Parking Spots

There's a fantastic little website called Parking Spots whose simple premise is to hold a small toy car up so close that it appears to be the same size as real cars that are far away. Although the aim is to get the cars looking the same size, there is a pleasant insistance on keeping your hand in the shot. This was mine.

Neil - sees a spaceman, and parks in it, man.

Call out the Invigilator

This morning I sat in a classroom, invigilating Alan. Alan is not a pupil, it is a test for adult literacy and numeracy based on 40 tick-box questions answered on-line. Normally, in an exam, you get to wander round a hall, in-between the desks, looking over the shoulders of pupils at their work. You also get to read through the exam papers and worry that you've covered all the necessary topics from your scheme of work.

Alan has none of this. All the pupils were sat at PCs, looking at monitors, and were reading and comprehending (hopefully), or doing maths. There was no paper copy to leaf through and while away the time. Unlike the fun of doing maths for the sake of maths, or reading and writing to expand your imagination and creativity, the Alan tasks were based on real-world functional maths (such as working out how much paint you'd need for a wall by working out its area; or reading advice about second-hand car-buying, being resolute in your negotiations (select the word or phrase which would replace 'resolute' from 'hairy', 'mixed with water', 'unchanging', or 'finely detailed'). The questions seemed as difficult as the ones you text in on premium rate numbers for ITV competitions. Clearly preparing pupils for real life-skills. Some things never change.

Immediately after the exams I was on break duty. For the past few months there has been a butt of smokers heading back from the tennis courts just as I arrive. As the sun was shining most pupils were out on the fields so I walked about and then went back to the courts to dismiss the pupils playing football with a) a bouncy ball, b) a tennis ball, c) anything round, or d) anything you can kick. I also met the smokers mid-drag. The same pupils who had taken the Alan exam which had no questions asking "You get someone older to buy you some cigarettes and give one to each of your three friends. Do you a) stink of smoke in school, b) develop a habit that will cause on-going health problems, c) get an hour and a half detention and your mum and dad called in, or d) contribute to the Treasury years and years before you have to?

Neil - says the resolution's here, and he knows that he's right.

I want to ride my bicycle...

Sunday 11th May was another fantastic May day in Southsea. There are a couple of attractions to Southsea: being near The Common and The Solent; and being a hop, skip and a jump away from Albert Road, the antidote to modern high-streets.

This Sunday the Albert Road Traders' Association put on a day of cycling, closing the road off to traffic, and opening up the shops. I caught the end of the day, walking down to The Kings Theatre, the road was littered with people chilling out on the tarmac whilst children and bikes were in fancy dress, brightening up an already brilliant sun-filled day.

Later this year, in September, there will be another "Love Albert Road Day". Again, closed roads, live music, barbecues, and hopefully the weather.

Neil - doesn't blame it on the sunshine.

Happy Star Wars Day

A Fistful of Fivers

Today I needed to have £15 ready for the window cleaner. I checked my wallet: a selection of receipts from the 1035 miles of driving over Christmas (like Joseph I had to travel to the place I was born, but return by a different route); some overused cards; and a ten-pound note. I also had some things to take back to the shops so went into town to return a shirt, and get some cash.

After sorting out the returns I bought a takeaway coffee to break into the tenner, and then went into the bank to draw out £30. A twenty-pound note and two fives. Five-pound notes! I can't remember the last time I went to a cash machine and was given crisp five-pounts notes. University? Probably, but as I've been at universities in some capacity from 1991 to 2001, and again from September 2006 to June 2007, that's not saying too much. It was probably some time in 1996 when I was shocked to buy three pints and it cost more than the fiver I had in my hand (about the same as three takeaway coffees from Costa).

Neil - doesn't want to break into the twenty.

Re-creation

Over the past year I've been given the job of taking my nephew and friends' children on afternoons or days out. I've gone to the Fort Nelson artillery museum at the top of Portsdown Hill, and visited HMS Dolphin, Gosport's Submarine Museum, which includes some cool stuff to play with and the Navy's very first submarine.
Walking towards the Historic Dockyard, opposite the bus and train terminus, there is a little museum with dinosaurs and fossils - the sort of thing I would think was great if you're eight. I went inside.

Inside you wind between display cabinets of fossilised plant leaves and sea-creatures, juxtaposed with photos of their contemporary equivalents. It all looks beautifully quaint with its bakelite ear-pieces, drawing you in to look and listen. However, when you do look at the accompanying text, and listen through the ear-pieces, you catch occasional sentences finishing with: "…and therefore evolution is wrong". Rather than stumble upon an old-fashioned curiosity-shop of dinosaurs, I'd walked into child-friendly arguments for Creationist propaganda. This wasn't a museum for fun and discovery; it was a museum for "fun" and "damentalism".

I had assumed that this sort of thing was limited to America, but here, nestled between the pubs, chip-shops, and naval history, was a genuine piece of pseudo-scientific selective re-interpretation of half-facts which scriptural theology says are poetic metaphors, but biblical fanatics are peddling to unwary parents and their children. It was difficult to know whether to laugh at the absurdity, or fume at the underhanded arrogance of this exhibition, sugaring its bizarre beliefs to prey upon unsuspecting kids: a Gingerbread House of fossilised ideas.

Neil - believes in dissention, and descention.

Juke Box Jury

There were two official-looking envelopes on the mat when I returned from holiday in July 2006: one, a confirmation of the PGCE Mathematics details, scheduled to start in September 2006; the other, a Summons for Jury Service, scheduled to start in September 2006.

Reading through the Courts Service leaflet there is no escape from Jury Service. All people on the Electoral Role between the ages of 18 and 69 are eligible and, more, obliged to perform this Civic Duty when summoned. The only people ineligible for Service are criminals and the mentally ill. As I've neither been Sentenced nor Sectioned there was no escape.

I spent a frantic afternoon on the phone trying to establish the effect of me missing the beginning of my PGCE. Still unsure of what to do, I phoned the Courts Service: "You could defer for up to a year." With only seven days to respond to the Summons I posted off copies of my timetable for the year and a letter explaining that I had was unable to respond withing seven days as I had been on holiday when the Summons arrived. A week later I received a deferred date of August 13 2007.

I have looked forward to August 13th all year. I hoped to be involved in the case of rubbish burglars, or the obvious surveillance (I've got a post to add). But now, almost 12 months since receiving that date, interrupting what should be six weeks holiday before the start of my first full school year, after a week of phoning the Courts and being told to phone back tomorrow afternoon because I'm not needed, I've been discharged from the remainder of my Service, with only the briefest glimpse of a Courtroom.

Neil - has only been fitted up for a suit

Grotto e Grotti

One of the excursions described as a highlight of the coach drive to Amalfi was a boat trip along the coast to visit Il Grotto Emeraldo. The boat around Capri a day or two earlier was fantastic, filled with vistas of sheer cliffs, speeding through natural arches, cool clear waters lapping in quiet coves: so this trip sounded great. Instead it was so bad it transcended itself. What could've been an educational trip describing the formation of this cave, its stalactites (the ones that hang down, like tights) and stalagmites (the other ones) was instead an excursion that took less time than it did to queue for - a bit like Alton Towers, but rubbish.

The grotto is lit through sunlight conducted through an underwater tunnel, illuminating the interior with an emerald green glow. The guide pointed out significant features of the cave: water and limestone trickling down from the roof and calcifying? No. "Looky-looky: this over here looks a bit like Garibaldi, or the Americans think it is Ronald Regan, or you say he is Tony Blair."

The piece de resistance of this jaded journey was shortly before the end (which was itself shortly after the beginning) when the guide shouted, "Looky-looky: I move the water and I make a miracle for you, looky. In the water it is the baby Jesus. And Mary. And Joseph. Looky-looky!" And yes, there beneath the waves of this grotto, amongst the submerged stalagmites was Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and a couple of shepherds and wise men, the kind of figurines found in any church's nativity scene. Only underwater. Perhaps here, in his infancy, the tiny Christ hadn't yet mastered walking on water, but I'm sure he could've crawled.

Neil - lookies before he leapies.