A diagnosis of Asperger's? Part Five

Talking to someone with Asperger's must be maddening at times, especially if they are having an off-day and their usual coping mechanisms are playing up.  You see, for high-functioning Aspies, it is often the case that their condition is pretty much invisible to the people around them as they have become so adept at reading situations and hiding their discomfort (all at a cost - it's exhausting as hell).  Occasionally, however, these long-developed mechanisms and techniques can suddenly fail.  Being ill with a bad cold, having a chronic headache, having to deal with just too much stimulus can all leave a person with Asperger's naked and vulnerable, and leave the people around them confused and upset.  But how do these strategies get learned in the first place?

I know for a fact that a great many people I know would be sceptical or even dismissive of any suggestion that I have a condition as pervasive and seemingly-obvious as Asperger's.  All my life I have managed it too well.  Asperger's often has little impact on a toddler, and language can often be learned at the usual rate.  In children it can manifest itself in meltdowns (outbursts where things get too intense and the individual struggles to maintain control) or in poor behaviour in school but just as likely it can lead to nothing more unusual than a quiet child with a few close friends who simply doesn't tolerate anything unusual, noisy or chaotic - in short, people with Asperger's can go their whole childhood and teen years without a diagnosis, all the while finding ways and means to offset the constant anxiety, social difficulties and emotional exhaustion.  Twenty or thirty years of practicing and refining these skills (still much more conscious and 'forced' than a neuro-typical's social behaviour) can make an Aspie blend in, disappear, until something happens to strip them of their armory.

This is how I think it panned out for me.  I reckon that for my whole childhood I just 'got on with things' and simply avoided anything that I knew would make me anxious or uncomfortable.  I think I assumed everyone was the same, that anxiety was a constant state of mind for all of us and that therefore I should just live my life.  I spoke only to people I wanted to speak with, and these were mostly people who shared an interest.  I am told I was often thought of as rude or even ignorant as I would refuse to respond to questions or small talk, even at the age of eight or more.  I certainly only ever wanted to be left with my solitary hobbies - anything dragging me from them (school, trips out, holidays) I actively despised.  School became tolerable only because I was good at it and everyone seemed pretty happy to leave me alone (a miracle that I am thankful for).  In fact an abiding memory of my GCSE years was a particularly cruel set of caricatures that one of the form's more artistic members had drawn up of the whole class.  Some were truly vicious and even alarming, but mine was simply a man standing by a fireplace, pipe in mouth, neutral expression.  Thank goodness for that, I say.

So I learned to get by and always had a small coterie of friends (most of whom I have lost contact with - I am dreadful at maintaining any but the closest of relationships).  I have no idea how I was viewed, or whether anyone thought I was 'different' in any way, but certainly all was as well as could be expected.  It was the much, much later triple whammy of becoming a father, being made a middle leader and suffering from depression that tore my defenses from me and left me trying to figure out what the strange being within this lost cocoon was, and how it worked: suddenly I found myself struggling with conversation, always deeply confused by missed implications or body language.  Teaching, which had been paradoxically quite a successful career path for me, given that I was so accustomed to acting and being hyper-aware of my interactions, was suddenly impossible.  I had time off.  I gradually recovered and learned more about ASD, leading to my situation right now.

My armory is being repaired and renewed these days, and I am increasingly like my old self, most of the time.  But it has been quite an experience and not one that I would care to re-live.  Asperger's does not have to be a curse at all; all told I am probably glad that I have likely grown up with it as it has given me so much to be thankful for, but it can spiral quite badly and an awareness of this for both Aspies and their loved ones is of great importance.

A diagnosis of Asperger's? Part Four

If you've been reading my blogs and thinking 'goodness, this sounds just like me!' then it may well be that you fancy taking this a little further and discovering a little more about ASD and Asperger's in particular.  That was certainly my first step.  However, like OCD, ASD is notoriously easy to self-diagnose based on a few character quirks that are actually relatively common in the general population, so it is important that you tread carefully and don't make too many assumptions.

Minas Tirith in Minecraft.  Just because.

Generally speaking, a diagnosis is only ever going to be helpful if you are finding your ASD traits to be impacting on your life in a detrimental way, or if you have a real need to know the truth behind your inability to operate as everyone else seems to.  If you are happy and getting on with life merrily, then it may not be worth the time and effort of getting a formal diagnosis, despite having some tell-tale symptoms.  However, if you're having significant difficulties in your relationships or at work, say, then it could be a good idea to look into it a little deeper and see if you fit the criteria.

There are many pretty poor quality 'ASD tests' out there - so many that it seems pretty likely that self-diagnosis is very common and possible even (shudder) 'cool'.  This is certainly something that the Aspie community is very wary of, and on forums it would be very wise indeed to know your onions and to have really made sure you are not just a bit shy before wading into conversation.  I have several questionnaires that I can recommend, if only because they are respected by those that actually make the diagnoses; these questionnaires are lengthy and requ
ire real effort, but are likely to give you a clear indication of whether it is worth pursuing a diagnosis or not.

My favourite, and the one that has been used during my current diagnosis (even though I'd filled it in online before) is the 'Ritvo Autism-Asperger's Diagnostic Scale - Revised' or RAADS-R.  This questionnaire differentiates between you now and you pre-age 16, as it takes into account that people on the spectrum often manage to teach themselves ways to cope, meaning that significant symptoms as children vanish in adulthood (well, not vanish, but become hidden).  As such it is more thorough than other tests, and at 80 questions long it's pretty intense!  Answers are a choice between:

a) True now and when I was young
b) True only now
c) True only when I was younger than 16
d) Never true

Here are a few sample questions:

1. I am a sympathetic person

2. I often use words and phrases from movies and TV in conversation

10. I always notice how food feels in my mouth.  This is more important than taste for me.

22. I have to "act normal" to please other people and make them like me

29. Some ordinary textures that do not bother others feel very offensive when they touch my skin

40. I can see in my mind in exact detail things that I am interested in

As you can see, the questions take in every aspect of ASD, including the lesser known sensory experience.  This can include an intolerance of slight warmth, meaning that cool temperatures have to be constantly sought, or strange changes of intensity of sounds that are actually remaining at a constant volume.  Somebody with simple introversion tendencies would score pretty low on this questionnaire.  Once you've filled it in, it places your results against the body of results and against those scores that seem to indicate ASD.  Apparently a score of 140 or more is highly suggestive of ASD; I got a score of 187...

The Empathy Quotient test is another fairly standard one that can be completed online and that you may well be asked to complete as part of a formal diagnosis.  This focuses on human empathy, of course, so avoids those other symptoms that RAADS-R explores, but raises some intriguing questions including my favourite: "If someone asked me if I liked their haircut, I would reply truthfully, even if I didn't like it."  Obviously this is less useful for adult ASD as we will often have developed coping strategies from past experience, ie NEVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT SOMEONE'S APPEARANCE IF THEY ASK!!!!!  No doubt this rule will be over-applied, as it is impossible for someone on the spectrum to tell when a person is genuinely concerned and not fishing for compliments.  Hard times.  But, the EQ together with RAADS-R are a great starting place if you are wondering.

After that, a trip to the GP and a request for a referral should be undertaken if you are sure that you want to make that journey.  Obviously the GP will need plenty of reason to direct NHS funds your way, so ensure you know what you're talking about and can give a detailed explanation of why you feel a referral is required.  My GP was extremely understanding and referred me quickly after I explained it all, but then this was after a year or so of speaking with her about anxiety and depression so I suppose she already had a lot to go on - being over-prepared wouldn't be a bad idea.

Good websites and forums:

Reddit's Asperger's subreddit - make sure you know what you're talking about!
The National Autism Society - useful info
A blog - 'Life on the Spectrum' with fascinating insights

A diagnosis of Asperger's? Part Three

Being obsessed with something can be great fun.  It means you never get bored of it, and it becomes a tremendous comfort to indulge in whatever the obsession may be.  I think everyone has the capacity to be so interested in something that the associated behaviour becomes a little obsessive, but with ASD things tend to go quite a lot further (as is something of a recurring pattern here).

I have always had the tendency to become fixated and obsessed with things, usually activities or objects or ideas, and I think I assumed this was the case for everyone as I grew up, mostly because I hung around with people who shared my interests.  However, even at an early age it was clear that other people got bored of talking about our shared interests way before I ever did.  In fact, I never bored of it, as far as I can tell, though it's hard to test as people willing to discuss Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Knuckles are few and far between, especially these days.  And so, like with everything else, I learned the 'correct' way to do things, and accepted it when friends wished to change the subject, albeit deeply grudgingly.  Even now, an opportunity to talk at great length about my favourite things tends to become something of a trial for the other person, as I simply won't stop unless it is made very clear to me that I have to.

As I have got older this tendency has not diminished at all.  I think I thought it would; I think I thought, as a child, that adult-me wouldn't want to talk about Lego or the Titanic or steam locomotives or Warhammer all the time.  How wrong I was.  I still have the need to talk about my obsessions, only not many outlets save for online discussion (Reddit is a life-saver).  Recently I added this 'quirk' to the rapidly growing pile of potential symptoms, finding it a key element of ASD.  But how does this obsession manifest itself, you cry.  Well, I can only speak for myself but here goes:

My attempt at Lincoln cathedral in Minecraft, mostly from memory

An obsession for me can last anything between a week and thirty years.  When an obsession is 'current', i.e. in the forefront of my mind (which can last months at a time - long obsessions tend to wax on and wax off intermittently) then it is always jostling and fighting to be thought about.  It is screeching with its hand in the air, 'ME!! Think about ME for a while now!" no matter what else I am supposed to be doing.  It will burst into my consciousness during a lesson, for example, or during a conversation.  As well as being irritatingly intrusive, my obsessions can be comforting, especially if left to indulge in them in absolute peace.  So, for example, I will allow them to fill my mind when I am doing something dull, such as waiting for a train or on break duty at work, and this makes me feel very relaxed, almost to the point that I see it as a sort of mindfulness, only very internal rather than external.  What the obsession is in will vary, but for me there are very definite trends and patterns.  The ones that are longest lived are my interest in the Titanic, which started at age 8, my deep immersion int he world of Harry Potter, my love of trains, Lego and specific video games, and my utter obsession with architecture.  This last one is the most useful and interesting, as I find myself studying the form and design of any building I find myself outside or inside of, considering its building materials, layout, style and a host of other things, mostly instinctively - there is no effort involved.  I think this is why Leg

My Minecraft Titanic Boat deck - yes, it's to scale.

o and more recently games like Minecraft have taken such a firm hold of me - they allow me to express this deep obsession at will, and as such I have built thousands of wonderfully intricate and architecturally pleasing constructions with both media.  Of course anyone can have a fascination with something, but for me, and the reason I see this as a possible symptom of ASD, the instantaneous 'scanning' I do of a building or set of buildings, the unbidden ideas and thoughts that spring to mind and the fact that I could easily sketch a pretty accurate drawing of said building after only a minute or so's study all point to this being a rather stronger act that simply being interested by something.  I can't control it, and if in a place I find uncomfortable or disagreeable I will take great comfort in studying the architecture around me, identifying hidden buttresses, flues, corbels, architraves, gable ends and so on.

I will never forget some of my stronger, shorter-term obsessions.  One was with World War One after visiting the battlefields of Belgium and Northern France.  This lasted about 6 months and was one of my sole interests for that period: I absorbed as much about it as I possibly could.  Another set of memories are my strong and very fond times spent with certain video games.  This obsessions can be intensely strong, and are most likely to be unwanted and intrusive.  Video games are addictive enough without having traits of ASD, so I tend to find myself daydreaming vividly about my current favourite game.  Long meetings at work have been the crucible for complex designs on Minecraft, French lessons when I was a kid were an opportunity for me to draw out the whole map of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and train journeys even now allow me to relive entire video games from beginning to end, if I let them (eg playing the whole of Sonic the Hedgehog through in my mind - yes, it's as pointless as it sounds).  All of this is both annoying and relaxing in equal parts, dependent on context.

So yes, I'm afraid that if I speak to you there is a very, very good chance I will be simultaneously thinking about Pacific locomotives of the 1930s or the last level of GoldenEye on the N64, and no, this is not going to have a massive effect on our conversation other than the likelihood of me occasionally seeming a little distant.

A diagnosis of Asperger's? Part Two

Lots and lots of people are socially anxious, and lots are introverted.  This does not mean they are on the autistic spectrum at all, and for years I assumed this about myself.  Socialising has been a major part of my life, but not in any way as much as for most people who have been to university and been in a gigging band - I tended to socialise as little as I could get away with whilst maintaining an air of reasonable normality.  The fact that I really love the taste of beer helped a lot too!  But I always had myself pegged as an introvert, assuming that terror and stress in social situations was pretty normal for everyone.

For someone with Asperger's, it is common for social situations to cause intense anxiety and even pain.  Making small talk and 'chatting' is something that does not come naturally, and the prospect of being around strangers (especially strangers whom one is expected to 'meet' and 'talk to') can be extremely problematic, often creating a fight or flight response to the stress.  As such, parties and other gatherings are anathema.  However, it is possible for well-established routine socialising with a small bunch of people in the usual haunts to be far more attractive and successful; throw alcohol into this mix and someone with Asperger's can make a decent fist at a night out (it's interesting just how often drink and drugs become a crutch for people with ASD - it makes perfect sense, when you think about how alcohol is used by just about everyone as a 'social lubricant', so those with ASD find it particularly handy.)  But a 'big night out', or a dinner party with acquaintances will be an utter nightmare.

The myriad issues that can crop up in social situations are worth looking at in some detail.  The biggest problem is not having an automatic, instinctive knowledge of how to act in social situations.  I genuinely view people with social confidence as if they are a different species.  It makes no sense to me how they are able to talk and be like that, so a two-fold thing occurs.  Firstly it can create resentment and even bitterness - 'it's not fair that these people find all this so easy'.  I think this is what led me to utterly despise the confident sporty people at University - it just didn't seem fair that they could be so at ease in any social situation!  The other effect is stranger, and is to do with a very common strategy employed by Aspies in particular - acting.  Socialising becomes an intense bout of Daniel Day-Lewis-esque method acting.  All the social cues and scripts that have been absorbed over the years help me to say and do the right thing when dealing with people 'en masse'.  Even films and TV shows can be dragged into the mix, as lines or reactions seen on telly become learned behaviour as it seems to work with people.  This was the symptom that really piqued my interest about six months ago, as it was something that I was hyper-aware that I did.  It's not just quoting TV shows - that's great fun when with the right people and is just an exercise in common humour; it's deeper than that.  It's scanning one's brain, looking for the right facial expression or bland comment to get you through the next chit-chat, stealing them wholesale from often quite obscure sources (often those shows or films that you've had a deep obsession with).  I know for a fact that I over-rely on several TV and film characters, but I will let the people who know me figure out who they may be.  Asperger's leads to a social life that is one long and tortuous performance, in the spotlight, with high stakes should anything go wrong.  It's small wonder that Aspies are so keen to avoid it.

When things go pear-shaped, then the fight-or-flight response can kick in.  I can't count the number of times I have abandoned a social occasion, usually abruptly and very often for no externally discernible reason, simply because I had to.  I have found myself wandering around cities after midnight having bailed (often without informing friends, as that confuses matters), deeply immersed in the sudden comfort of being alone in an empty place.  Now I am having the assessment, I have found myself looking back over my entire social experience and realising that this was the thread that linked all my peculiar behaviour together.  I'm hopeful that if I am diagnosed, then I will be able to manage a little better, as I'll know that those close to me will know about it too, and will understand, rather than be confused, hurt or cross!  But nothing can quite communicate the sudden and wonderful relief of leaving a social occasion - even one that is very enjoyable, with close, good friends - and wandering home alone in the cold dark with nothing but my own thoughts. This does not mean I hate socialising with friends - I actually love it, within strict parameters(!) but it does mean I am always grateful for the last orders bell.

A diagnosis of Asperger's? Part One

I have always been rather introverted.  I say 'rather' with a sense of grim irony, as I am in fact deeply, painfully introverted; this may be surprising for those who know me, but I have always found social situations exhausting and generally stressful, even with close friends.  I have managed to keep it pretty well hidden, I believe (though it's possible I may be wrong and everyone I know has always had me figured out!) and maintained a 'front' of being reasonably sociable and even lively at times.  However, I had never really considered this as anything more than a fact of life until quite recently: I guess I assumed everyone was the same.

My pride and joy - just for illustrative purposes

Then a few things happened in concert.  I became a father and a leader at work in the same year.  I won't go into details, but these things combined convinced me that perhaps my way of viewing the world and going about my business was a little different.  I'd learned a lot about Autistic Spectrum Disorders from teaching and getting to know various students with the condition and so I decided to see if I fit the criteria.  Lo and behold, a few free online clinical-style tests gave me a 'woah mamma' conclusion.  Apparently I wasn't a bit on the spectrum: I was in the pot of gold, so to speak.  Fascinated by this, I asked my GP for a referral to an expert; after describing my symptoms she referred me without hesitation, barely questioning me at all.  I am now in the middle of the diagnosis process.

In Wiltshire (different authorities do things differently) the diagnosis consists of a three-part assessment, each appointment lasting 90 minutes.  Along with this, questionnaires are completed (interestingly identical to those available online - the RAADS-R test among them) and parents/loved ones are asked for their take.  At the end of the assessment I will be emailed (not phoned, obviously!) with the results, and right now I have no idea what I want to happen.

On one hand, getting a diagnosis would explain an awful lot, and presumably give me some peace of mind.  On the other, I am afraid it will allow me to 'relax' into it, and this would not necessarily be a good thing.  I have made a reasonable job of my life, and have a good job, a wonderful partner and daughter and plenty of Lego, and much of this is down to my ability to hide how I really feel and react to the world.  I worry that if I relax, and 'let it all hang out', then problems may ensue.  Time will tell.

Anyway - the purpose for this rambling introduction is that I wish to begin a series of blogs about the diagnosis process, what it is like to hide the symptoms of Aspergers and how it is that I can be a reasonably successful teacher and middle leader with the condition.  Of course, I may turn out to not have the condition (or at least not sufficiently enough for diagnosis), but I believe a blog exploring my experience could be useful for anyone who feels similarly about themselves, and it may give the wherewithal to get a diagnosis for themselves.

And so, I shall leave this for now but I will follow up with Part 2 soon, which will hopefully be concerned with social anxiety and difficulties.

Pete

Novel Extract 2

Harris, in his alleyway at 11.20am knew none of this.  The delivery van was still blocking the alley, and water was pouring from a ruptured pipe in the wall of the wounded coffee shop; the alley was a mass of puddles and chunks of masonry.  He tried his mum again: again no luck.  Putting his phone onto a battery-saving mode, he weighed up his options.  As far as he knew, a terrorist attack was ongoing and the city was a dangerous place.  He had found temporary shelter, but realised it was pretty restrictive if he was spotted by someone wishing to do him harm.  He would be better, he reasoned, in a more open space, but one with plenty of hard cover.  How would the parks be? Would they be as hectic as the streets?  With no way of knowing, he set off down the other end of the alley, where the passage was narrower, and emerged in Chinatown, staying on the narrow streets.  Things were quieter here.  Helicopters were still hovering overhead, and the roar of crowds could be heard, but it all felt a little more distant, like the back streets of a busy seaside town in August.  Harris felt himself relax, and he considered his next move.  If he headed down past Piccadilly, he could get to St James park.  Or, with a little more effort, he could head to Hyde Park, which was bigger and a little further out, and therefore possibly safer.  He decided to head towards the West End, skirting Piccadilly as much as possible.  He fought against crowds in several places, and Pall Mall turned out to be almost as busy as Charing Cross, but he found himself in Green Park by midday, discovering it to be relatively quiet.  A few people he’d met on the way had given him snippets of information.  It seemed that the terrorists were brutal, exacting physical, manual violence on Londoners rather than shooting or bombing them.  Apparently one person had seen a group of individuals being eaten alive by their assailants.  Harris’ head span.  He still couldn’t get hold of his mother, and was still no closer to discovering what was going on.  He’d realised the Guardian had gone down at about 11.50, when an error screen kept being returned.  Twenty minutes later, his signal had gone altogether, including his 4G.  He was without means of communication, huddled under an oak in the least revered royal park in London.  He quietly sobbed, hiding himself as best he could under his coat as rain began to fall.

              A sudden flash and eruption of flame interrupted his misery.  It came from somewhere around Park Lane, and was joined with a second plume of smoke and fire.  The sound reached him a moment later, a heavy thudding roar.  Pieces of flaming debris were scattering around him, hurled into the air by the explosions.  Harris could see tall flames emerging from the source of the chaos, licking the walls of the high hotels and apartment blocks, a smear of black smoke on the blue sky.  So it was terrorists, he thought.  They were going for the symbols of wealth and inequality, no doubt.  He glanced across the trees to spot the heights of the Shard, peeping over the oaks and rooftops; a moment of clarity came in the realisation that he was sitting only a few hundred yards from Buckingham Palace.  He began to run.

              He was stopped by another immense crowd of people, many of whom were screaming and crying.  They were jostling and elbowing past one another, like an aggressive glacier.  There was no hope of crossing the stream, and Harris had no desire to join it.  There was no choice but to wait, so he ducked into a clothes shop that seemed to have been looted – garments were strewn on the floor and windows were smashed; no one was around.  The place smelled stale, with a tangy odour Harris put down to the vandals.  He squatted in a corner, hidden by some racks of jeans, and took out his phone again, only to discover there was still no signal of any kind.  Turning it off to preserve battery, he looked around at his situation.  The steady stream of people continued outside, and he could see the other side of the road, where people were leaning from windows, frantically looking at the events unfold.  There was a brief flash of blue lights and a moment of a siren which then died to nothing.  The shop was wrecked.  He hadn’t noticed how the ceiling was caving in, wires and light fittings dangling; glimpses of upstairs apartments with potted plants and book cases could be seen through the apertures. There seemed to be no logical reason for such destruction.  Harris pondered this for a moment and then noticed a figure, watching him from the far corner of the shop, a silhouette against the bright inlaid lighting advertising Givenchy and Boss scents.  Harris held up his hand in greeting, but the person didn’t move.  They appeared to be looking intently in his direction, and seemed totally uninterested in the crowds outside; Harris shifted his weight to offset the cramp that was developing in his thighs and tried speaking.  “Hiya, you ok?”

              The response was immediate and horrifying, as the figure leapt at Harris in a single, fleeting movement.  Harris turned and dived under the customer desk, banging his head hard on the wood, hurriedly drawing in his exposed legs as the other person reached for them.  The light was now illuminating the other, and Harris could see grey skin, shrivelled and worn features and empty eye sockets. The smell was incredible, and almost made him pass out.  Screaming in terror, he backed away, under the desk as the creature crawled towards him, clutching for his feet blindly.  The stench was unbelievable, and was choking Harris, bringing tears to his eyes.  The monster was wearing a grey, matted and filthy dress, in blue and gold, and had a necklace dangling around its neck; it swiped at Harris’ eyes with thin and discoloured fingers, the tips worn to bone like dinosaur’s claws.  Harris kicked at it with all his might, landing a few solid blows on the jaw of the thing, which promptly broke off and shot across the floor like a rat.  It rose, standing over Harris, its head shrunken and strangely imbalanced; with electric speed it lunged at him, but he managed to roll out of the way and struggle to his feet. Heart racing, he cast his eyes around for anything that could be useful.  A fire extinguisher was a possibility.  Footsteps behind him as he closed his fingers around the nozzle of the extinguisher alerted him that the creature was close, so he wildly swung the heavy metal cylinder in a wide arc, using its momentum.  Blind luck had it connect with the thing’s head, and its skull shattered into powder and small fragments.  The rest of the body continued to move for a few seconds, clawing ineffectually at him as he danced out of the way, extinguisher discarded on the floor.  After a longer time than felt reasonable, the remains collapsed onto the chequered floor of the fashion shop and were still.  Harris let his back slide down the wall; exhausted, he too slumped onto the floor, breathing heavily.  He now realised tears were shiny and sticky on his cheeks and his back ached terribly.  The crowd was thinning outside, but he could do nothing but rest.  But there would be no way he would shut his eyes.

Novel extract

It was still quite a view.  The cooling towers in the distance may have finally collapsed, presumably from the slow erosion of freezing rainwater in cracks in the concrete, but the Trent valley was still broad and green, and the cloudless sky, clear and translucent as water, allowed the sun to smile benevolently on the scene, strengthening the colours and shadows and heightening the resolution.  The moors and crags of Charnwood surrounding her were still bleak, as befits such a wild region, but there was beauty to be found there too.  The gorse and ferns were swaying in the stiff breeze – the earliest sign of autumn – and the sun glinted from specks of mica in the granite that breaks from the earth like splintered bone in that part of the country.  She shifted her weight onto her good leg as the wind tore her scarf from around her head.  She grasped the end of it swiftly before it had the chance to escape, and tucked it well into her collar.  Her eyes adjusted to the distance, she could now see a hint of cloud on the horizon.  She estimated it may be five hours before this storm hit, so she resolved to head home.  Lifting her bag, she turned and went downhill towards a small town that lay at the foot of the hills. 

The tarmac of the road she crossed had almost vanished entirely, assaulted from below by plant life and above by rain and snow.  The few remaining chunks of black tar still spoke of their former function; one piece still had a large ‘STOP’ painted upon it in a fading grey.  But no vehicle could use it now, and hadn’t been able to for almost a decade now.  As she moved further down the slope, past large school buildings, the sun was hidden by the remains of a gymnasium that towered over her, and she found herself in shadow.  Relieved by the sudden cool, she moved more quickly, along another cratered and pocked road that continued to be shady, cloaked by large mature trees.  The houses around her were in various states of decay, and the rate of their collapse was due to their age and building materials.  Brick houses still maintained their shape, though their roofs may have collapsed.  Stone houses (there were a few remnants of pre-Victorian architecture scattered along this old road) were in better shape, some even still clinging to their roofs and windows. The cheaper buildings dating back to the 1970s and 1980s were barely recognisable – with no chimney stack to hold the frame firm, they had fallen into utter ruin, piles of shingles and rotten wood.  Agatha ignored these buildings – ignored them all; she had walked past them many times before on her hunting expeditions up in the Forest.  Once one had completed its slow collapse right as she passed it – the roof timbers had failed with a groan and a crash, and damp plaster had coated her.  There had been worry about asbestos, but then what could be done? This had been years ago and her lungs were as good as ever.   

The clouds that had been on the horizon were closer now – they were emerging from behind the hills of the Forest behind her.  They were moving faster than she’d expected, and were thick and lumpen, suggesting very heavy rain: it would be no fun to get caught in weather like this with a heavy sack of game weighing her down.  She contemplated waiting it out in one of the houses on her route (she knew of one or two that were pretty structurally sound and would serve in a crisis) but was eager to get home and arrange things for the evening, and she did not relish the possibility of spending the night out here with few supplies and little light. As she passed one of the potential shelters she resolved to keep going.  It should only take another hour of steady walking, over the tracks, round the old quarry and then amongst the crops.  The route was burned into her head, as were several dozen other resource routes that she took regularly, some of which were over twenty miles.  These walks were her life, her livelihood, and a little rain would be of no real consequence.  Still, she remained alert as she walked.  The expected sounds, such as birdsong and the scurrying of small mammals, were ignored as she subconsciously filtered them out.  It was other more purposeful noises that she was listening for.  Footsteps, perhaps.  The crack of a weapon, or the sound of shouting.  Nothing had been heard all day, but this did not calm her nerves. 

Poem

Dressed in an egg-white vest

And a tiny pair of speckled leggings,

She was dressed as had become

Customary.  Still sprawling, underdone.


The skylight seared, acid blue

With bloated balloons, no breeze;

So tired.  Last night's support, so

Teary, bleary, blurry-eyed.


She resumed.  Presumably

Displeased; we'd never know why.

I leant over, cracked, reached, grasped

Drew her to me, tried to soothe.


Through splintered lips and gravel

Throat but, holding her at arms

Reach, felt a new steel, which

Shook me, I paused, sat down.


Within the usual jelly,

Was a strength, new today, that

Told of future days biking,

And cheering from the touchline.


Of carrying on my shoulders,

Of running down too-steep hills,

With shouts of 'careful' ignored',

Of first days at school, of life.


I held her close, enveloped this

Burgeoning being, protected this

Brittle crysalis, cleansed by the clarity

Of what the years would say.

Grandfather

I only caught the final episode.

Only really paying attention half way through,

I loved it; was desperate when it stopped

And often, now, wonder how the plot had

Developed before I tuned in, how its

Twists and turns had meandered broadly,

How faithful those final moments really were

Compared to the whole. I can never know;

But I cling to what I’d seen, a child missing part of himself.

Queensferry

It’s exactly the right colour. It’s strange how a mud

Red works so well on the scale of titans and giants.

Placed against the blossoming monochrome flood

Of a Scotch June sky it hums softy to itself whilst

Wild shouts of wind encircle it, meaning no good,

Remembering with relish how it had laid low

A predecessor; but not here, where the mud

Red stalks are planted surely, reaching deep.

Becoming a HoD, Part 2

I've been in the job now for eight working days, and in terms of energy and the heavy weight of my eyelids, it feels more like eight weeks.  The good news is that in terms of motivation and eagerness, I'm still pretty bright and bouncy, like a mad puppy.  It's odd that the ability to make decisions and simply make things happen does this to a person, but explains where dictators get their boundless joie de vivre from, I suppose.  I am working constantly in school from 7.30am until around 4.30, and thanks to the endless multitude of different tasks, I am always able to re-energise myself with a new or more interesting job.  I must stress here, however, that for me looking at levels of progress on a spreadsheet is a genuinely interesting job.  And fun too, once you break out the conditional formatting.  It's like being allowed to use crayola when in a restaurant as a child, carefully colouring in the line drawing of a circus that the place kindly proferred on entry.  I can't get enough of it.  Someone pass me the Burnt Sienna.

So I'm maintaining a spookily high level of motivation, which is good.  But I'm also focusing even more on my lessons.  I had heard from many corners that one of the first things to suffer when you shuffle into middle management is the teaching itself.  Happily, so, far, this is yet to happen; I'm treating every lesson like a particularly vital observation.  This is bound to be down to my high levels of motivation and the strange new confidence that promotion brings.  I aim to keep it this way, but we all know an ill-timed cold or bout of insomnia can play havoc with our best teaching intentions, so I will have to see how it goes.  There is also the matter of 'setting a good example' which is now a major factor.  The reality of being a classroom teacher is that you never feel responsible for the practice of your colleagues.  As Head of Department, you suddenly are.  It is imperative to practice what you preach, and so you become even more aware of what you are doing than ever before.  I think it'd be fair to say that this week has seen some of my best ever teaching.  How exciting.

In terms of the 'other stuff' - things to keep the department running - my primary realisation is how much there is to do, and how disparate it can all feel.  One thing I'm having to do, against my character really, is be more outgoing and positive with my colleagues.  My natural habitat, or indeed my cage were I ever to find myself incarcerated in some human zoo, would be a dank cave packed with electronic gizmos and Lego.  It certainly wouldn't contain other people.  So I find myself hoisted bodily from my comfort zone, going around the department chatting away and being as 'motivational' and 'nice' as I can muster.  Joking aside, it has been very pleasant, and I have a good role model to look up to - our Head of Maths has got this aspect of his role nailed, and is incredibly good at making his department exude positivity and optimism.  Their results are supernaturally good, and I think a good portion of this success stems from this - thus, as desperately odd it must seem to anyone who knows me, I must follow in his footsteps.

More about the admin side of things next time.  Right now, I've got to get some forms filled in.

Becoming a HoD Part 1

In five days time I will be at work as Head of English for the very first time.  At results day I could still hide a little, safe in the knowledge that at that point, I was barely more than a cabin boy with some weird primary transition duties and a wee snifter of KS3 to look after.  However, come the beginning of the new school year, I have nowhere to hide.

This is an interesting position to be in, as I've never been in charge of much more than an EPQ before now.  As such, I expect this year to be jam-packed with trials and problems and issues and disasters and, with a fair wind, some successes too.  I have worked with some inspirational and excellent HoDs in my 7-year career, and would be ecstatic if I could measure up to them in any way.  I have also met some quite difficult leaders, and I hope that I may well have learnt from the experience.  Whatever happens, it will all be new and I will be under a great deal of pressure, so I think this could be the start of a healthy and possibly therapeutic series of blog-posts outlining my time as a proto-HoD, and the many adventures I have along the way.

I will attempt to blog weekly, as far as I can manage, but for now I shall content myself with outlining the focuses I have given myself for the first week, so we can track how they go over time.

1. Teach my lessons.

2. Get through the first day without forgetting I'm meant to be in charge of proceedings with my dept and waiting for someone else to start the meeting;

3. Finish the organisation for the year, including dates for CW, exams, moderation, meetings, reports and all the usual bumf;

4. Get my poor head around the intricacies of Performance Management and CPD;

5. Set my stall out re: expectations of behaviour, effort and progress;

6. Make my first major target for the dept clear: to be a 'famous' department that the students chat and yammer about, because interesting and chat-worthy things are happening there;

7. Have a chat with the new headteacher and see what he can offer English;

8. Sleep well;

9. Look after our two new starters in the dept, and make sure they know what's going on and how to get on well.

10. Minimise sobbing to around 5 minutes per day.

We shall see how it goes.

My year as a 'Cross Phase Leader' Part 2

Now I had managed to communicate with the primary schools and agree to work with them, what did I actually do?

As I have already said, the main reason my job existed was to push our school and make it a more attractive proposition for Year 7.  I may have managed to soften this objective for my own sense of well-being into one that was primarily about helping students, but I still had to deliver for the powers-that-be.  This meant that any time working with Year 6 was essentially time wasted, as they had already made their minds up.  Far better to work with Years 4 and 5, as the decision was still pending for them, and therefore there was plenty of opportunity to get them to consider our little school.  The trouble was, the primaries were very keen indeed for me to work with their Year 6s - the looming SATs were clearly on their minds, and my offer of helping with 'reading and writing' was very attractive.  For the first two terms of this outreach (Christmas and January terms), Year 6 was all I was offered.

Aware that it was unhelpful to my main objective, I took the work anyway.  I reasoned that many of the students I was going to work with were to end up at my school anyway, so it would aid transition (especially useful now I am Head of English, so quite a useful 'familiar face' for them to have - though I didn't know this at the time).  It was probably going to help raise my profile within the schools too - allowing me to work with the Year 4 and 5 students later on in the year.  So I planned some a detailed writing unit for these Year 6 classes.  I had them once a week, for around an hour, for a whole term.  This meant I needed seven full lessons that really engaged them with writing (the skill their teachers had identified as being weaker).  I created a unit based loosely on The Demon Headmaster and Boy, by Roald Dahl: the concept was a short story, with character development and clear structuring, about a new headteacher who turned out to be 'odd' in some way.  Each week focused on a different skill, utilising 'slow writing' techniques a great deal: cohesion one week, detail and imagery the next, punctuation a third and so on, until the students were ready to create their delightful little tales.  With a clutch of level 5 and 6 workunder their belts, the students were happy to have made progress, and the primaries were more willing to let me work with students from further down the school.

I did some reading work, again based on Boy, with some Year 5s, focusing on the skill of inference and evidence gathering.  Year 4 students worked with me on a writing topic based on the Titanic, focused on finding the 'joy' in writing and developing vocabulary and simile creation.  Some Year 3 students, and goodness me they were tiny and quite frightening at times (they are so very different even to Year 7s), worked on a speaking and listening topic, again based on the Titanic (stick with what you know, that's my motto!) where they created really quite startlingly professional TV news reports on the sinking.  Jabberwocky was a focus for another group of Year 5s, where we worked on creating meaning through language, ensuring every word counted.  All of these units were around one hour a week for about a term, and I think in total I must have worked with over one hundred students from around the town.

However, there was a problem.  I was able to collect work, mark it and share it with them, but I had no idea about progress over time.  It was difficult to liaise with their class teachers, so by the end of the year I was aware that I had no idea - really no idea at all - whether I had had a positive impact on their progress.  It dawns on me that this is likely the biggest downfall to the programme.  As a teacher who is very much led by marking and then developing work, this was hard to handle; in the end I had to content myself with the fact that I was very unlikely to be doing educational harm to these students, and to liaise with the primaries over their SATs results whenever I could.  As these things should always end with an evaluative note, checking progress would be an area of development for the next time I make it to the primaries.

So, my year was over.  I had managed to get myself promoted to Head of Department by May, so it is clear to me that I will be spending far less time in the primary schools in 2014-15.  Cross-phase standardisation, moderation and joint planning had taken baby steps, but were by no means fully implemented, and I had worked with more Year 6s than I'd wanted to.  On the other hand, the units of work had been enthusiastically received, and communication routes had been set up between the schools, and we saw a raise of around 25 students entering for Year 7, so all in all, it wasn't a bad year.

My year as a 'Cross Phase Leader' Part 1

Back in May 2013, I was given a promotion.  It was a Second in Department job of sorts, having responsibility for KS3 curriculum and assessment, and a 50% timetable.  This seems very generous, but I was expected to spend that time doing something else entirely - working with primary schools.

Schools try many different methods of communicating with their partner primary schools, and can spend a lot of money, or very little.  The importance of such work is generally accepted, though it is often hard to pin down exactly what benefits we are expecting to reap from transition efforts.  Often it's a simple case of attracting Year 4 and 5 students to our schools - advertising the quality of the place to the main consumers; sometimes it's a worthy desire to help the students cope with the terrifying change of scenery and routine; occasionally, and I whisper it, it can be through a need to tick the appropriate box.

Happily, in my case, the first two reasons were paramount.  We are a small school, struggling in a very competitive area with two other, much longer-established secondaries.  The work of the four Cross Phase Leaders (English, Maths, STEM and PE) was in many ways simple: attract more students to our school, to help keep it viable.  However, this is a desperately 'private sector' approach, and clashed with my woolly lefty personality of education being for the kids, so I had to smother this core concern in a more Pete-friendly smock of 'helping students'.  I reasoned we in the English department could learn a lot from our peers in the primaries, and could engage in very practical issues such as cross-phase moderation, standardisation and possibly even planning.  I also wanted to take my own particular brand of teaching down to the Year 4s and 5s, hopefully working with them on projects that they wouldn't normally get involved in.  In short, I was trying to achieve quite a lot.

Once September 2013 came along, the order of the day was networking.  It's astonishing how few contacts we had with the primary schools.  We could easily get in touch with the heads of our main 'feeder' schools, of course...but what about the other schools - the ones we were interested in, as they would enlarge our catchment?  By the end of the year I had made contact with, and worked with, about 70% of the town's primaries, but what a hell of a job this was.  The break-through came in the form of the town's primary Literacy meetings which take place three times a year.  These have a teacher from every primary, and they spend time discussing curriculum changes and SATS.  Once I had infiltrated this - actually inviting them to have their January meeting in our school library - the rest was easy.  I chaired the meeting, chatted to everyone, got their emails and that was that: easy access to every primary.  Having a key contact in every school is very useful - it may be their Literacy Co-ordinator, their deputy head, or a class teacher, but it doesn't matter.  What you need is an ally who will organise things at their end, spread the word and act as a point of contact whenever you want to work with the students at their school.

Before starting the job, we CPLs had been warned of the difficulty of communicating with primary colleagues.  We were told horror stories of teachers who never check emails, or who are actively hostile to any secondary teachers who dare to enter their domain.  I was expecting to meet endless walls of resistance, but what I found in reality were warm welcomes and eager requests for help.  Most of the primary colleagues were incredibly keen to let me work with their students on 'different' work.  Any extra input on reading or writing skills was instantly snapped up, to the point where it became difficult for me to juggle everything.  The 50% timetable began to look too heavy.  In truth, I was astonished at how willing primary teachers were to get me in front of their students; but then I considered - if someone was willing to drop in and teach my Year 10 class once a week, freeing me up, I'd jump at the chance too.

The horror stories had been over-elaborate and exaggerated.  The job of working with multiple primaries across town seemed to be a little more achievable.

Part 2 will be about what I actually did in the primaries.

A teacher and his ticks.

We teachers all love ticking work.  That green, unaccompanied tick on every page of an exercise book - a solemn nod to the Ofsted inspector that this work has been read by teacher, and that the student must, therefore, be making lovely rapid progress.

Ah, sarcasm.  Can't beat it.  But as a slightly foolish and over-excitable relative of irony, very relevant indeed.  For this week, the ticks were not a teacher's best friend at all; no, they made life a complete misery.

Exmoor is a beautiful, wild zone separating the Bristol Channel from the A361, a realm of heather-smirched rounded hills and terrifying steep descents into sleepy seaside towns.  It is famous for its scenery, its cider, its horrifying 1950s floods and its beautiful population of red deer, which have wandered the place since God-knows when.  These deer are content to bellow maniacally and smash each others' heads in, seemingly oblivious to the grim creatures that stud their exterior.  Deer, you see, are the Pearly Kings and Queens of Exmoor, studded with tiny, shiny humps of pearlescent white and marbled brown - often resembling the branch of Selfridges in Birmingham, so cloaked in blood-sucking ticks they are.  For these arachnid vampires are a very real presence anywhere that large mammals such as red deer, roe deer, dogs and people interact with each other through the medium of long grass: a lesson I have learned well this week.

Exmoor's coast, near Lynton.
A picture of a tick would just gross you out.

Pitching a tent by a river on a flattened plain of trampled long grass seemed a splendid idea at 6pm in the evening, after a long drive along apparently endless hills of 25% gradient and above.  Get the tent up, crack open a beer and sob by the camp fire - that was the plan.  And it worked.  The tent was up in no time, the beer was rivaling the stream at our feet in volume and swiftness of flow, and the exhausted sobbing of amateur campers could be heard in Tiverton.  In fact, the whole time there went reasonably well.  Maritime vistas were photographed and instantly spread by Facebook, steak was consumed in dusty old inns tucked under perilous cliffs and dogs were befriended and sat by the campfire like sentinals.  It wasn't until we had packed our tent and made our way home that we discovered we had stowaways, presumably picked up from the long grass that had become our carpet.

No red deer had been seen at all in the week, so ticks had been of little concern to us; our hubris would have made Macbeth tut and shake his head in worry.  For my part, I had never even seen a tick in the wild, and was of the opinion that ticks only ever happened to 'other people' - people who liked carrying maps in plastic envelopes around their necks and ate Kendal mint cake more than once a year.  They never happened to folk who drank lattes and drove a Fiesta.  Well, they did happen
.  Four separate ticks, all nuzzled in that peculiarly intimate way of theirs into just one individual.  Four tiny little beasts - spiders drawn by toddlers - all eagerly burrowing down to the artesian well of blood that lies beneath the skin.

Cue a brace of days frantically tumble-drying every single item of clothing taken on the trip, at a high heat, for twenty minutes.  Cue panicked research online into the order of symptoms and likeliness of death from Lyme Disease.  Cue endless - limitless and deathly boring - examinations of bare skin every time an itch was felt.  Believe me, the experience was so icky that itches were a constant, dull reminder of the body's ability to freak itself out unnecessarily.  Everything itched.  I'm fairly certain that for a short time, even my pockets were itching.

It's all over now, but I'm painfully aware that should another darling little critter rear its abdomen at any point in the next week, we'll have to go through the whole de-ticking process once more, at which point I will probably just give in to their whims and allow them to turn me into a walking nosebag.

I look forward to September, where I will once again be dishing out the ticks, rather than being a dish for them.

Minecraft - the whole span of human history in a week.

Minecraft is a game without an instruction manual.  You download it, and then you're plunged into a strange, vast new world, packed with pigs, sheep and spider-riding skeleton archers.  You have nothing to defend yourself with...you have nowhere to hide.  However, you don't know this yet.  All you know is that you can see loads of lovely, blocky trees, and perhaps a few brightly coloured flowers.  The cubes of earth beneath your feet undulate gently, forming hills and meadows.  The bright blue sky presides over a vibrant world.  You prance, quite content, through this place, taking in the strange vistas, noticing a desert in the distance perhaps.  The weather holds, and you gamely climb the nearest mountain and marvel at the view - a broad Savannah to the west, a thick jungle to the south, a vast ocean with a craggy shoreline to the north.  The sun continues to move overhead.  You see a cave in the craggy mountainsides, and explore it for a while, finding nothing more than a few black specks in the rock that look a little like coal.  Emerging from the cave, back into the sun, you realise that it is now evening.  Said sun hangs heavy in the sky, orange and raw, and the blank above is beginning to darken.  It will be night soon.  You begin to feel anxious.  All of your roaming around was lots of fun, but now it's nearly dark.  You've heard that the darkness in Minecraft is not your friend, and that monsters appear in the black of night. The sun continues to sink, digging into the horizon.  It hovers for a moment, and is then gone.  Darkness envelopes the landscape, and suddenly the inviting land around you seems alien and strange.  Odd noises emanate from the jungle.  Shapes are moving on the grey sands of the desert; you stand on your hill-side perch, and you panic.

The 'first night' in Minecraft is an experience that you will only ever have once.  Eventually, you become accustomed to the game, and any attempt to re-live that dreadfully scary time is undone by your experience.  But it shapes the player, and most Minecrafters will recall their first night with relish.  Mine was spent in a makeshift hovel made from wooden planks in the middle of swampland.  Luckily, I had figured out how to punch trees to gain log blocks quite quickly, and had crafted planks from the logs - I had just enough to build a 2x2x2 hut that enclosed me totally.  I had no torches, so no source of light.  I didn't manage to get the wool together for a bed for about another in-game week.  So I sat in my pathetic hut all night, listening to the moans of zombies as they swarmed around me, with only a thin wall of wood to protect me.  Being totally unencumbered by weapons or armour, I was the epitome of vulnerability.  If they'd somehow managed to gain entrance, I would've died a scary death.  I stayed in the hut for around 3-4 nights as I explored the area and gathered resources, and each night was the same - tedious yet strangely thrilling, like I was experiencing first hand the thrills of being the main character in I Am Legend.

But before long, you will have a secure, well-defended homestead out in the wilds, with farmland, storage space, domesticated animals and interior design.  That's the beauty of the game - you get better, and end up leading a comfortable and safe lifestyle.  You no longer fear the monsters of night, as you have a diamond sword and enchanted armour, so you focus on aesthetics and making your home a beautiful sight, adding wholly unnecessary turrets and flourishes, all to please your eye for architectural glory.  It is a microcosm of human experience, mirroring the birth of culture once the immediate dangers of starvation and being prey to toothy predators had been held at bay for good.  Your home towers, cathedral-like in its splendour.  The surrounding land is tamed and landscaped with great oaks and hedgerows.  You add stables, barns, outbuildings.  You expend once-valuable wool on trivial fripperies like picture frames and carpets, flags and portraits.  Your home is awash with colour and design.  Diamonds, once so vital, are now in strong supply as you expand your mining operations, so you create a throne built of blocks of the precious stones.

Soon, a huge stock of electronic redstone thrusts you into the industrial era.  Now application and efficiency are key.  You begin working on train networks, webs of railway lines threading between your quarries, mines and forests.  You begin to create large scale smelters, using the myriad tools available.  Now you can craft whole stacks of iron bars in moments, and those early days, spent desperately wandering caves searching for minute pockets of iron ore seem long, long ago.  You now have so much material that you no longer know what to do with it, so you make pointless diversions, crafted from various rare blocks, just for something to do.  You build a vast skyscraper out of iron blocks and populate it with furniture, just to get some kind of use out of the gigantic stockpiles of stuff you are now struggling to store.  Your cathedral home is disfigured by necessary extensions for all this rubbish, yet still you crave more, until you have utterly exhausted the world around you.  The trees, the flowers, even the mountain is now gone; they have been ground up, used to make other things.  You stand in a desert of your own making, and despair.

My Minecraft YouTube channel is here!

Vampire Slaying, fifteen years too late.

I've never seen a vampire in real life.  Apart from some questionable characters seen during various festivals at Whitby, my life has been vampire-free, and all the worse for it, it seems.  I've recently been getting into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you see.  The endless joys of Netflix have enabled me to scoot merrily through seasons 1-6, and it is being made increasingly clear by Joss Whedon's critically acclaimed show that vampires make your life a whole lot more exciting.

Anya's Hallowe'en suit - like Bishop
Len Brennan, she is terrified of rabbits.

I should have watched Buffy at the proper time, of course.  It first aired in 1998, when I was fourteen, sitting comfortably in its demographic; however, I somehow managed to miss out on its charms.  Being an American show at a time when  The Simpsons and Friends were still pretty esoteric and niche on this cold, huddled little island made it almost imperceptible to me.  I am vaguely aware that it was on BBC throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s, but I was busy with the grimy business of being a teenager and later a student.  I simply missed it.  But now, eager to make for lost time, I'm imbibing the contents of this macabre, funny and tightly plotted programme like a crazed man drinking Drambuie before Christmas is up.

It's tricky to define what makes Buffy such a good show.  I should confess that part of my joy is probably taken from my naive assumption that a show with a name as seemingly foolish as 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' must be awful.  How nice it is to have one's prejudices slashed like this - if only the same thing could happen to my view of Tories.  So, part of my enjoyment may stem from this astonishment.  However, the bulk of it is down to the character arcs.  In fact, they are more viaducts than arcs, given their complexity.  Buffy, for example, undertakes challenges and difficulties that shape, distort and bend her into one of the most complex characters I've seen in a TV show.  She dies at least twice (by Season 6 - I won't tell you how or why) and has family members come and go like Pop-Up Pirate.  She has a turbulent love life revolving around the undead themselves, and hates herself for it.  Her best friends are regularly put in mortal danger by her very existence.  She holds the fate of every living creature on Earth in her poor hands.  Watching her life billow and crease and occasionally fall apart is great fun.  The supporting cast have just as convoluted and myriad plotlines that weave and twirl around each other, creating a colourful, emotional and hilarious tapestry of death and despair.  The oxymorons mount up due to the very dichotomy at the heart of the show - it's a true horror-comedy.

So, a complex, involving show that makes you scream, cry and chortle in equal measures?  Yes; that's precisely what Buffy is.  A sample episode - the Emmy-winning 'Hush' from Season 4 - had me squirting hot tears of terror at regular intervals, thanks to the menacing yet oddly camp withered-headed villains that steal the voices of a population, leaving an episode almost devoid of dialogue (usually the show's strongest suit).  The characters resort to crude charades-style miming to convey the plot to each other, and to us.  Yet this is, of course, where the humour comes in - confusion, bewilderment and misunderstood gestures are always a grand source of amusement, after all.  So I dilly-dallied between fear and amusement like a man on a waltzers filled with twirling axes.

As for the archetypal Englishman, Rupert Giles... I cannot stress enough what a fine portrayal of a disconnected yet caring father figure this is.  Anthony Head gives a performance that even trumps his Nescafe adverts of the late 1980s (no mean feat, and you know it), and his departure is a harrowing moment that suggests that a vital safety net has been removed from underneath the Slayer, making her even more vulnerable.  I'm told he returns before the end, and I seriously hope he does, as watching the younger characters flounder and struggle to find answers without his wisdom and security is probably as stressful as actually trying to sort it all out yourself.

So, fifteen years late, I am discovering a show that has shocked me with its quality - a show that I am actually extremely sad to have missed the first time round.  I can only imagine how it would have impacted my impressionable little brain back then.  It even has an episode that is entirely in the form of a traditional musical...

The Titanic - stuff you should know.

RMS Titanic leaving Belfast (From Wikipedia)

As this is a subject dear to my heart, it saddens me when I peruse the concentration of nonsense around the ship and it's story.  Like most legendary events (especially terrible tragedies), it is a magnet for narrative flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated over the years, some of which so pervasive that they have become established as fact by many.  Whilst urban legends can be fascinating in their own right, I feel that an event like the sinking of the Titanic needs to be protected from a descent into this dubious genre.  Here's my tiny attempt to sort this out.  The following are five spurious stories that often find themselves shared by folk when discussing the great ship.

1. The Titanic's hull number was 390904.  It is a common tale that Catholic workers refused to work on the ship as its number was 'NO POPE' backwards (it is if you squint, a lot).  This is nonsense as the number has no connection with the ship whatsoever.  The hull number, set by Harland and Wolff, was 401.  Its sister ship, Olympic, was 400.  It's un utterly unpleasant story, fuelling the already lively and destructive flames of the sectarian problems in Northern Ireland.  It is an example of how tales can be generated from nothing, to help justify terrible acts, I suppose.

2. The Titanic was the longest ship on Earth when built.  Sadly not true.  At 882 and three-quarter feet long, it was identical in length to its sister, Olympic, which, since launch in 1910 had been the record holder.  It was not a hair longer, wider or taller than the Olympic.  What made it the 'largest' ship afloat was simply its arrangement of windows and rooms on A deck:  as part of the promenade that was fully open on Olympic was enclosed on Titanic, there was more use-able space, increasing its gross tonnage.  This is also an easy way to identify photos of the sisters - the Olympic has an entirely open A-deck, whereas Titanic's is closed forward of the third funnel or so.

3. The Titanic had the skeleton of a worker entombed within its double hull. Nonsense.  The same was said of the Great Eastern - that famous 'cursed ship' of Brunel's.  The fact is that no shipyard would be lackadaisical enough to allow such a thing.  8 workers were killed in construction - a remarkably low number, when you consider the size of the ship and the 3,000 working on its construction.  However, as a fan of ghost stories and the macabre, I can see some merit in this tall tale.  Nothing beats folklore about bricked up corpses, after all.

Ken Marshall's imagining of the wreck, observed by ALVIN

4. The Titanic held a cursed Egyptian mummy in its hold.  There is no real evidence of this in any of the surviving rosters or manifests of cargo, and firmly fits into the category of urban legend.  The mummy in question - a priestess of Amun-Ra - is still in the British Museum (it isn't, in fact, a mummy at all - just a coffin lid).  The initial 'cursed mummy' story is attributed to William Stead, a journalist with an eye for the macabre.  He went down with the ship in 1912, and so this is potentially how the two stories merged.  The manifest did include fresh feathers, two french automobiles and a prized, bejewelled copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

5. The Titanic had been foreseen in several works of fiction in the 19th Century.  Strangely, this seems to be true, though claiming any supernatural foresight on the part of the writers is possibly a little premature.  But certainly the type of disaster that overtook the Titanic was explored in earlier works.  One, "How the Mail Steamer went down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor" by none other than William Stead, told the tale of an unnamed mail ship that went down with too few lifeboats aboard.  The similarities end there, though it is spooky to note that Stead always said he would die by either 'lynching or drowning'.  The other text - Futility, by Morgan Robertson, has many eerie parallels with the real ship.  Both were triple screw liners that struck icebergs in the North Atlantic, with the loss of between well over a thousand lives.

The fact is, the whole story of drawing-board to sea-bed is fascinating enough, without foolish embellishments such as most of these.

My thoughts on GTA Online

Good day to you all.  I've been playing a bit of the MMORPG-lite GTA Online recently, and have developed some strong and often startlingly unpleasant opinions on it.  Before I outline my violent hatred of the thing, though - a little back-story.

Around the time of GTA San Andreas (2004 - a kangaroo's lifetime ago) I spent hours daydreaming about the possibility of a proper multiplayer version of GTA.  This heady vision centred around the prospect of trying to evade a friend flying a fighter jet after me: what would I dao? What would my strategy be?  This entertained a brain otherwise fruitlessly engaged in reading Modernist literature and trying to formulate cogent arguments about the symbolism of umbrellas in A Room of One's Own.  The possibilities of a fully multiplayer map with vehicles, weapons and more seemed too good to be true.  And so it remained, for nearly ten years.  GTA IV had a game stab at multiplayer, but it was truly awful: a lazy, crusted turd of an experience, made good only thanks to the fact the single-player game was excellent.  It was this October (2013) that the dream finally came true.

And like any of my other dreams, it has essentially left me feeling frightened, miserable and totally confused.

You see, it's a terrible, frustrating and generally boring game that has still, somehow, managed to make me a total addict.  I am desperately trying to save the (fake) cash to buy the in-game equivalent of a Koenigsegg.  At $795,000, it's not cheap, even by fake-money standards; the fact that the average payout for a 'job' in-game is around $15,000 makes it a distant pipe dream, given the limited time I can invest. It's making me very unhappy.  But I feel I need to clarify to myself, and to others, what my grievances really are, so here goes...

1) Playing with other people is satisfying but hateful.

You see, it's great to have the challenge of playing real humans, with their initiative, experience, skills and unpredictability.  It's a real joy, and it's this that powers the online gaming world.  However, not only can you enjoy these positive traits of humans; oh no, you also get to wallow in the wonderful world of people's mean side.  And my word, GTA Online really illustrates the dark side to humanity.  Being shot for no reason is desperately annoying in real life, and arguably even more so in a video game.  There you are, merrily trying on hats in a clothes shop called Binco, when a guy bursts in, seemingly bypassing the game's ban on wielding weaponry in the equivalent of a Primark, and shoots you in the hat with a shotgun.  This makes me sad.  But even worse is the irritating tendency for people to stop others progressing through the loading screens.  You see, thanks to the desperately misguided touch of forcing all players in a given lobby to vote whether they enjoyed the race, or which level they want to play next, you spend hours just waiting.  Waiting for some vile little craplet to press a button.  Losing one's living moments to some imagined smirking goon who simply refuses to press the 'Y' button is probably the most egregious experience I've ever had with a video game.  The willingness of people, protected by the anonymity of the internet, to ruin others' days is terrifying to behold.

2) Money is too hard to come by.

All anyone really wants is to make tons of money and buy a fast car and a big house.  Or at least enough money to be comfortable and able to buy a new jumper when you need one.  This is a human requirement.  So why does Rockstar insist on making the earning of money in GTA Online as difficult and onerous as it is in real life?  Video games are meant to be escapes from reality.  Sure, I'll never afford an Aston Martin DBS in the real world (I'm a teacher), so I sure as hell would like to be able to get one in a video game.  What I don't want is to feel just as mediocre and pathetic inside the simulation, anything-is-possible world of San Andreas as I do in the reality of Bristol (only joking, but I'm sure you get my point).  As someone with limited time, I'm forced to race in the equivalent of a Reliant Robin whilst a dozen 15 year olds who can spend their entire lives on the game drive Bugatti Veyrons.  If nothing else, this is massively skewing their expectations of their own earning power in their real lives.  The $500,000 we were all meant to receive by way of an apology from Rockstar from screwing up the launch of the game is nowhere to be seen, so my Swedish Supercar dreams will just have to wait.

3) The missions are too hard.

Anyone who's ever played a GTA game knows that your in-game character can more-or-less take a whole magazine of bullets before expiring.  It's part of the joy of the thing.  It makes you feel like T-1000 in a denim jacket.  It's wonderful.  In GTA Online, however, my character seems to have about the same tolerance of bullet wounds as I do - essentially zero.  Before anyone says, 'Ah, but it's just trying to be realistic', let me just stop you dead with one word - Tetris.  Tetris, Pong and all the rest are proof that people don't want realism in video games.  Nowhere in the real world do the physics of Tetris actually occur.  If they did, the building trade would be bankrupt through inexplicable loss of building materials.  We want realistic graphics, yes - I'll concede that.  But we do not want realistic health systems.  The fact that the computer-controlled characters are better shots than William Tell makes the situation all the more dispiriting.  I've been shot from two city-blocks away, whilst driving, by a man hanging out of the window of a speeding Landrover.  Awful.

4) There's not enough variety.

I'm sick of racing now.  I never even began liking the deathmatches.  Parachute jumps can just sod off.  But that's it - that's the variety of jobs in the game.  No heists (yet), no utilisation of the truly incredible landscape and city they've built, nothing.  I want to see more little sub-games and treats.  Perhaps a fishing mode, or a gym, or even some more playable arcade games?  An orienteering activity or treasure hunt would be nice, or even a scavenger hunt where you have to go about with mates finding and snapping hidden easter eggs?  I don't know, but they should - it's their game and they are clearly masters of game-creation.  They should flex their creative muscles and make GTA Online the treat I always wanted it to be.

EPQ

As you may have guessed, I've been very busy.  Not just playing GTA V - not at all.  In fact I'm playing that far less than I'd like to, thanks to work commitments.

You see, I'm now Cross Phase Leader for English, which is a new post that more-or-less combines managing KS3 (minus those dastardly Year 9s) with some really intensive outreach to primaries.  I have four primary schools currently working with me on a variety of blossoming projects, from tuition for the Level 6 exams to creative writing workshops and Spelling Bees.  I am also the Centre Co-ordinator for EPQ and the English department's PGCE mentor.  So blogging has taken a bit of a backseat this last few weeks.

But now I'm in the swing of it I thought I'd come back, all guns blazing.  As I do a lot of crazy jobs this year, I think it would be only fair for me to share these with you, so I can bore the hell out of you and possibly even discuss best practice and what to do and just how the hell I can make these things work.  So here's my first thing - EPQ.

I love the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification), and I have done since first acting as Centre Co-ordinator six years ago at my first school.  I've worked on it, as Co-ordinator and Supervisor every year since, and I'm currently doing a little of both roles.  I've seen it develop as a course; I've had terrible freak outs about not delivering enough taught time; I've had my marking lambasted and yet I still keep doing it (in fairness most of these issues have now been ironed out...).

You see, it's such an enlivening and exciting qualification to teach. It gives an unprecedented level of freedom to students just as they reach the age to really make the most of that, and the results can be awe inspiring.  I've read incredibly detailed and scientific analyses of various disorders and medical problems, seen wonderfully designed dresses and heard beautiful strains of music all created by Year 13 students who have been given the freedom to do something they love for a qualification.  But there is a serious side - the administration of looking after a thriving EPQ is hard work and often challenging, so I've put together a few top tips for anyone new to the thing:

Tip 1: Make sure you can account for the 30 hours of taught time.  AQA are very hot on this, and expect a clear outline, probably pasted into the relevant box of the log book, that gives a detailed description of exactly what they've been taught.  Failure to do this can lead to moderation and a slapped wrist at best.  Failure to deliver the taught element is even more dangerous.  Sure, your students may be able to reference effectively, but can they run the gamut of online research without falling foul of hearsay and subjectivity?  Unless they're history students, chances are their research skills would be limited.  As such, teaching explicitly how to research their topic; primary, secondary and tertiary sources; evaluation of material and even Google search terms is vital.  The presentation at the end of the course (more later) should also be explicitly taught, as should academic register.

Tip 2: Ensure you force the students to maintain and fill out their logbooks.  These diaries are incredibly important in the marking process, but also help guide the students through their project.  The temptation can be to leave them to it - it's their work after all - but it will save you a lot of horrid fuss later if you essentially force them to fill it in after every meeting.  The entries should be extremely detailed too, in order to allow the moderator to get more of a sense of the work they've put in.  Basically, they should make a note of everything they've done.  And for God's sake, sign and date it as you go along - don't end up in the position of having to post date everything using a variety of different pens for a veneer of authenticity...

Tip 3: Prepare them for their presentation.  Preparation for this comes in two guises.
1) Make sure they know that it will be happening in the future, and try to give them a rough date (week beginning, for example).  Inform them of the purpose of the presentation at the same time - it is a reflective and evaluative explanation of the project's process, not an explanation of what has been discovered.
2) Use the taught component time to teach them vital presenting skills, like creating workable PowerPoints, rhetorical techniques, coping strategies and practise. This will vastly improve the nature of their presentations, which should be almost degree-level in their professionalism and content.  There can be no temptation to think that the A* grade descriptors for Speaking and Listening in English are of any use.

Tip 4: Force them to focus their topic into a question that can be answered by a Yr 13 student in about five months.  They must word their title in such a way as to give them this opportunity.  'What causes cancer?' is far too broad and impossible to complete.  'What treatments are used in the fight against breast cancer, and what appears to be most effective?' is better and more workable. 'Can I make a guitar?' is cute, and sounds lovely, but isn't focused enough.  'Can structural and electrical elements of a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul be merged to create a successful and usable guitar?' is much more useful.  Of course, large swathes of this last title will need to be clarified in the write-up, but so long as this is done, there should be no problem.

So there we are, four tips that may or may not be useful to any EPQ people out there.  Now I'm off to cry over the amount of marking I have to do.