A good face for radio

It's true.  I do have a good face for radio.  This morning my voice (well I think it was my voice because you never sound the same as you do to yourself) was on Radio 4.
Listen here :The Kitchen Cabinet from Maldon

The Kitchen Cabinet programme was recorded in Maldon last Tuesday evening and my friend managed to get free tickets to go.  She said, "You've got to think of a question."  and because I'm a compliant goody-goody  I did.  My insecure childish brain said, "You'd better think of a good one, she's only invited you to ask a question, she wouldn't have invited you otherwise."

I have been on the radio before.  When I was a teenager I used to write (under pseudonym) to Terry Wogan and the Hairy Eyeball Show and my letters were read out.  I liked to write about things that I thought would make people laugh (nothing much has changed) and then our Young Enterprise group (do they still do Young Enterprise?) were on local radio to promote our business.  We made wooden toy blocks, which wasn't very exciting or original but we were 6th formers who had to do something.  When we were there they asked us if we'd brought them with us and I said, "No, it's radio, no one can see them!"  The presenter was quite put out and insisted that he hadn't got to the level he had without being able to describe a boring wooden block.  With these things in mind I devised my question.

There is nothing that makes people laugh more than ginormous veg, especially if it is oddly shaped or has the potential for innuendo. I've had a good year for beetroot and despite eating beetroot every day since June they are still going and getting quite large.  So I dug up one of the biggest, put it in a bag and took it with me.

A bag of beetroot

When we got there we were given a questionnaire to complete about what food we eat with the rolling autumnal mists (or something) and a sheet to write questions on.  I was beginning to think that the whole asking a question thing might be a bad idea.  Did I really want to be on this programme?  I looked at my friend and thought, "that's why she brought you, don't be such a wimp." I was encouraged by the fact that lots of people wrote questions and that at the bottom of the form it said that they would be taking questions on salt, oysters and whitebait.  I told myself that it was fine, my question wouldn't be chosen, so I wrote it down.

Ginormous Veg Question

Just before the show started the production team came out and told us that when Jay Rayner (the host of the show) came out he would call out the people whose questions had been chosen, who would then have to sit at the front on the reserved seating for the recording of the show.  After five people were called out I relaxed, then someone was called out that had a similar name to mine.  Julie.  Who was this Julie?  Oh, it was me.  I shouldn't have been surprised, no one ever gets my name right.

So, I sat at the front, Julie-no-mates, trembling and fretting, while my friends sat together enjoying the show.  I did have a good view and could actually witness the woman who was forced to eat a raw oyster retching but I'm not sure I listened very well to everything else. I had to wait for almost everyone else to ask their question first.  By the time the furry thing was shoved under my nose and I had to read out my question I was a sweaty mess.  "Would you like to see it?" I teased.

Punk Baby's Head Beetroot.

 "My, that's a big one!" they replied.  When the show was over people were having their photos taken with the presenters.  "Shall I take yours?" my friend asked, "It would be good for your blog." I couldn't wait to leave and learn how to breathe again.

Over the last few days I have worried about how it would sound, secretly hoping that my question would get cut but also worrying that it would be cut because my voice is just too awful for radio.  This morning I had the radio on in the kitchen, as usual and the first person to ask a question was me.  I sounded as shocked to have been asked the first question as I was to hear my voice coming out of the radio.  I knew that there was a possibility that I wouldn't be cut but it never occurred to me that they'd edit it to put my question first.  I still didn't listen and so still don't know what to do with my enormous 'baby punk head' beetroot but as I didn't really want to know the answer as it's not my last beetroot and couldn't care less if I make it special or just boil it and eat it with spinach and goats cheese as usual it doesn't matter.  I've never believed that you should let the truth stand in the way of a good story (luckily this is something that my would-be-journalist daughter gets very irritated by).

People have commented that I sounded posh, that hearing my voice was distracting and my son said, "I'm glad I was in the kitchen then, that's the funniest thing I've heard in ages."  The trouble is, I don't think he meant that I'd thought of a funny, witty question, just that hearing his mother on the radio was odd.

The End of Music in Schools?

I was really grumpy yesterday. Uncharcateristcally so. I knew something was bothering me but I wasn't sure what. A little voice in my head kept saying, "What's the point? No one cares!" It was a stupid little voice because I don't care whether anyone cares because I care and that's enough (*cue little voice "too many cares in one sentence"). I like teaching music and making it fun and inspiring other people to love it too.

Then I remembered. It's Michael Wilshaw's fault. Life is always better if there's someone to blame and maybe that's the point of the Head of Ofsted.

On Thursday morning I read an article in the Guardian reporting a speach Mr Wilshaw had given saying that an hour's teaching time is lost per day due to disruptive pupils.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/25/headteachers-too-soft-unruly-pupils-ofsted-chief-sir-michael-wilshaw

This will appeal to parents. Parents know about the 'naughty' child in their offspring's class. Children love telling adults about their peers, especially if it makes them feel superior. "Mum, today Jeffrey had to go to the headteacher because he hit a teacher with a stick in the playground. He came in when I was there because I'd hit Petunia on the head with a marracca but that was a raccident!" It would be easy to think that a whole hour a day is being lost to dealing with the 'naughty boys' (as I used to call it when I was at school). Teachers know that disruptive behaviour is annoying and all have strategies for dealing with it. Ofsted's own report said that behaviour in 80% of schools is good. I'd be surprised if any teacher has a casual acceptance of bad behaviour; for most, bad behaviour among their pupils causes anxiety, feelings of guilt and sleepless nights. 

It was the fact that he described the poor behaviours as humming and tapping that worried me. Surely, humming and tapping are not bad behaviours? That would make me badly behaved and I am the most compliant goody-goody on the planet. Some people just move a bit or make a little bit of noise when they are processing stuff. The logical parent will be thinking, "But it's only the irritating tapping and humming that they are talking about," which must be true but where do you draw the line?

Several years ago a school I worked in had Ofsted in the week before Christmas and were criticised because the children didn't walk into assembly in complete silence. Most people would think silent 5 year olds on the 20th of December would be a bit 'Midwich Cuckoos' but it didn't stop the school trying to make sure every assembly was entered and exited in complete silence from then on.

And this is what makes me think that this latest speech might signal the end of music in schools.

Psychologically, most people spend about 10 minutes of a lesson processing what happened in the previous 10 minutes. This is why teachers plan exciting and engaging starter sessions. As I music teacher, I know I have delivered a good lesson if the children are still humming the song, tapping out the rhythm or twitching their fingers as if they are still playing the recorder tune they've just learnt as they leave the room. I know then that they have engaged with the music and are beginning to understand and appreciate it on a deep physical level. I know they will walk down the corridor singing quietly to themselves. If my lesson has really made an impact they will still be singing the song at the end of the day or playing their oboe reed straws (sorry parents) all weekend.

Music is already a threatened subject in many primary schools, where there is too little time to do everything, where there aren't specialists, teachers lack confidence in teaching the subject and where funding issues mean that resources are limited. I worry that if Ofsted are now going to be expecting silent, seen and not heard, children that model our image of Victorian or Asian schools then the risk of teaching a subject that actively encourages tapping and humming will be too great. 

Does this matter? I think so. I hope you do too. I think humans need a variety of activities to keep them healthy and happy and an educational diet of maths and English alone won't deliver that for our kids. 

The most terrifying headline, ever

Yesterday, there was a headline that should strike fear in every woman.  It said, "Good News! Menopause to be Eliminated!"

That's not good news.  Whoever thinks that's good news is bonkers. That means periods forever.  That means the possibily of pregnancy, FOREVER!!!.  I can see the benefit for Dairy Cows but real women?  No thank you.

They discussed it on morning television and the male presenters seemed to think that women would be glad.  The female presenter seemed less sure but also was reluctant to say.  She did say that it was difficult because no one liked talking about menopause.  She's right about that.  Last week a colleague made a joke about making a mistake by saying that she had her 'menopause head on today.'  Everyone laughed, uncomfortably and a male colleague went green, grimaced and shuddered.  I thought his reaction was a bit odd, what exactly was he picturing when he heard the M word?  It was the same kind of joke that women make about 'baby brain' and PMT.  Women blame our hormones.  It's not always our hormones fault, sometimes we just make mistakes like men but we have wild, unpredictable hormones, which have to be useful for something.

I thought, "I'll talk about it.  I have a blog.  People need to know.  Menopause is good."

The thing is, periods are a pain.  Often literally.  Sometimes they are a pain that is not relieved with drugs, wine, chocolate, rest,baths, exercise or hot water bottles.  We try all those things but they don't really work.  Sometimes they sneak up on you, as a surprise visitor, especially for birthdays, holidays, christmas, or any time when you don't want them to.  They mean that a significant portion of your life is spent avoiding wearing white, just in case you suddenly do an impression of the Japanese flag. Before they arrive you can be even more irrational, moody, clumsy and tearful than usual.  The only real use they have is informing you that you are not pregnant.  Yesterday, Caitlin Moran, wrote this on twitter:

She was probably talking about constitutional change following the Scottish Referendum or something but I can't help thinking, "Lucky her!"  and anyway I suspect the weight loss is a consequence of the pre-menstrual bloating going away.  Caitlin Moran is very funny and upfront about things that happen to women but I know she won't comment on menopause - not yet anyway, she's too young.

Not that menopause is about getting old.  Getting old is an issue for women because we live in a crap society that undervalues women and the old and so women naturally are a bit wary of being older.

If you think about it, menopause is just the end of the one third of your life that nature has decided it would be a good time to have a baby and you could still have as many years left to live as you have lived already.

Fertility is an issue for some women, again, because we live in a crap society that undervalues women.  Women with children are not taken seriously in the workplace and so there may be some women who think that still being fertile in their retirement years would be a good idea because then they could have a baby without it affecting their career.  I just wonder how many men will want to have a baby at 65 or with a 65 year old woman in our crap society?   

Menopause, which is the end of periods isn't the problem for most women, it's the transition into it.  Those wild, unpredictable hormones get even more wild.  In fact they are furious.  They know that you don't need them any more and they rage and they are even more unpredictable.  It's like being a teenage girl again without the stamina, boyfriends or new experiences.  

Maybe, I'm judging the headline too harshly.  Maybe it would be a very valuable treatment for women who want children but have gone into early menopause and I'm not against that idea.  Maybe, the scientist is a woman who wants to help other women.  I'd better check.

............................

No,   Dr Aubrey De Grey is looking to re-grow ovaries to stop the ageing process.  He talks of turning women on and off (like a lightbulb).  He's one of the scientists I fear most: one who wants to make us live for ever.

Catweazle has the answer to women!

Open House

Whenever I go to London, I wonder why I don't go more often.  I love a city and we have one of the best in the world virtually on our doorstep.  This weekend London has a free event called Open House, which is a sort of Heritage weekend, where you can look round lots of buildings.  There are 856 buildings that you could look round if it weren't for the queues.

Luckily, I quite like queueing. When in a queue you can, in a very British way, find out a lot about people.  You can listen to their conversations, make assumptions about them and even make notes without having to engage more than with a polite smile if they catch you staring.

We started our day by deciding not to join the 2 hour queue for the Bank of England.  We had been in the museum before.  We also decided that the Cheese Grater building queue was too long but we did wait behind a very excited Italian, who was going to get an i-phone 6 next week because, "Why shouldn't I?  I have to spend my money on something," and his mates for the Lloyds of London building.  He seemed inappropriately excited to explain how his mother had died on the only weekend she had ever been alone.  The building appealed to the Long Suffering Husband because it looks like it's made from exhaust pipes.

It's a building I'm pretty sure I've been in before, when it was new and I did a week of temping, while a student, for a ship insurer.  I think I remember the bell and the funny escalators but I'm sure there were less desks and filing cabinets.

Then we spent a little time in the queue for the Gherkin building, until a man told us that the queue was so long that we were not going to get in before it closed and suggested we came back at 8am on Sunday.  It's a building that I'd like to look in but maybe not that much.  It's quite nice from the outside, though and looks very different to the Baltic Exchange that I used to walk past before the IRA blew it up. 

We were getting a bit bored of the queueing so we went to see the poppys at the Tower. Stupidly, from other people's photos I thought they were real poppies but they are even better for being sculptures.

Next, it was City Hall, egg, honeypot, woodlouse or glass gonad (as Boris calls it:  I am a bit concerned about Boris' testicles and think he should probably see a doctor!).  This was a fantastic queue to stand in.  The Southbank is a great place, where you can see people hanging out.  Couples propose on Tower Bridge, street performers sit for hours pretending to be the invisible man, dads climb on top of large black ball sculptures to impress their children.  This weekend also coincides with when many parents are dropping their children at University.  Behind us in the queue were a family, with a daughter wearing a freshers wristband.  The daughter was explaining to her mum's friend how embarrassing her mum had been, as she was the only one crying, which set the mum off all over again. The Dad was trying to keep things pleasant by telling what he thought were funny stories about his sister's roots that everyone ignored and clearly thought were less than funny.

In front of us was a couple with a very smiley baby, who were fretting about their daughter's food getting radiated in the x-ray machine.  She scolded him for being stupid about something by saying, "And you're a teacher."  If she hadn't said that I would have known because we saw him later asking about visiting at other times and I could tell he was planning a school trip.  They asked the two young volunteers at the door if they worked there.  They did.  They were apprentices.  Their job was cool because they got to work on events and exciting things like that.  They only met Boris in the lift, where he said random things that they didn't know how to respond to.  

I liked this building but it was a bit strange.  There was a selection of piped music playing including the Archer's and Blue Peter theme tune and lots of people felt compelled to lay on the floor, maybe it's the extra large steps.

On the lower ground floor there is a map on the floor.  I found Essex on the map, it appears to be the escape hatch!

We ended our day with a visit to St Paul's and some food nearby. I did a lot of temp work in an office next to St Paul's in the eighties and never noticed the nail before.

Open House is a great idea.  Next year I will go early and apply for the ballot for some of the appointment only buildings like 10 Downing Street.

Blue Sky Miracles

Yesterday was the kind of day when you could achieve anything.

The sky was blue, the sun was shining, small boys accompanied their Dads on a dog walk to kick balls, squirrels fell out of trees onto dog walkers and old men sat on their shed roof, drinking tea.

It was long walk Tuesday:, a making cake, baking bread, ticking things off your list day. The washing dried on the line.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an equally good day today. It needs to be as I am using i-pads in music!!!!!

Don't Stop the Music

I've only just watched the Don't Stop the Music programme that was on TV on Tuesday. Finding time to watch the telly in the first week back at school has been a challenge but it's also that programmes like this make me a bit narky.

I'm not quite sure why but I get an uncontrollable urge to slap Gareth Malone every time his smug smiling face appears on television, claiming to have introduced singing to Britain. Actually, I do know why. He didn't! He jumped on a bandwagon. People were already joining choirs, children were already singing in school (not least because the best way to deliver the Wider Ops programme was through singing, with the excellent and free, at the time, support of SingUp)

I think I get narky because programmes like this undermine all the great work that is being done all over the country.

This programme made lots of valuable points about music education in our country and I do agree with a lot of what was said but it's so much more complicated than a television programme can convey. 

They are absolutely right in noting that music (and many other subjects) are squeezed by the pressure of every child now having to achieve an above average score on a maths and literacy test. And yes, that's exactly what I mean. Level 4 SAT was the average achievement when the exams were introduced. We all know that you can't make every child above average because that is statistically impossible but it doesn't stop primary school teachers nearly killing themselves in an attempt to do so. This has the effect that only maths and literacy are valued. Most people think this is right. Most people think that standards in maths and literacy have to be constantly driven up. I wonder where it will stop and worry about producing children who can't see the value of anything that isn't words or numbers. Even in a school that values other subjects children will still be taken out of their 40 minute music lesson to read to a TA because there isn't time in the other 25 hours  and 50 minutes they are in school (not including lunch). We are also missing the point that a rounded education leads to rounded brain development, which aids learning. Just this week there was another study stating that learning music improved language acquisition http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/latest-news/studying-music-increases-blood-flow-brain/  

The programme is also correct in pointing out that opportunities for poorer children in classical music are limited. The ignorance of James Rhodes to this fact made me laugh. I'm sure he's a very nice man with good intentions but when he snorted at a school budget of £400 a year for music he showed that he really had no idea. I believe schools get an average of £3200 per pupil per year, from which they have to buy everything (including teacher's salaries but excluding building work, which has to be applied for separately). It's not quite the £30,000 a year his parents would have paid for a prep school or the £69000 they would have paid for Eton. Oh, and music lessons at Eton would have cost them an extra £1572 to £4722 a year. He probably doesn't understand just how little money most families have to live on either.  I know that when my daughter joined the Music Hub's (subsidised) youth orchestra the extra £1000 a year I had to find nearly broke us and we earn reasonably well. When I visited a local prep school I was so jealous of their resources but realistically with 40 minutes a week, punctuated with children dribbling in and out to read and class sizes double those they had and the fact there is only one of me and they have 5 full time music staff, what would be the point?

I love the idea of an instrument amnesty. I don't know why no one has thought of this before? Oh wait, they have. This is one of the ways we run our Youth Orchestra. We get instruments and loan them to children (for free!).  Again though, I find myself seething with jealousy at the quality of instruments they are given. Most of the quality instruments we have, we have had to buy second hand and then have repaired. We are given the occasional flute, clarinet or violin that no one can sell on EBay. How useful a film crew would be to those of us trying to do this work permanently. It's the way I run my school band too and I was able to get the music hub to give me a selection of instruments, rather than a class set of the same for the Wider Ops programme that was dismissed so quickly on the telephone. 

Quality of many donated instruments

I love the idea of getting professional musicians in to play and inspire the children. I wonder why no one has thought of this? Wait. Don't all major orchestras have outreach programmes? And teachers are clever enough to beg musicians in their local area to come in and play (usually for nothing!)

I love the idea of getting pupils, no matter how bad they are, to play in front of the rest of the school. I wonder why no one has thought of that? I'm not the only primary school doing it, surely? Our weekly band practice, before school on a Friday, leads to an assembly where the band provide all the accompanying music. There are weird farting noises from the brass, squeaks from the woodwind and sounds like nails being scraped down the blackboard from the strings but the fact that children can see their peers; both boys and girls and not just the clever children with rich parents up there is an inspiration.

I love the idea of music teachers turning up on the doorstep of their pupils with a film crew to badger their parents into making their child practise. I can see that working well. I've never thought of that before. Where can I get my film crew?

I love the idea of every school having a free concert pianist to accompany in their music lessons. I'd quite like Lang Lang but if James Rhodes would like to come to our school instead we wouldn't turn him away.

I'm not so sure about children needing to know Mozart and Grieg. Why those two composers? There is such a danger that 'experts' think they know the best way of doing something. The new proposed GCSE music curriculum suggests that composers between the years 1700 and 1900 only should be studied. This proposal leaves me speechless (this doesn't happen often) and risks putting more people off music. People need to have access to as wide a range of music as possible. 

The idea that it's not music unless it's played on conventional orchestral instruments and written by composers who died over 100 years ago is stupid. I was really upset that the programme filmed a teacher, obviously doing a great job and ridiculed her for using 'junk' instruments. This is such a valuable thing to do. Especially for poorer children. It teaches them that everyone can make music. Many years ago (before I was the music teacher) our school had a visit from the drummer of Status Quo (you see I don't know why no one has thought of getting professional musicians into schools!) and he told the children that they didn't need to buy a drum kit, they should just raid the kitchen cupboards for pots and pans because that was how he started. The world would be a poorer place without drummers who started on saucepans and without Stomp!

At the risk of being shot down by the naive people who think we can have a truly equal society there is absolutely no point in a child who comes to school on the bus because their parents can't afford a car in learning the classical harp but they could learn 3 chords on a guitar that and write the most amazing pop songs known to man, or invent a new instrument with plastic tubing and a margarine tub.

Music has always been unequal. Classical musicians have always been rich and folk musicians poor. Brass bands were for the working classes and symphony orchestras for the upper classes. The middle classes didn't have any music because they were working too hard to become the upper class. That's not true - they used to have the piano in the parlour and now they have Xfactor on the TV.  Music is for everyone.

The subtle undermining of people who are trying their best in difficult circumstances in programmes like this upsets me.  The problem with TV and 'experts' is that to make the expert right everyone else has to appear wrong. When James Rhodes nearly slammed the phone down on the lovely Janette from the Essex Music Hub, my heart nearly broke. What does he want? Should people work for no money to provide something? The only way the music hubs can offer more free services is if they get more money from the government. People like Janette and myself already do a lot of free work but we do need to eat and Channel 4 aren't paying us for our opinions. And the poor class teacher who ended up looking as though she was just a bad teacher.  She had agreed to be filmed and had obviously been chosen because she doesn't enjoy music and didn't want to teach it.  From the two minutes of her lesson that we saw, no one would deny that it was a terrible, uninspiring and had very little musical content but this isn't true for every primary teacher.  In our school, where teachers do not have to teach music (because I do),  I often walk into a classroom to find children singing a song to support a subject they are learning, making a beatbox backing to accompany their rap that they wrote in literacy, passing a clapped rhythm around a circle, responding to musical sounds (eg one shake of a tambourine for stop, two for tidy up etc), or singing a grace before lunch.  I'm willing to bet that this is not that unusual.

Maybe I will be less narky after the second programme and will be grateful that it has raised the profile of music in education but for now, I and thousands of other music teachers will be doing our best for our pupils.

A little bit Eeyore

I've checked my tail; it's still there and no body has given me a popped balloon for my Birthday but I'm still feeling a little bit Eeyore.

Maybe it's because I've been back at work for a week? A week back in a primary school after a fantastic holiday is a test for anyone. A colleague said, "Love you," to the lady at the petrol station instead of, " Thank you," because she was so tired. It has been a week of tears and tantrums (and that's just the teachers) and by Friday there was hardly any space in cupboards for a tired, sobbing teacher to hide. All schools have large walk in cupboards for this purpose.

The shock of going back to a world where you spend the day in a room full of thirty people who tell it as it is has been difficult too. "Purleeese, did anyone fall for that story about the bear?" said a year  6, rolling her eyes while my belief that my Summer healthy eating and exercise regime had worked wonders was brought crashing down when a year 2 child asked me if I was having a baby.

But, despite all those things, I really quite like my job, so I don't think I can blame work for my Eeyorishness. 

Maybe I just feel glum. One of our orchestra members told me on Friday that he'd had a bad day and when I asked him why he said that he told me that he was just feeling glum and it was perfectly possible to feel glum without knowing why. Maybe, like Eeyore, you can just be a lugubrious person, who lives in a rather boggy and sad gloomy place but I don't live on the other side of the stream on my own and most of the time I think I'm a bit bonkers like Tigger.

Maybe it's because life can feel a bit precarious? My son fell, moving a grand piano and spent several hours in A&E on a Friday night, which is enough to make anyone feel miserable but he's fine, a quick healing sprain and he's already moving quite well. We're lucky.

Maybe it's the moon? I can see the moon from the car as we travel back from Leicester. The moon affects humans more than it does stuffed toys because of the water in our bodies. 

Or maybe it's because we are driving back from Leicester and the car has less stuff and one less person in it? Yes, I think that might be it. It has been great to have both children home for the summer. I have had a swimming buddy and someone to teach pastry cooking to (4 big spoons of flour rub in 1/4 pack of cold butter with cold hands stir 4-5 big spoons of cold water in with a knife until it starts to come together then squish it and roll it out - In case she's reading this as I don't think she wrote anything down). 

I know this Eeyore feeling won't last long though. I know that she's gone off for her final year of Uni and will have a brilliant time and I will be able to watch the TV without anyone talking through it. There will be less washing, more food in the fridge and hardly any reality TV shows on the telly. 

But for now Eeyore rules.