Politician

We're fed up of the politicians that we are used to.  The ones that are capable, intelligent, competent.  The ones who understand how to do the job.  The ones that think before they speak (sometimes even asking people who are better with words than they are to write out what to say for them).  The ones who know that they might need to compromise some of their beliefs when faced with the realisation that the budget just wont do it all. The ones that understand when we are being mean about them but roll up their sleeves and get on with the job, regardless.

No.

What we want are politicians who are more like us.  We want people who most of the time can't tell their ass from their elbow.  We want people who are a bit sexist or racist and are not scared to say so.  We want people who can't manage to buy their groceries without going overdrawn.  We want people who are stubborn and uncompromising.  We want people who lose their keys in the fridge or go to work in mismatching shoes.

It's the only explanation. The only way to explain Trump, Boris (why do we use his first name?), Corbyn, the local BNP candidate with the Thai wife and the lad that kept me entertained on Twitter today.

It was my daughter who first pointed him out to me.

"This boy thinks periods are like weeing, how sad," she texted, her journalistic nose quivering at the whiff of a story.

The lad, and I say lad because from his profile picture and the perspective of my ripe old age I thought he looked about 12, had tweeted that he didn't think tampons should be free and couldn't understand why people were saying they should be.  I've never heard that argument, only that they shouldn't be taxed as a luxury item.  He went on to say, "If u can't control ur bladder then that's not taxpayers problem!"

I was concerned for his education and imagined teachers who had tried to drum a few basic facts into the boy holding their heads in shame and mumbling, "I know you can't polish a turd but I wish we'd sprinkled a little more glitter on this one." I wondered if his parents had been the type to stop him participating in the sex education lessons, thinking they were protecting his innocence.  I imagined them reading his tweets and thinking, "Oh dear, maybe we were wrong."

He was unrepentant, though.  As more people tweeted him to explain the error of his thinking the more he stuck to his guns.  

"pay for ur own tampons if u can't hold it until u get to a toilet.  I don't urinate everywhere and expect free nappies," he tweeted.

Technically, if he had a bladder problem and needed nappies now that he is (hopefully) toilet trained he would be entitled to free pads.  There is a design flaw with us women.  Why can't we shed our uterine lining at will, like we do with other waste products?  Let's face it, we'd all prefer it, especially if it could be painless.   I wanted to suggest he slit his wrists and hold onto the blood until he was at a bathroom a mile away but I thought that might have been a bit aggressive.  I started to feel sorry for him, as I concluded that he had no women in his life.

He got quite upset that women were tweeting him to explain that his suggestion that they lacked #selfcontrol was......well they said lots of things but let's just say.....wrong. He accused them all of being crazy feminists. For him, feminist was obviously an insult. His Twitter bio stated that he was a mennist, which I think must mean that he would like men to have equal rights to women.  He's probably just angry that he can't continuously bleed for 7 out of every 28 days and live.  It also said that he was a politician and his linked instagram account showed pictures of his 19th birthday cake.

Several people asked what party he represented and his answer was, "The Brexit one." 

I told my daughter that I was sad for him and that he can't have any menstruating women in his life.  I imagined him in the care of an elderly, cruel grandmother, who dropped him on his head as a baby.  She agreed, telling me that his girlfriend doesn't bleed.

He had tweeted, "wow I gotta go, my girl waiting for me and I'm here reading all thise single bloody bitches tweets to me need to get my priorities right."

"yo I'm so lucky my girlfriend isn't crazy like these feminists and she never bleed lol always clean."

I was horrified. A pre-pubescent girlfriend.  

The novelist Joanne Harris had also spotted the story and was enjoying the idea of a boy dog politician being completely ignorant.  She replied to his tweet about his girlfriend. 

I imagined what would happen when he met his 'girl'.

Girl: You're late

BoyDog: yo sorry. I got caught up with some crazy bleeding feminists on twitter.

Girl:  Yes, I saw.

BoyDog: yo, it were so funny.  I'm so glad you're clean and not like that.

Girl:  Sit down.  I've got something to explain to you.

BoyDog: What?  You look so serious.  Don't tell me the communists have landed.

Girl:  Every 28 days, dear.  You know how I make an excuse not to see you and tell you about making my monthly visit to my granny?

BoyDog:  Yeah

Girl:  Well, you know my granny is dead, right?

BoyDog:  I thought that was strange

Girl:  Well, I'm not visiting granny.  It's the time of the month, I've got the rag, It's code red. I'm on the blob.

BoyDog:  Noooooo.  Not you too.  Are you a feminist?  I thought you were clean.

Girl: I'm a woman.  All women bleed.

BoyDog: But you hold onto it until you get to the toilet right?  You don't use tampons.  Please tell me that you have self control.

Girl: Look darling, I know you are a bit thick but really, no woman can hold back period blood.  Shall I draw you a picture of how it all works?  By the way, you're dumped.

Before he met her he had time to reply to those who agreed with him.  The hashtag 'I'm with Ryan' appeared, as did #vaginasarescary.  I think most were sarcastic and although sometimes sarcasm is hard to spot I'm fairly certain of this one, even if Ryan is not.

Even though I made up the above conversation I suspect that someone might have had a word, as the young man has now protected his tweets.  He'll make an excellent politician, if he can ever work out which party he is a member of.  

  

What do you know?

There's a quiz doing the rounds on Facebook of the current SATs grammar test. I got 60%; all good guesses. http://www.sats2016.co.uk/think-youd-pass-your-sats-in-2016/

Grammar is something that hasn't actively been taught in schools since comprehensive schools were introduced and so only a few linguistically interested adults will be able to do well on this test. Most of us don't know our subjective clause from our adverb but luckily are still able to tell our arse from our elbow.

 Normally these quizzes set parents against each other. Some say, "These poor f-ing kids. I only got two right. Give them back their childhood." While others say, "What? How can you be proud that you only got two right? Only a thicko would be happy with that. What are our teachers doing? All children should know this stuff. How will they cope in life if they don't?" 

This is proving to be different. Most adults finally agree on something. If you can use a preposition phrase do you really need to be able to label it as such? I remember a similar conversation between my friends after we'd watched a new sex education film to be shown to our children. A parent was very cross about the idea of her 8 year old being introduced to the word clitoris.

"Why? Why does she need to know that at eight?" she shouted at the teacher.

"It will save confusion if she ever needs to go to the doctors about a problem with it," the teacher replied matter of 

factly. 

I mentally ran through my not-so-exhaustive knowledge of clitoral disorders and decided that if I had any of them I would still probably say, "I've got a problem down there." I might even just mouth 'down there' while pointing. 

The poor teacher might not have been happy with eight year olds suddenly calling each other 'Clitorises' in her class either but teachers don't choose the content of education; that's the job of the government. Teachers who never learnt the grammar rules and labels themselves as as a child are now required to instill a message of their importance into the children they are teaching. This is going to be a tough sell. 

When I watch 'clever celebrities' on TV, such as Richard Osman or Steven Fry, I am always struck by how much trivia they seem to know. I wonder if they can define all the determiners in a sentence and then I wonder if it really matters and I start to get philosophical about the point of education in the first place. I used to tell my school-reluctant son that he had to go to school to try out lots of different things in order to find the one that he'd like to spend the rest of his life doing but I'm not sure the Government would agree with me. 

In the school where I work (not teaching grammar, you will be relieved to hear), there are six year olds who know more facts about dinosaurs, or birds, or Romans, or snakes, or flags than I could ever know. Actually, not flags because that was my six year old self's specialist subject. Some of these children will never be clever according to standardised tests because the Government isn't interested that you know that a velociraptor had thirty teeth.

Schools work really hard to teach children some of the things they think are just as important: being polite, eating with a knife and fork, playing outside without getting mud everywhere, queueing (a very important British skill learnt in Primary school), riding a bike, swimming, life saving, building an igloo and dodging snowballs (if we ever get any snow).  They do this while trying to cram the test facts into those little heads. 

This week the oldest children in our school were learning life saving skills in the hall. The music room can only be accessed through the hall, so every class had a glimpse of their future. They were all fascinated. They knew they were missing out on something, even if they weren't quite sure what. Trying to engage children to learn about the pentatonic scale and ostinato patterns was tough. 

In a quiet moment a child said, "They're doing sex in there."

"No, they're not!!! Lifesaving! They're doing lifesaving."

"Oh, that's what she told me," he said grumpily nudging the little girl next to him.

"I said sex education. I thought it was," she protested rolling her eyes at me.

"No. Lifesaving."

Loud music started: Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.

The temptation was too great not to go and look through the glass door. He bounced up and I followed him to encourage him to sit back down.

"See, I told you!"

Fifteen children were leaning over dummies, kissing them and bouncing up and down in time to the music. 

I suddenly saw the Government's point. I would have been less embarrassed if the children in the hall had been learning how to avoid a dangling participial. 

Not on a school night

In primary school staffrooms all over the country a conversation can be heard.

Teacher 1 (female):  Well we've got to fit sex in sometime before the end of term.
Teacher 2 (female):  Oh, do we have to?
Teacher 3 (male):   Yes, It'll be fine.
T1: Let's just get it over with
T2: OK.  If we have to.
T3:  It'll be great.
T1:  So that's three times this week.
T2:  Three times is a bit excessive.
T3:  No it's not!
T1:  Far too much for a married woman.
T2:  Especially in term time
T3: Where's your sense of adventure?
T1: So when shall we timetable it?
T2: Tuesday morning?
T1: That's a bit risky.
T3: Sometimes the morning's good.
T2:  Not in term time.
T3:  We could just do it when we feel like it.
T1 & T2:  NO.  We'd never feel like it.
T3:  A bit of spontaneity?
T1:  No it has to be planned.
T3:  It's just too hard

I love a bit of double entendre.