Mostly schooly stuff, obviously, but I�ll get onto that later as first there was the small matter of a whistlestop visit by the everlovely Brummie Drummer Boy, who was doing a drum session for L and combining it with a �Stay at Stepfies and let her cuddle me and forcefeed me Cajun chicken and call me �darling� and fetch beers for me� session (which is, incidentally, the way to a musician�s heart, should you ever come by one and wish to ingratiate yourself).
I love having men to stay. I speshly love having lots of men to stay. I love being the shortest person in the house, and getting lots and lots of �big arm� cuddles and cooking great big dinners in my most enormous pans, and I like the after dinner bantering and the back slapping and the jockeying for Alpha Male position and that they all smell nice and let me sit on their knee for smooching. I like making fish finger sandwiches at midnight and the occasional �firemans lift/run round the garden with a squealing girl on my back� shows of derring do. I like beating my tiny fists on a manly chest and saying �you are HORRID� and getting another cuddle (with added tickling). I like being on the sofa, watching the telly, with my head on one big lap and my feet on another. I totally could do that for a living. If that is actually a job, can you let me know where I need to apply please. Thank you.
Anyways, it was jolly nice to have Brummie Drummer Boy here and get lots of kisses off him (which I think are probably OK as long as L is in the room and is laughing and tutting at us. Which he was) and it�s a bit of a shame that he�s gone back now and I only have L to fill my need to be servile and pointless and giggly and so horny that my head is proper FIZZING.
Aww, and Brummie Drummer Boy did a nice thing which was to listen to Treacle practising her singing and being all complimentary about it. And that was a nice thing cos Treacle knows that BDB works in the West End a hella lot of the time, often with proper famous singers off the telly so she was all bigged up and thinking that she�s a proper growed up singer and not an 11 year old in a school play.
So, the school play then. Treacle was cast as Nancy in Oliver and Ive been going up to her school to do some vocal coaching with the bigger kids (10 and 11 year olds). It was only a two-night run Thursday and Friday but they�ve been rehearsing for months and months. We were going to see it last night so I only had to go pick her up after the performance on Thursday. She came out of the theatre all fired up and buzzing � I already guessed it had gone OK as quite a few people had stopped me in the foyer and told me how fantastic she was � when we got in the car she said �Do you know what, mummie? Everyone said I looked EXACTLY like you!� Unfortunately, being Nancy, this means that she looks EXACTLY like me when she is dressed as a prostitute and sporting a Black Eye (courtesy of Bill Sykes, natch).
We got up a family party to go see the show last night and I have to say it was pretty good. Nancy/Treacle�s cheeky tart-with-a-heart in Oom-Pah-Pah was �Just like you. In the pub.� according to L. When she sang �As Long as He Needs Me�, 5 of us (out of 9) cried. BiL took some photos � if theyre any good I�ll post em when he sends them to me.
We got a new dvd player thingy and its got all kinds of special thingies that it can do � like BBC iplayer. This means L has just found the Inside The Human Body: Hostile World programme which was on last week or so. He�s looked at me all shamefaced.
You want to watch this, don�t you?
Umm�.
You do. I can see it on your face
*smiles sheepishly*
Its Ok sweetie. You ARE actually allowed to watch a proper grown up programme sometimes, you know. It doesn�t all have to be Family Guy and Take Me Out..
No. Or people making cakes in the shape of motorbikes. *gets comfy on the sofa*
Just seen a fungus spore get eaten by a macrophage . It had some slightly implausible Doctor Who-ish �munching� sound effects. L is transfixed.
In between times, its all been about exams and school and revision and study leave and bolshie teenagers. Yesterday I took my first lessons all by myself and they were pretty much OK.
In quiet moments this week, and because I get asked at least once a day �Miss, why do we have to know this? What use is it actually going to be?� Ive been thinking about the nature of �learning� and how it seems to be an utterly fluid thing.
In the 13th century, students at Oxford and Cambridge universities would all be educated in grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry.
A couple of hundred years ago, aside from reading and writing, an educated person would also probably need to be able to ride a horse, light a fire, skin a rabbit, grow crops. Fancy education would have seen you knowing how to play a fine tune on a spinet, execute a passable watercolour, have a working knowledge of classical civilisations be able to handle a sword or a pistol and (for girls) be proficient in needlepoint and be able to speak French with a pretty accent.
Nowadays, I certainly don�t know any teenagers who can do all those things, but I do know plenty who can handle The Periodic Table, quadratic equations, mitosis and meiosis and the nutritional value of a lasagne. They can analyse Shakespeare, document the Invasion of the Ruhr and tell you how an oxbow lake is formed. They know their tectonic plates from their iambic pentameter and can calculate the volume of a prism. If you�re of a similar age to me, you probably know all that stuff too (or you did�and you�ve forgotten it!).
But today�s teenagers can also do a whole load of shit that you and I, as schoolchildren, could have had no concept of. They can design a webpage, shoot, edit and replicate a piece of film on a device smaller than our grainy instamatics � gadgets which could only turn out passable blurry snaps if the light was EXACTLY right and involved a trip to Boots and a week-long wait. They know how to compose and record music without ever having had to learn to play an instrument and can translate written and spoken words into the languages of countries that didn�t even exist when you and I were at school. Designing in 3D needs no Rotring pens nor knowledge of perspective and complicated calculations can be accurately carried out without any sing-songing of times tables
How long will it be before the knowledge that we cram into our childrens heads becomes pointless, needless or obsolete? Just as battered paperback of Logarithms, a slide rule and making flaky pastry from scratch seem anachronistic oddities to today�s teenagers, how long will it be before Chaucer�s �a poore widwe somdeel stape in age� and the method by which an amoeba reproduces itself cease to be things that need to be known?
Things we take for granted have replaced things we don�t think we need to know any more � I can drive a car, so I don�t need to know how to ride a horse. My lack of piano playing knowledge is superceded by my ability to purchase CDs of all the great concertos. Waitrose sell rabbit ready diced to save me the bother of all that trapping, skinning and butchering. I know that gold cant be made by alchemy, so I don�t need to keep trying. A dysgraphic child can word process their schoolwork and email it directly to their teacher, almost negating the necessity to learn to write legibly at all. All that �essential knowledge� just fell away and, over time, other essential stuff took its place.
In the future, what will we know? What will we have forgotten that we once knew? How much knowledge will be gone forever for the average Joe? Or will the ability to store unfathomable amounts of shit via the miracles of the digital arena mean that we could know everything there is to know, given an unlimited timeframe in which to google it?
And on that note:
Dumbass Things my Students Say #4
During a revision session for Catering and Hospitality GCSE
How do we make stock?
Ummm�one of them cube thingies?
Yes, or we could make it from scratch, with bones and vegetables and stuff.
Oh! Can you?
Yes, its not difficult. OK, then, next bit. What�s a bain marie?
��Dunno
How about brulee? What does that mean?
��Dunno
OK, never mind. We�ll come back to that. Lets try another one. What�s a broth?
Umm�.Innit one of them places where prostitutes live, Miss?
I actually laughed so much and for so long that the student did eventually say �Aww, Miss, shut up!�