The Other Side

Well, everyone. Despite the implication of the blog silence, life has not been dull this last month or so. It has been a November packed with house moving, fireworks at Gothic castles, lovers' reunions in Paris and afternoon strolls around Wimbledon Common. Delightful, and all very blogworthy. 

However, none of this moved me seriously to blog (I mean, Horace Walpole's House after hours, prancing around on the turrets and in low lit libraries with a glass of mulled wine in hand. Yawn, frankly. I wouldn't want to bore you). What did catch my fancy last night was the scientifically monumental realisation on the bus home at 11pm that I have achieved a feat mad professors have been working at for hundreds of years: I have travelled back in time. It's true.  Quite precisely, I have travelled back to that time that may be familiar to some of us, circa 2006-2009 when life was made up of London, night buses, waitressing and temp work with the happy understanding that it all served a greater purpose (at the time, books; now, survival until the Real Job begins). 

What is fascinating about travelling back to such a time period is that you experience things that you would otherwise never have chosen to, and it's educationally enlightening in many ways. For example, I have spent the last five days marking year 7 Maths tests and KS3 Reading and Spelling tests for an education company who of course, will remain anonymous.  Whilst I have been responsible for all 60 spellings and all 60 reading questions on all 500 papers (how many questions did Emma mark in total?  Ans = ...), it was only necessary for me to mark questions 3, 17 and 18, 3, 17 and 18 over and over and over again 3,000 - 4,000 times on the Maths papers, during which time I have learnt the following things:

1. Rules and uniformity are really important to standardised testing, but really, bureaucracy is stupid. A child, who does this, for example, gets 1 mark for a correct method, even though they are a moron who can't multiply by 100:

A child who considers it beneath them, aged 11, to demonstrate to an examiner they they know how to multiply by 100 because now they are in secondary school and really, shouldn't they know that by now, will also only get one mark for a correct answer because they have only shown 'part working' and thus their method is considered incomplete.  It feels injust but I'm pretty sure you don't get marks for trying in Life so Child #2 should win out in the end. 

3. I am not the only child who struggled with Maths at school, but number-blind children seem to be much more polite about it nowadays than I ever was:

I totally get what this guy's going through:

And I feel that this child already understands how life works:

3. The District Line makes no sense. But at least they have retro signs. 

4. 2000/ 250 = 8

    8 - 6 = 2

    2 x 250 = 500 

Is the same Maths as...

    6 x 250 = 1500

    2000 - 1500 = 500

Who knew?

5. Images are not always helpful:

This took us a little while to figure out...

6. Poor spelling is hilarious when you read it out loud phonetically in a silent library in a half whisper to your entirely unsympathetic husband, but really, life must be just so confusing for some children: 

7. England is cold, but sometimes freezing early mornings are worth it:

8.  Erroneous. Abscess. Eligible. Precocious.  Allegiance. Who knew they were spelt this way?  Huh!  Not me, the English teacher. 

9. Admitting you don't know how to spell 'mischief' but acknowledging that your iPhone does is humbling. As is remarking and re-entering the data for the 120 tests you marked down for spelling this word 'wrong'. 

As well as the repetitive hysteria of marking thousands and thousands of papers outside my subject area and repressing panic when children use alternative and valid mathematical methods not included on the mark scheme, or in my realm of understanding, I have also been waitressing. This is how I roll in 2006-9.

Last night I waitressed for a lovely South Kensington home-hosted company Christmas drinks for the American expat CEO of a big company that did something with money. Throughout the evening I learnt that his children were quite lovely, if a little overexcited, I met the Filipina nanny and the German au pair and was amused that I counted, for this evening as 'The Staff' and that the mother spent her whole childhood as an expat in Manila and her American accent was not real, but the international school accent that many of us know and love, as long as it's not whining at us at 7:50am.  Miiiissss Shepppppaaaaaaarrrrrdddd?

We got chatting about Asia, obvs, and we totes had an expat affinity and then I watched the whole evening full of intelligent, monied, well-dressed, high-powered people from the other side of the bar feeling slightly surreal that only a few months ago, our enormous, maid-maintained house in Singapore was also paid for by the company, as well as my second home, the bijou apartment in Saigon. 'Oh how the mighty have fallen,' I feel obliged to say, but you know, it was really lots of fun having a sort of external view of this world, remembering my despair at the prospect of being a trailing spouse in Singapore and hysteria at having no pressing reason to get up in the morning.  

I especially enjoyed a gentle reminder that there is still a British class boundary that even the most exciting expatting will not diminish. It's easy to forget, when abroad and all jumbled up with everyone else, sort of like soldiers were in the trenches, your proper place in the natural order of things, but conversations like this help me to remember that if there's a percentile, I'm really not in the upper realms of it and probably never will be because neither my parents nor I inherited a title and I went to a school, lower case, rather than a School, one of select few, upper case:

Lady: (after amusing bants about American phrasing) Gosh, you are funny. Were you at Girton?

Me: ... What is 'Girton'?

Lady: ... Oh. 

If you don't find that amusing, then welcome to the ignorant, but striving middle classes.  I managed to continue the bants for some time after the crushing realisation that the amusing waitress really was one of the Staff thanks to the witty power of high brow innuendo and shared appreciation of the feminist cause, but the Lady was clearly saddened by the fact that we would never really be friends, not truly, and, like Mr Wickham, returned to her posh colleagues and pretended not to know me when I came back to top up her champagne. Oh the sting. 

Sigh. Anyway, next on the agenda: getting festive in France (featuring ovary-aching new additions to Frenchie's famille that I will squeeze.  Yum!) and my first day at the Big New Academy. Actually medium sized but it's important to my ego that I continue to impress and inspire my blog fans...

London! We Could Go There One Day!

Right. If you have a 'real' job in an exciting city - London, say - and you have a sibling who spends their life doing 'fun' things like prancing around dressed as a bookshelf or teaching young people about phallic imagery then I entreat you to run a 'Bring Your Sibling to Work Week' as my sister has done. Check out how awesome the real world is:

On Day 1, between Royal Mail coffee cups, dearest sister suggested I use my lunch break to explore the local surroundings. Oh. Okay. Sure. 

WOW. 

On Day 2, amongst the phone calls and operating the oldest working lift in London, sister suggested I move to the rooftop fire escape to get a better view of the soldiers in the courtyard outside who had been entertaining us all day with their drums and marching and shuffling and chinooks. 

Second from the left in the front row is looking the wrong way. Naughty. 

The roof was also good for pretending that I was Dick van Dyke in 'Mary Poppins'. 

 And for conquering my fear of heights. 

AMAZING!

On Day 3, before we even thought of running out for milk or replenishing the coffee cups, sister suggested a rave. At 6:30am. With the lights on. And no alcohol. 

It was IMMENSE. And also very sweaty. 

Strangely, despite the fact that I have genetically 80s hair and uncannily orangutan-like dance moves, I have never been to a rave and thus was very worried about not having an appropriate rave outfit but luckily, I was staying the night with my friend Chandni who, upon hearing the word 'morning rave', nodded sagely and started rummaging around in her wardrobe, pulling out items that became this most rave-worthy outfit:

YES. Never have I felt more appropriately dressed. Think early morning rave, think leggings and sparkly crop tops.

On Day 4, the weather perked up again and since I was tired after all the raving, I spent my lunch time in the absolutely gorgeous St Dunstan in the East park, which looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic film where nature has taken over civilisation, which in some ways is true because the church was bombed in WW2 but instead of rebuilding, the Parks and Gardens people created this space in 1964. 

 

It is very peaceful here so if you work in the city, I highly recommend it for a relaxing lunch time experience. 

On day 5, it was obviously Halloween and the UK seems to be taking this far more seriously than I ever remember it, which is saying something considering I lived a year of my life with an American from Salem, MA, where they take Halloween very seriously. It turns out that in the world of real people with real jobs, craft skills are as necessary as they are in teaching, and I watched on in admiration as my sister carved this wonderfully frightening creature to sit below my Halloween lilies:

The slightly sad thing in the bottom right hand corner is my attempt at a paper bag pumpkin. Just in case you were wondering. 

As if this wasn't enough Halloween excitement, we were also joined in the afternoon by an argument of wizards who collected in the Guildhall to receive their O.W.L.s (I'm so sorry for the HP reference. It hurt me to do it but it makes the blog reader-friendly). 

So. Take your sibling to work week. Awesome fun times.