What do you believe in? Is it fairytale endings? Is it a happily ever after story? Maybe it’s pots of gold at the end of colourful striped rainbows? Perhaps there’s a pirate ship sailing through your skies above. Do you believe in love? Is hate something you shove?
Who believes in you? Do they think you’re a prince or princess? Are they your happily ever after? Maybe they’ve seen shining rings of gold? Perhaps they’re buying long dresses and swanky suits for that special day they dream of. Do you believe in yourself? Do you have a heartbeat of wealth?
Why do you believe in you? Do you know your happy ending? Is it flowers and sunshine at the end of your road? Maybe it’s celebrity and fame down your journey of fate? Do you believe in success? Is your life free of duress?
Whatever will be, what ever you wish may follow, but deep down, amongst it all you need to sweat it and bet it. Without a gamble, the adventure can’t be written. Without a step off the beaten track, you’ll never find what you’re looking for. Danger may hurt you but the monotonous life will drain and kill you. They may all sound like cliches, but didn’t they cliche writers have a point?
Your comfort zone: you’ll remain alone or go insane. Your sense of exploration: you’ll adapt or be born again. So, what are you waiting for?
Well below are some comments passed on from Mr Ben. They may include quotes or the like.
Thank you kindly for your time. Take care!
LOVE this rubric. Good work. I agree that it will prove very valuable especially as a repeated tool or maybe a classroom environment resource (on the wall).
Hiraeth [hiːrai̯θ] is real. I absolutely empathize. Its one of the reason why reading the Hobbit this past year hit me so hard and moved me so deeply.
Our students undergo a similar experience; imagine hitting your limit for foreign, non-homestyle etiquette or expectations or communication or food or cultural normalities… and you just sink into a state of longing or maybe homesickness; at the very least a sense of bitterness about things here not being the way you know/feel they are back home; this frequently happens multiple times a day in the life of an ELL in the international school. you and i may now have developed and matured enough skillsets for living and maintaining sustained life abroad to only feel this way occasionally and usually only when we confront certain nostalgic memory-inducing reminders. But for the ELL, young, immature, undeveloped, and almost always ill-equipped to deal well with the difficulties that you and I confronted on our first abroad experiences, or maybe in university when we had to get used to the big city or the lack of family, whatever the case may be. It is these difficulties that we strive to remove from their day-to-day academic life; after all, study in our own mother tongue can be strenuous to the max, let alone in another language. This sensitivity, and the toolset to deal with it effectively, makes us English-language-in-addition-to-mainstream-subject teachers.
“For many of us, we may be able to pre-read and digest a news article, magazine piece or a book blurb just from experience. Our pre-formed ideas and exposure to templates could settle our mind on a track to read with ease. The imagination and interpretation of a seasoned-mind will draw out bold titles, enhance key points, find text captions, and articulate the who, when, what, why and how etc.”
You’ve successfully articulated the objectives of the language-in-addition-to-subject teacher’s instructional planning when re consider granting out students access to written/visual texts. With a bit-o-revision you could change this quote into a succinct set of reading objectives that you should now be better equipped than ever to address explicitly as a teacher.
Polias, Nominalisation, meaning making in the written realm by Brian Dare, and How accessible are the texts we use by John Polias made for riveting reading. They kept me up into the wee hours and on my toes. Why? They made me question my teaching and my selection of textbooks. Hugely.” I’ll be sure to pass this on to the two writers of TESMC (now called TEMC) though i’ll be careful to leave out the ‘fellow hair challenged Brian Dare’ bit; in the meantime, remind me to pass on some other works sure to ‘rivet’ and further call into question instructional practices.
” Our job is much more proactive though. We’re targeting an end product.” Your use of ‘targeting’ here carries such a nuanced depth of meaning, it is hard to ignore or avoid commenting on; everything we do should be focused on how to grant access to the end product on behalf of our students.
I’ll also admit to opening the test your vocab link you shared….thanks for that time-murdering resource. Appreciate it.
“I never teach my pupils. I can only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein
This of all your quotes most closely aligns with my educator sensibilities. And it is upon this mentality that I think the TEMC course is based; assessment should not be a method of judging student efforts and progress, but of success of failure of our attempts to create the necessary conditions for learning to occur; teacher who take their responsibility seriously immediately embrace this, while those who’ve been slighted or taken advantage of by schools/districts/governing forces using assessment result as the rationale tend to knee-jerk push back against this, citing student lack of effort. I understand both responses intimately. We must be aware that in practice and in theory it is the student at the forefront of our motives and to forget, when necessary, and to embrace when available, the inclinations and perspectives of administrations be them top-down or adjunctory (there’s wordplay for you). Teachers must draw a line and say within themselves “if it is in the best interest of my students, I’ll do it without grumbling and even with determination. If I cannot see how it even benefits my students or that it in fact takes away from the learning environment, I reject it, all personal repercussions aside.” Thus you sleep well at night and must choose employers very selectively.
Jiǔ (九) is nine in Chinese. It sounds like jiǔ (久) which means long-lasting. Nine is considered a lucky number. So, with the ninth class of Mr Ben’s TESMC course, our journey into the English as a Second Language (ESL) course will hopefully last forever. Failing that, until retirement to the R.Y.P. (Retirement Years Programme) at the nearby care home that is under construction (by the Tungwah Group). With our nine bows we took aim at the challenge of teaching a foreign language in a foreign land.
In some ways the ninth module was like a Best of… TV show. It was a compilation of all that was before it, applied to our very own school situation and discussed in part, to remind us and drill home the finer details. The module title of Programming and whole-school models of support for ESL students summed up the content. That is what chapter titles do after all. It gave an increased awareness of the importance of collaboration throughout the school, with respect to ESL students’ and their delicate needs. It gave us a chance to reflect and evaluate the course before clarifying the next steps (after the course). It reassessed person programmes and combined them with understanding gained throughout the TESMC course.
“Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.” – The Reverend Fred McFeely Rogers, Children’s television presenter, actor, puppeteer.
As we zipped through an overview of the course, Mr Ben outlined how far we had come on the TESMC journey. Whilst much wasn’t too new, much of it was refreshing and cohesive – something to take away and re-digest before using actively. It was the beginning of the end, of the start of something. The sun was on the rise with the sky brightening.
“The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as every child should be given the wish to learn.” The Right Honourable The Lord Avebury John Lubbock, author and X-Club founder.
Possession is nine tenths of the law, apparently. After nine great classes, we’re in control of more than we entered the classroom with. The teachers were the students. We went the whole nine yards to get where we were – and didn’t need the nine circles of Hell. With the conclusion of our class, I should have been on cloud 9. Instead, my head drifted to the question, “So, what now?”
Notes from the final class:
Programming and whole school models of support for ESL students.
What is our the school’s ESL policy? Can we describe our student group? How much time has been allocated to our students? What are the roles of our ESL students, classroom and specialists within our school? What are the anticipated learning outcome throughout an appropriate state of the ESL continuum? What themes, topics and topic objectives are covered by our International Baccalaureate programme? Is there a specific language goal and objective list? Are any grammatical structures focused upon? Will there be a final series of Money Heist (La casa de papel) in 2021/02? What’s our methodological approach? Have we got an appropriate assessment and reporting plan in place? Together with guidelines for programme evaluation and resources available, we looked deeper into how our school functions for the benefit of the ESL students within it.
The conditions of the International Baccalaureate methods satisfy the below key points:
1. The long-term programme
2. Units of work
3. Daily diary or work program
4. Assessment program.
The course finale gave me chance to think about my own planning and collaboration. I must look at the below more closely:
include / delete / modify / elaborate upon
I’d written ‘involving and working in partnership with families and the community’ and underlined it with two lines. My reasoning being that like the whole course, we must consider ways to set up a successful whole-school framework that is achievable over a manageable time-frame and is completely sustainable. As an early years teacher, I must adhere to four principles: every child is unique; positive relationships are essential; the classroom must have an enabling environment; we’re all here for learning and development. To that end, I wish to thank Mr Ben for enabling us throughout the TESMC class. There’s plenty to take away. Be that practical suggestions and language clubs, or birdwatching groups, or revision centres or cultural exploration… the world of teaching is diverse and open to sharing through collaboration.
So, what now?
Essential TESMC readingtitles:
“ESL Students: some factors influencing their school experiences and learning outcomes.”
“ESL Students: changing and re-shaping identities (identities under construction).”
“What ESL students may bring to the learning context.”
“From speaking to writing in the content classroom”
“Using small group work”
“Talk about literacy in the content areas”
“Supporting ESL students with written and visual texts across the curriculum”
“Multiliteracies in literate futures”
“Reading for meaning across the text”
“Perspectives on vocabulary”
“Nominalisation: meaning making in the written realm”
“How accessible are the texts we use?”
“Making assessment supportive”
“Reviewing ESL provision within a culturally inclusive curriculum”
My heartbeat is firing like a machine gun rattling out bullet after bullet, streaming out flashes upon flash of doom and fire-streaming life-ending hot metal. My breath is heavy, laboured and gasping in pockets of air, struggling to deliver the necessary components to my demanding heart rate. I can’t open my mouth fast enough and suck air inwardly. It burns with every gasp. It rasps as I force it down my windpipe deep into the cavity of my lungs. They heave and tussle at their over demanding master’s will. My chest throbs and I swell with redness. My temperature is rising. I shiver with fear and pain. I can’t get air quick enough. I quiver and flutter like a bird stuck in a net. My eyes water and my nose sounds dry and tight. Air filters in and out of it like a vacuum in a hurricane. I grasp my hands tightly onto my sweaty shorts. They’ve crinkled in the heat of my own body but I don’t know it. I can’t see further than my own nose. The vision around it blurs and blends. It’s coming soon. I can feel it. My mind swirls and whirls. It moves around like a dishwasher dancing on a violently shaking washing machine. I taste something metal. Little do I know that the iron taste is my own tongue shredding between my clenched teeth. I smell nothing. I feel less. Suddenly. No warning. Nothing. Light’s out.
“You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” – George Lorimer, author and journalist.
It could be afternoon, morning or night where you are, but I’m greeting with my own time-influenced greeting. Why not? I mean, “G’day” is for the Australians, “How do” is rather Lancastrian and “Nihao” is local but not that local. Let’s stay simple. I’m sat watching Irish actor Ciarán Hinds in movie titled The Man in the Hat. It’s a Sunday night movie. Very gentle. A British independent movie, downloaded in China. Musical composer Stephen Warbeck (Billy Elliot, Mrs. Brown & Shakespeare In Love) has moved from scores to directing. It’s a flowing road trip comedy full of charm and great cinematography. It features five bald men in a Citroën Dyane car. Rather Good Films Ltd. have a modest name and now they have a movie befitting their studio title. This is a great movie to escape the news and doom or gloom of these most testing months.
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian.
This week has seen two visitors join the apartment. First, following Western Wednesday (on a Tuesday), I walked from Mr Ben’s digs outside, with Mr Oliver. Many kittens and cats were by the overflowing rubbish bins. On walking around the bins, in the gloomy post-Chinese New Year smoky air, I spied a white rabbit. Follow the white rabbit? I did. I picked it up. It was chewing plastic. It being around midnight, and following Once Upon A Time In The West, I was shattered. Oliver scooted off. I passed the garden security guard bearing a white bunny. I tried to explain, in my crap Chinese, where I’d found the long-eared lagomorph but didn’t get anywhere. So armed with the calm albino rabbit, I tootled back to my apartment, giving a mixture of dry food and a small bed to the new guest. After almost tripping up over him, I nicknamed him Speed Bump.
“The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.” – Tricia Cunningham, author.
The previous night has seen me message almost everyone I knew within the gardens of residence that I reside, and the neighbouring phase one complex. Some clues were gained but nothing concrete. Nobody claimed the bunny. So, later that day, hearing that possibly two rabbits were regular lawn guests, I went back. There I found the second rabbit. On asking some kids on the lawn if they knew where the rabbits lived, i got nowhere. I did find a cage and the second rabbit chewing plastic with gusto. So, Second Coming joined Speed Bump. That was last week. It’s Monday now. Many small brownish black balls have been scattered throughout the apartment and promptly cleaned up. I’m starting to see why Elmer J. Fudd had such a problem with Bugs Bunny (originally a hare!). Whilst I don’t class myself as an adversary to my guests, I could do without them jumping on me whilst I’m reading on the sofa, especially whilst watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre late at night.
“When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” —Karen E. Quinones Miller
The Friday of last week and the Saturday saw our academic team join the varied and diverse departments of Tungwah Wenzel International School (TWIS) return to work. With an International Baccalaureate® (IB) task we made a video showcasing Songshan Lake, created some ideas for the next Unit of Inquiry (American English is acceptable). All in all it was two days after a 13 day break that was quite enjoyable. We finished Saturday with a barbecue (completed by Breakfast Champion’s black pudding) and looked out across our school grounds, over the running track and football field. I looked at the farm at the farthest reaches of our school perimeter. Perhaps the compost machine rabbits will join our school farm soon. Maybe an owner will come forward. We’ll see.
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” – Emile Zola, French novelist, journalist
Until next time, good evening/night/morning/afternoon/day… Have a nice day (if you must)
Rabbits and their habits. Mice into vice. Whippets who whip it. Dogs who do doggy dogging. Cats who prowl for pussy. Porcupine porking time. Zebras who do lines. Heroine hyenas. Hung like a horse: a story of execution. Penguins Eat Nice Icy Salads. Cock a doodle do? No, Dr. Seuss, we decline your submissions.
Sat here just thinking. Thoughts rattling through my head. Should I do this? Should I do that? Maybe I can go there? Perhaps a visit to such and such a place is order? How about I do that thing? You know, that thing, the thing I always say that I should do. Or maybe learning an instrument is in order.
Maybe, I said maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me. No, not my words. Sorry Liam and Noel. I could listen to music or write a song, or see a band or play an old vinly record. Is it just the ideal time to dance? Alone or with a stranger? Someone familiar or someone I want? I’ll decide one day.
What if…? Oh, so many what if questions. What if I add another question? What if questions mount up? What if they become a mountain? What if I can’t climb that mountain? What if the mountain has a landslide? What if the landslide swallows me up? What if I’m buried alive? What if the burial is long and starves me of oxygen? Oh. What if?
By the time I’ve thought all of this, time has slipped away. Was it relaxing? Was it a waste? Was it time lost to history? Was it a moment of reflection or a moment of? planning? Was it worth it? Procrastination, what’s that all about? I’ll tell you later…
Wasted energy just fizzled away. Wasted thoughts upped, up and away. Gone. Entropy, all said and done? Faded light in the thick darkness, a laser pen without power. No battery cell to zap outwards. Protons and neutrons inactive.
Plastic shreds, humanity on meds, ducks strangled by packaging. Gone. Waste management, and no fun? Carrier bags drifting in murky waters, a container without a rubbish bin. No recycling scheme to expand areas. Wrappers and sheaths defective.
Rubber tyres, telephone wires, headaches caused by noise. Gone. Bikes of thunder, and not one gun? Airplanes thunder overhead in shrouded skies, a siren without an emergency call. No laws to control the sounds. Banging fireworks completely reactive.
Grimy air, murky vision, stuffy noses full of dust. Gone. Smells of flowers, not by the sun? Machines clatter earth on stripped land, skies fill with ashes. No rule visited this land. This is all productive.
Do you remember trees?
What happened to the bees?
Rainbows and clouds vanished. Elephants and rhinos banished. Trees and grass diminished. Lakes and rivers finished.
Do you recall the smells of spring?
When did the birds last sing?
Dust filled the sky with pain. To see the horizon is a strain. No animals left with a mane. People struggling to stay sane.
6th February 2021. Day 1 distance cycled: 94km.Tongsha Reservoir and Ecological Park (同沙生态公园) was the route chosen. Lodged beside the 107 National Highway, beginning at the Dongcheng District, the reservoir and ecological park stretches towards Foling Reservoir, linked by a stretch of road at the unknown named temple (under construction at grid reference 22.971147108234454, 113.82079775499022). The area is great for cycling, picnics, and walking. It has a mix of managed and wild forestry. There’s the odd farm selling fruits such as passion fruits, bananas and other such desideratum fruits. There’s often a good melody of bird calls and some wildlife can be found throughout, although patience is needed. The best way to enjoy the park, in my humble opinion, is on two wheels. There are some side cycle routes and the loop road throughout the area is safe enough to cycle on (with care). There’s a shop somewhere on the west flank and one towards the southern entrance (with cycle hire) which allows for snacks and refreshments. I often cycle to this parkland area just to buy my honey. I’ve yet to try flying kites or picking my own fruits. This park is the place for such joys.
On my return cycle, I swung by Songshan Lake and rolled through a new park (Central Park – ZhongXin GongYuan is next to 梦幻百花洲), discovering an abandoned theme park ruins and a good place to park my bottom whilst swigging a cup of hot cappuccino. Looking back at the day spent in a wetland and ecological park only built in 2006, I thought how quickly nature had taken hold of the area. For a teenage park, it has much more potential to blossom. The huge 40 square-kilometre region has small mountains, water bodies, flowery meadows and plenty of leafage. After that ride, I ate Hunan food with my friend Melody and then had dinner in Nancheng. It was a very pleasant day indeed.
7th February 2021. Day 2 distance cycled: 85km. Alongside my Spanish colleague Jaime, we set off for the most south-western point of Dongguan. We’re not allowed to leave Dongguan during the Chinese New Year festival. It’s part of the pandemic control. It makes sense. Why risk it? So, we headed to a place that overlooks Shenzhen’s most north-western tip. The new ecological park at JiaoYi Bay is so new that on arrival we found that most of the wild areas were under construction. The Marina Bay New District is being. Some land reclamation, some sea landscaping and plenty of soil was being moved. Still it was easy to work out what the end product would be. A Dongguan government propaganda piece has a alerted me to the area, and it wasn’t a bad wander. However the ride through Chang’an town and much of Dalingshan on the way there was an anticlimax. The ride back following the Dongbao river wasn’t bad even if sometimes the cycle path just vanished or had a construction site over it.
8th February 2021. Day 3 distance cycled: 70km. I went out for a coffee. I had no intention to do more than 20km. Songshan Lake has many inlets and side roads. Some areas are under intense building work, whilst others have immense environmental projects here and there. And then there’s Europe. Huawei’s European town is tacky and classy. It’s cheap and it’s extravagant. It’s simple and it’s complex. I’m unsure how I feel about this stack of contradictions. Although it does have a pretty cool railway system, I worry the scale is so large and so imposing that in a country struggling between Western and Eastern cultural identity that this piece of luxury is one step too far. Ox Horn Campus has 12 town styles inside it. And it seems to be growing, year on year, like a sinister James Bond nemesis set.
9th February 2021. Day 4 distance cycled: 0km. Today was our Murray’s F.C. x DGFC 30-man football tournament on Dongcheng rooftop. Between us all we had 5 teams, two fields (both 5 and 6 a-side) and a good evening of football, followed by beers and food at One For The Road and then Hollywood Baby Too. After many games throughout three hours, I was shattered and sore. The holiday needed me to have more energy…
It’s been seven years and a day since I arrived in China. There should be a lengthy piece of writing about that, but looking back is already documented. So, let’s look forward together to joy, happiness, City being top of the league and all that wonderful uncertainty that we get to kick in the dick. Don’t let the bastards wear you down. 2021 is the year of the (metal white?) Ox and we’re off and running.
To those lunatics who follow the lunar New Year, I wish you a happy new year. To those who follow the sun, you commit lunacy by not obeying the order of the moon. Each to their own. Blue moon will be played over the noise of the fireworks outside or maybe Saving Private Ryan is more appropriate.
In loving memory of Ivy Freeman, great grandmother, gran, mother, wife, sister, friend, neighbour and all the wonderful things, my Gran was to so many people.
Laid to rest at Hollinwood Crematorium on the afternoon of Friday the 21st February 2014, my Gran was much more to me than I think I ever told her.
The service by Canon John Sykes, featured professional music (Bette Midler’s Wing Beneath My Wings). I haven’t listened to it since that day without welling up in tears. The poem, Look for me in rainbows, by Conn Bernard and Vicky Brown featured.
Psalm 23 and John 14:1-6, 27 were read from the Bible. With the Lord’s Prayer by Il Divo preceding the commendation and farewell, before a dismissal by the Canon John Sykes. On leaving Andrea Bocelli, played over the speakers, Time to say goodbye. The procession moved on to The Millgate in Failsworth, Manchester.
The below is the writing of my Aunty Susan, I believe.
Ivy was born in Failsworth in 1925 – the second daughter of John and Mary Harrison. Her father died when she was 10. Her mother baked and took in washing. Despite these poor economic times, her mother ensured that her sister Mary and herself were always well dressed with gloves and hats.
She went to Mather Street school, where her second husband John was in the same year. Ivy and John were courting when they were both 17 years old but opposition from John’s mother due to health concerns stopped them from seeing each other.
War started and Ivy worked in the munitions factory and volunteered with the fire service, taking calls. It was joked that it was a wonder we won the war because Ivy probably sent the fire crews to the wrong address. She had no sense of direction.
Following the war, she met and married her first husband, Eden and had her first daughter Carolyn. Unfortunately, she was widowed early and left to bring up a young child on her own. Within six months, Ivy had also lost her mother.
In 1956, she married her first boyfriend John and went on to have two more daughters, Susan and Elaine. Ivy was widowed again a second time at the age of 60. At the age of 12, John had a kidney removed and the surgeon said he wouldn’t live to be a man but he had lived to 60, spending 29 years of marriage with Ivy.
She had various part time jobs whilst the children were young but was a machinist by trade. Whit week was a particularly busy time for Ivy, when she made Whit dresses and knitted cardigans for her daughters. She had a lovely voice and liked to sing as she did her housework – notably, Molly Malone.
As her daughters grew older, Ivy began work as a Home Help. She enjoyed helping and meeting people. Ivy was a very kind, caring woman and she often visited and helped her patients in her own time. Once, she didn’t return home from work until early in the morning, leaving her family frantic with worry. She had stayed at the bedside of one of her favourites Mr Ward, until he died. Ivy didn’t want to leave him alone.
In her later years, Ivy found a companion in Ernie and married him in hospital two months before he died. She had spent many happy times with Ernie.
Ivy loved life. She was a vivacious but quiet, thoughtful woman who always looked for the good in everyone. Right up to the day she died, she never lost her sense of humour and hope. Ivy believed that you should treat everyone equally and had a good knowledge of what was happening in the world around her. Although, not as political as her younger daughters, she would ask ‘Which apples am I not supposed to buy?’ during the boycott of South African goods.
She enjoyed reading, walking and spending time with her family. Even in her eighties, she would say ‘I didn’t wait for the bus but walked from Oldham to Failsworth and now I’m jiggered!’ In her sixties, she decided to give aerobics a go with her two younger daughters. It was Susan and Elaine who gave up going first! When walking started to get difficult and Ivy had breast and bone cancer, she resisted using a walking frame saying they were for old people. She was 87!
Ivy had 10 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren and enjoyed their company. She spent many happy times in Nottingham with her daughter Carolyn’s family only stopping her visits because of ill-health. She enjoyed listening to what her grandchildren were doing and gave support whenever she could. She had a close relationship with her sister, Mary, who helped her through difficult times. They were very close and always lived near each other. Mary’s recent death affected Ivy greatly and she lost her best friend.
Ivy spent her later years at Earls Lodge, where she made many friends, especially Mavis. She had an active social life and there are many photos of her dressed up at various parties. Quite often she started her sentences with “Mavis said…” and at times her daughters would joke “perhaps we shouldn’t let her play with Mavis… she’s a bad influence”
After her death, one of her grandsons, John commented
“Humble, strong willed, independent, brave, modest, selfless. Rest well Gran, for you have been a hero and an inspiration to me. Those you have touched, will remember, and we’ll miss you. Keep on doing headstands. Gran, 1925-2014.” A very fitting tribute.
Look for me in Rainbows
Time for me to go now, I won’t say goodbye; Look for me in rainbows, way up in the sky. In the morning sunrise when all the world is new, Just look for me and love me, as you know I loved you.
Time for me to leave you, I won’t say goodbye; Look for me in rainbows, high up in the sky. In the evening sunset, when all the world is through, Just look for me and love me, and I’ll be close to you.
It won’t be forever, the day will come and then My loving arms will hold you, when we meet again.
Time for us to part now, we won’t say goodbye; Look for me in rainbows, shining in the sky. Every waking moment, and all your whole life through Just look for me and love me, as you know I loved you.
Just wish me to be near you, And I’ll be there with you.
Music and lyrics: Conn Bernard (1990). Vicki Brown
‘This poem was found on the memorial card for Ivy’s Maternal grandmother, Ann Clarke who died in 1907. (My great, great grandmother)‘ – Aunty Susan
I’m too tired to write this. I started writing an hour ago. I can’t think how to continue the words. Did I forget something then or am I forgetting something now? I can’t shake my mind into gear. The ideas are there. I can feel them. I keep getting bits of this and that, or something and another. Nope. Gone again.
I’ll try memory techniques. I can’t remember how to do them. I’ll walk around in circles. Why am I doing this? What is it that I set out for? Left, right, left right? Look up here. No not there. Oh, there’s something I was looking for. When was that? What was I looking for it for?
I am shattered. My shoulders dropped down a life time ago. What did it to me? Why this week? Now and again it all seems to build up. Then the glass overflows. I need a rest. I need naps. I need to lay in bed. My muscles don’t just ache, they throb and they pulse. They burn. I eat right, I think but something is lacking. I rest well, usually, but what is it that I miss? I relax with books and movies and television shows and music and love and peace and quiet. I lack something.
I overslept. I barely moved today. My step count was liked by friends and colleagues but on those days I’d barely moved an inch. Are they mocking me? Even so, I don’t have the energy to ask them. I’m drained, pooped and my battery is empty. Duracell bunny? Not a chance. Time to close my eyes. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be full of energy. Here’s to hope. I’ve been too tired for optimism. Pessimistic thoughts didn’t join me either. The number you have dialled has not been recognised, please hang up and try again…
My eyes sag heavily. Dry lips. My mouth tastes like yesterday. There’s a smell I recognise as the fumes of frustration. I’ve blinked and the fidgeting of my hand is twitching away. I’m stammering words and mumbling hopes. Dreams pass by. I’m fighting a battle. Just can’t sleep or stay awake. Time to rest. Rest in peace. Not that way. Just quiet. Me, my mind and no movement. Rejuvenating restful rest. I close my eyes, without concern of waking. No plans tomorrow. Just rest. Only rest.
*…Walsh, Gündoğan, Sheron, Creaney, Wright-Phillips, Benarbia, Fowler, Barton, Geovanni, Pizarro, Nasri… and all those other wonderful Manchester City numbers 8s.
These are the voyages of the starship TESMC. Its nine-module mission: to explore strange new words. To seek out almost new teaching methods and relatively new vocabulary. The bold crew of the giant starship explores the excitement of strange uncharted dictogloss things, and exotic uninhabited refined writing.Imagine it – thousands of noun groups at our fingertips…To boldly go where few teachers have gone before!
“Navigation was always a difficult art, Though with only one ship and one bell: And he feared he must really decline, for his part, Undertaking another as well.” – The Hunting Of The Snark, a poem by Lewis Carroll
During TESMC classes we have focused on language in learning across the curriculum. Here’s a recap (to build on the 7th instalment), at the Using English for Academic Purposes website, of nominal groups, structures and examples with exercises. There’s two links here and there for dictogloss activities. Look at this website called The Up-Goer Five Text Editor. It expects you to type a complex idea only using words from a list of 1000 common use words. That’s that, done!
[Now, an important announcement] Lemma: a word family, e.g. running, run, ran; blue, bluer, bluest, blueish, blues, etc. [Announcement ends]
Another vocabulary test website was pointed my way. Cheers ears! You know who you are. VocabularySize.com is a tool to create customized and test vocabulary tests for students. It was created by the University of Wellington, in New Zealand. Their School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies worked with School of Engineering and Computer Science. Language acquisition takes time, patience and exposure. Those students in an international school such as Tungwah Wenzel International School, surrounded by numerous international teachers, are most likely to increase their vocabulary than students in Inner Mongolia without a foreign teacher or access to YouTube. To them English will be as Scottish as a suntan.
Judgement value calls shouldn’t be drawn from memory. Responsive attitudes towards data collection over time carries more merit and significance. By showing a daily goal, we set a part of a bigger picture. The bigger picture should come from steps and aims. Those goals need organising. Rubrics are familiar territory that often get overlooked. I know, from my experience, that I have often favoured an in-head calculation over pencil, pen or paper. That’s not fair. Formative and summative assessments need clarity, not just for the teacher or the parent. The student should have the goalposts set early on. They must know what the task entails and how to achieve maximum marks.
“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.” – Robert E. Stake, Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Illinois
Having a summative assessment that resembles activities earlier on is key too. If you use formative pieces that have multiple choice questions and then for the finale you switch to an all-singing, all-dancing 2000-word essay, then that’s totally not playing cricket with your students. English as a Second Language (ESL) students need modelled methods that allow them to switch between multiple forms. To do it without preparation is unfair. Failure or success depends on students and their experience. To think outside of the box without the necessary scaffolding is not easy. One activity that I found useful was to assign half the class the activity of being the teacher. The other half had to follow the instructions given by the teacher. Afterwards peer review of the followers revealed that some students gave clear instructions. Others did not. Some students improvised where instruction was lacking. Many students competed to give the better and clearer instructions. Positive peer pressure gives chance for evaluation and reflection. Using a checklist or rubric over the top of that student’s activity gives a more meaningful insight to the activity and assessment. The teacher can play the role of referee or judge. The peers become the jury. Hopefully no executioner needs assigning. That being said we’ve all had that one student who never does homework… [It’s gallows humour, relax]
“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier
Student age gives us an idea of where to set our expectations. Within an age group, each student’s experience and exposure to English needs to be factored in. Then there’s nationality, multilingualism, academic performance in their native language(s), and so on… or what they ate for breakfast. Classrooms are living breathing jelly-like places that seldom remain constant. One gargantuan factor to take into consideration is that of student behaviour. Special needs and cares need to be taken into account. Not every student has the level of focus that we desire. To give confidence, informal formative assessments and their analysis will benefit the teacher and student. In the long run, reforming practices to unlock their true productive potential using a variety of interactive assessments will become a most valuable teaching tool.
“I never teach my pupils. I can only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein
Formative assessments can guide a teacher to how a student is or is not progressing. It can allow the teacher to amend their methods or tailor an individual student’s needs much more fluidly. John Polias, of Lexis Education, describes it as:
assessment of learning;
assessment for learning;
assessment as learning.
I read that in the style of Pep Guardiola as an intense football manager. He, like many great football managers, uses coaching of football in the game, after game analysis and during the game. The game is the test. The game is also a time to test new formations and tactics. The game is something to reflect on and to understand new learnings. This can also be said within our classroom. This should also be applied to our students. Assessment as learning is a real chance give appropriate and frequent feedback – in order to modify learning activities. It’s proactive and not reactive. Assessment of learning, the summative part, is reactive. It’s done, it’s dusted. Game over, almost. Assessment for learning also allows us scope to work away from the traditional unit test and external testing of old. Here in assessment for learning and assessment as learning we allow magic to happen. Students can express themselves. There’s self-assessment, self-monitoring and peer-assessment time. Students can create or make their own checklists or rubrics. With that, they can be employed for the purpose of learning. They allow students incentive, a drive, a spur on to get to a much more useful end. Therefore, Making Assessment Supportive focuses on how we can devote adequate time to making a type of assessment that makes sense for our students – and being able to use it at varied points of instruction. At points along the teaching cycle allows us to make assessment more fruitful. Lorna Earl’s Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning further strengthens this material showing a host of judgements about placement, promotion, credentials, etc to fit with other students. It shows information for teacher instructional decisions to meet external standards and expectations. It shows self-monitoring, self-correction and adjustment to reach personal and external goals.
“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” – Kahlil Gibran
So, with all that, I ask you, teacher or not, what does the assessment pyramid look like? Identify how your school, current or old, had their pyramid. Where would you place the below? Top, middle or bottom?
assessment of learning;
assessment for learning;
assessment as learning.
Let’s each analyse samples of assessment tasks being used in our schools. Are they devised to be assessment of, for, or as learning? How can we incorporate a more overlapped approaches to assessments within teaching? What’s the understanding from students within our classes about the kinds of assessments that we do?
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B. King, musician
“Ben told the class that nouns are sexy. I couldn’t agree more.” – Mr Lee, 2020/21 cohort, TESMC, TWIS
Noun groups are everywhere. ESL (English as a Second Language) learners may find ordering tough, whereas a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, may find that their description of the fictional Scottish public and private boarding school of magic for students aged eleven to eighteen child’s play. The British magical community’s Ministry of Magic may not be an ideal place to start an exploration of noun groups, that most specific to English topic, but we can begin here with a dabble into the magical realm of TESMC class with Mr Ben. It’s our seventh class, hence the title.
“Many a man has a treasure in his hoard that he knows not the worth of. (Sellic Spell)” – Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien
Perspectives on Vocabulary by John Polias, Nominalisation, meaning making in the written realm by Brian Dare, and How accessible are the texts we use by John Polias made for riveting reading. They kept me up into the wee hours and on my toes. Why? They made me question my teaching and my selection of textbooks. Hugely. I’ve always been a fan of a DK Board game called Very Silly Sentences. This game helps to expand the vocabulary and manipulates verbs, adjectives and nouns. The idea of manipulating the nominal group needs base knowledge. That is to know the density of meaning slapped together inside a written text by giving numbers to nominalization per clause. Heavy stuff. Really heavy packed stuff. As a teacher we want to see the evolution of a student’s writing. It must go from: ‘It is a cat.’ We’re aiming to add weight to the sentence. Students, like adults, should be spouting Shakespearian cat descriptive pieces.
“foul night-waking cat” – The Rape of Lucrece, Sir William Shakespeare
If we sit our student’s first grade work alongside the same student’s work as they enter their early teenage years, you will see progress. The same can be done if we take week two work, week ten and week 17 work. Analysis is easy because it is reactive. Our job is much more proactive though. We’re targeting an end product. The factory assembly line of our classes must be targeted to show our desired outcomes of language learning. The crux of the matter is vocabulary extension: It’s a pretty cat. John Polias makes some strong cases for playing detective and taking visuals aside for as good old interrogation.
Fellow hair-challenged Brian Dare points out the pros and cons of refined writing. The high end of the mode continuum gets a fair treatment. He points out that suddenly students are less likely to be thinking on their toes. Students should be encouraged to both rewrite spoken text and speak in different ways about written text. It has to be bidirectional and the transpositions should become the tools of meaning-making in language. Going back and forwards, inverting, flipping it a bit, and relocating words here and there will provide the necessitous scaffolding. Do you remember the joys of messing with words and creating something clean and trim? The mode continuum gives our students something to blend and bend as a way to develop knowledge about language.
Explain these terms to a student without using the terms: common noun, proper noun, abstract noun, concrete noun, countable noun, uncountable noun, compound noun, collective noun, singular noun and plural noun. Respective examples could include window, Manchester, love, house, bike and bikes, rice, textbook, crowd, monkey, and babies. Easy enough, right? Now explain the function and use of a noun group. A noun group is a group of words relating to, or building on, a noun. There may be a pointer (a, an, this, that, these, those, my, your, his, her, its, our, dad’s, Mr Ben’s), one or more adverbs and adjectives. Before and after the main noun. The pre-modifier and the post-modifier offer ample opportunity for exploration. Referring back and forwards, within a sentence is a highly useful skill and tool for an up-and-coming writer. Adding weight and detail to the noun expands the information about the noun itself. It offers a clearer mental image. With these skills, our students can tell us much more about a cat. It’s a pretty fluffy cat with a wonderful temperament. The students are now armed with magic wands to cast spells on their noun structures. Effective writers need detail. Expanding the nominal group should be a weapon of choice.
Note: Nominal means as planned, or as named, or as written (in the mission plan). It does not mean normal.
Synonyms and antonyms are keys and tools to create colourful and abstract language. They’re also ideal for adding dimension to concrete dialogue and reports. One of my earliest English class memories was at Clayton Brook Primary School in Manchester. I, under ten years of age, and my peers were tasked with finding as many synonym words for the words good and bad. Many students talked about it. Some sought books. The tall loner in the corner dived like goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel and grabbed something useful. The dictionary fell into my lap. I was hooked. My personal vocabulary grew from word hunts, games, and reading. Mr Jones, class 5AJ, at Chapel Street Primary School, where I later attended, had me constantly finding words, or even searching for made up words, which made me look up similar words. These strange games certainly gave me reasons to live amongst the pages of discovery.
Here on vocabulary played a part. Even to this day, I enjoy expressions, terminologies, and styles of writing because the words within are shouting at me like conversations and whisperings that I must hear. According to TestYourVocab.com, most adult native test-takers range from 20,000-35,000. The average 8-year-old native speaker already knows about 10,000 words. Foreign test-takers tend to hit 2,500-9,000 words – and even by living overseas that only tends to hit 10,000 words. As I slotted my answers into tick-boxes and scored an estimated 32,700 words for my vocabulary size, I realized how few of the 300,000 entries into the Oxford English Dictionary that I probably know. In reality knowing one word from the 20,000 printed pages of the Oxford English Dictionary isn’t all that bad (and in truth, just 35,000 are useful). Are the website’s findings accurate? Well, entering your data is based on honesty and over two million surveys doesn’t accurately reflect a global population of umpteen billion people. Also, who uses the internet?! Their website’s methodology, the nitty-gritty argues that their accuracy is around ±10%, so in my instance, I could be closer to 35,970 or 29,430 words. Either way, it’s a curious little tool of play. I’m not showing off. Not at all. It gives me a good reflection on how many words I have yet to experience or learn. The bad news, however, is that their findings say middle age is where vocabulary retention tends to end. The best reading I found on their website related to reading habits. They found that reading habits directly increases vocabulary growth. It may sound like, as my Dad would put it, “stating the bleeding obvious” but it goes a long way to reinforcing the habit of reading at an early age. This website is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project. The decade-old findings of China show that the average vocabulary size here for English as a Second Language users was 6,636 words. Now, considering the education boom in China, that could be higher now. The website is an indication but not a science. It made me think about how many base words we need to learn a language. But, then how often do we use the words and do we lose the words? Who do we talk with that make us use new words? Are some words specific to some scenarios? Oh, the endless questions! Where on Earth is Anglesey?
“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.”- Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, writer (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966)
Textbooks need selection. Most of us read reviews and even more of us get handed a reading list and stack of books tall enough to paralyse a student’s passion for reading. Trying not to overwhelm a young kids with a stack of books is a good start. As John Polias points out we need to support the students. If I throw the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at you and say read it. With that name of the Welsh village just over the Menai Bridge, you can unlock the language of Welsh, possibly. Possibly not. That’s where teachers must support every textbook handed to a student. A book without support may scare away passion for reading.
“Our song escapes, on little silver discs; Our love is plastic, we’ll break it to bits” – Reflektor – Arcade Fire
Too long, didn’t read? Well, that’s half the problem. If reading isn’t for you, how can reading be for someone else? And if reading isn’t a habit, how can writing be a skill? I haven’t read any of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Am I a sinner? Maybe. It just never grasped my attention. So, now, I believe that I must read it. I won’t read it alone though. I’ll make it my personal mission to read it with each and every student of my grade four class. Maybe they have read it in Chinese. Maybe in English. But, how did they enjoy it? I’m sure we can enjoy the magical journey as one. If you don’t have one of the Harry Potter books to hand and you want to dig on into the wider world of English, check out the below sites:
The Economist (Johnson blog: named after Samuel Johnson, who made dictionaries. This blog is all about the use and misuse of language, with its ripple effects)
FreeRice.com teaches and tests vocabulary whilst donating 5 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Programme.
Language Log. Simply put, Mark Liberman, at the University of Pennsylvania, is a linguist with love of words. His Language Log website is a ticker-tape of blogs, posts and news all relating to language. Expect popular culture, controversy and history.
Dictogloss: a language learning technique. Used to teach grammatical structures. The teacher prepares text examples that need to be studied. The teacher reads it. The students just listen. No pens allowed. Next the students lift up their pens. Notes must be taken. By forming small groups, students can work together to reconstruct the text example using their knowledge, notes and teamwork. Afterwards reflection comes as students compare their various versions. With respect to my Grade 4 class, they tried this task twice and each time, they sailed the rough seas. Grade 4 are very capable sailors when the going gets tough. For extra experience, add a Powerpoint presentation whereby the words (and phrases) that you feel need noting pop up as you read it. It can reinforce student ability. After students become familiar with the dictogloss methods, take away the option of teamwork. First try paired working and then ask the students to work solo. This can also promote confidence.
“Fate goes ever as fate must.” – Beowulf, Seamus Heaney
As students move through schooling they will encounter different registers with full expectation to engage them accordingly. The use of nominal groups to enhance and even make complex text can be explained and shown to be more than useful. The dictogloss is there to be used as a tool, but not for exactitude. How many things change through new interpretation and retelling? Language and writing, like speaking can all be about exploration. As teachers we are captains of ships and we must wake our hypnopompic students with a sparge of word play. Our fuliginous fluffy funambulist of a feline with a wonderful temperament must exercise its vibrissae to avoid any pother as it balances on the tenebrous tightrope of life. With that, I end my braggadocio writing.
“Fate will unwind as it must!” – Beowulf, Burton Raffel
Are they immortal? Do they feel their movements? Shaped in time, carved by ice, snow and rain, to name but a few of nature’s shaping tools. Winds blow over them, sometimes finding ways deep into the soul of the mass, but often unmoving little more than loose ground.
Rains, earthquakes, feet passing over, whether herd or bird, a plethora of life creeping and digging into it. What does a mountain sense? Does it see the land and valleys below? Can it feel the altitude changes of plants like we feel the differences between socks, shorts and a woolen jumper?
From the lowlands to the tips, diversity grows and taints every inch with colour and variety. Crags, crevices, crests, cracks, boulders, rocks, ledges and all spectacle of materials decorate the mountain. Waterfalls and streams bathe the light that shines brightly down between the gaps in the clouds.
Flowers give the wings of bees and butterflies places to compete for beauty. The banks of trees stretch from thicket to wood to forest. Some ancient. Some not. Insects occupy every level and avoid the preying spiders that jump, spin webs and roan the floor. Chasms of rock beneath overhanging shelves house fluttering sounds within. The darkness of the mountain’s belly home to frightful delightful shapes and shadows. Oh, majestic mountain, what is it that you know?
Penned, when trekking, during a break at Muse village, Nepal, 11th January, 2017.
Writers use language resources as a key to organize texts, very much as I am doing now, albeit very amateurish in style, so that you, like the students as readers have a sense of what shall follow. When reading, a reader must orientate to a subject. For most who have experience reading in their native tongue, experience plays an advantage in determining the subject. For English as a Second Language (ESL) students, that experience may be lacking. For many of us, we may be able to pre-read and digest a news article, magazine piece or a book blurb just from experience. Our pre-formed ideas and exposure to templates could settle our mind on a track to read with ease. The imagination and interpretation of a seasoned-mind will draw out bold titles, enhance key points, find text captions, and articulate the who, when, what, why and how etc.
Achieving a proper semantic level via syntax isn’t a bad starting point. How many of us can clearly and quickly distinguish a cohesive conjunction from a rhetorical conjunction? How do we view phrases rather than look at individual words? Do we see the Lego castle or the loose blocks? Do those phrases serve as roles in conjunctions? Students face multiple texts, in differing formats, in varied lengths across countless textbooks, journals, magazines, booklets, instruction books, and so on. Students must use a range of complex resources and processes to make sense of the materials.
foreground/ˈfɔːɡraʊnd/ verbgerund or present participle: foregrounding
make (something) the most prominent or important feature.
Knowing that a strap-line sits over or under a title, elaborating briefly on a subject is useful. The headline or title will grab the attention of a reader. There may be a byline with a writer and their expertise. So, before, even reading a sentence or paragraph, the reader could be parachuted into the story beyond, just by a few simple well-positioned words. From the introduction, a piece of writing will be elaborated on. There will be interpretation within the text and then quotes. Just to make things interesting, some publications make their ordering flexible, bullet-pointed, short and sharp, whereas others pad the hell out of the article. Rather like the teaching cycle, a reader must learn that things can be flexible. This learning cycle is subject to change, like all else in life. Orders change.
Some aspects can be skipped if students demonstrate they can satisfy the earlier stage of the cycle. It is advisable to set a clear context, to create a model, deconstruct it all, make a joint construction and then set independent construction.
Teachers must be sensitive when we go through books or texts. We read for meaning across the text. We read for context. The use of five different skills to comprehend the meaning will be decisive in thorough interpretation of text.
Pronouns refer back (and sometimes forwards) to content within the text.
Vocabulary is part of grammatical English. Grammar teaching requires cohesive conjunctions. Words like when, while, although, in other words, in the case of this, and so on are often new to students. Creating a list or glossary to assist will be useful.
Rhetorical conjunctions
Foregrounding at the whole text level.
By unravelling these pieces, peace in reading should follow. The purpose, schematic structures and language choice are all connected. Foregrounding is essential when it comes to almost all forms of texts. If a student is expected to look at and understand an article, then giving them the bigger picture and idea about reading the whole article is a must. Students from ESL backgrounds may be unfamiliar with conjunction forms and how linking words are used to tie together unknown vocabularies into their related sentences. Conjunctions should be provided to students, whether by heading, indexing or other means. Examples must be given for each and every one whether provided steadily or as a block. Familiarity takes time, and with gentle nurturing a student can be supported in focusing on reading text to know exactly which keywords of an introduction paragraph to look for. How do those words lead into the following paragraph and so on…
Cohesive conjunctions:
Conjunctions and connectives are cohesive devices that work to improve the flow of the writing.
Conjunctions operate within sentences and connectives relate to meaning between sentences.
Different types of conjunctions are used to express different types of relationships between ideas.
I know being in lockdown isn’t ideal and staying at my Mum’s for the best park of a year isn’t so independent, but at least our kid is safe and sound.
Astrid has the unfortunate month of birth that falls in the shadow of Christmas and just after the January sales dry up, usually. This year has been testing and it seems the future is also difficult. I know my sister is strong and she’ll do her best to keep herself busy and relaxed. Copious amounts of Beyonce and other vocalists will probably be heard. YouTube will be in good company with our kid playing tune after tune.
Our kid has always been wonderful to me, sharing her Hotel Chocolat chocolates, buying me snazzy and fragrant soaps from Lush or simply watching movies with me and our brother Paul. Astrid has always and will always be my friend and sister. I can’t wait to catch her when I’m in the U.K. next. We’ll have a good natter and a party later. Until then, all my love and best wishes for? this special day.
Cutting into me, it twists like a knife. Confidence hasn’t been in my hand for too long. This companionship I hold drains me. An awful lonely feeling of dread and dreams that have disappeared.
Will I be disappointed? Will it all go wrong? What should I do now? WHAT SHOULD I DO? My soul screams at me. Echoes ping around my head like a thousand pinballs on a pinball board. Each ball finds a hole but no points join the scoreboard.
Silence hasn’t visited me in weeks. I’m trying. Oh, how I’m trying! Trying and crying. Solace? Where are you? I’m sensitive to you but you haven’t called for me in so long. Remember peace? I don’t recall it’s calm. My millpond is full of rippling waves. A cask of broken rocks plummets here and there. A plethora of circles expand ever outwards. This is my universe’s big bang.
A street that has no name is where my feet fall. I’m lost. I’m a shadow without a being. Am I a ghost without life? I want you to understand that I’m not looking for sympathy. You’ll forget me, as soon as you look at me. My skin is supposed to be thicker but every whisperer who whispers makes me want to shrivel away into nothingness. I’m not really here.
Religion and words won’t relate to me. Poems and stories won’t leap from the page. Songs won’t pull me together. I’m sure that I’ll see you again. Whatever you are. Whoever you were. We’re far apart. We’re not really here. Like the face of an invisible man. We’re not really here. We’re not. We are not. We’re not really here.
Oh doubt, you cut through me like fear. You tear me apart. You give me indecision. I’m in Dante’s inferno dancing without feet. My eyes are red-raw bleeding tears of sorrow and my lips are dry. Where did it all go wrong? Sometimes, no, all the time, I wonder why. Why does my soul wander? Why does it choose to wander hand-in-hand, side-by-side with you, doubt?
THUD! THUD! THUD! Clattering tapping, scraping, raking of metal on concrete, tapping to no discernible rhythm, whooshing of liquids of pressure too high to be useful (surely) and horns of an arriving concrete mixer. Jangling metal lifted by crane slams to the floor of an unfinished level. Thank you my neighbouring alarm clock that forever remains unwanted.
A yapping dog, barking, growling and filling the air with its territorial call of power. I imagine it’s been disturbed by the building site. The dull humming of pumped up storey after storey probably haunts the ears of that canine. Either that or the dog is angry that it is confined to an exposed balcony. Howling away without shame. Poor thing. Wouldn’t you be? Balconies should be silent, not living, breathing, wolf like alarm clocks.
The pressure is too much. It hurts. I’m going to burst. Can I sleep through this? No. Just no. I must get up. The call of my bladder has rang. Get up! Get up! Get on up! I stretch on wearying legs, reach up, straighten and with legs like Bambi, I strut awkward motion toward the bathroom. Here I greet the porcelain telephone and deliver my undesirable alarm clock’s stream away.
I settle back into bed. The din of the building site. The dog yapping. Wet hands from washing them after my body refused me a minute more of closed eyes. Vrrrrrrrrrr. The whirring of a power drill in the apartment overhead. It wakes a baby. Screams echo around the walls in a room somewhere adjacent to the drill hall above. Twinkle twinkle… What’s that? A piano thunders into life. Repeated notes, some off, some tuneless ditty from the apartment below. The nonessential alarm clock is an orchestra today.
A scream for good measure echoes down the corridor by my apartment. The immediate neighbour’s daughter is in a singing mood. Their cockerel on the balcony let’s out a few sounds. Little does it know that it’s on the menu tonight. Their washing machine had finished. I can hear it beeping. The treble electronic bleeps come every minute, and have been doing so for at least this last hour. I hear as the grandparents of the family rip up large packaging boxes and slam plastic bottles together before compression by foot and body. They sing a song, gently, no doubt, but to my alert morning ears, it is at karaoke level. My neighbours are a reliable alarm clock. But please… not today.
De trop. Redundant. Rejected. Unsought. Unwelcome. Unsolicited. These alarm clocks aren’t of my choosing. I close my eyes. Trucks and cars honk on a nearby road. An ambulance siren is piercing the air, screaming at traffic to move aside. Judging by the duration, the selfish traffic is refusing to assist. Blackballed the ambulance shrieks a lonely sound of hope to narrow-minded folk going about their day, unaware of an emergency vehicle probably on the way to something more important than my desire to snooze a little more. These alarms are not in the picture of my plan to doze.
The body clock, programmed by weeks of morning necessity has won. The Monday to Friday alarm clock of my mind has triggered. Saturday is now a school day too. I wonder if Sunday will be any different.
Swirling swirls swirl around, swirly and softly to the ground. Drops drip and drop beyond. Down, falling high and low without sound. A roar of wind breezes through, pushing all air aside, drawing every room’s breath outwards. A vacuum for a split second, all life freezes. The rip of heat singes and severs flesh from bone. Dust from stone fragments, as waves upon wave of pressure jump and ripple in circles ever outwards. Heat rises. Metal buckles. Fragrance ceases to exist. The particles refuse to cooperate. Iron tastes flutter but refuse to reach the tongue. Rainbows of orange, red, gold and yellows in every known shade flicker, flash and flurry. A crack of sound, as if the sky itself had collapsed. And. In one brilliant flash. It was all over. Gone. Blank and no longer.
Help I’m alive. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Comfortably numb. Fall. Still feeling blue. Boulevard of broken dreams. Everybody hurts. I’m so lonesome I could cry. If you’re reading this. More than a feeling. I’m so lonely I could cry. Nothing compares 2 U. While my guitar gently weeps. Apologize. Mad world. Is there life out there? I just wanna dance with somebody (who loves me). You don’t even know who I am. Creep. All by myself. Hurt. Life is a lemon and I want my money back. O my heart. Left outside alone. Act naturally. Only the lonely. No hard feelings. Don’t let me be lonely tonight. Here comes that rainy day feeling. If you’re happy and you know it (clap your hands). Smile to keep from crying. Say something. Peaceful easy feeling. Into you. I feel the earth move. Dancing with myself. Hooked on a feeling. I feel fine. I can feel a hot one. Electric feel. I got the sweetest feeling. I got you. The way you make me feel. I will rise. Cum on feel the noize. Make you feel my love. I feel free. Feels like the first time.
Twisting and turning, weaving and looping, over and over again, the thread winds and binds itself together, securing passage, places to capture and sending signals far beyond the centre. Each radiating line sends ripples outwards and inwards. A prang here. A twang there. Waves of delight or despair depending on your view. As wings flutter, powerless to escape, out I step, ready to drink the juices of life. The sun beats above, or it doesn’t, I’m ever present. Ever ready. Ready to feast. All on the web of life, that I spun.
Sat in the passenger seat across from my Dad, the warm fans blasted heat into my legs and the windows were wound down. The cool Lancashire air drifted in. We were returning from Morecambe to Manchester. It was probably a Sunday night. Dad had been playing heavy metal from Iron Maiden, the early stuff with drums plentiful.
“You see you’re losing, yet you still try The game just a’watches your life go by You’re playin’ well, Oh you’re playin’ the game.” – Meat Loaf’s song Razor’s Edge
Now, in he popped a new cassette, and on played Meat Loaf. The smooth tracks mixed with electric and melodic blues rock took me beyond the car journey. I’d suddenly been transported beyond my pre-teenage self into a world of words sang at just the right tempo to catch my ear. Razor’s Edge is my favourite track on the often-ridiculed album. It has a frantic feel but is such a short song in terms of lyrical content. That’s considering it’s just over 4 minutes long.
“I can tell by the look in your tear-filled eyes; You need somebody you can hold onto; If you really want to, I’d love to hold you; If you really want to, then I’d love to be the body that you hold onto.” – Meat Loaf’s song If You Really Want To
I still remember looking at my Dad at the wheel. As a small kid, I looked up to my Dad. He was a colossus of a man with shoulders like bridges and arms like tree trunks. His chest stuck out like a rugby forward. His hands were like two shovels. He smoked casually at the wheel, eyes forward into the traffic and we talked a little. City this. City that. I gained my passion for Manchester City from my Dad. Stories of the ballet on ice, Kippax crowds, Uncle George and Grandad at the games. King Colin Bell, the floral named Summerbee, Franny One-Pen (took me years to understand that name), Tony Book, Trevor Francis, John Bond, Asa Hartford, Paul Powers, Gerry Gow and so on. Many other names were mentioned but times eroding effect on a kid’s memories can be harsh.
We talked lego, steam trains and finally Dad introduced me to Meat Loaf. With the finale of the Midnight at The Lost and Found album, Dad ejected the cassette and popped in Bat Out of Hell. The first Meat Loaf album I’d heard had been like a warm up act. Now I was spellbound by the range of vocals, the ferocity and energy, the theatrical length of several tracks and the tracks within tracks. The lyrics of Jim Steinman were sensational and to this day are poetry in musical form. A few weekends later Dad played me Dead Ringer on vinyl. Fond memories. I can’t wait to talk with my Dad again on a video call soon. If only the VPN would work with Messenger, Skype or something to make it. easy. Here’s hoping. Until then writing helps homesickness.
I awoke on January the 2nd in Shangri La. The final day of trekking around YuBeng (雨崩) village involved a 500m ascent followed by a 1100m descent to XiDang village. YuBeng translates directly as rain and collapse or avalanche. As Piotr, Oliver and I were ascending we heard a mighty crack in the air and watched an avalanche high on the wide expanse of the Hengduan mountain range. A shelf somewhere near Kawagabo peak slid away. Rather noisy.
On arrival at XiDang, our driver Mr ZhaShiDingZhu (扎史定主), a warm-hearted Tibetan, picked us up. He would take us to Shangri La. Our driver stopped at three historic monuments, two dramatic views and to enjoy a chicken hotpot. It was a good journey indeed. The long road of return was pleasant and a fitting end to a wonderful few days in the mountains. Arriving late to pleasant digs gave us all a chance to rest our weary heads.
A day of gentle cycling and pottering around followed. With hire bicycles from the Boudhi Boutique Shangri La, Oliver and I cycled around old buildings, shops and I stripped down to my underwear as the rear of my trousers underwent a cheeky repair. The shopkeeper wasn’t too perturbed but his wife certainly showed embarrassment.
In Shangri La, Oliver and I bid farewell at breakfast to Piotr. He was off exploring more snow-capped wonders. As he wandered off, Oliver and I meandered and ambled up and down the Shangri La old town. Between gift buying and sightseeing, we ate great Nepali food at the Bohdi Boutique Inn. A most wonderful find. Shangri La beers did their best to quench our thirst and that’s where the trip closed. One simple flight back the next day and we were back to Guangdong. Yunnan was far away but close to my heart.
Sat eating our selection of dishes, people were drifting by the window in small groups. Sometimes one or two. Sometimes ten strong. Our dishes featured Tibetan pork, eggplant, potato in some shape and form, lovely eggs, and various vegetables cooked to perfection. Our New Year’s Eve selection was delectable. Piotr, Oliver and I supped Shangri La Beer local lager and nattered away carelessly. By 10pm, Oliver was flagging by the hot stove and Piotr was busy on a phone call. I suggested Oliver can sleep as nothing seemed to be happening. Soon after we all decided to go and get some fresh air. And beer. Mainly the beer.
With our carrot dangling before us, we set off like donkeys on a mission. We briefly called into a neighbouring hotel/KTV bar before watching a party there. It was rather boisterous and loud but not our cup of tea. The warm stove was welcoming but the floor beneath it rocked precariously. Off we set to the Yak Butter Inn, and the many cats within. Here the boss welcomed us but a group of footbath users were less than warming. The cats wandered around, greeting us with gentle mewing and meow sounds. A beer sank ever too easily and we strolled back to our lodge. Still people passed by heading to the upper part of Upper YuBeng.
After another beer at our lodge;curiosity swung it’s hands at us. We followed the now more frequent groups heading to the upper limits and temple area of Upper YuBeng. Off we trotted. Here, by Upper YuBeng’s main stupa, a group of a few hundred people were doing their best to resemble Chinese druids. A swelling and pulsating circular throng of people moved around to no particular beat. Some instructions by people in the middle rang out. A central fire, with warmth attracted Piotr and Oliver. I stood around the edge trying to make sense of it all. As 2020’s final minutes arrived, a ripple of excitement charged through the gathering.
Western breakfast, almost. Sadly, no HP Sauce.
A girl from Beijing grabbed my hand and explained the proceedings. Sparklers, countdowns and fireworks with some local dancing. And that’s almost what happened. Some of it was wonderful, other bits disorganised and cumbersome. Either way it was a welcome surprise and a great experience to share the welcoming of 2021 with trekkers, some local Tibetan people in modern takes on traditional headwear and attire. I never thought I’d see Apple-brabded Yunnan clothing. This is China, after all. Everything is possible. The next morning involved Tibetan pork, eggs and Tibetan bread for breakfast. Well if you’re heading off, head off on a full tummy…
Let’s drink a drink a drink a drink/For Colin the King the King the King/He is the leader of Man City/He is the greatest inside Forward/that the world has ever seen.
I grew up on Colin Bell stories from my Dad, Uncle, and Granddad. Our kid had some too, but his playing days were before his time. Met Colin Bell many times in the years that City moved to the cold new grey City of Manchester Stadium. Can’t say, I was blown away, but I will say that talking with Colin Bell, was like talking to any down-to-earth person. He was quiet, welcoming and warm-hearted. Me being shy, I didn’t get a photo, but I did get a signature on more than one occasion. His Maine Road folklore will last long into the future.
Colin Bell MBE played 501 games (scoring 153) for City. He played about 48 games (scoring 9) for England. He began his career in Bury, scoring 25 goals in 82 games. He had a short spell at San Jose Earthquakes. Nicknamed after a racehorse, Nijinsky had stamina and was soon nicknamed The King of the Kippax. He played in the days of Bell, Lee and Summerbee. Having scored at the Maracana Stadium (against a Brazil team featuring Pele), Wembley, Maine Road and countless other grounds, the crowds were won over by the skilful player who was forced to retire from the game all too early. He would later move on into coaching at City with the youth and reserve teams. Following that he quietly held club ambassador roles.
Number one was Colin Bell, number two was Colin Bell, number three was Colin Bell…
