘I only ever wanted to be manager of England. I’d have made the difference as well, you know. I’d have won the World Cup. Mind you, I’d probably have started a world war in the process…’ 

B is for Book is available on iPlayer.
Provided You Don't Kiss Me won the 2007 Sports Book of The Year. 

Glastonbury Highlights

Even though this blog is about Glastonbury, I should make it clear that I didn't actually go to the festival this year. Being a secondary school teacher entitles me to thirteen weeks of holiday a year, but it doesn’t entitle me to take time off whenever I want; as a result I have never been to the world’s greatest music festival. I once worked in a school where a colleague did go to Glastonbury, saying he had a ‘wedding’ to go to on the Friday. On returning to work on the Monday, he bore more resemblance to a funeral: his deathly pallor and sunken eyes acting as an open coffin warning, fuck with the Gods of the term-time calendar and they'll come for you. Heeding this, I've never been on a Glasto' weekender.

So each year I set up camp in my living room and watch the highlights. Upset that I could never go to Somerset, I used to try and imitate the world of Worthy Farm by bringing mud into the house and pissing into a bottle, but since courting I’ve been told that this behaviour is both selfish and bizarre. My girlfriend tells me that instead of re-creating the physical terrain of the festival, I should replicate the financial burden of going; thence she now charges me £200 to watch the highlights, alongside £6 for a pint of beer. Next week, she is taking her friends away on holiday.

Mud.

Anyway, the best bands I saw on the old telebox were LCD Soundsystem and Coldplay. Fans of mainstream music will politely say they are unaware of the first, but love the second. Fans of alternative music will love the first, but impolitely say the second are a Chilcot inquiry against music. That 2.6 million words is not enough to cover all the auditory crimes the band have committed. That sending Chris Martin and his cronies to The Hague would not be a suitable enough punishment for all the harm they have committed. That Coldplay should have a tow rope pulled taut to their ear and be then dragged kicking and screaming down the street in a symbolic reenactment of the pain they bring to us all. Then when their lobes are ripped raw from their heads, a Greek chorus will assemble round them to sing, ‘Fix that you fuckers.’ 

I guess what I’m saying is people hate Coldplay.

I’ve always really liked them. They were the first band I got into in a big way. Their first album Parachutes was a massive hit that earned them critical and popular acclaim. A lot of Coldplay detractors would cite this as the band’s best work, offering as it does a quasi-covering of Jeff Buckley and Radiohead’s best acoustic moves. Alan McGee, manager of Oasis, described it as ‘music for bedwetters,’ so it wasn’t for everyone. I loved it because it had a commercial sound, which was easy for my young teenage ear, alongside a vulnerability that meant it wasn’t for the ‘lads.’ Over the years their sound would grow more anthemic, encompassing the muscular Rush of Blood To The Head, the mess that was X and Y, the transitionary Viva La Viva, and the colourful outpourings of Mylo Xyloto and A Head Full of Dreams. It is true that Coldplay don’t re-invent the wheel when it comes to music, that their have been missteps, times when their sound has been over-earnest, too heavy on platitudes, too light on attitude; but the ubiquity of their music proves the wheels show no signs of coming off.

Alan McGee: a grown man that still does this.

So to their Glastonbury performance. The band have headlined the festival before and know how to do it. This isn’t an easy thing to do. Many big bands have tried and failed to conquer the Pyramid Stage. Whereas Coldplay wet the bed, other bands shit themselves when it comes to playing in front of 100,000, along with the millions watching at home. For example, Alan McGee's Oasis were so bad at their headline spots that years on those in attendance are still unable to wash the stink from them. Even people that hate Coldplay appreciate they know how to put on a show.  Their set begins with Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator calling on men and women to unite – an important message given we're just a few days after Brexit. Then, we’re into the tunes. Arms are held aloft whilst mouths mouth to the words. Both stage and fans are awash with colour (the wristbands of attendees glow with colours to fit the mood). Chris Martin jumps and jives around the stage like Michael McIntyre put to music, whilst the other nondescripts chime out the melodies to their hit sounds. It’s all very easy listening, but it’s joyous and communal – which surely is no bad thing.

Look at all the pretty colours.

A lovely touch in the show is the band’s decision on what to cover. It being the year of Prince and Bowie, you’d think the choice would be made for them. Instead they chose Viola Beach’s ‘Boys that Sing.’ If you recall, the band were killed in Sweden when their car plunged into the water at the start of the year. Martin and the boys respectfully coalesce their own version with the band’s video to give the young band a chance to headline Glastonbury. There will be some of you making the joke: if it isn’t bad enough they died young, they’ve got Coldplay playing a musical tribute to them. I think that’s unfair. The 'play are decent lads with decent tunes. They may not be the best band in the world but to my mind it's no bad thing they’re the biggest.

 And now for something completely different. 

LCD Soundsytem are the epitome of cool. Fronted by James Murphy, they are a glorious cut and paste of every hip 45 in High Fidelity’s record store. Formed in 2001 the band came to prominence with their hipster-baiting Losing My Edge (I hear everybody you know is more relevant than everybody that I know. But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry …) It is at once a piss-take of people who collect music to name-check and an acknowledgement that all musos do this to some degree. From there the band produced their eponymous album, boasting the hysterical thrash of ‘Daft Punk is Playing in My House’ and the sexual yelp of ‘Disco Infiltrator.’ Their greatest success though was reserved for their second album, ‘Sound of Silver.’ 'Sound' is one of my favourite records as it trades in the first album's archness for romanticism. It retains the groove of the first and adds an emotional honesty, meaning it connects with your heart as well as your feet.

I missed out on the opportunity to see LCD Soundsystem first time round. They were playing at my university in my first year, but I wasn’t in to them yet. By the time I had become an ardent follower, they had disbanded vowing never to return. Well, like all bands other than The Smiths and The Jam they have re-united; although for Soundsystem, still relatively young, you feel that this is as much musically motivated as it is money related. 

Live LCD are everything I hoped. Starting with Us V Them, my girlfriend walks into the living room and says, “they’re a bit repetitive aren’t they.” And she’s right, they are. But this isn’t repetition without purpose, filler to cover the cracks of no discernible ideas; this is repetition with motivation, the rubbing of sticks that brings about glorious, incendiary choruses. If Chris Martin is the Michael McIntyre of music, then James Murphy is the Stewart Lee, because by the time you get to the end of the song all the preceding layering makes perfect sense.   

Their set also boasts three of my favourite songs from the last decade. ‘Someone Great’ is a twitchy meditation to lost love, a beautiful lamentation that doesn’t understand why it isn’t raining when someone great is gone. It is Auden’s Funeral Blues put to electronica and is mesmerisingly beautiful. Another favourite that they play towards the end is ‘New York I Love You. But You’re Bringing Me Down.’ Just like his heroes The Velvet Underground, Murphy can do a piano ballad as well as Lou Reed. The song meshes the archness and romanticism I talked about earlier to be utterly scathing about a city that has sold its soul to billionaires yet utterly enthral to it too.  They of course end on ‘All My Friends.’ I get why some people don’t like LCD Soundsystem, but I cannot countenance a human being that doesn’t like this tune. It begins with a propulsive, compulsive rhythm akin to The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard;’ then comes the hit and run drum kicks of New Order; next we’re into Murphy’s vocals, a defiant rasp against the dying light. The closing triumvirate of driving guitar, pulsating keyboard and plaintive refrain, ‘If I could see all my friends tonight,’ makes it the song of the millennium. I just wish I were there in person to witness it.

LCD close the night, pulling the bed covers on Glastonbury.

So Coldplay and LCD Soundsystem, the uncoolest and coolest bands on the planet. Liking both: what does it make me? The uncoolest cool person or the coolest uncool person? Out of all the literary techniques, I’ll take being an oxymoron. Rather that than being irony. Imagine how insufferable they would be. “Hey, can you just give me a straight answer.” Weird way to end a blog by doing a riff on literary techniques, isn't? Ah well, it’ll do.

Both performances are available on BBC iPlayer.