Reservoir 13

During school time I find it difficult to read. I start a new term with noble intentions, resolving to read at least half an hour a day- to be the reader I wish my students to be. Unfortunately, it’s not long before this pragmatism undergoes a chemical change, vaporising into idealism, before reducing into absurdism. After marking assessments, correcting books and planning lessons, I’m mentally exhausted. 

Good prose should be a stimulant: lead to increased brain activity, prove pleasurable and invigorating. When taken on a busy working day though, its impact isn’t just negligible, but contrary. A writer’s finest passage is no match for tired eyes. Literary magic cannot compete with life’s sleepy dust. Yes, acclaimed authors your sentences are hypnotic: hypnotic enough to send me under, to put me to sleep. At least your harshest critic reads to the end of the book; I don’t even get to the end of the page.  If lauded authors saw the soporific effect of their writing, they would give up tomorrow, citing 'existential crisis' in their press release, wailing: “If my work meant anything, it should be able to sustain an English teacher into turning one page.” 

Do not be offended authors. I mean no offence. Its just reading- like sex- is a young man’s game: I can’t do it like I used to. Just give me a nap and I’ll try again in the morning.

In the holiday though I’m a different animal. I’m a man possessed. I’m popping books left. right and centre. I’m dancing to an author’s tune all night long. I’m having it large. A wild week of excess, a literary bender, a total blowout until responsibility comes calling. This week I’ve read Jon Ronson’s Frank and Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. I’ve also started The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. I’ll try and finish Whitehead’s book before Monday, otherwise it will be the Easter holiday until I’ve found out what’s happened.  

Me on books.

McGregor’s book is the one that I feel compelled to write about. I try to read a lot. I often like what I read. I attribute this to my friends, who have great taste, and the Radio 4 show A Good Read, where famous faces nominate their favourite books. However, it’s rare that I truly love a book. The last book I got really fanatical about was Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As a teacher I’ve taught Of Mice and Men for years: I still think it’s wonderful. What it is though is small, contained, a fable in many ways. I didn’t know Steinbeck could examine something with the rigour he does in The Grapes of Wrath. Its style is different too with the plainness of Mice replaced with something more ornate. I read it nearly two years ago. It’s taken me that long to fall for a book again.

McGregor’s book begins with the village disappearance of tourist and teenager Rebecca Shaw. From here on we would expect the book to be a generic crime-drama, a who and whydunnit. However, it never becomes that story. In an interview with The Guardian McGregor explained that he wasn’t interested in telling a murder mystery, rather he was more piqued in “the passing of time and routines of life, the dailyness of life.” For someone unwilling to write a Broadchurch­-type narrative, McGregor ironically uses the tricks of crime fiction: the red herring is there, only it isn’t a suspect, but the body. Rebecca is the MacGuffin that the reader focuses on, unaware the true mystery being exposed is life itself.

It isn't like Broadchurch.

What’s most impressive about this book is how it combines style and accessibility. McGregor’s story has thirteen chapters, each focussing on the year and subsequent years of the girl’s vanishing. To tell a story of a year in one chapter is something of an undertaking: David Nicholls managed it in One Day and McGregor executes it here. The latter’s approach is different though as where Nicholls adopted a fill-in-the-gaps approach to an annual form, McGregor gives us the details. Through sliding in and out of people’s lives in just a few sentences, he chronicles the major life events of villagers, somehow without leaving any out.

Each chapter begins at New Year fireworks.

In some respects the book reminded me of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. In that play for voices, Thomas dropped in and out of character’s lives, registering triumphs and tragedies in poetic prose. Other reference points in my eyes were Keats and Heany’s nature poems, To Autumn and Blackberry Picking respectively. Since McGregor doesn’t just record the life cycle of humans, but nature too. So good is the depiction of the natural world, I thought the author must be something of a naturalist. According to an interview with Booker Prize winner George Saunders this isn’t the case: McGregor likes a stroll just like the rest of us, but most of his descriptions he argues comes from Google research and ‘a lot of smoke and mirrors as well.’ Expanding on this he reasoned, ‘There’s not a ton of detail about any one thing. There are a ton of things about which there is some detail.’ I think the writer doth protest too much. There’s not many layman that could write: 

The last days of August were heavy with heat and anything that had to move was slow. At the allotments the beds were bursting with beans and courgettes, the plants sprawling over the pathways. The bees stumbled fatly between the flowers and the slugs gorged. 

Lazy writers couldn’t capture listlessness so well. McGregor hasn’t experienced the countryside vicariously through search engines, he’s walked amongst it, breathing it in; his exhalations are seen on the page.

At school I was more interested in Human Geography than Physical Geography: the same applies to the book too. I still read the passages on nature, because I’m keen to know about a world I never experience; however, what I really enjoyed was tracking the characters. The whole of human life is here: the schoolteacher, the caretaker, the farmer, the landlord, the hotelier, the journalist, the student, the outsider, the vicar. Not one of these characters takes priority. There is no leading man or lady. This is an ensemble cast that coalesce to form a drama every bit as enriching as Chekov or Dickens. Look below at how he achieves this:

Along the river at dusk there were bats moving in number, coming down from their roosts to take the insects rising from the water. They moved in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen. The Spring Dance ended early when a fight between Liam Hooper and one of the boys from Cardwell spilled back in through the doors. It was soon broken up but by then there’d been damage and the Cardwell boys were asked to leave. Outside in the car park Will Jackson was seen again with Miss Carter from school.

The book and author.

The bats are returned to throughout the book. As in Of Mice and Men, the natural world mirrors the human one with them doing what they can to survive. Then, it’s the Spring Dance, an annual village fixture that we come back to in future chapters. The rivalry with the neighbouring town (Cardwell) is touched upon here, a motif that’s developed further through allusions to cricket. And look at that last line: a single sentence on a blossoming romance between farmer and teacher. This is the village condition: a dichotomy of public and private life where everything is observed (‘was seen again’), and nothing remarked upon. A surveillance state of compassion. Nosiness resting in seclusion.

That’s the thing I think I will take away from the book: society in action. No character is without fault. One may even be a killer. But all are of virtue. A favourite passage of mine involves Les Thompson, a parishioner, and the vicar Jane Hughes. After service, he asks her to come over. A village enjoys the benefits of a bygone age – closer community ties- but the disadvantages too – outmoded ideals. Les’ sister is dying, yet he can’t just come out with it. Therefore, it’s down to Jane to visit him on his home turf where he feels strong and masculine tending his cows. His avowal is beautifully rendered:

It took him a while to be out with it, and the cows were making a racket in the shed by the time he was done. She chatted to him a bit longer while he worked, and he turned down the offer of help. She collected these confidences from people, and carried them around. It was like piling rocks into the boot of a car, she told her dean once, and sooner or later there are too many rocks and the suspension bottoms out each time you hit a bump in the road.

Les struggles to open up, even in private to someone whose job it is to listen. His refusal to accept help could be viewed as a show of strength or the price of masculinity. For Jane, God’s work is both salvation and burden. Like a hobbyist, she enjoys collecting- only with her its problems, not stamps. The shift in verb from ‘collected’ to ‘piling’ indicates how there is a cumulative cost to her obsession: there’s only so many lives one can keep before you begin to lose a sense of your own.

In writing a book about a missing tourist, McGregor has unearthed a village’s soul. The book will be a disappointment to people who enjoy the big headlines of disappearance and murder; and catnip to those fascinated with park benches, headstones and obituaries: micro story dedications to quiet, remarkable lives.

Reservoir 13 is available in paperback now.

Derry Girls

Just as New York has Little Italy, LA has Little Mexico and Miami has Little Havana; my school has Little Ireland. Due to a dearth of teachers in this country, my school has taken the prudent step of outsourcing work to Ireland. In Ireland there are only three jobs: teacher, nurse, pub regular. Because these three occupations are constantly at full employment, it’s nigh on impossible for young people to join them. Their best hope is to come over here and take the good, honest British jobs that no one wants. A recent Guardian article chronicled how Brexit has dissuaded migrant workers from coming over here and picking fruit; as a consequence this has led to food rotting in UK fields. A similar fate would befall our children if Irish teachers didn’t man our schools. Without educated supervision, it wouldn't be long before their minds withered and died. Slack-jawed and imbecilic, they would undoubtedly waste their days authoring illiterate Snapchat 'stories' and re-tweeting- without irony-Donald Trump.

This is why my English department is populated with more Irish people than their own villages. And you know what: I like it. They’re all funny. And I say this without any self-deprecation: they’re all funnier than me. (They would agree with this). They’re just great craic. They think funny, they say funny, they talk … It’s that speed of thought that’s always impressed me. Whilst I’m thinking of a retort, they’ve already got three in. I’m sure they've yokels that have the process speed of a combine harvester, but I’m yet to meet one. Whether it’s north or south, the Irish know their way to a punch-line. They are people of sublime wit and fierce intellects …well, the ones that come here are anyway.

My eulogising over the Irish is because I’ve been enjoying all things Ireland these past few weeks. Two weeks ago, I wrote about Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards and this week I’ve been enjoying the sitcoms Derry Girls and Young Offenders. I might come back to the latter at a later point, but for now I’ll concentrate on Derry. * Should I forget to go back to it, I urge you to watch Young Offenders on Netflix: set in Cork, the low-budget film centres on two scallies seeking social mobility in the retrieval of lost cocaine. It’s funny from first to last. The BBC have now commissioned it as six-part sitcom that you can currently enjoy on BBC3. 

A great film.

Derry Girls is a comedy set against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles. We know there’s trouble in the opening scene as we see Londonderry having the London spray-painted out of it. Being an English teacher, I’ve had to teach poems on the Troubles: Belfast Confetti and Storm on the Island being two of them. Despite this, I still find the history hard to get my head round. Cromwell: bad. Potato famine: terrible. Mo Mowlam: good. Some people want to be British, others don’t. This is my SparkNotes reading of the conflict.

The beauty of Lisa McGee’s script is that you learn while you’re laughing. You appreciate that there were moments during The Troubles where it was just a fucking inconvenience: having to take the long way to go on holiday because a march is moving through town, or missing your sun bed appointment because a bomb refuses to go off. In the final episode we see its true human cost where innocent lives are lost; the fact this scene is juxtaposed against another of children dancing makes you appreciate how joy and pain were never far away. Lacing her comedy brew with politics is inspired: it still tastes of laughter, only it carries more impact.

The Troubles.

As for that comedy, well it comes thick and fast. The title comes from a group of teen friends who are more concerned with surviving adolescence than the bomb. There’s Erin, Clare, Orla, Michelle and … James. James is an honorary Derry girl because his mum from England couldn’t look after him, leaving him in the care of his cousin Michelle’s family. He can’t go to a boys school because as a ‘limey’ he would have his accent ripped from him and fed to fists. As a result he attends Catholic school with the girls where he’s denied toilet facilities because using the ladies would make him ‘a pervert.’ Erin is our heroine; she lives at home with her Ma, Da, sister and Granda Joe. Her Granda Joe doesn’t like her Da Gerry and asks him frequently when he’s going to leave. Gerry is played by the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan, a wide-eyed lyrical performer, playing against type here as the put-upon son-in-law. Next door is Aunt Sara, a woman more interested in diet plans than mothering Orla. Clare and Michelle are the friends: the first a scaredy-cat, one ill-equipped for the scrapes the gang find themselves in (under teacher interrogation, she's liable to fold quicker than an origamist); the second, a sex machine powered by cursed virginity. She would ride any boy given half a chance – even the Protestants: “there’s something really sexy about the fact they hate us so much.” Michelle is a girl who would willingly lay down her body for the sake of peace.

Derry Girls.

Over the course of the six episodes the girls – and James – manage to threaten a child, destroy a chip shop and lie about miracles while remaining truly sympathetic. Like The Inbetweeners we enjoy how their attempts to achieve populism are scuppered by their immoral personalities. We love the characters because they are everything popular people aren’t: intelligent, awkward, caustic and rubbish with the opposite - or same - sex. Unsurprisingly, it's a hit.

So with a second series on the way it looks like I'll be seeing the Irish at work and home. If you haven't let these Derry Girls into your living room yet, wise up and do it now. (Now said with a long vowel sound.)

Derry Girls is available on All 4 

Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up To Shyness

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to.

(The Smiths, Ask)

From time to time everyone experiences shyness. It is contextual, dependent on circumstance. One day someone can be the Talk of the town; the next, a Hamlet of indecision. I see this in my work. So many teachers have no qualms about standing in front of teenagers, hour after hour, day after day; but have us lead training in front of adults and it isn't long before we resemble Lee Evans at the 02. Our heads become heatwaves; our mouths deserts. As for words: well, they're usually our currency; put us with adults though and we're depreciating quicker than the pound. Our internal dictionaries go to smoke. From the dying embers, we just about salvage some umms and errs.

A teacher delivering training.

For other people shyness consumes them. It doesn’t feel situational. It feels pervasive and hopeless. Sufferers feel unloved, unwanted, alone. It can be fucking awful. Now, someone you wouldn’t expect to suffer from shyness is a comedian. Comedians work in front of large groups of people every night – that can’t be a sign of shyness. Many comedians invite interaction with their audience – surely shyness is the inverse of this. Comedians thrive on being the centre of attention- doesn't sound like shyness. Yes, all this is true. But stand-up isn’t real. (I’m not saying it’s The Matrix or anything; I just mean it doesn’t resemble real life.) The comedian has billing, status, microphone, and introduction – sometimes requesting the audience’s silence during the performance. None of this happens off the stage. In the jungle of human existence, it’s survival of the magnetic. Like regulation of the press, conversation has its unwritten rules - be respectful to others, listen to their point of view - but nothing is enshrined in law. If someone doesn’t want to involve you in a conversation, they’re not legislated to do so. If someone wants to hog the conversation, they can. No one is duty-bound to pass the ball. It’s a free-for-all where the loud, the flamboyant, control possession; where the quiet watch, surplus and sidelined.

The comedian tackling this issue is Rhod Gilbert, a wonderful comedian who hosts The Apprentice: You’re Fired. Although Gilbert hasn’t been on tour since 2012, stand-up is what made his name. His stock-in-trade is taking minor annoyances and building them up brick by brick until what’s left our monuments depicting life's furies. Since taking a break from stand-up, Gilbert has devoted his time to television and radio. One of my favourite shows he does is Rhod Gilbert: Work Experience where he tries a different job each week. So taken by his experience as a primary school teacher, he even told Stuart Goldsmith on Comedians Comedian Podcast that he was thinking of moving into the job full-time (wisely, this never materialised).

Gilbert is tackling the problem because it's pained him all his life. As a child he would make excuses not to go to school. As a teenager he would never ask a girl on a date. As a student he once slept rough to avoid meeting fellow Erasmus housemates. As a man he finds himself unable to go into a café on his own and order a drink. In the episode he asks:

How could someone who does stand up be shy? … Was I born shy? Did I inherit it from my parents? Was there some traumatic childhood experience that I’ve buried under 6 tonnes of psychological rubble? Did I share a shy kid’s towel in school? Is it an STD? Did I get drunk and sleep with a shy person who was too shy to tell me they were a carrier? I have no idea.

The lovely thing about this documentary is it doesn’t follow the typical arc of presenter journeying towards enlightenment. There are some of the celebrity documentary tropes: Speak to friends. Check. Speak to family. Check. Speak to academics. Check. In the second half though Gilbert takes the road less taken in celeb-doc and makes Joe Public the star. He reasons that without stand-up he would be in a worse position than he finds himself in now. If it weren't for meeting his fears head-on, he wouldn't have found his career. It didn’t cure him of shyness, but it medicated him against its worst effects.

Immersion therapy.

In the show’s close Gilbert sends out a distress signal for other ‘shysters’ to come forward and find help in comedy. Three people answer the call: Jodie, Mike and Kate. All of them are lovely. Jodie feels anxious in social situations; Mike’s never been on a date; and Kate feels like a failure. Over the course of a few weeks, Gilbert gives them the courage to give stand up a go. These closing stages reminded me of Musharaf and Mr Burton in Educating Yorkshire: Musharaf, you may remember, was struggling with a stammer; Mr Burton knew that stutter-whisperer wasn’t in his job spec, yet through dedication and patience he gave his student the space - however temporary- to forget the disorder. Although Gilbert never took a teaching post, he would be brilliant at it because he uses his expertise to empower his students and shift their mindset.  The episode culminates in a stand-up show where all three are genuinely funny and charming.

Kate, Mike, Rod and Kate (left to right)

For me, the documentary served as a reminder to keep my shy students in mind. They may be quiet in class, overawed by groups, cautious of challenges; yet all their heads possess a voice: funny, creative, ambitious, fearful. Not everyone wants to say much. But everyone wants to say something. It's all of our jobs - extroverts included- to make sure that happens.

Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up To Shyness is available on the IPlayer.