The Dark Side of the Lakes

Holidaying in the UK is wonderful, especially if you choose to visit somewhere that is filled with light.  I'm a huge fan of Pembrokeshire, in West Wales, Cornwall and the Lake District.  These are all places that have amazing light.  It rains a lot but it rains quickly and the light is back, shining off raindrops, reflecting through the puddles. These are locations that make me want to be an artist.

I take pictures and play with words.  I'd like to paint or draw but my skills in that area are those of a 5 year old.  I'm not surprised that so many artists and writers live in these places:  Artists whose work often makes me feel inadequate.

When you have a place that is so full of light there must be a dark side.

The forests are filled with giants.  You  can tell this by the huge stiles and occasionally you might get a glimpse of a foot pretending to be a moss covered tree stump. If you stand still and listen after catching sight of a giant you can hear nothing. The birds stop singing, the trees stop rustling their leaves and the silence is so strong it almost hurts your ears.

The mountains and fells look pretty, reflecting into the water (which the dog tells me is full of monsters) but they will try to kill you if you walk up them unprepared.  There are memorial stones at the top and the frowny face on them says it all.  As evening falls their true identity is displayed as the dragons breathe their fire into the sky.

Holiday destinations with good light are always nice to dogs.  The Lake District is probably one of the best places for a dog.  Everyone loves them.  They feed them their sandwiches at the top of mountains, let them bark in pubs and holiday cottage owners leave treats and blankets for them and poo bags for their poo collecting obsessed humans.  Often dog lovers aren't so keen on cats but I do think that this is a bit harsh.

The dark slate houses are probably inhabited by witches who control the narrow winding roads, moving signs and luring the unsuspecting motorist to his doom.

With all these dangers it's no wonder their police have to be so heavily armed.

What are you worth?

The BBC has been forced by the government to hand Twitter trolls a big stick. The government decided that as a public service the BBC should publish the names and amounts earned by anyone earning over  £150,000 per annum.  I believe it was a strategy to undermine the public broadcasting service and make people question whether it was worth our tax payers money. As a strategy, they miscalculated. People like the BBC. Most people like the names on the list but those who don't were given jealousy as justification for their hatred.

The list was rubbish. It didn't show what people are doing for their money. I fell into the trap of thinking that Claudia (with the too long fringe) Winkleman was paid more than Tess (I put up with Bruce) Daley for Strictly but the fringe lady has a radio show and is the new Barry Norman. The list didn't tell you that most people in the BBC (the journalists, the local radio presenters, the weather announcers) are actually quite poorly paid and are on stupid 3 month contacts. It didn't mention that to get some of these already big stars they would have had to match what they were already earning. Very few people would take a wage cut so footballers and people who were running multi million pound media enterprises are going to be expensive. The list didn't say how long someone had been doing the job. It didn't tell you how much Sky or ITV offered them to defect.

Anyway, the Twitter trolls had a field day.

The question they asked amongst the abuse was, "Do you think you are worth that much?"

It was a question that got me thinking. How can they answer that question? If they say yes they will be accused of gloating but a negative answer leaves everyone confused.  Ask yourself the same question. My first answer was that I'm worth more than I'm paid. This is actually true because I do too much work for free and am too lazy to apply for jobs where I would be paid more. But if I had applied for the job that was suggested to me last summer would I have been worth more than double what I'm getting now?

The problem is that money isn't a good indicator of a person's value and that worth can be subjective.
Is it fair that Chris Evans is paid millions while a nurse gets about £25,000 a year? Of course not but the people shouting the loudest are also those who would be most upset by a communist system where everyone is paid the same.

 I found myself worrying about Clare Balding. I thought she wasn't being paid enough because apart from her excellent sport work you can barely turn on radio 4 without hearing her talking about horses, dogs or walking and she has a popular radio 2 show.  I wondered if Gary Lineker was worth eight Clare Baldings and then I wondered if she was worth eight of me.

Yesterday a parent came to see me with her child. They gave me a pot plant and a hand written card. She told me how grateful she was for everything I had done and the opportunities I had given her child in the last seven years of teaching them music. I joked, "Seven years! You've had to put up with me for seven years. I think it's you that deserves the present." The child smiled and rolled their eyes. The parent continued, listing concerts and trips and how my encouragement had increased their confidence. Her words came to an abrupt halt but before I could say how much I appreciated it her mood changed and she quietly and sombrely said, "It's not enough.... just a little token..."
Of course it was enough. It was more than enough. It made me feel valued more than my monthly salary does. Luckily, I'm not like one of those BBC stars who not only get comments from the people that like them but also from the haters. I can't imagine how awful it would be to get cards from the children who hated my subject and suffered though each lesson.

Oh, wait. Maybe I can.

Maybe 2012 wasn't my best year.

School Trip

When I was in the 4th year juniors (year 6 to anyone under the age of 40) we went on a school trip. It was called a school trip and not a residential. The junior school trip provided life long memories.  The Long Suffering Husband went to Dorset and frequently talks fondly of Durdle Dore and Swanage as if they contain the holy grail of happiness.

My Junior School had four classes per year and usually went to the Isle of White.  Our teacher decided to do his own thing.

Mr Hanson was strict (all teachers were) and would catapult chalk across the room at naughty boys with a swift flick of the ruler.  He liked maths and science and was nice to me because he thought I was good at the subjects he liked.  It was a survival technique I had learnt the previous year in Mrs Thain's class.  She was terrifying and would call children to stand by her desk and ask them to lift their skirt or drop their trousers so that her smack on the the top of the thigh would cause the most public humiliation.  This was when I learnt to read the books she liked.  These were the good old days: the 'it never did me any harm' days of long hot summers and corned beef fritters for tea that we are heading back to post-Brexit (don't say I didn't warn you).  Anyway, back to Mr Hanson. Apart from being strict I remember him as a tweed wearing mustachioed man who smoked a pipe and would have days off in term time because he was Jewish. He enjoyed walking and some of the boys in the class, the football types, would tease him about walking not being a proper sport and suggest that he wasn't a real man because he didn't have a 'team'. Sometimes his response to this teasing progressed from chalk to board rubber. Thinking about it now, he would have made a very good fast bowler but I don't think anyone asked him if he played cricket. When it came to our school trip, Mr Hanson decided that he would 'show' those boys and organised a walking week in the Lake District. One of the other 4th year teachers was called Mr Bray. Everyone liked Mr Bray because he was young, fit and liked football. Mr Bray was always up for a challenge, so his class came with us.

When I came back, all I could talk about was how beautiful the place was.  In the end my dad had to tell me to shut up because I was waxing lyrical.  I didn't know what he meant but it sounded bad.

I've often suspected that my fond memories are just due to it being that rite of passage trip.  My children fondly remember their very safe and controlled residential, where they took part in activities that they would never choose to do now (like high ropes and zip wires).

We have only been to the Lakes a few times since.  Once for a wedding: a weekend of drinking and goat dancing, which remains one of our favourite memories and once with the children when it rained and we drove the whingers around the bleak landscape and I thought my memories of the place must have been mistaken.   Last year we went to the Scottish Highlands and did some walking.  We stopped at Penrith on the way and I realised that I wasn't mistaken because it's beauty is best seen on foot.

This summer we are going to explore some of the area on foot. Keep this to yourself because I haven't told the LSH. He is hoping to drive around, visit Zeffirellis for pizza and a film and maybe go to the pencil museum. However, I have decided to resurrect the planning Nazi and make sure we don't waste a second.

While researching walks the memories of this school trip have come flooding back.  I can't believe how brave these teachers were. We stayed in Borrowdale and took trips to Bassenthwaite Lake for swimming.  Mr Bray organised a football tournament in the evenings when they weren't shouting at the TV, as Argentina, who were generally considered to be bad, kept winning games. These evening activities were only for those that weren't nursing blisters, or writing long letters home about clouds reflecting on lakes and red squirrels.

We got up each morning and dressed according to the instructions in our kit list. "No jeans! Wet denim flares are no good for walking," we were warned.  Two pairs of socks, T shirt, Light jumper and waterproof cagoule. After breakfast we traipsed into the boot room to put on our hired walking boots  (Only Mr Hanson had his own) and waited for the coach or to drop us at the start of our walk.  We walked all day, eating our cheese sandwich, orange and packet of puffs sitting on top of whatever mountain we had climbed. Rations of dextrose tablets and Kendal Mint cake kept us going.

Walklakes.co.uk is a brilliant website that I have been using to plan this holiday.  The photos are just as I remember.  We walked up Grasmore, Green Glen, Great Glen, Skiddaw, and Whiteside.  We scrambled up rocky faces and walked along rivers.  We even climbed Scafell Pike coming down via Symmond's Knot, sliding sideways down the scree, some children on their bottoms. I remember some children crying but they were the ones that weren't looking at the clouds or the lakes or taking photos of red squirrels on the camera that they left on the top of Scafell Pike (I wonder if it's still there?).

Even if I can't get the LSH to walk up that many hills I remain forever grateful to Mr Hanson and his fearless attitude to making 60 children in borrowed walking boots climb the highest mountain in England, ignoring the complaints about twisted ankles and blisters.

A couple of hills to try - what could go wrong?

Hornets

I should be writing lots of blogs at the moment. It's important to ridicule the ridiculous and there is a lot of material around right now. I sit down to write but the ability to be funny has left me. This is quite a worry, not least because when I looked at my list of concert preparation jobs my wonderfully organised youth orchestra committee member had given me it said, "sandwiches, wave arms, be funny."

I know the problem. 

I am furious.

The words are buzzing in my mouth like a swarm of hornets and I'm terrified of opening my mouth just in case they kill. 

The problem is that I've shut my mouth so firmly against the striped assassins nothing is coming out.

So I will have to let them out. This could be a long ranty blog. Be warned.

It started with the news that a school in Saffron Walden in Essex is going to stop providing music lessons for year seven and eight. The hornets multiplied as I read article after article on why arts were important or not important. The debates about access and elitism in music caused a fresh sting in my mouth each time and finally when a friend asked, "What are you going to do when they cut music?" I went into total anaphylaxis. 

This is what I think about the whole debate. I'm just going to leave it here and hopefully the hornets will leave without the need to call the exterminators in.

1. Music is a basic human response.

        We move and we make music. These things make us human. Even if you think you don't make music you do. You use a sing-song voice to talk to babies. You tap or clap rhythmically when you are distracted and you move to music, responding to the pulse without even noticing. When things are bad we turn to music. Concerts and charity singles are organised for disasters. Think about the singing that happened in the Second World War as people huddled in the underground while bombs fell overhead. 

2. Music is therefore available and accessible to everyone.

         This might be a controversial statement, as we have gone so far down the road of pretending it's an elite activity that we've forgotten that we all do it. Music could learn so much from sport. The 

great Sport for All campaign should be adopted for music. No one would consider cutting sport from the curriculum now. There would be an outcry, "Think of the health of our children." Sport for All managed to turn around public opinion. When I was at school I remember a teacher tilting her head to one side and saying, "Not everyone can run, you should stick to music dear." The idea that I shouldn't  try to run because it was only something that the fastest should bother with stuck in my brain. The truth is that everyone can run and most people get some pleasure from it. Very few of the park runners will ever win the Olympics but they are out there enjoying the experience. Why can't it be like that for music?

3. Music is important for mental health.

           Sport takes care of our physical health. Music is a workout for the brain. There are many studies that show how music is the only activity that uses both sides of the brain at the same time.
Neuroscientists are beginning to map how the brain responds to music and the results are amazing.  Listening to music is good for the brain, playing it (even badly) is better.  MRIs of people who play a lot of music show that their brains are more symmetrical, areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing, motor and spatial  control are larger, and the corpus collosum (the band of fibres that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) is larger. Just listening to music reduces the amount of cortisol, is more successful than prescription drugs in controlling anxiety and thrilling music causes the release of dopamine. We need to look after everyone's mental health.

4. Music should be taught.
            Again, this seems to be a controversial statement. You hear people talking about musicians as if their skills have been magically dropped on them at night while they are sleeping. This is never true. The verb to practise is a favourite of the musician.  Musicians know how to work hard at something.  Just as some children come to school being able to read, some come being able to sing in pitch or clap the pulse.  This is because they have been around music. Children of musicians can do these things not because they have the genes for it but because they've experienced it.  If a child came to school being able to read and his parents could read you wouldn't assume that it was a 'God given' or genetically based talent.  You would rightly think that it is because they've seen books, words and shared stories.  Imagine the outrage if we said, "Oh well, some children just love reading and others don't so we'll do nothing because those who love it will be good at it and those who don't never will." Can we afford to let down those who have not seen a book or experienced music before?

5. Any kind of music could be taught.
            There is an awful lot of snobbery in the music world. I'm guilty too. I spent years thinking less of guitarists because they didn't read music but they could look down on me because as a flautist I couldn't read TAB and my knowledge of chords was purely theoretical. The content of a country's school curriculum is political.  Politician's decide what children 'should' know. Mr Gove decided that Bach Motets were very important: "an understanding of  the tradition of classical music is what a rounded education is about," he said.  People think there is a kind of hierarchy of music that makes it more important the older it is. I know musicians with fantastic degrees from Oxford who are certain that music by Thomas Tallis is more musical than song by Adele.  This isn't true.  They might prefer Tallis just as you might prefer Adele but they both use musical skills. At primary school children need to learn how to sing in tune, keep a pulse, understand rhythm, dynamic, expression, tempo. They need to experiment with sounds. These are the basic skills that a musician will use if they become prinicpal violinist of the LSO, the next Stormzy, a composer of film music or something new and experimental.  The books on the set curriculum list are what the government wants everyone to know but everyone knows that they are just a way of developing skills.  Good readers will read more. Writers will read everything.  It's true for musicians.

6. Any kind of music is valuable.
              Sport doesn't fall into this trap. It seems ridiculous that runners would suggest that cycling is a lesser sport because it hasn't been around as long. Sport understands that  some people will suit one type of sport over an other.  People who do park runs don't look down on me because I prefer to do lengths of the swimming pool but I have seen choir members who sing early choral music look down on those that sing in a rock choir. I know orchestral players who think that people who play in a brass band are lesser musicians.

7. Privilege is responsible for this hierarchy.
               Oxford scholars like early church music and because they are Oxford scholars it is considered valuable. Classical orchestral instruments are considered higher than brass instruments because it costs a lot to access these instruments and the training needed to be any good at them.  Brass bands used borrowed instruments and players learnt by sitting next to someone who had learnt by sitting next to someone.
"'Just press 1 and 3 and play Ds all the time."
"Like this?"
"Yep, well done, lad."
"'Ey John that one looks different. It sounds wrong."
"Well spotted. It's an E - press 1 and 2."
People wanting to be in a brass band had to pay a small amount of subs and would get a cup of tea and some biscuits in the break.
Folk music is further down the pecking order but higher than pop.(Folk music is older) Anyone who can borrow a guitar and teach themselves a few chords can do pop (providing they have the basic music skills). However, many successful pop musicians have had training of the classical orchestral variety because that is still (in this country) the best way to gain those basic musical skills.

8. Throwing more money at the already privileged won't make more musicians.
                Like the campaign to provide more grammar schools it worries me that any money that is around for education it is being spent on the kids who are going to do well anyway. The music hubs provide orchestras and choirs for those who are already proficient. My daughter had grade 5 violin before she could join and I, as a flautist could have only hoped to join at grade 8. It was out of reach for me because of the cost and my daughter's fees certainly made a large dent in our family budget. They hire instruments at a reasonable rate (£15-£60 a term depending upon instrument) and provide teachers to schools, which parents must pay for (£14 for a half hour lesson).  I think my music hub gets it.  They are attempting brilliant things.  They have instrument zoos and professional musicians who can go into schools and play.  They have invested in good ICT music schemes that they provide free to schools.  They organise conferences for teachers and exciting events like a world record breaking Stomp routine. They are trying.

9.  It is going to take more than a few individuals with good ideas.
              Government needs to take action. We need campaign groups, like Music for All and for people to campaign against the EBac but this all starts with individuals. It starts with people who care that all children have access to music lessons.

10. Each person who cares about music is important.
                  Together we can turn ourselves from an annoying sting to an impossible to ignore hornet colony.