There’s no more money

 Warning: I might punch the next person who says, “There’s no more money.”

The truth is, that money is made up. It’s not real. And it’s not fair. Especially if you are talking about government money. They can just make some more. 

If someone says, “There’s no more money,” they mean that thing or person they are being asked to spend on isn’t important to them. It’s rude.

As a weird child, I was aware of this and usually managed to work out that the thing I wanted (usually sweets or comics) wasn’t as important (as, for example, proper food or books) but sometimes I felt snubbed, as though I was least loved. 

The same people who rage about people on benefits with a big telly, then pretend that there is no more money to keep the poorest off the streets, or pay enough to recruit professionals that society needs. 

When the government choose the chairman for a pay review body and tell them what the budget is before they decide on a figure then choose to ignore their recommendations because ‘there is no money’ it is clearly a lie. This is what is happening with teachers and doctors at the moment. Their salaries have not kept pace with inflation, austerity being  blamed for not giving them pay increases when bankers were getting bonuses bigger than a teacher’s annual salary. This has lead to a recruitment crisis and burnout as fewer people try to do more with less. Not only are the salary increases ignored but the general funding is lower (in real terms) and other public servants are having to pick up the slack with police officers sitting with mentally ill people for hours, schools being asked to just add in lessons on gender identity or cricket for brown girls. 

We passively accept that there is ‘no more money,’ but it is really about choosing what is important.

Strike

 The NEU have announced two further strike days for the 5th and 7th of July.

I was shocked when I heard. I couldn’t quite understand why the unions had chosen these dates, as I thought it would put more pressure on teachers than they need at this time of year.

If you don’t know then in primary school (which is all I know about) we are in the manic phase. Even teachers who are like swans, gliding around but kicking like fury underneath, are starting to flap and break arms of anyone who comes too close. There is just too much to do and not enough time left to do it in. (Assessments, reports, data, teaching kids to tell the time, sports day, sex Ed, transition days and meeting the new class for next year, packing things up to move room, end of year concerts, PTA fetes,  parties, assemblies, church services) and then there’s the weather. If you didn’t know, then the weather is hot. 300 children a day will tell you. 

With only 22 days left to fit all of that in (less if you work part time) then 2 less days feels impossible.

“So,” you might be thinking, “just don’t. Why do you need to strike anyway. It’s been going on for ages. Isn’t it over yet?”

And that’s the problem. It isn’t resolved. Schools still don’t know what they will have to pay their teaching staff in September (even though their budgets have already been set). If you were generally anti-unions then you could blame them for not accepting the offer that was made but school leaders were already warning that the pay offer wasn’t fully funded for most schools. The government agreed that their calculations were based on the average school. 

Not only that but the pay offer of 4.5% was considered to be too low. The government agreed to take on the recommendations of a pay review body, which they haven’t yet published although that might not be as sinister as people lead you to believe because it’s always published in July. Rumours are, though, that the report has recommended 6.5%, which gives the unions a reason to demand the government go back into negotiation. 

Gillian Keegan has been too busy attending sports days and steel pan recitals. The end of term is tough for everyone.

Whatever the outcome of these strikes, if the school budgets aren’t increased to properly reflect any increases in pay then this is only the beginning. Head teachers are discussing their options next and when the leaders can’t take it any more then we really are in for a bumpy ride.

So, take the strike days. Cancel the extras because without proper funding they are going anyway. Or don’t because you can’t bear to see the children lose out. It’s a difficult decision and not one any teacher is taking lightly. 

Meanwhile, I will be trying to replan my difficult to plan summer music concert with several options because that’s what we do. 

Dozens of Dicks

 What is our preoccupation with dicks? We obsess over them, see them when they don’t exist (see my last post about the weather) and talk about them even when they cease to be relevant (Boris, the dick, Johnson).

When you work in a school there will be many moments when they appear in children’s work. Potion bottles, a drawing of scissors, santa’s hat, Henry Moore sculptures and so many phallus shaped objects in R.E. Occasionally, an artist will draw a set of headphones on the toilet door and we will all see a cock and balls. The first cave painting was probably meant to be a sky full of birds but looked more like flying Johnsons. 

But is our obsession with the dangly parts a cause for concern? If you work in school, is it a safeguarding issue? Would Ofsted be worried?

I ask because there was an interesting post on a primary school music teacher forum about one of the year six shows. The poster, unironically called Karen, had a bit of a bee in her bonnet.

“How on earth has the line “This spotted dick is hard as a brick” got through writers, editors and publishers?” she wrote.

There were instantly lots of replies. 

“It’s pudding”

“It’s about school dinners.”

“British school dinner pudding.”

“The song is called lumpy custard.”

Her post hadn’t stopped there, though. It was long and ranty.

“Has not a single person thought about the safeguarding issues in teaching this line to children. I wouldn’t even teach this in secondary school.”

No one had. It was unanimous. Nobody could see the safeguarding issue of hard pudding and lumpy custard. The idea of a paedophile sidling up to a child and propositioning them with a brick-like spotted dick seemed laughable. 

Some were teaching the song with no problems, others thought that double-entendre was a performing skill. 

But Karen hadn’t stopped there. She went on. And on. And then on a bit more. She couldn’t understand why the company hadn’t employed qualified teachers, how no one had thought about it, how headteachers could condone it being sung in their schools, how safeguarding leads should be very concerned, how it didn’t cause the warning bulb to be changed in the Department of Education, triggering an immediate Ofsted inspection, which the school would, naturally fail.

The company who wrote the musical replied - perfectly. They confirmed that at no point had any of their fully qualified teaching staff thought there was a safeguarding issue with a hard, raisin-studded suet pudding from a 1970s school dinner however they did suggested that if Karen felt uncomfortable teaching it she could change the line to ‘this spotted dick is making me sick’ or if it was the spotted dick that had terrified her she could sing ‘This rice pud doesn’t taste too good.’

Karen replied to everyone who had commented with, ‘would your head agree?’ and turned off the comments before anyone could tell her. She then edited the original post to say that it was clearly controversial as there were no headteachers in agreement with the line. She was incandescent that she should have to change any words herself.

I started to worry about Karen. Had she had a traumatic incident with a suet pudding? Had someone sewn rohypnol into the raisins of a pudding, like in Danny Champion of the World? She hadn’t really found her audience either, as only the previous day there had been a long thread on favourite tongue twisters to teach as warm ups but she couldn’t see that she was talking to a group of people who had perfected the pheasant plucker song in their early teens and sang ‘roll me over, in the clover,’ in the primary school playground. 

Seeing penises where they don’t exist is a recognised phenomenon (although most commonly its faces) called pareidolia caused by the brain trying to make sense of the world but I’m not sure they are always something to worry about.

I’m going to leave you with one of my favourite children’s drawings where I could have got overly excited and raised a safeguarding cause for concern.

Jesus does look rather relaxed and hasn’t even noticed the giant rabbit heading towards them, as Mary Magdalene washes his feet. 

I bet you didn’t know…

 There are things you might know about the weather 

You might have read that the North Atlantic Sea surface temperature is higher than it has ever been. You might know that this will cause more storms and you may have seen the New Zealand weather forecaster showing the twister cloud that a woman took a photo of on her way back from yoga. You might be able to quote every word of the Peter Kaye sketch about sticky weather.

But I bet you didn’t know that it’s hot.

I usually enjoy working with children but when you are sweating in parts you didn’t know you had and the 120th child you taught today says, “Did you know?…..it’s hot, “ then it’s very difficult not to be sarcastic and reply, “Is it? I had no idea.”

Baby bug vomit

 There’s a story that is running in the newspapers about a dangerous new froth that is appearing on plants. 

WARNING

It shouts. Scientists say…. don’t touch…report….

The original article was much more balanced and interesting https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/warning-not-touch-weird-spittle-27039249 but let’s not let the facts get in the way of an attention grabbing headline. It was an interesting case of journalistic Chinese whispers and so by the time the Sun journalist had read the headline and ‘re-written’ it, you would have thought it was the next Coronavirus.

If, like me, you like spending time outside then this stuff isn’t new. However, if your lockdown walking became a habit then you might be seeing it for the first time. 

These articles have reminded me of my mum and one of the last days of her life. It was a good day. Her sisters had come to visit and she rallied. We laughed and our conversation rambled from one topic to another. As we were talking about Masterchef and the pretentious ‘waft of hay’, ‘fennel dust’ and ‘foam’ we started to talk about this thing that the newspapers have decided is dangerous.

“And that foam,” my uncle said, banging the table, “It’s just like that stuff that used to be on plants when we were kids. Do you remember? I think it was called cuckoo spit?”

We all agreed, laughing heartily.

“We used to collect it up and make sleeping potions for our dollies,” one of my Aunts said.

“You don’t see it any more,” said another.

I had to disagree. It was May and the first globule had appeared in mum’s garden on the Cistus. 

“Is it actually cuckoo’s spit?” my mum asked; brain still intact, wanting to know why right until the end. “I’ve always wondered because I’ve never heard a cuckoo in this garden.”

“Maybe they spit when they are flying over.”

Hmmmm. None of us were convinced.

We decided to ask google.

We found out that it was protective foam that the nymphs (babies) of the frog hopper bug vomit up. They get coated in it and it protects them from being eaten. These nymphs are sometimes called spittle bugs and the reason it’s called cuckoo spit is because froghopper nymphs are around at the same time that you hear cuckoos (May/June) and it looks like spit.

“But it used to be everywhere when we were kids,” my Aunt protested.

I was adamant that it’s just that adults don’t go outside enough but I think she was right and it probably has something to do with pesticides. Environmentalists should be proud that cuckoo spit is back (along with daisies in lawns)

But why have ‘scientists’ suddenly given ‘stark warning’?

It turns out that they are just trying to monitor a plant disease that these creatures are prone to getting. Xylella fastidious causes plants to wilt and sometimes die and hasn’t yet been discovered in the UK. Scientists are monitoring to see if it does spread from diseased plants brought from abroad and the way to do that is sample some of the Spittlebugs.

But why mustn’t we touch them?

Because you might kill them and we’ve only just got them back in significant numbers for the Daily Mail to notice.

We googled what a froghopper and it’s nymph look like.

I think we can all agree that they are truly terrifying. 

Dear Developers

 I’m not a NIMBY. In fact, I might be the opposite. I would like where I live to grow. I like the idea of new homes being available for youngsters and an already thriving place growing, rather than services being drawn away to a new satellite town. So, while people my age are moaning about people and traffic and moving away to Suffolk I keep quiet. I also like the extra footpaths.

However, if you are going to make a new footpath between two huge housing estates then you possibly shouldn’t do it through a protected bit of nature reserve and certainly not next to the sign.

The rest of the path shouts about what you have done.

I know it will grow back with the resilience that this type of landscape has but it is just a silly thing to do. 

Die Schwimmerin

 It has been six years since my last fly-and-flop holiday. You can blame the pandemic but in reality it has taken a while for me to trust my brain in any ‘being still’ situation. However, the Long Suffering Husband is thrilled because I’ve finally done it. I sat around a swimming pool in the sunshine.

The bit of the  Algarve we stayed at didn’t get the thunderstorms that were forecast and the food was amazing, so it was an overall success.

I had forgotten how much fun people-watching can be on a holiday. The stories you build up about families (grandparents are the essential holiday accessory), old couples (beach bar t-shirt with the words ‘I ❤️ BJs on the beach’) and single travellers (Twisting ring finger and sitting round the pool drinking cocktails) grow. People sit in the same places at breakfast or round the pool. Daily snippets of overheard conversation enter notebooks along with weird observations about foot placement of the sexes (men stand/walk like penguins while women’s feet point forward). Translated signs lead to a story about the sunbed resistance. “It is not permitted to reserve sunbeds. Unoccuopancy for 45 minutes will lead to them being liberated.” These are the lifeblood of this kind of holiday for an invisible people-watcher.

Before I went away, a friend had pointed out that my powers of invisibility were slipping and that I was in danger of becoming a character in once of my own stories. She imagined a Quentin Blake illustration of a woman reading and walking. I have become ‘that woman who reads and walks.’ This must be due to my invisibility  powers fading because I’ve been reading and walking since I was a child when I discovered that it was the best way to get back from the library on a Saturday morning. My parents never told me to ‘be careful’ and so it never occurred to me it would be as dangerous as old ladies seem to insist. Nobody has ever commented as much as they have in the last year. It occurred to me that it might be due to repetition, as I have been reading on my walk to school for 5 years now and that has given people enough time to notice but no one said anything when I was commuting and continued to read at both ends of my train journey. 

After this holiday, however, I am certain that my superpowers have left me. I became a story for someone else.

The hotel where we stayed had the most amazing pool. It was 80 meters long and filled with cool blue water. I loved it. Proper swimming beckoned. Other people dipped a toe in and complained. Enthusiastic dads jumped in and made their toddlers cry by dunking them suddenly only to have to get out straight away. Women who look good in bikinis even stayed off the lilo just in case someone tipped them in. This was fabulous for me as I could silence my stupid brain by swimming up and down and up and down. After an hour my sunbed was in danger of joining the SLA and my fingers had lost all feeling but I felt great and my brain was quiet. 

On the second day two people asked me how many lengths I’d done and were disappointed that I hadn’t counted.

On the third day the LSH had chosen the sunbeds around the pool. I always let him pick where we sit and weirdly, although the same table is required at breakfast and at dinner it is a different regular seat, the sunbed can be anywhere. This is not true for everyone else.

I was a third of the way through my third book of the holiday when two German ladies in matching swimsuits came past. They looked at us and tutted. We were clearly in their place. They looked momentarily disgruntled then one smiled at the other and said, “Die Schwimmerin,” (Do not read this in an English way - the story isn’t a murder mystery)

We were forgiven. However, if anyone finds my superpower could they return it because I’d really like it back.