How to put on a concert

1. Find a group of small children.

2. Give them instruments.

3. Make them sing every day.

4. Start a band (and in the words of Bryan Adams, "try real hard")

5. Let the children show the others what they can do all the time.

6. Tell them they are brilliant. All the time. Even when they are not. 

7. Sing a bit more.

8. Spend a year counting to 4. Repeatedly.

9. Expect them to get better. Be disappointed if they don't and wildly, stupidly, over the top enthusiastic when they do.

10. Smile and laugh, often.

11. Sing a bit more.

12. Become a member of SingUp

13. Sing more.

14. Get the school diary and book the hall between 5 and 7 one evening, in Summer when you know it will be hot, sweaty and uncomfortable.

15. Offer a letter to all children inviting them to take part. (Yes, I mean all children. You never know who might have spent a year playing in secret)

16. Talk to anyone who replies and find out what they are going to play. Don't turn anyone away.

17. Be brave.

18. Sing together for courage.

19. Expect a lot from the children.

20. Be supportive. Repeat step 9.

21. Spend a whole day with pieces of paper around you, juggling all the solos, duets, 12 person flute groups, band and choir pieces into some kind of order that makes sense. Making sure that you have the child who has to go to Brownies on first and the child whose parent can't get back from work until 6 later in the programme. Put the Key Stage One children on in the first half so that they can go home in the interval if they want.

22. Send a letter home to all soloists, choir, band, flute group and Ukulele club members, asking how many audience seats they'd like. 

23.  Put children who are scared on the programme and tell them that you believe in them.

24. Have a practise of how to go onto stage and most importantly take applause. Bowing is a life skill!

25. Check CDs and technical equipment (although one of these will go wrong)

26. Send children home to have some tea and change into their best

 outfits.

26. Tidy the hall

27. Put hundreds of chairs out (expect a big audience)

27. Check technical equipment and CDs four times.

28. Practise the piano (while no one is there to hear the swearing). This step might not be necessary if you can actually play the piano.

29. Go to photocopy the programmes and find that the wonderful people in the office have done it for you.

30. Change into your concert dress, heels and wear red lipstick. I think this is important step and shouldn't be restricted to one gender.

31. Let people in, no earlier than 25 minutes before five. Those plastic chairs can get very hard and sweaty if you sit on them for too long.

32. Panic that you have forgotten to ask the PTA to run refreshments.

33. Relax when you realise that you didn't forget and they have a large selection of ice pops in the freezer.

34. Take a photo of every child. Make them feel special.

35. Remind everyone that they are going to be brilliant.

36. Bribe some nearly grown up children that you used to work with (chocolate usually works) to come and help move stands, work CDs (and if you are really lucky conduct the band)

37. Let the headteacher talk for a bit (it is their school after all)

38. Start with a song.

39. Watch with complete pride and admiration for every child that stands up and performs.

40. Allow re-starts. 

41. Cheer wildly after each performance.

42. Make the Chinese piece by Tu-Ning joke. Everyone expects it.

43. Try not to tell the rude joke about the French Horn player on a date while your  helpers get the stage ready between each act.

44. Remember that you are asking the children to be increasingly brave and nerves can come in many forms. Be kind.

45. Allow them to use their own stand, not stand on the stage, perform with their back to the audience - whatever it takes to get them up there and showing off their talent.

46. Remind the audience how brave the children are.

47. Be disappointed when the CD sticks (it will) but try again. If it happens again turn it off, encourage the children to keep singing and wait for the biggest round of applause.

48. Remember there is nothing wrong with Hells Bells by AC/DC on the electric guitar, even if you are in a Church of England School.

49. Have tissues ready. There will be tears (for all kinds of reasons) and possibly the odd nosebleed. Stress, nerves and heat can make bodies so funny things. 

50. Make sure you have some sparkly hats. They will inspire a performance that will remind you how much fun making music can be. 

51. Make sure your second half is shorter than the first. 

52. Make the audience sing, wave flags and pretend they have just witnessed the last night of the proms.

53. Try not to hide under the piano if the headteacher says nice things and gives you flowers. Practise the breathing exercises that you taught the children and allow them to tell you off because you didn't take the applause and bow politely.

Simple. 

 

In support of the leavers

I know I need to stop blogging about all this politics stuff. You all want to hear funny stories about children who say amusing things in flute lessons but I can't do it. They're not even making me smile much at the moment. I expect some of you, knowing that I am in full on end of year mode thought I would be writing about the wonderful year six children, who will soon go on to bigger and better things. Sorry. Sometimes I  just need to get things off my chest. (Why do we say that? It's not on my chest. It's in my head)

I did a stupid thing this morning. I was awake early and I stepped out of my bubble and looked at the tweets of Katie Hopkins. I love my bubble. It's full of nice people, who are kind to others and care about each other.

There was a reason. I'm trying to understand. There has been too much division and people are cross and scared.  Leave voters are particularly scared that the decision they made will be overturned by politicians who just can't work out how to leave the EU, getting everything that the country wants from it. Mainly because their promises were lies.

Leave voters are feeling battered by a television media that had a strong commitment to remain. The Daily newspapers are adding to the conflict by telling their readers that they did the right thing and now everyone hates them

 for it. Nigel Farage is adding to it by being a rude, silly little man.  You can't blame the media; a good story is always about conflict and the media are there to entertain.

If you voted to leave the EU for any of the following reasons then you have my full support. I hope that someone in government (if there is still a government at the end of all this) has the ability to invoke article 50 and separate us from that political body for you.

1. The EU is too big. A political body with so many countries in it can never come to a complete agreement and someone will always feel put out.

2. The common currency project isn't working and has caused financial hardship for too many countries.

3. The solution to the Euro problem (5 Presidents report) of a United States of Europe, with banking union, a common budget and political union is a bonkers idea that you don't want the UK or any other country to sign up to.

4. The EU treated Greece really badly over their debt repayment crisis.

5. The EU has become too right ring and is perusing economic policies that would have made Norman Lamont think twice.

6. In the pursuit of a trade agreement with the US (TTip), instead of protecting workers rights they are actively deregulating.

7. The president of the European commission, Jean Claude Junker is a dick.

8. You would like the UKIP party members who were elected to a job they have no interest in doing to lose it and as the public insists on voting them in, leaving the EU seems a viable alternative.

9.  You are concerned that in allowing free movement of people within Europe, the continent has become a fortress which has stopped people from other continents who need to move into it for reasons of money, love or safety from doing so. 

10. You are an anarchist who would like there to be no government and just see how people get on. (Well, maybe not that one but 9 is such a silly number to end on)

However, if you voted to leave to "return to the Britain you knew," where you never saw a brown face or heard another language then you are a deluded racist (even if you think you're not) and I'm not going to let you into my bubble.

People I know who voted leave have been sharing this picture on social media.

I'm not sure if they are subtly trying to tell the world that they've changed their minds.

Political Love Island

Look, I know the country is going to Hell in a handcart. Racists are roaming the street with Swazstikers tattooed on their arms, old ladies are wearing t-shirts crying for death to Blairites, England's national football team can't win against the one that caused raucous laughter when I picked it out of the sweepstake pot, and the weather is only good for slugs. And it is all the fault of the politicians, who decided that letting us have a vote on the EU question (yes, even the weather) was a good idea.

It has been hard for them. They are tired and a bit grumpy. They've probably got blisters from all that walking around, having their photo taken in pretty places. They haven't eaten properly in months. Can you imagine what it's like to have a pie and a pint for breakfast dinner and tea? They have had their ego bruised and battered as they tried to talk to people about voting to remain part of something that they have been telling them is the cause of their suffering for the last 6 years. And to cap it all, they lost. Even the ones that won lost. Boris Johnson who wanted his campaign slogan to be, "Say no for a better yes," has been scuppered by Angela Merkel who has said there will be no informal talks until article 50 has been triggered. Nigel Farage is always a loser.

Sometimes we forget that politicians are real people. We expect them to keep doing their jobs on an hour's sleep a night and be nice to everyone even when they are hangry. 

What they all need is a little mini break. 

We could send them all off somewhere together for a little while. Just a couple of days. Maybe a deserted island, where they could chill out and get a bit drunk. I suggest one of the deserted Scottish Islands because we wouldn't want to be too extravagant. When they come back they would be much more able to deal with it all.

I recommend we send all the political journalists off too, on a separate island because I think they are all sounding a bit overworked and hysterical.

I know it seems like a terrible waste of tax payers money but I am sure it would be worth every penny. Just think, two or three days free of political tantrums. 

Come on, you know it's a good 

idea.

I was wrong (again)

When the referendum results came in with such a narrow margin I was actually a little relieved that it went to Leave. That seems like a strange thing for someone who voted remain but with such a small margin I really thought it would be best for the country.

The problem with watching any political decision on social media is the filter bubble. You only ever see things from people who agree with you and that gives you unshakable faith that you are right. This bubble exists in real life too. We surround ourselves with people who are just like us. I don't have any friends who don't like books and music. The Long Suffering Husband only knows golf players. 

Before the vote, people had become very certain that it was going the way that they were voting.

"Where are all these 'Leave' voters? I don't know any," or "Everyone I know is going out out!" people cried. 

When the result was announced there was shock and sadness. Those who voted to stay in the European Union are processing their grief at different rates and the seven stages of shock, denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance feel like they are all being played out at once in the media. 

Because most people in my bubble are mostly easy going, accepting nice people who voted to remain I thought that with a close vote for leave would cause less nastiness. I had seen considerable nastiness (especially of the violent and racist variety) from Brexiteers on Twitter whenever I had made a conscious effort to step out of my bubble. 

But it seems as though I was wrong, again and there will always be nastiness when there is division of opinion because this causes conflict and humans are really bad a dealing with conflict in a pragmatic way. 

If you voted to remain and are sad and angry, that is OK. You need time to get to an acceptance. You believed in democracy enough to vote, you have to believe in it enough to hope that what happens next is what the majority wanted. You are allowed to think they are wrong but it has to happen for the democratic process to ever be trusted again. It is not acceptable to publicly swear at or threaten anyone who didn't agree with you. 

If you voted to leave you also have a job to do. You need not to gloat. You need to not go back on your decision. You need to not be too sensitive. I say that with caution because if you are being verbally abused or threatened you should complain but getting into a bit of a huff and saying it's that all getting very nasty when all that has been said is that the other person thinks the decision can only have been made by people who weren't clever enough to read all the arguments is over sensitive.

It seems as though the vote has also given a mandate to racists to tell people to go home. There is nastiness out there and it's coming from some of the people that won. I was completely wrong to think that the leave voters that were voting purely on getting rid of immigrants would be nice when they won. Instead they think that everyone who voted with them supports their right to abuse human beings with darker skin or an accent.

A vote to leave was always going to cause political turmoil because most of the people in government wanted to stay. There will be difficult times ahead but I really hope that it doesn't end in violence.

Sorry. It's all my fault

The country has voted to leave the European Union.

In many ways, it was the most exciting thing I have ever watched (apart from Vince Cable, who I think might be a dementor). It was like ping pong. It went one way, then the other and back again.

Scotland, Ireland and Gibraltar want to remain part of the EU and so could start negotiations to leave Britain and make it less great.

It is my fault. I voted to stay in. Maybe because I understand the structure of the European Parliament. I can name, not only the President of the European Commission (Jean Claude Junker) but the British representative on it (Jonathan Hill). I understood that the European Commission was a civil service organisation. Maybe I did it because I prefer to work with people than cut myself off (actually, that's not true -I don't like people but I think other people should work together). Maybe it was because I've read Lord of the Flies and fear being stuck on an island with Piggy. Truthfully, I probably voted to remain because, as the Long Suffering Husband says, "Change is bad."

I'm not the only person who voted like this. Nearly half the population went the same way. If you are one of those, you've probably woken up this morning and are shocked. You feel a bit sick.

If you voted to leave thinking it would never actually happen, I hope you are wrong. I hope Cameron invokes article 50 today and resigns to let someone else deal with it. I think this is important because democracy is important. 

I apologise, though. It is my fault because I have never won anything. Not a raffle, not an election, not even a bottle on the school fete bottle tombola (except once when I won an out of date bottle of Asti Spumenti covered in dust, with paint on the label). I have lived in constituencies where MPs had so much support they could be a homosexual in the 1970s or travel on the tube with Miss Whiplash with hardly a dent in their majority. I never voted for them. 

The LSH just woke up and said, "I told you you should have voted to leave."

"It wouldn't have made any difference," I protested.

"But as you're such a jinx it might have swung it for remain."

He has a point.

Badger, Badger Badgers, Badgers, Badger

Boris Johnson visited our town today.  It was a vanity trip.  You couldn't find a place that is more overwhelmingly Leave. The MP is, the posters in windows suggest that the majority of the population are and so he wasn't in danger of converting anyone.  It was just a breakfast trip to stand in a picturesque place and have a pint of beer for breakfast surrounded by people who think he's wonderful. You can't deny that he's working hard at being liked; he was in Yorkshire for a lunchtime pint but part of his popularity is that he's a very strange man.

I can't look at him without thinking of badgers.  I'm not sure why.  It might be to do with the cartoon Bodger and Badger.  Was Badger called Boris Badger? No? Oh well, I seem to have made that up. Maybe it's because in the yawning photos of Mr Johnson he looks a bit like a badger, or because he answered, "Badger, badger, badgers, badgers, badger," on Have I Got News for You.

The school I work in has animal names for the classes and I was sitting with the French teacher in the staffroom, while she was making labels for the class doors in French.  Our French teacher is French but she has been here long enough to have lost some of her vocabulary but not her accent. She struggled a little with Octopus, wondering if she was just calling them calamari but she couldn't remember the word for badger.  She googled it, blushed, giggled and said, "Oh no.  It can't be."
"Is it a swear word?" I asked, sensing her mood (I'm clever like that)
"Well, yes, sort of. It's not polite.  We would say that about someone who isn't very ..." she tapped her temple, "you know."

So you might say, 'Boris Johnson c'est un blairau'?
Maybe I'm a natural french speaker and that's where my association comes from.

Semantics

Does it matter what word you use?

If you are like me, you can waste a whole day trying to find the 'right' word for a sentence. You see, I've done it there. 'Right' doesn't say it all. Perfect wouldn't be correct either. Nor would correct. I am looking for the word that means 'to convey the exact meaning' I could scour the thesaurus but then you have to check that it doesn't change the interpretation of a sentence. 

The thesaurus can be the most deadly dinosaur for a writer. In a writers group, I once read, "My mother was so kind; in fact most people called her a spanking woman." I read to the end of the piece expecting conflict but there were none. I checked thesaurus.com and found spanking listed as a synonym for good.

Journalists have to be extra careful. There are some words they can only use in certain circumstances or they are in danger of breaking the law. The rules are so complicated that journalists are urged to keep a copy of McNae in their knapsack. 

There seems, to me, to be an important word missing from the Jo Cox coverage. 

Assassination.

Not one newspaper has called her death an assassination and I'm confused by that. This word is all I have been able to think about for days. I keep asking people. Mostly, they just shrug and mumble a disinterested, "I dunno." Occasionally, they they agree that it's odd for the word not to have been used. The Long Suffering Husband has tried to silence me on the subject by telling me that only a head of state can be assassinated. 

I checked several dictionaries and he is wrong (I know, there's a first time for everything!) The Oxford English Dictionary  (the big one on my bookshelf) says, "Assassinate: murder an important person for political or religious reasons."

Maybe Jo Cox wasn't important but as the MP for the constituency she was killed in I doubt that. Maybe she wasn't murdered. At trial they might decide that it was all some horrible accident and the gun coincidentally fired three times and the man, who just happened to be carrying a knife fell on her six times. Maybe it wasn't done for political reasons. Maybe shouting, "Put Britain First," as he plunged a knife into an MP who cared deeply about refugees was a version of Tourette's. Maybe he was just mad and she was only a woman so it doesn't matter what we call it.

I think it does matter. The reason that we were all so revolted and being terribly un-British about the whole thing, with flowers and vigils, is that an assassination is a shocking event. Everyone remembers where they were when JFK was shot. Even if we weren't yet born, we know about the grassy knoll and Jackie Kennedy's pink pillbox hat. Assassinations mark the beginning of coups and political uprisings. 

It is tempting to pretend that this sort of thing doesn't happen in Britain; that this is a nice country, where the fields are green, the streets of London are paved with gold and children are going on adventures with their dog, Timmy, while drinking ginger beer, but can we really kid ourselves by not using the word?

 We know, really, don't we? We know that Jo Cox, a brilliant, important person; an MP who fought for the rights of Syrian refugees and her Muslim constituents and  who was urging people to vote to remain in the EU was murdered by a man who had a political agenda. She was assassinated. 

Do I need a brain scan?

It's day five of a storm headache and making sense of anything is getting more and more challenging. I'd forgotten about the weather affecting me like this and was seriously considering requesting a brain scan until a friend sent a message, which said, "How's your head 🌩". She's a genius. The world hasn't turned into an incomprehensible place with treacle for air, it's just the atmospheric pressure. 

Although.

The world is a bit weird.

Actually, it's a lot weird. 

It's so weird that I think someone might be having a laugh.

The politicians have had enough. They've thrown their hands up in horror and said, "Bugger this. Can't be bothered anymore. Let the whingers have their way." Despite most politicians being on the remain side of the EU referendum, only we only heard from Cameron, who has only managed threats and fear mongering . Corbyn was suspiciously silent, making his supporters believe he really wanted to vote 'Out' but was being forced to back 'In' by some invisible Blairite force. 

The facts seem to be on the Remain side. Even the Washington Post has printed an article saying that Britain has gone mad to even consider Brexit because we are doing very nicely from being in the EU but not one Politician in Britain has mentioned this. The financial markets have already lost billions, scared that the UK population will vote Brexit.

Feelings, however, are firmly with the Leave side. After so many years of this Conservative government telling us how dreadful everything is we feel poor and oppressed. Freedom is the cure. It doesn't matter what we are free from, just stop oppressing us, man.

 

People are miserable. Staff room conversations have never been more depressing. Even the children have stopped doing funny things and are just moaning about each other.

Nigel Farrage has said he will give up politics and get a proper job if we vote out. You've got to admit it's tempting. 

There was a flotilla of little Brexit boats down the Thames and a huge boat with Remain supporters came the other way. Bob Geldof and Nigel Farage had a fight. This is the stuff of cheese induced dreams. 

The fathers of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson are quoted in the Guardian as saying their son's ideas are bonkers.

The Remain campaign is asking its supporters to display a poster inside. I've put ours on the fridge but I don't think it's doing much good there.

A immigrant taxi driver was interviewed about why he was voting out and he said that he drove English people around all day and night who accused him of stealing their jobs but when he asked them if they would like to take his night shift from him they all refused. "Leaving the EU would make the British less lazy. They'd have to do the jobs that only immigrants are prepared to do now."

The Disney alligator stole a child and took him to Neverland to live with Peter Pan.

David Dimpledknees is rolling his eyes so loudly they are likely to get stuck at the back of his head.

Michael Gove is wearing sheepskin over his wolf suit and is starting to make sense. He might eat granny but he will send us off for a good night's sleep. Sheep, meanwhile, are getting stuck on their backs because they have too much wool.

There are Buffalo on Countryfile engaging in a spot of mob grazing, sporting Gove hairstyles.

New words are being made up every day. The portmanteau is King. I imagine a Brexiteer to be a sort of superhero who eats Weetabix and leaps tall buildings in a single bound. 

So, I'm wondering. Do I need a brain scan? Have I fallen into a weird Lewis Carroll  type dream? Will the dog start telling me that I'm late? (Probably not as he's too busy barking at the sky but what if the sky starts barking back?).

Could it be dangerous to have a brain scan?  Will they find a herd of squirrels running around, hiding their nuts or little men, as in the numbskulls cartoon, but in the midst of industrial action: striking for more pay and better working conditions?

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the psychological phenomenon where people selectively collect evidence to confirm their previously held belief. We all do it and I can only assume it has some protective value for us humans. 

I've been noticing a lot of this phenomenon recently. 

It is amazing how every EU television debate has Twitter flooded with people saying how their side 'won the argument'

We like to be right. It feels very uncomfortable to be wrong.

Clever people, such as Boris Johnson (don't be fooled by the scruffy hair and word stumbling) can make use of this trait in people. "Ah, well, erm, that £350 million pound figure is wrong, yes I accept that but we give too much money to the EU and we give them £350 million pounds too much." You hear that and it confirms your belief that we give too much money to the EU and you reason that £350 million, which is a lot of money, could be the correct figure. Both sides are doing it. Cameron says we will all be doomed if we leave the EU and if you think we should stay in, you agree with him (even though, no one actually knows what might happen) and repeat his fears as though they were fact.

It's not just facts that are the issue. Personality politics is a huge factor. If you think that Cameron is a pig loving twit you are likely to hear his facts as false but if you are irritated by lizard-face Farage then you are more likely to believe  them.

There are big marmite personalities in this debate. 

Eddie Izzard's appearance on Question time caused many people a seriously uncomfortable moment of cognitive dissonance. He wasn't on their side but they liked him (or vice versa). Jeremy Corbyn on the Last Leg caused a similar outcry that wasn't worthy of either side's comments.  People who liked him before the programme said, "Did you see JC on the Last Leg? I thought he was rather good......funny in fact." People who disliked him were furious that he (a man who is notorious for having no sense of humour) could even be allowed on a comedy programme.

When people feel as though their side is losing the argument they cry that they were picked on, not listened to or interrupted. This frequently happens with Nigel Farrage, who isn't as skilled at factual argument as others are and Jeremy Corbyn, who isn't as skilled at the game of politics.

I have found this whole debate very difficult, as I'm struggling to weed out the personalities and clearly didn't have enough of a bias to confirm in the first place. I'm still of the opinion that we, the general public, are not qualified to judge and I am absolutely furious that they are spending £142.4 million pounds of tax payers money to  get us to answer a question that they can't decide on.

This morning, I am not only furious about the EU vote I am also devestated by the violence in America. 

Donald Trump has immediately stepped in to use it as confirmation of his own bias. He tweeted, "Appreciate the congrats on being right about radical Islamic terrorism." 

Then there is this weird thing that happens.  People put a spin on the story that reflects their own confirmation bias. The facts are that a man, originally from Afghanistan, told his dad that he was disgusted when he saw two gay men kissing, went out and bought a gun, walked into Orlando's "hottest gay nightclub", he may have shouted something about Allah and then he shot at hundreds of people, killing 50 of them.

The fact that this gunman was of Islamic faith is very convenient. It helps to maintain the status quo. The people in America who passionately believe in the right to bear arms don't have to let go of that belief because it was terrorism, not a gun that did it. 

Sky News had the saddest, most uncomfortable newspaper review I have ever seen.

Owen Jones was clearly very upset by the shooting and his own confirmation bias tells him that there is still a horrendous amount of violence directed at gay men (or the LGBT community). He felt the other two were focusing on their confirmation bias; guns and Islsmic terrorists who want to stop people enjoying themselves. He got up and left or walked off in a strop (depending upon your own bias) and the presenters continued without any compassion for his distress. 

History tells us that violence against minority groups (LGBT, Jews, women(ha, funny minority)) is common and that we prefer not to think about it. How long did it take after the war before people finally believed that the Hollocaust happened? Even when the pictures emerged people were still saying that they didn't believe it. 

Psychologists think that confirmation bias happens for two reasons. The first is motivational (sometimes called the Pollyanna phenomenon) where you can't bear to think the other thing might be true. They think that this creates the bias and then cognitive reasons, such as only being able to focus on one thought at a time, determine the size of the effect. 

I think it's a problem that us humans get stuck like this allowing every fact to confirm a belief, even when it actively disproves it.  I try to be as balanced as I can but know I am guilty of this phenomenon. I would try to stop doing it but fear that my brain might explode and when I am rushed to hospital the doctors would say that I'm fine because brains can't actually explode.

The Dress

Children rarely show any confusion. They are more likely to brazen it out; full of bravado. For example, as a lesson starter I set the discussion question, "What is an earworm?"

They didn't know but that didn't stop them.

"Ooo oooh, I've seen one. It's a little brown worm with six legs that lives in the sand and when you go on holiday and you lay down on the beach it crawls into your ear and lays eggs and eats your brain."

Today, however, I saw a child suffer a moment of genuine confusion.

We were walking down the corridor to the music room and this child was talking about anything that popped into their head, pleased as punch to be at the front of the line and have the teacher's full attention for once. Conversation started to dry up and a sense of panic settled in her brow. In these situations the policy for most little girls is to flatter the teacher.

"I really like your dress."

"Do you?"

"Yes, it's really pretty. My mum has that dress but she doesn't wear it anymore. "

"Doesn't she?"

"No, it's too big for her."

She looked me up and down.

"It fits you."

"Yes it does."

She scratched her head. "I spect that means you're fatter than my mum." She screwed up her left eye, tilted her head on one side  and said to herself, "I don't get it though 'cause she doesn't look fatter."

Hospital Symphony

Visiting someone in hospital can be tricky.

Some people love it. I met a woman this weekend who makes a hobby of hospital visits. She sits with people who have cancer and, "makes sure they've filled all their forms in properly." I admired her dedication and sacrifice of her precious days off (she was a DCI by day) but her brusque efficiency made me secretly hope never to need her services. 

I prefer to avoid hospitals, as they are full of sick and tired people (and that's just the staff) but when someone you love is there you have a duty to visit. 

Some families sit by the bed for the full 8 hour visiting session, barely talking, watching the machines go 'beep', fluffing pillows and undertaking any nursing duties that the staff are too stretched or tired to do. Others keep their visits short and sweet, exchanging information about each other's life since the last visit and leaving with a breezy, "cheerio," and a peck on the cheek. Some families bring small children to fold their grandparents up inside the bed by accidentally pressing a few buttons and asking questions about death with saucer-wide eyes. The dementia patients families explain to their loved ones with increasing volume that they are in, "hospital. Yes, hospital. HOSPITAL! H  O S , oh never mind." These are extremely useful visitors, as the staff generally prefer to ignore the rantings of the senile. Some families arrive with sweets and fruit and leave before they have eaten all of it. These families are particularly useful, as hospital food is still mostly inedible.

I'm the type of visitor that engages in salt smuggling to a cardiac ward, sits watching the people and listens to the noises. Hospitals wouldn't be my first choice of place for creative stimulus but they are, nevertheless, a rich source of inspiration. They are full of humour, which I find useful to share with the person I am visiting. 

I listened to the man with the rare blood disorder tell the nurse that he caught it when he was in the Boer war and heard her ask him if he got any medals.

 The man in the next door bed who shouted, "There's an ambulance!" every time one went passed the window before his daughter replied, "Yes Dad, you're in hospital," was tragically funny. If I'm ever in hospital I hope the staff aren't too busy to come and deal with the redundant , unconscious woman that is in my hospital bed. He tried talking to her himself but she just wasn't shifting. I dread to think what kind of night he will have if he has to share his bed with her. I couldn't see her at first but by the end of my visit I was as certain of her presence as he was. 

The food arrived. Patients cleared their trays of sweets, crisps and fruit and apologised to the girl bringing them their dinner. 

"I'm sorry. It's just that when you have visitors they bring you sweets and things."

"What's wrong with that?" The girl puzzled.

"Well it means that I probably won't eat my dinner."

The girl raised an eyebrow and a small smile began to twitch at the corner of her mouth. She surveyed the pushed away treats,"It's all good stuff though."

"Are you saying this dinner isn't?"

She chuckled, thinking that she would rather chew her own arm off than be forced to eat it herself. 

The man opposite pushed his food around his plate a bit and the nurse who  came to give him his drugs and stick a thermometer in his ear (which she does without a word of warning) asked him why he wasn't eating his dinner. He complained of feeling sick and the nurse told him that he needs white toast and jam, "That's what my mum always gave me when I was sick. The plainness of the toast and the stickiness of the jam helps to keep it all in," she says cheerfully. In the absence of jam to stick the potential vomit in place she brings him a bowl.  He begs for her to remove his plate of food but as that is not her job she continues rambling on about ginger and bananas." She is nice. I liked her. We gave him a banana.

We played a game of 'best word to describe the food'. 

"Un-eatable."

"Unpalatable."

"Rancid."

"Revolting, nauseating, abhorrent."

"Distasteful, stomach-churning, vile.

"Indelible, indigestible, inedible."

"Crap?"

The nurse returned to the man with the banana, "You still feeling crap?" she asked him before moving his tray of food to the bedside cabinet.

"See? crap! It's a technical term for the food."

I hadn't noticed the man's prosthetic leg until the nurse accidentally kicked it. 

"I noticed it straight away when I came in. It was propped up against the end of the bed," said my Dad, really beginning to enjoy the humour of a hospital. 

Things started to get quiet. The man with the leg had eaten his banana and fallen asleep in the chair, the man in the next bed's visitors had left and he was quietly chuntering away to the invisible unconscious woman in his bed. The man with the blood disorder had been plugged into his heating bag, temperature set to 40 degrees and drifted off to, what I can only imagine, were tropical dreams. We had caught up on all the news and so we sat and listened to the noises of the ward. 

The not so gentle hum of the heating bag, the slide of shoes across the floor, the different beeps of the various machines and the echo of those beeps, as bored patients incorrectly sing back the tune.

"It was bothering me all night. Are they triplets?"

"No, I think it's semi quavers followed by a rest."

"He sang three."

"I know but he was wrong. There are four."

"You should hear the plasma drip. That has a brilliant tune."

"What note is it?"

"I guess an Eb."

"I think it's a F."

We checked. You never know when you might need the digital tuner on your phone. 

"It's a B. A slightly flat B. Not a Bb but just a tiny bit out of tune."

"Well, who'd have thought it. I thought it was much lower than that."

Two machines begin to beep and there is a harmonic buzz between them. We wonder if you would experience the Doppler effect if you walked between them. 

"There's a symphony in here," we agreed and I left with a notebook of ideas promising not to write it first. Everyone needs a project for when they leave hospital, even if the days of 40 mile walks and mountain climbing are over.

The real question

The news is currently cancelled until after the European Union vote. It's all anyone can think about. My daughter has complained that finding a front page local news story is harder than usual. 

When I mentioned this to a friend he said, "Don't local papers cover the referendum then?"

I'm sure they do but it can't be the front page story for the next four weeks. It might be all anyone is talking about but when you listen to them the arguments are circular and soon dissolve into something more frivolous. 

Pigeons.

Whenever I talk about the EU referendum vote the subject invariably turns to pigeons.

That's the real question.

I will vote for someone who can tackle the pigeon problem.

People talk about the leave campaign as though it can do something about migration. If they can encourage the fat, smelly pigeons who are constantly bonking on my fence to migrate then they will have my vote. Pigeons don't migrate. They are like the Long Suffering Husband: sedentary. 

The pigeons in this area are so fat. We might have the fattest pigeons outside of a Macdonalds car park. It's probably because everyone feeds the birds and pigeons haven't got the message that they aren't the birds we want. Go away pigeons. We are trying to attract the small, pretty, foreign birds. You are here all the time. You would be so much more interesting if only you'd come from another country, like the swallows (not that they eat from the bird table unless it's filled with a range of small invertebrates). 

They sit all day, eat and have sex. Loud, viscious sex. Sometimes they have threesomes and it is always on my fence. There must be more comfortable places for them to go: maybe Germany? In its favour the sex is always quick but once isn't enough. They like to get an early start and a late finish and are at it all day. You would think that they like it. They don't even stop in winter. No wonder there are so many of them, over here stealing our jobs and... Oh wait I'm confusing the issues again. 

They are horrible disease ridden things; carrying TB, cryptococcal meningitis, salmonella, listeria, viral encephalitis and e-coli. All of these are transmissible to humans. Just think how much money the NHS would save if the pigeons left the EU? I guess it would be about £350miion a week.

The farmers would be happier if the pigeons left, as well. Woah, there. Wait a minuite. That's a big claim. Are farmers ever really happy? Probably not but I would be happier. I would be able to plant peas without having them pecked to death within 3 minuites. I wouldn't have to cover my whole allotment with netting and would only have to worry about the deer stealing my sweetcorn.

Actually, sending the pigeons back could reinvigorate our whole farming industry.

You may think that I'm confusing the issues (you could be right) but I'm not the only one. In Wales they seem to be much more interested in beavers.

Personally, I'm wondering about that shirt and shorts combination. 

Wanna be in my gang?

When I was at school there was a cool crowd. There was at your school, as well, right? 

In my school it was the football gang: The boys who played football and the girls who followed them round, not doing very much except being mean to other girls. Girls who played football were definitely not allowed to join. They were 'lesbians' who weren't allowed to join anything. 

A peculiar thing happened at the very end of our time at school (before 6th form). The football boys decided that they would like to expand their potential shagging opportunities, so they made their group a bit more open. They advertised its attractiveness and went around singing, "wanna be in my gang, my gang, my gang?" to unsuspecting young girls, who had previously adopted the 'freeze and hope they don't notice me' stance within 100 yards of anyone from this group. Obviously Gary Glitter wasn't the social pariah he is today. They also cleaned up their act a bit. They got the girls in the group to be nicer and the girls in turn invited a few of the good looking, intelligent boys to join. 

I hasten to add I was in none of these groups but I am able to report on it from my position in the playground. The cool group occupied the area outside the fast food canteen, where people got slightly soggy chips from a hatch. There were steps up to the canteen and a concrete platform ran in front of the building. In front of the platform was a sheer drop into a flowerbed of roses. The cool kids were protected from falling into the thorns by a green painted iron railing, from which they used to swing, like monkeys in a zoo, perfecting their chin up and bench presses before having the girls admire their muscles. Across from this stage was a pillar holding up the humanities block, behind which was my place in the playground. 

The concrete platform got fuller and fuller until there was no room for a hanging raise, never mind a full somersault. The attractive intelligent boys turned out to be surprisingly good at press ups too. I wasn't that surprised, as these boys were in my classes and were the types who could do anything but the original football lads were floored; they just thought having a brain would weigh your head down too much and make exercise impossible.

The girls found it too taxing be nice to the new members of their fraternity for long and after a while went back to their old ways. Their favourite trick of a surprise skirt lift to laugh at the knickers underneath fell flat though as many of the new girls had very pretty underwear and were confident enough in their bodies not to mind giving a quick accidental flash. Worse, they were also classy enough, never to show their underwear on purpose. 

Soon,the group was looking unhappy. The founding members started to talk about leaving.

"It was our gang in the first place."

"Yeah, who do they think they are? Who invited them? I didn't, did you?"

"Nah, they just came and spoiled it."

"Can't we just get them to leave?"

They discussed who they would ask to leave. One of the main offenders was Suzie's boyfriend, Tim. Suzie was in the original gang, so Tim had to stay, which meant that Tim's mates would stay too. They threw their hands in the air, scratched thei heads and furrowed their brows.

"There's nothing for it. We'll have to go out on our own."

I can't tell you how successful their new adventure was because their new location wasn't one I could see from behind my pillar but now I wished that I'd followed them to find out.

These debates about the EU are reminding me of that time. I keep seeing people who say, "I voted to be part of the Common Market when I was twenty (1975) but now that all these other countries have joined (Poland, Romania) it's not what I thought it would be. Turkey even wants to join now and that would be the end of the world."

This is what France has been thinking since they finally let us in. The U.K. wasn't one of the founding members. We first applied to join in 1961 and were blocked by France who thought we weren't made of the right stuff and they kept blocking it until 1973. 

The breakaway gang may have gone onto bigger and better things or they may have been two sad lonely boys who used to be something special. The new gang carried on swinging like primates on the bars but they gave no indication of whether they wished the two defectors had stayed. 

If only I had changed my playground position in 1983 I might have an answer to the EU question.