Up on the rooo-hooo-hoooof!
2011-07-06, 12:00 a.m.
I really am RUBBISH at updating, aren�t I?Im also rubbish at remembering how many times Ive said �what�s occurring?� here and thought it was the first time Id said it when I said it last time. I don�t actually say that in real life, but I hear it in my head, with Nessa�s voice saying it. If it actually came out of my mouth it wouldn�t sound like that at all � mostly because Im not Nessa, but also because I would be consciously trying to NOT sound like Nessa and so would also probably not sound like me, either. In any case, it would be crap and you would be all like �that Stepfie, I thought she was quite funny but actually she�s a bit of a twat.�
Is �twat� a unisex term when used as an insult? I had a friend who used to use �Wankerene� for the female form of Wanker (meaning �useless, foolish or objectionable fellow�, not �one who wanks�), but Im not sure of the ruling on twat. As a body-part noun, its fine but Im not sure about character-trait describer. Whatever.
I got told to fuck off today by a pupil. As Im not actually allowed to scream �FUCK OFF YOURSELF, YOU COCKSUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!� in the pupils faces and/or punch them full in the face (and he was a big lad � it wasn�t advisable!), I took the next best course of action. At the end of the lesson, I collected in all the work from all the kids, wrote their names neatly at the top and took them up to the staff room for their regular teacher to mark. This included the paper from the Fuck Off boy, which was mostly black scribble of such intensity as to have ripped the paper in a couple of places. Oh, and a drawing of a stumpy (and, frankly, poorly executed and anatomically incorrect) cock and balls. Why do teenage boys always draw a cock and balls on everything? I have yet to see a teenage girl sniggering over her biro sketch of a ViJayJay, or had a child hold up a text book and, in ringing tones announce to the assembled throng �Miss! Someone�s drawn a vulva! Look, Miss! Its on Queen Victoria�s head!�
Its all about the cock and balls. Ive seen loads of real ones in my time, and loads of drawings of �em, too, but the two don�t seem to match up. Either Ive been looking at some VERY dodgy genitalia�.or teenage boys are crap at life drawing.
So anyway. That�s enough f-ing and blinding, what news from Merrie England?
Silly, SILLY school entrusted me to do a field trip all on my own. We went to the University Art Gallery where there was supposed to be a guide to show us around the Warhol Exhibition and do some workshoppy type stuff with the kids. I was told �just take a book � they�ll deal with the kids�, so I thought it would be a doddle. Our �guide� was a rather earnest looking woman in Birkenstocks and a yak-hair sweater who said to the kids (15 or so 13-year-olds all of whom have been singled out as likely to underachieve and/or go off the rails if not carefully monitored) �Go off and explore the exhibits and then�� but of course she didn�t get to explain about the coming back to the resource room and the learning experiences and the pooling of ideas and the brainstorming posters and all that, as the kids had heard the �Go off� bit and had scarpered. Luckily I hadn�t taken a book as I wouldn�t have got a chance to read it. I was too busy rounding up my kids and stopping them from picking at the stitching of the Warhol Stitched Photographs (!!!!) and talking through the Warhol Screen Tests and removing one boy (several times) from a Warhol photograph of a naked woman which he was �studying� from a distance of, oh, about � of an inch away. When they weren�t doing that, they were playing a splendid game of �Running Away from Miss�. *sigh*
The earnest lady tried clapping her hands together a few times, which I think was supposed to attract (and possibly keep) their attention. It didn�t.
Eventually I corralled them back in with a mixture of veiled threats and old-school toddler taming and we started doing some �art�.
Anyone who has ever taught, or worked in a teaching environment, may now groan with disappointment. The first activity was �Design a Poster�� I don�t need to finish that off, do I?
�Design A Poster� � the lazy teacher�s �I cant be bothered to find you anything stimulating to do so Im going to get out some colouring pens and hope it keeps you quiet� lesson. As a Cover Supervisor, I see a LOT of lesson plans which say �tell the children to design a poster on blah blah blah�. The teachers know it�s a cop out, I know it�s a cop out�and so do the kids.
The university lady didn�t know this and thought the children would enjoy doing �something a bit different from boring old lessons�.
Well, nobody died and the room didn�t get wrecked, but nothing that could honestly be described as a poster got created neither!
Over lunch I had a chat with the nice university lady, who generously admitted she �didn�t feel the children were fully engaging with the Warhol Experience� so I stepped in and helped the poor cow out � translating all her poncy art-speak into words the children could actually understand and explaining who Andy Warhol actually was as she hadn�t thought to do that and none of the kids had heard of him at all. Luckily, Id done a Packaging Design lesson with the very same kids just a couple of days before so it did all eventually kind of click into place. None of them had ever done screen prints before, or added effects to a photograph without the aid of Photoshop, so they had a bit of trouble understanding the point of the next activity, too. We put on dressing up clothes and took photos of each other and then we printed them on clear acetate. Then we used REAL sticky paper � �Miss! There�s no glue!.....What? Lick it? Euuuurgh! That�s disgusting!.....Oh! It sticks by itself!� � along with pastel crayons and sweetie wrappers and bits of sequins and all sorts of other stuff and we Warhol�d ourselves! Look! I even had a go!
Rip up the sticky paper and stick it down any old where
or cut it neatly to shape using a complicated tracing type method involving a lot of tutting and swearing under ones breath
Then lay the acetate on top et voila! Miss Warhol!
If you have an artistic child (Fifi � could Biba do this? Anna � one for Tony?) they would deffo be able to make a better job of it than this as its unlikely that they would also be supervising 15 unruly Chigley kids and trying to stop a nice university lady from topping herself, but you get the general idea.
In other news, The Palace of Many Sins has had a whopping great leak in the roof. We suspect that this leak has been there quite some considerable time but we didn�t notice until it started dripping through the studio inspection hatch.
EEEEEEEK!
Luckily, the studio inspection hatch isn�t above any of the equipment so it just dripped on the carpet.
If Im honest, we probably would have noticed it sooner if a) I was a better mother or b) my daughters were not zombies.
a) If I were a better mother, I would probably go into my daughters bedrooms every now and then and maybe have a little tidy around, shove the hoover about, that sort of thing, instead of just yelling up the stairs �I cant open your bedroom door cos there�s too much crap on the floor � bring down your washing or wear your dressing gown to school tomorrow�. If I went into my daughters rooms I would have noticed the large(ish) stains on both their ceilings from the leaking roof. But I didn�t.
b) If my daughters were not zombies they would have noticed the large stains on their ceilings and would have TOLD SOMEONE ABOUT THEM! Instead, when questioned, they both said �Oh. Yeh. I think its been there a while.�
So. We had to get Sammy �round and he had to climb up on the roof and do some terribly clever things with roofing felt and some kind of scary gas torch thingy while L stood in the garden shouting helpful advice and taking pictures. Taking pictures which give a fairly impressive view of the back of our house (if you look in the first conservatory window, you can see the back of that bloody David statue. Yeh. Look in my window and see David�s bum. Taking pictures which give a fairly impressive view of the back of our house, but sadly not as impressive a pic of Sammy actually doing the impressive bit which was mending the bloody roof.
I gots a few more bits and pieces for you but I want to post this now and then go off to beddy byes. School Sports Day tomorrow � if we can persuade any of the little poppets to put their cigarettes out long enough to amble round the track, that is. It�s a far cry from the days when Jooj and Treac were at the private school and School Sports Day had a tea tent and a Daddies Race and a (Fiercely competitive) Mummies Race and there was raked seated for the parents, and medals and parading and cheering for one�s house. Now its three proper athletes, one fat kid who�s entered for a laugh and a juvenile delinquent who has been told he�ll be expelled if he doesn�t start coming to school a bit more.
And nobody cheers. Apparently, it�s �lame�.