A Monkey in Manhattan
This ape's thinking has evolved sufficiently to know that this is all there is.
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£1 000 of Cracked Pepper
Two small housebound kittens – what could possibly go wrong? One could fall from the landing and not land on her feet – that’s what could happen – with no insurance! Was she pushed, Ginge? Now we have six weeks of trying to prevent a cat from being a cat, i.e jumping, scratching, licking, fighting etc. Worse than having a toddler – they’re more athletic!
Calling Ginge in at 8pm last night, found her on the patio prostrate, struggling to breathe and blood coming from her mouth. She’d been hit by a car. Romy managed to lay her in an old coat and hold her in the car as I drove to the vets. Mercifully, our beautiful little girl, on being put on the vet’s table, very quickly curled up in a ball and died very soon after. While Ginge had been in severe pain, she had bit Romy which caused us to go straight to the hospital and sit (and sober up) in A & E for 3 hours till 12:30am later that night!
A week later, sister Pepper is run over. I come home to find Jack burying her in the garden. Very sad moment. The only solace is that they will remain in our memories as a pair. Beautiful little cats.
Ginger and Pepper
November 7, 2014
School Film Time
From 2008 onwards for 7 years, I had fun dabbling with film-making. This first one, set to ‘The Masterplan’ by Oasis was shot on a borrowed Sony camcorder. The lack of clarity convinced me from then on to use an HD camcorder which led to a considerably more impressive professional quality. The general idea was that I personally have one picture of myself when I was at school to try and glean what sort of oik I was at 16! So to produce a video record in a collaborative musical effort where all the year featured, no stars mind, would serve as a good memento of their school years.
This is my son Harry’s Year 11 leaving film. Apart from an experimentation with time lapse, I wanted the central theme to be that in school, like in life, you can’t do it on your own. Not without friends, parents, teachers, sports coaches, drama front and backstage staff etc. It’s basically a socialist idea. Do you remember socialism? Used to be big in the 70’s and 80’s!
I fancied doing a film where pupils became teachers and teachers became kids. One of the highlights of my career was getting the whole of Year 11, before they posed for their traditional school photograph and in front of the headteacher, to shout out in unison, “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control” Worth the life’s entry fee itself.
Good fun playing with green screen. Very surprised to get some decent results and realise that all you need is a big green cloth, some cheap software programme and loads of wonderful HD films that, in passing, I would like to state I do not own the rights for! The black and white cards took weeks to organise and the co-ordination of 150 pupils to work as an entity, without rehearsal, was one of the most intense 40 minutes I’ve ever spent.
With a childhood working in a theatre and loving musicals, I wanted to do something all singing and dancing! Space Walk by Lemon Jelly is such an expressive piece of music that it just lends itself to some interpretation of some sort or another.
Birds fly the coop! I feel it’s the most obvious, natural inclination to have, that to record change. As a secondary teacher (and parent) you see the most fundamental physical, social and emotional change as 11 – 16 year olds move through adolescence and then disappear at the other end of the production line!
School Film Time
August 25, 2014
Falling Slowly
Every teacher must reflect on how quickly pupils grow up, especially your own!
Here’s a little project, five pupils and I started five years ago when they entered secondary school in Year 7. Each of them have been filmed every week doing a stride or two in a walk around our school, two from the front, two left profile and one right profile. That walk took five years and here is that passage as they come back to the entrance from which they started, just before they leave in Year 11.
Charlotte
Megan
Myles
Sophie
Ross
Falling Slowly
April 24, 2014
Muhammad Ali – The Greatest
At the end of the sixties when I first became aware of Cassius Clay, I couldn’t stand him and always wanted his opponent to beat him. Nobody ever laid a glove on him because he was so fast. The first Parkinson interview in 1971 changed all that and from then on, like the rest of the planet, I regard him as simply the greatest athlete and personality that has ever lived.
Any other champion of the world would have been happy to prosper from his fame and fortune but that wasn’t enough for Ali. He changed his slave name and followed the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and became a leader for black rights in America.
Even winning the Olympic heavyweight gold medal in Rome was not enough for him to be able to eat downtown in his own city. He subsequently threw the medal away into the river in disgust. Ali also later refused to enlist into the army to fight in Vietnam and as a result was stripped of his title and banned from boxing for four years. That started his long journey back, losing to Norton on the way, before losing to Joe Frazer in probably the greatest fight that there has ever been. One billion people watched the fight including a 13 year-old in Felixstowe, England. I was heartbroken and I remember writing about the injustice of his story at school!
Ask any sportsman who was the greatest athlete/sporting icon of all time and there is no contest. His poetry, wit and character made him a hero on every continent. Charming and kind, a man for all seasons who fought injustice and for what was right in the world.
I recorded this Parkinson show on a reel to reel rape recorder; – yes before cassettes of any kind! I was so taken by this Atttica poem that I learnt it by heart and actually chose to perform it at a school Prose presentation. People after asked me why had I recited it whilst imitating Muhammad Ali’s voice to which I replied I hadn’t even known I had done so. I must have been so taken by his aura and the conviction for what he believed in, that I mimicked his delivery subconsciously. Tony Benn said that the four most influential people he’d ever known were all black. Freedom fighters all of them. Nelson Mandela, Ghandhi, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Paul Robeson. I’d like to add Muhammad Ali to that list. Not a learned man or a politician but remembered by everybody and not only by people of his colour. There must be some reason why 44 years later after learning this poem it still remains with me today. Simply the Greatest.
I overall love his humour, honesty and wonderful character which transcends race, colour and creed.
Muhammad Ali – The Greatest
April 16, 2014
Black and White Gold
This James Cagney scene is at the end of Yankee Doodle Dandy, a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan, known as “The Man Who Owned Broadway”. I was so impressed with this routine, I tried to do it when I was at school with obviously absolutely no success!
Unbelievable perfection in dance, timing and golf swing technique. In the next clip, Fred Astaire describes how the cameraman complained about the trajectory of his shots being too high and how he had to amend them.
This was the first film I recorded on our new VHS recorder and so because of the novelty of being able to rewind and review, learnt the whole film by heart. Fantastic thought-provoking script, characters and unravelling story.
The Marx brothers were so ahead of their time. ‘A Night at the Opera’ my particular favourite. Love the Groucho Marx quote, ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member’!
My parents’ generation regarded Spencer Tracey as the greatest ever actor. ‘Boys Town’, ‘All about Eve’, ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ This speech still relevant today – perhaps more so! …. “because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.”
The Tony Curtis quote, ‘Kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler,’ is actually untrue. No-one else came close to MM when I was a teenager.
Black and White Gold
April 13, 2014
Performance Feedback Revision – Baba Brinkman
Baba Brinkman’s freestyle rap “Performance, Feedback, Revision” from “The Rap Guide to Evolution’, live in front of 3,500 people at Robin Ince’s “9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People” comedy variety show December 20 2009 at the Hammersmith Apollo, London. Instrumental beat by Nokz from Tehdit.
One thought that I have and that a lifetime teaching Maths has confirmed to me is that, The best solution is never at the extremes.
The best solution in optimisation problems are not exactly in the middle either but where the competing variables find an equilibrium together. Anybody who has played computer civiisation building games will know programmers build in a riot, plague, invasion of an enemy etc to throw at you if as a player you ignore completely or play with a variable to excess. Complete state control such as the totalitarian communist model of USSR is as far off the ideal political solution as the ‘American Dream’ free market, capatalist model. Excessive authoritarian parenting leads to as many problems with bringing up children as a laissez-faire, too liberal, no clear boundaries approach. My little experience in film-making taught me the need to have a structure but at the same time letting freedom in the model leads to unexpected magic happening that could never have been planned.
There has been million-dollar research into the quickest way to getting passengers on and off planes to minimise the time needed for the plane to stay on the ground. This is a billion dollar industry so it’s important to get it right, so guess what they found out!There are about 40 ways of getting people on and off a plane with such variables as the back/front of the aircraft, window/aisle, left/right etc. The best solution was one that involved a balance between order and randomness.
Teaching thirty youngsters is a more dynamically fluid chaotic system than people uninvolved with education think or will ever know. Establishing a successful relationship with one adolescent let alone a group is one of Performance – Feedback – Revision. The evolution of this relationship which can take years to develop, observing administrators attempt to judge in 20 minutes!
…..and how do human beings (teachers) ever learn to do anything? – like this –
Performance – Feedback – Revision
…..and how do I generally develop my lyricism (teaching style/behavioural management)? – like this –
Performance – Feedback – Revision
…..because the performance is necessary to change the words (learning) to decide which have an impact and which to send back to the drawing board.
Performance (by me) – Feedback (from me and my peers) – Revision (suited for the children I teach)
“… the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don’t need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it.” – John Holt
Performance Feedback Revision – Baba Brinkman
March 24, 2014
60s and 70s Classics
I have always loved all sorts of music and noticed that passion seems to grab some people from a young age whilst completely missing others. When we were young, our family shared a gramophone amongst six of us. It served as a communal musical watering hole where all our collective purchases of 45s and long-playing albums were kept together. I think of this today with kids on ipods and the mandatory use of socially isolating headphones and DVD players in bedrooms.
My older brother Peter’s musical taste ranged and changed from Cliff Richard and Rolf Harris singles to Vanilla Fudge’s ‘You keep me hanging on’ and the Zombies ‘She’s not there’, I occasionally listened, (under his tuition) to my dad’s choice of classical records and grew to love Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto No.2 and Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. My first ever record was ‘Needles and Pins’ by the Searchers. The strangest inclusion in our record collection was ‘House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals because it was bought by our dad. He had watched a television talent show and this song had won and had made a great impression on him.
I was five when the Beatles released ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962. Growing up with them on the television, at the cinema or buying all their records. two or three times over in every format possible means they are number one to me. Their catalogue is incomparable as any hopeless 3-chord strumming guitar playing amateur like myself will testify.
Two years ago, my wife and I went to see Bob Dylan at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. As millions of others, we are devoted fans of pre-electric bob and we held our breath to recapture an experience something special. It didn’t materialise and it’s not his fault either because our memory of the Bob Dlyan that we went to see, frozen in time, is no more. The few classics he did play such as ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’, he mutilated beyond recognition on purpose. He has always been thus and that’s why still at 70 he remains the enigma and icon he is. He didn’t say one word to the adoring audience, left with no encore. He doesn’t want to talk and he doesn’t have to talk. We couldn’t wait for it to end. The music was so loud, I had my fingers in my ears for most of his slot. Mark Knoffler supported him and at least he said something even if it was self-indulgent and forgetable. On leaving, I listened to ‘fans’ vent their disappointment. Someone called him a c**t!
I have always loved the simplicity of Paul Simon’s songs and like the Beatles, they’re not defined by a certain few commercially successful hits reaching No. 1, the whole catalogue is important. Art Garfunkel’s voice is beautiful in this song. It is as flawless as his forehead!
The progressive rock music of Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer etc was not a favourite genre of mine due to it being owned,(in my mind) by the older boys. I did listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and appreciated it but I was born too late to be the right age. Luckily that’s not the case when Monty Python appeared. Isn’t it strange after all these years, being a Beatle fan, I still wrongly remain ignorant and ambivalent to the Stones. My son Jack has beaten me to it there, recently being in the front row at Glastonbury and experienced what all the fuss was about. My other son Harry made his way to the front at the Isle of Wight festival to catch Paul McCartney. I’m increasingly no longer in the audience, but in one way, perhaps I am!!
In the unmissable oscar winning documentary, Searching for Sugarman, Sugar tells us that in the 70s every south african had three albums in their record collection. ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’, ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. My older brother Peter bought me ‘Sweet Baby James’ by James Taylor one Christmas, saying everybody had it at college, whereas ten years later at the end of the 70s, for me, everybody seemed to have ‘Rumours’ and to be continually playing it!
60s and 70s Classics
March 22, 2014
The End of the World
Every film clip, picture and frame edited to perfection.
‘It’s time I had some time alone, I feel the same way, it’s time I had some time alone, my god, hands up, who wants to walk around thinking there’s a war that’s going to hit. That is a terrible system. I believe the majority of people want to live in a peaceful world, that’s what I believe. Because otherwise we’re looking at the potential world war. A world when modern governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent and if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, “What happened to those people in 2007, how come they couldn’t see the threat to a future generation of people?”
Look I understand here in Washington some people say we’re not at war, I know that, they’re just wrong, – in my opinion!’
You said it George!! (at some time or other)
A Monkey in Manhattan 