Saturday "Night-Fever"

In my bit of England, when I were a lad, we had infant, junior, secondary schools, 6th form college; and if you were lucky, university.

I was reminded the other day of an "incident" at junior school (7-11 years old) that still sends shivers of embarrassment down my spine when I think about it 30 years later!

Every year we had a "prize-giving" day - in those days, being labelled as a winner or a loser was still acceptable (I've got some other stuff about this that I will write about later).
We had a young female teacher, who, in the minds of 10 year olds, was a goddess: I guess we must have been approaching puberty. Ma Wilson (all female teachers were prefixed with "Ma" by the pupils) kept a rubbish bin under her desk. Something that kept us busy one day was the rumour that you could look up her skirt and see her knickers if you diverted your eyes while pretending to be looking in the bin. It just so happened that we sharpened our pencils into that bin. Like the 25 other boys (it was an all boy school), I had a good look, but all was dark. All I can tell you is that everybody's pencil was shorter at the end of the day than it was at the beginning.

Anyway, Ma Wilson, was a cosmopolitan girl: she was into Disco music and instigated dance lessons - dance lessons at an all-boys school! We must have been really infatuated, because quite a few of us went along. You've got to picture the scene: in England, kids wear school uniforms - we were all in grey shirts and trousers with burgundy ties and Doc Marten boots (the number of lace-holes was a measure of how "hard" you were). A bunch of pre-pubescent kids, identically and inadequately dressed, lined up before a young, beautiful female teacher, following dance lessons. Because it's always good to have a goal in life (apparently), she decided that we were going to learn the steps to "Night-Fever", the Bee-Gees standard from Saturday Night Fever. Not only were we going to learn the steps, we were then going to perform them in front of the whole school at the said prize-giving, including the ageing group of school governors who were wheeled out for the occasion.

When the moment arrived, she duly rolled out her record-player (if you don't know what a "record" is, refer to one of my earlier articles), lined up the aspiring disco-dancers and set us off: 3 steps to the left, point left-hand towards the ceiling at an angle of approximately 60° to the vertical, 3 steps to the right, with corresponding arm movement. Now walk forward towards aligned seated septuagenarian school governors whilst twiddling arms in the same way that football coaches do when they want to substitute a player. And so it went on. And on. And on.
The embarrassment was palpable and it takes my breath away even now, 30 years later. I can't remember how many of us did the dance, but I would love to know if I am the only one who:

1. remembers it
2. feels the same physical feeling of embarrassment just by thinking about it.

Poor old Ma Wilson; I wonder what happened to her? I'm sure she was a good teacher, but I am pretty sure she steered clear of dance lessons at all-boy schools. And I don't think many of the governors will have got out of their bath chairs to copy the moves.

If you want to see how it should be done so you can see just how deeply this marked me, here is John Travolata in the original film, dancing pretty much the same moves, albeit in a slightly different style.

Epilepsy: it's all in the mind

I thought it might be interesting to write down a bunch of random facts about epilepsy as I realised that people don't know much about it and feel uncomfortable even talking about it. Don't worry, I'm here to help.

At this end of this (if you get that far), you won't be much the wiser, but you'll know a bit (if you're not even the slightest bit interested in reading this, just have a look at the anecdote at the end, it made me laugh...). Maybe you'll want to go further and learn more, but even if you don't, you'll be able to fire off a few facts and sound knowledgeable...I find that, in life, a few facts, well-placed, can get you a long way. Anyway, here is a highly non-scientific list of unordered titbits:

• Normally, electrical signals pass between the neurons in your brain; they control your thoughts and movements - everything you know or do, that's all. In normal situations, this is a fairly ordered process. Stop signals are respected (unlike in France) etc. Epilepsy is a temporary malfunction of this process and is often described as a "storm" of electrical signals firing off abnormally.
  
• The part of the brain where this occurs determines the type of epilepsy you have: some are generalised (the whole brain is effected), some are localised (just a bit of the brain -always the same - is involved). Mine are localised in the temporal lobe (not very important, just heavily involved in memory, speech and vision, gulp!) and are called "complex partial seizures". Not surprisingly therefore, my seizures often result in changes to my speech and rekindle strange, long-forgotten memories...
  
• A seizure can last between a couple of seconds or several hours. Even a 1 second seizure is a pain. I've been in the middle of a presentation to customers, had a seizure, which basically had the effect of making me lose my train of thought and my audience feel uncomfortable...anyway, where was I?
  
• Between 0.5% and 1% of the population suffer from epilepsy; it's difficult to know exactly how many - some simply don't realise and others don't admit to it because of the stigma attached to it or the associated annoyances (loss of driving licence, difficulty in finding jobs in some sectors...). You probably know somebody who has epilepsy (especially if you know me).
• There are innumerable triggers for epilepsy: some common ones are:
• Stress (definitely one of my triggers). On an otherwise excellent site about epilepsy, I read the following useful advice about how to reduce stress-related seizures: "try to avoid stressful situations". Amusing, but actually, using it as a kind of mantra might actually make sense.
• Alcohol abuse (although I recently read that it is stopping drinking that can trigger the seizures, at least that's the way I understood it - don't contradict me, you don't want me getting stressed),
  
• Sleep deprivation ("stop writing this blog entry and go to bed")
• Not taking your medication. Duh.
  
• Some other stuff.
  
• All sorts of things have been been attributed to epilepsy and have been the focus of serious scientific study:
• Enhanced creativity (although there are some exceptions - take this blog...)
• Extreme religious belief. I guess that part of my brain didn't get affected - hallelujah! D'oh! Could it be that religious belief is just a bunch of electrical signals fired off in the wrong order in a particular bit of your brain? Richard Dawkins would have something to say about that...
  

OK, so that's enough random snippets. Epilepsy is not really a laughing matter, but this made me chortle:

A friend of mine told me that his company had sent a memo to all staff looking for a replacement phrase for "brainstorming" because they thought that this word might be offensive to people with epilepsy. They came up with "thought-shower". Brilliant - a thought-shower to replace the word brainstorm!

Looks can be deceptive

This is not one of those numerous posts about genealogy. Actually, it is in a way, although I will try to put a different slant on it - even though you might want to skip to the end to see the slanty bit...


The photo that you see here was given to me by my grandmother just before she died (or "passed away after a long fight against illness" as they would say on the BBC if she was a celebrity). I have this picture on the wall at home and every day I look at it wishing I had more than a few scant details about it.

Like the words in "A Brian Dialogue", the image comes from a different era. Apparently, in Victorian days, people were told not to smile while photographs were taken. I assume this is why they look so serious, otherwise, I wouldn't fancy going round to their place for a beer and curry to watch the rugby world cup.

So here is what I do know about the faces behind the picture:

The lady to the bottom left is my grandmother's aunty (who apparently looks like me), and her, I knew: she lived over the road from us. When I was young , my parents deemed me mature enough to leave me on my own while they went somewhere or other (the shops I think, rather than a 2 week holiday). My parents thought they had me fooled by hiding the "Breakaway" biscuits on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. Oh, the fools: a chair to stand on was all that was needed to reach up and sneak one. Unfortunately, my family are not known for their DIY skills (a tradition I uphold), and as I held onto the cupboard for balance, it came off the wall and landed on top of me. This, of course, as a small child, alone in the house, posed a bit of a problem - especially as the bottle of beetroot fell on top of me and smashed, giving the impression of me having been involved in a serious car crash. My solution was to cross the road to "Aunty Mary's" house, covered in beetroot juice. After her initial panic (she was already an old lady) she helped me clean up the mess and explain it away to my parents. Problem solved. Great lady.

Mary never married, and lived all her adult life with her brother (one of the guys at the back). The other guy at the back is called Sam, and is recorded in the 1901 population census as a "coal porter". Perhaps life would have been different if he had been Cole Porter rather than the guy who carried the sacks from the cart to the coal cellars (does anyone remember them? All the houses in my parents street have a (now filled in) space where the coal was poured when the coal-man delivered).

Here's the slant; I hope it was worth waiting for:

The matriarch in the centre of the photo fascinates me and I look at her each time I pass. Frankly, she looks extremely austere and a bit scary. She is my great, great grandmother. However, the two fascinating details about her are:

1. She married twice (I don't know how common this was at the end of the 19th century), outliving two husbands (maybe they died in a war, or maybe after a "long fight against illness"). What you see is therefore a re-constructed family.
   
2. She adopted one of the young boys in the photograph. All I know is that his nickname was Jub. What makes me sad is that I don't know why she adopted him and I know that I never will.

However, it pleases me to think that it could have been an act of pure kindness on her part that is in direct contrast to the image that is presented in the photo.

As the title says: looks can be deceptive.

Quality and the Rugby World Cup

France is holding the Rugby World Cup at the moment. Interest is waning after a poor start, but that is not the point of this article. Each time the rugby world cup comes around, I am reminded of the 1991 edition, a period which shaped me for many reasons.

At the time, I had been in my first job after graduation for a year or so. I was working in the research labs for a multi-national company, mainly involved in developing techniques for analysing satellite images. I have mixed feelings about the 2.5 years I spent there. On the negative side, I felt that most of the people were waiting for retirement and it was not the most dynamic working environment. On the positive side, it helped me develop my rebellious side, as I rallied against apathy and cynicism (traits that have now seeped into my own personality, but which I try hard to suppress. But, as usual, I digress).

The 1991 World Cup coincided with a no-doubt fascinating event at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham (i.e., it was big). The project I had been working on was deemed interesting enough to warrant a poster in the exhibition hall (it was something to do with detecting ships from the patterns left in images by their wakes - I could tell you more, but the secret services may pay me a visit).

I spent a long time working on that poster. I was quite proud of it. The project was interesting and to top it all, it had nice pictures in it - who could ask for more? I was in the days before Photoshop, so I had to glue all the pieces of text and image directly onto an A3 piece of paper before sending it to the "Turn-pieces of-paper-into-posters" department. Well, the day before the conference started, I was told that the poster wouldn't be ready until the second, and last, day of the exhibition. Did I say it wasn't a dynamic environment?

However, the hotel was booked, train tickets bought and space in the conference hall reserved. What to do? My reaction today would be different to my reaction at the time. My reaction then was to say, "For Christ's sake, if you haven't got the time, I'll just take the mock-up and use that instead of the poster. What I've done here is interesting and other people will be interested in finding out more". This proved to be a monumental and professional-life-shaping mistake.

It was an industry event and several top "dignitaries" were there. Unfortunately, the dignitary from our company saw the "poster" of the project of which I was so proud and complained loudly to my boss that it was amateurish and reflected badly on the company. Not surprisingly, I was told to take it down. This felt like I had received a very heavy tackle from one of the All Blacks. The boss was right: I should have waited - showing something professional for one day was better than showing something amateurish for 2 days even if I thought it needed to be "out there".

Why do I mention this during the rugby world cup? Well, I spent the evening after the first day watching a match in the window of a TV shop in Solihull, near Birmingham - no sound, just pictures. It couldn't get much worse. I was alone, too shy to go to a pub or restaurant alone and felt utterly miserable. Boo-hoo, poor me.

I work in the software industry and am nowadays mostly involved in project management. There are lots of blogs out there about the importance of getting version 1.0 of a piece of software out of the door and into the customer's hands. In many cases, this is undoubtedly the best course of action, particularly if you need to be the first into the market and I have worked on this sort of project before and, indeed, it can be a good way to get early feedback if you find the right partners.

However, in an established discipline, such as the one I worked in at that time and the one I work in now where the software is used in mission-critical installations, quality counts - involve the customer from the beginning and right through the project, but take whatever time it needs to get it right (within the business constraints) and be prepared to defend this position - don't throw it out there because you are proud of it and want it to be seen as soon as possible - it will fly back in your face like an, ahem, disgruntled All-Black forward (to keep the laboured analogy going).
I don't pretend to be any kind of guru, but it's become my mantra and a lesson I learnt the hard way.

The good news is that the French rugby team's over-confidence has been dented, and that the English rugby team's under-confidence might pull us through as far as a sound beating by a team from the southern-hemisphere which is not so bad - quality counts, but let's be realistic!

Ca plane pour moi...

French language music has never made it in the UK. Can you think of any? Sacha Distel's "Thank Heavens for Little Girls" was a translation and is probably best not spoken about in polite circles. Apart from that, I can think of three others:

1. Serge Gainsbourg's and Jane Birkin's "Je t'aime, moi non plus",
   
2. Vanessa Paradis' "Joe le Taxi", and,
3. Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane pour Moi". This song was really popular at the end of the 70's, surfing on the back-end of the punk wave. Unfortunately, I was pre-pubescent at the time, so by the time my face was covered in spots, it was New Romantic rather than New Wave (although, Wham were seriously under-rated :-) ). However, Plastic's song stuck in the mind of lots of people (at least I think so: maybe I'm the only one who's heard of it?).

It was the "Village Fête" this weekend and imagine my surprise when I saw that Plastic was doing a show in a marquee on the local football pitch! It seems he is doing the rounds with a couple of other singers from the same era. As it's a village (well, OK, a small town), the football pitches are only a few hundred metres from our house and we could hear the music from the garden. It was a lovely afternoon, and we had just finished the annual "City Mountain Biking" tour - up and down the hills of Lyon with the traffic stopped for the cyclists - an excellent day out (but if you've ever been to Lyon you'll know that there are some killer hills).

So a bunch of us are sat in the garden with a beer, and guess what comes on? Oh yes, you've guessed it, Plastic was knocking out his old standard. It was more cabaret than punk, but he got a standing ovation from us at the end. Thanks Plastic, you made my day.
I'm sure he was playing huge venues in the early 80's, and a village fête is not be in the same bracket, but hey, 30 years later and he's still out there, doing what he loves. Not many people can say that about their lives.

Unless of course, he is absolutely sick of being remembered for one song, a stupid name, playing "provincial tent gigs" and is doing it because it because he is broke. Damn, that spoiled my upbeat ending!

A Brian Monologue

This little anecdote from my father made me laugh and I wanted to record it for posterity for my own amusement. It came from his 80-year-old neighbour (who, for the record, hasn't lost his marbles).

I suspect you have to know a bit about the character to find it amusing, but if I ever write a novel, this little monologue will slip in. It's language and style from another era (but firmly rooted in northern England). As an exercise in style, I tried to write it phonetically to capture the accent. Not sure it works, but here goes:

"Y'alright Dave?"
"If thez one thing ah carn't bloody stand, it's cheats"
"Ar've bin watching that program, "The Weakest Link" an' y'know what? The strongest link always gets t'end and then t'others vote 'em off and thee never win!"
"People t'day ave no scruples!"

"An another thing ah can't bloody stand is liars"
"Ah bought these trousers las' week and thee said thee were non-crease"
"Bloody creases everywhere, the lying buggers. Med in Britain too!"
"Y'know whats t'worst in all that Dave? Ah can't bloody stand ironing".

And off he went.

I hope it doesn't come over as mockery, because I know and love the guy (I have known him all my life) and he's never short of an off-the-wall comment. I hope he has many years left if only so I can get some more for the novel...

Customer Service à la Zidane

I love it when a sweeping generalisation is backed up with evidence (Global Warming? Polar ice-caps melting? Hhhmm, might be something in that piece of evidence...)

Anyway, the following relates to my "infamous"article, "3 Things I Dislike About France". Although it didn't figure in the "list of 3", I wrote that the French like "nothing more than a good-old stand-up argument in public". As above, it was a sweeping generalisation, but sometimes there is a grain of truth that leads to the generalisation...

Last Friday lunchtime, I went to the restaurant with a colleague. We work close to the supermarket mentioned in a previous article. They have several restaurants surrounding them and one of them we go to on a regular basis. It's popular: I estimate that there are over 100 people there at any one time every lunchtime: it's not a dodgy backstreet boozer; the food is OK and, until Friday, I thought that the service was good too...

Today, something was different - there was a guy, in his 40's, not the brightest looking to be honest, but so what, a customer all the same. Anyway, I didn't see how it started, but evidently he wasn't happy with the plate of cheese that had been served to him and was rather vociferously "explaining" this to the serving staff. He entered into a bit of an argument with the manager. Eventually, the manager took off his apron before wandering off into the kitchen. During this time, the guy kept pointing at his cheese (sorry, I really don't know what he was complaining about - it was loud and I was looking over someone's shoulder).

He made his final point by picking up the plate, pointing at it once more for effect, before throwing it on the floor, smashing it and evoking cries of "eh, ô,ô" from the customers (I don't know what effect an ^ has on an ordinary 'o', but it makes it look foreign). At this point, the manager, having removed his apron, returned from the kitchen. He arrived behind the indignant customer who was still remonstrating with the waiters. He calmly tapped the man on the back of the shoulder, and, as he turned round, gave him a swift head-butt. Silence. Problem solved, no ugly shoving out onto the street, no calling the police.

"Got a problem customer? No sweat, a swift smack on the head will soon sort that out".

Nobody, including the buttee knew what to make of this (is buttee a word?- if not, remember that you saw it here first! "buttee" = "one who has been butted". We use "butty" in the north of England to signify "sandwich". A double-butty is far more appetising than a double-buttee. But I digress.).

After a few seconds, he regained his indignation and continued to insult everybody, all the while retreating towards the door as he saw that he might receive another for his troubles. He left, the mess was cleared, and the boss continued to collect orders as before. Problem solved...

Not for me though. We had only just started our meal and I think it shows how paranoid we are because for the rest of the meal, I expected the guy to come back, maybe, god forbid, with a weapon. I am sure that I am not the only one in there that was thinking this, even though there were nervous laughs all round. As Morrissey said "I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible. Oh mamma, let me go". Actually the "Oh mamma let me go" is nothing to do with this article and is a story in itself.

Anyway, my original point that there are very few places in the world where you would see something like this happen, especially in a family restaurant. I checked this story with my French colleagues this morning, who were equally as shocked as me, so my "evidence-of-a-grain-of-truth-in-a-sweeping-generalisation" theory is not exactly vindicated, but its an interesting little interlude in itself.

What doe all this mean though?

1. I will never go there again, and probably neither will many of the other customers present
2. If I do go there again, I won't order the cheese
3. If I don't like the service, I will be very careful about how I complain.
   

I wondered what I would do if I had been the owner watching this? I can't go into French employment law because there is only a limited amount of disk-space in the world. However, putting that aside, I would think I would take one of four options:

1. Send the boss home for the day to keep him out of sight of the remaining customers and then give him a written warning when he comes back, or,
2. Send him on a course on how to treat customers
   
3. Sack him on the spot
4. Recommend him as a bouncer to any night-club-owning /debt-collecting friends.
   

To me, it doesn't seem to be something you should allow your staff to do, even with the most difficult customers...what would you do? Comments welcome.


As a complete aside
In case you don't understand the title of this article. Zinedine Zidane is the 2nd best player I have ever seen (after Maradona). My kids are young and love playing football, but, if you mention Zidane, they follow it up with a "coup de boule" gesture (see the video). If they grow up as football/soccer fans, then it would be a great shame if this is all he is remembered for.