Everything's gone green

I have a 9-year-old son. We just moved house to a small town just outside Lyon and he started a new school. The local council have a policy of electing schoolkids to their committees to push forward the ideas that are dear to them. In order to choose which children to elect (there are 2 from each school), they hold elections and each candidate must present a manifesto. I was immensely surprised that my son decided that he would like to stand - he's not one of these over-earnest kids and is in fact, quite shy - maybe because he was the new boy, he didn't know any better.

Anyway, his manifesto was a simple, "green manifesto":

• All street-lights to use low energy bulbs
• Larger recycling bins for all residents
  

As simple as that! Guess what?: he was elected and tomorrow gets his mayoral sash and takes part in an official ceremony. This is undoubtedly a"stunt", but I like the idea of trying to get children interested in local politics and it warms the cockles of my heart; proud father and all that.

However, I am pretty sure that I won't be seeing local council employees replacing the bulbs any time soon. But he's as pleased as hell! The trouble is that, if he is as pleased as hell, he is making my life hell. I am now required to:

• Replace all light bulbs in the house with low-energy versions.
• Stop the tap running while brushing my teeth
• Stop the shower while applying soap!
• Recycle the smallest scrap of paper.
• All leftover food to be placed on the compost heap (not sure what this achieves, but I do it anyway - I will tell you in 1 year when I have my first "harvest").

I have had to draw the line with his request that I install solar panels on the roof to heat the house (if you are reading this in the north of England, don't worry, it won't be an issue for you).

He doesn't realise that I am years ahead of him: when I was was a lad, every Friday was fish-and-chips night, and it was always wrapped in recycled newspaper. We were way ahead of our time and we didn't even know it! Funnily enough, my French friends look at me incredulously when I tell them that:

1. We eat fish and chips, smothered in animal fat.
   
2. It is wrapped in yesterday's newspaper.

Who said the British don't have a deep culinary culture? Funnily enough, my British friends look at me incredulously when I tell them that:

1. I have French friends
2. They don't eat fish and chips in France (unless it's at McD*****ds)
   

Wow, that post didn't end up where it started!

PS: Kenny, you are not the only one to use obscure song quotes in your post titles.

Lazy Teaching Leads to Lazy Blogging?

I wrote once that I try to avoid blogs that are simply diaries. However, something triggered off some memories of Junior school and it brought other memories to the surface, so thought I'd add one last one...can it be considered a diary even if it happened 30 years ago?

It relates back to Junior school again (where we had the dancing lessons). How about this for a school holiday assignment:

"Construct as many words as possible from the word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Two rules:

1. There must be more than 2 letters in each word,
2. Don't use a dictionary.

What a crappy, waste of time to ask kids to work on this during their holidays. I don't think that test would make it onto the National Curriculum today.

To cap it all, I only came second with 800 words. Darren came an easy first with 1200, but I maintain to this day that he got help from his parents...

The 3rd placed kid came in at about 50: evidently the other class members were less competitive and preferred to play, use their imagination and just be kids as you are supposed to be at that age.

We need to talk about Kevin

When I was young, a convoluted set of events led my uncle from the far north-west of England to the far south-east. My uncle was a tough guy and apparently an excellent footballer. In fact he was so good, that Manchester City invited him to go for a trial with them. Unfortunately, he was a big Manchester United fan, so decided against it (I suspect that, with hindsight, he regrets that decision).

I should say that my dad and I never really got on with my uncle. I remember it coming to a head many years later just as my parents announced proudly to him that I would be going to university. He started off on a self-righteous "Students, waste of taxpayer's money..." etc. rants. My dad's reply stopped him dead in his tracks: "We can't all be bus drivers you know". If you know my dad (and you will if you read another of my posts), you will know that this was completely out-of-character, and, as far as I am concerned, the put down of the year - I don't think they have spoken to each other since (I am assuming that you realise from this that my uncle was a bus driver).

Anyway, a couple of times before this incident, we went down to the deepest south-east to stay with him and his family for our holidays: "Drive towards Skipton, turn right at Scotch Corner and keep going south" were all the directions you needed. So off we went in my dad's mini-van, kitted out with cushions in the back for me and my sister to sit on. Seat belts, pah, who needs them? On arriving in the south, the differences for a young boy from deepest Cumbria were striking:

1. It was flat
2. The people spoke with a strange accent
3. The bricks were a different colour
4. There was sunshine!
   
5. The roads were not paved with gold; rather, they were large slabs of concrete joined by tarmac that melted in the said sun.

Like most young kids, I was a big football fan. It was during one of these holidays that I went to see the "local" team play; at the time they were one of the best teams in Europe. I saw them beat Anderlecht in a pre-season friendly and then Newcastle 3-0 on the first day of the season (I still have the pre-match programme and can remember where I stood (under the 'M' on the large "Portman Road" that was displayed on the stand roof).

The team had a player called Kevin. He was a young player breaking into the England team and was described as having the potential to become one of the best ever English players since, erm, the last one who would become the next best English player.

The most amazing thing though (for me), was that Kevin was my uncle's friend. Imagine saying that your uncle's best mate is David Beckham or Tiger Woods and you are not quite there, but you get the idea. "Why don't you come with me round to his house?" my uncle asked me one day. I was completely flabbergasted - my uncle taking me to one of the country's best footballer's house! Just like that. I grabbed my autograph book and off we went.

I imagined driving up a long drive to a huge house, indoor swimming pool etc - you get the picture...but your picture, like mine, would be wrong: this was well before the days of big, big money in sport. In fact, we didn't drive there, he lived just round the corner in a semi-detached house, not dissimilar to the one in the picture. Kevin himself answered the door and invited us in for a cup of tea after my uncle explained that I wanted his autograph (I didn't really, but it would have been churlish to say so). I was too overwhelmed to speak: I just held out my autograph book (i.e. and old exercise book) for him to sign. On the walls were pennants and his England caps - yes, they really are caps. I put one on, and had my picture taken with him (sadly, it's been lost).

Now, as far as I know, it may have been a top-of-the-range semi-detached house. However, when you see pictures of the houses of the likes of David Beckham, it doesn't really match up.

The big money came into football in the early 90's: this was the late 70's. Kevin's star shone brightly for a brief period, but too soon as far as sports super-stardom is concerned. He finally retired after injuries at 27. That's life, but I bet there are a lot of 70's and 80's footballers who rue just missing out on the Sky Sports windfall!

Unfortunately, the story doesn't seem to have ended too well (no gig as a TV football pundit unlike many others from his era for example). From what I can find out from Google, things haven't changed too much, but articles from the web can't give the full picture (this one being a perfect example), so let's hope he's happy with his lot.

Unfortunately, my dad's put-down means that I don't get to speak to my uncle too much these days, so, even if they are still friends, I'll never get the real details...

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!