School Daze (Part Three) - Shapes of Things

I often wondered whether I fully exploited the subjects I did at school. To be honest, unless you really know what you want to do, deciding your career based on subject matter at an age where raging hormones and, in my case, rebellious confusion can make you decide on the path of life for the next 50 or so years is quite daunting.

I know that I had little clue about what I wanted to do and if I could go back I would change it all. Sadly, between the ages of 11 and 18 I made my choice based on the subjects I was good at, rather than the subjects that were more of a challenge.

I thought, for a laugh, and for a bit of nostalgia and to give you an idea of the person I was and how my schooling shaped me into this grumpy old pseudo Mancunian IT geek in his early 50s, who hates his career and yearns to be a travel writer.

Let me guide you through the various subjects I had to endure and how I coped.

Art

I was useless at art.

I suffered this for two years before I could safely kick it into touch. Surely the teacher must have had a bit of a clue about my ineptitude when he asked me to draw a bowl of fruit and found himself staring in shock at an alien nightmare. Mind you, my efforts could probably have been seized by pseudo –intellectual art critics as an abstract masterpiece.

My attempts at pottery were equally appalling and resulted in clay being thrown at the walls and other kids, not because I was a rapscallion; I just couldn’t control the bloody stuff as it flew in all directions. And you should have seen the result.

Woodwork

I am rubbish when it comes to DIY and I blame my woodwork teacher. He was a man who tried to encourage me with dulcet words as I destroyed half a tree trying to turn wood into something useful. I have never been able to mould wood since and I have no intention of ever trying again. Everything I constructed either fell apart or ended up in the bin. Another subject dumped after two years of wasted effort .

French

French was compulsory for five years and I had several run-ins with a rather maniacal French teacher who had the ability to make kids cry with a mixture of stern authority and menacing threat. My problem was that I could see through his façade and actually used to laugh at his attempts to belittle me in front of the class.

Despite this, he was a very good teacher who immediately sussed out who the class villains were and made them all sit directly in front of him at the front. Nobody answered back – including me – yet I struggled to stifle guffaws when he started on a poor victim. Consequently he would pick on me – yet all I did was laugh.

“What is so funny?” he would ask, growling.

“You are,”  I said truthfully.

I would of course end up having to see him after class for a stern telling off and detention (or jug as we used to call it) – but I simply couldn’t help it.

 I was actually very good at languages and I still remember a lot of French thanks to this rather eccentric teacher. French is one of those subjects I regret not mastering; I would dearly love to be able to speak French fluently.

History

I found history totally boring and in the three years I had to suffer it, I had to endure tedious facts and, eventually, I found that it was drifting towards politics, a subject I despised even then.

My history teacher was an absent-minded old man who actually wrote a book about the history of my school, a rather grand grammar school in Walsall.

We just used to joke about him, saying that his knowledge was so deep because he was old enough to experience it personally.  These days I find myself being drawn towards history again and I sort of regret not being enthusiastic about it at school, choosing instead to draw moustaches on pictures of Henry VIII's wives.

Geography

For someone who wants to travel, this should have been a key subject for me.

It wasn’t.

I have the glorious distinction of coming bottom of my entire year in my final year of studying the subject. I was not going to continue, I figured, so I would do absolutely no work in the subject.

It worked; I simply couldn’t answer any of the questions or write any meaningful essays.

I didn’t care. To be honest, I don’t really care now because travelling for work and pleasure I am learning it all again – this time in a fun way.

Music

Here is a major regret. I really should have learned to play a guitar and/or piano and paid absolute attention to musical theory.

My music teacher was another eccentric maniac whose mannerisms and warped enthusiasm helped to fuel my rebellious nature.

Unlike the French teacher he wasn’t funny – he was just an obnoxious arsehole. And because I was also an obnoxious arsehole, we clashed in magnificent fashion.

When I gave up the trombone he was angry unlike the man who actually taught me how to play the instrument, a jazz trombonist whose skill with this brass monstrosity was amazing - he was very disappointed.

 Looking back, I feel ashamed that I had let my trombone teacher down – and maybe I could have been as good as he was had I pursued it.

I really should have chosen a guitar!

English Language

My English teacher didn’t like me.

I seemed to be able to wind him up just by being in the same room as he was – and this had nothing to do with any ill feeling on my part. During free writing lessons, I wrote weird stories about the Bermuda Triangle, space travel and monsters. He criticised them saying that my warped imagination was leading me completely astray.

Consequently I was forced to write about stuff I hated and my lack of enthusiasm must have shown through. In retrospect, perhaps I should have listened to him more and at least attempted to prove him wrong. Sadly, when my rebellious nature finally did manifest itself we drifted even further apart – which was a problem because he also taught me English Literature.

English Literature

Forcing me to read Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy was a mistake in my opinion. I hated them. I also despised poetry and my abhorrence showed itself in the essays I had to write criticising them. When I say criticising, I don’t mean pouring scorn on them; I mean giving a critical analysis of the work in question.

Sadly my true feelings often came through.

It was only when we had the opportunity to choose our own books that I somehow clawed myself back from the abyss of failure. H.G.Wells, Jules Verne and George Orwell saved me. My passion was evident, even to a teacher who regarded me with contempt and he had to acknowledge that the essays I wrote about authors I liked were actually quite good – a brave admission from the man, in my opinion, despite our differences.

Finally

There’s more to come so I will continue opening a door to the past in my next post rather than droning on about other subjects.

In the meantime, dear reader:

Did you enjoy any of the subjects I have mentioned above? 

Have you any regrets about school?

And just how cheeky or obnoxious were you to your teachers? 

An Englishman On Holiday

I am a proud Englishman and I am a proud Briton. I love my country and I love my island. I love the Welsh and Scots who share the island with me and I love the Irish who live on the neighbouring island.

However, there are times when I try my best to avoid other British people, something you may think is difficult considering the fact that there are 60 million of us crammed into an area of roughly 81,000 square miles (that’s 750 people per square mile).

It’s not the British people on the island that I worry about; it is a minority of my fellow countrymen who travel abroad.

A lot of Brits are perfectly sane people until they arrive at the airport to go abroad. Once they pass through customs and find themselves airside, a switch flips inside the brains of a few and they mutate into something that can be quite embarrassing - the British tourist.

Most people in the world let their hair down a little bit when they go on holiday (I have been known to once or twice). The only problem is that there are a few British people do so with added gusto. Of the remaining sensible British tourists, there is another bunch that are either naïve or live in a bubble of Britishness, making them behave like obnoxious arses.

For some people, common sense is tossed aside; our normal reserved nature is discarded in favour of a rampant drunken beast. Others simply forget that there is a massive difference between Britain and the rest of the world and approach other cultures in the same way as Godzilla would approach a city on a day he was feeling particularly destructive. To them, the rest of the world should be like Britain.

I have travelled to many countries and I am humbled by the differences between cultures. I embrace them and I respect them. I try to become part of them. If I travel to France, I try to speak French; if I travel to a European country where I do not speak their language, I use a phrase book to get my message across. I have travelled to many diverse countries, including many European countries, Thailand, Russia, Australia, South Africa, Canada, United States and China. In each country I have welcomed our cultural differences and tried my best to be an ambassador for my country.

Sadly, a few of my fellow countrymen are not willing to try to blend in and, worse, others contribute to the ever increasing bad reputation of “Brits abroad”.

The worst offenders I have seen have typically been in Europe. Great Britain is part of Europe, whether we like it or not (personally I love it) and in my humble opinion we should be thankful that we can pop over the sea and find ourselves in fabulous countries like France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway. Travel a little further and we can enjoy Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and many others. They are quite literally on our doorstep.

So why do we have such a problem? Let me give you one or two examples of what I’ve seen and perhaps all will become clear.

I travelled with a group of friends to Palma on the beautiful island of Majorca, in order to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday. We had a few beers, we had a few meals and we visited some of the lovely places in and around the capital city. One day, we opted to go to Magaluf, mainly out of morbid curiosity. For those who have never heard of Magaluf, it is a seaside resort in Majorca that basically becomes little Britain during the summer months. Throughout that period, fleets of charter flights full of young nutters descend on this small resort with one aim: to drink as much alcohol as they can for as long as they can and cop off with as many members of the opposite sex as they can.. Young men and women mutate into the worst kind of party animals and turn the place into a throbbing drunken cesspit of debauchery. Those who avoid the place call it Shagaluf.

Our party took a couple of cabs to Magaluf after breakfast at the hotel and as we approached I was horrified to see a fish and chip shop with the bold claim “Fish imported from Britain”. I was stunned and remarked on this to one of my friends. The cab driver, with a look of sadness on his face, said “Magaluf is an English colony in Majorca. It is horrible.”

I was disturbed by this. We arrived there and found the place almost deserted, which amazed me. It was 11 o’clock and there were only a few people around. “Where is everybody?” I asked. And then it became clear; if you had been up all night partying then you would be in bed. Fair enough, I thought. You can lie in on holiday. But then I noticed the number of clubs and bars; and they weren’t Spanish bars – they were pubs – English and Irish pubs.

And even worse there were pubs boasting that people could watch their favourite soap operas there, beamed in on satellite dishes especially for those who have no desire to become part of a foreign culture, preferring instead to create a pocket of Britain.

“Don’t miss Eastenders or Coronation Street”, it claimed and there were people there watching TV. There was another bar that beamed episodes of “Only Fools And Horses” on an endless loop. People were actually sitting in there laughing at a British comedy show in a bar on a Spanish island.

At lunchtime, we decided to have a beer; we searched around the place for an authentic Spanish bar; we failed and opted to pop into a pub. I marched up to the bar and was greeted by a dark haired tanned barmaid, who I assumed was Spanish. The beers in front of me were all British. I scanned the taps and discovered a Spanish one.

“Cinco cervezas y una coke, por favour” I said in very bad Spanish.

“Which beer do you want?” came the reply is a Cockney accent. I pointed to the Spanish beer, disappointed that I hadn’t had the chance to converse with a Spaniard. The pub was owned and run by British people.

After beer and food we wandered around Magaluf and I saw very few Spaniards. All we saw were British people; if it wasn’t for the sun I would have sworn that we were in Brighton or Margate. I saw cafes and restaurants serving English food; fish and chips were everywhere and people were sitting in pubs watching their favourite TV programmes beamed in from Britain.

The plan had been to spend the day in Magaluf and visit a couple of bars in the evening. By 5 o’clock the party animals had risen and were preparing for another night out. We had had enough so we caught cabs back to Palma to seek out Spanish bars and restaurants ans immerse ourselves in Spanish culture once more.

As we travelled back I thought to myself; if you are going to come to Spain why the hell would you eat fish and chips? Can’t you live without crap TV for a week? What is the point of coming to Spain and demanding all the comforts of home? Why bother travelling all the way to Majorca just to sit in an English pub all day watching endless repeats of a British comedy show? You could stay at home and do that and it would cost you absolutely nothing.

On another occasion, I was working in Amsterdam with a Belgian colleague called Eric. We had selected a traditional Dutch restaurant for our evening meal and sat down prepared to enjoy some Dutch cuisine. As I read the menu and chatted with my Belgian friend, I heard a loud English voice from the other side of the restaurant and cringed.

“Excuse me! EXCUSE ME! Do you have any Worcester Sauce?”

My Belgian friend stared at me in shock. I shook my head in shame. The loudmouth hadn’t finished.

The restaurant was packed and we had been lucky to get a seat. Consequently the waitresses were very busy and couldn’t attend people as quickly as they wanted. However, this vociferous English goon continued.

“I SAID EXCUSE ME!!! CAN I HAVE SOME WORCESTER SAUCE?????”

I looked over and saw a middle aged man, now standing up, and waving his hands in the air like a demented windmill.

“He’s English isn’t he? Are all English people like him?” remarked Eric.

I watched the reaction of the other diners; some laughed at him; others shook their head in disgust; most were shocked and appalled.

Mr Loudmouth hadn’t finished. Clearly he thought he was being ignored so he walked over to the nearest waitress and, tapping her on the shoulder, butted in as she was taking an order.

“Do you have any Worcester Sauce?” he asked rudely, ignoring the couple at the table, his voice still annoyingly loud.

I was totally embarrassed; I was sorely tempted to stand up and say:

“Sit down and have some patience you obnoxious arsehole. You’re giving British tourists a bad name.”

I resisted, mainly because it would have made me look bad and possibly made him worse.

“I’m really sorry,” I said to Eric. “We’re not all like that!”

The waitress, clearly eager to get rid of this muppet, walked over to the kitchen area and rattled a few bottles looking for Worcester Sauce. She found one and handed it to him. Mr Loudmouth must have noticed that he now had a captive audience. Instead of slinking back to his table in shame he held up the bottle of Worcester Sauce in triumph.

“Lea and Perrin’s", he shouted. “The pride of England – guaranteed to add a touch of class to any meal.”

What an utter arse! He failed to realise that most Dutch people speak perfect English and that he had insulted their cuisine by insisting that it required an English sauce to make it worthy to eat. The same waitress returned to her customers and said something in Dutch; the people laughed and stared at the goon.

She then wondered over to our table. Mr Loudmouth had made me so ashamed that I was barely able to place my order for fear of being associated with the obnoxious idiot. I spoke very quietly and then added: “We’re not all like that you know!”

Eric laughed and the waitress smiled kindly.

My final example was again in Spain, this time on a trip to Madrid with Mrs PM. We were sitting at a restaurant and a man walked up and said to the waiter: “Do you sell fags?”

Now then, dear American readers, “fag” is English slang for cigarettes (I realise that it means something completely different in the States), so please don’t imagine that I am going to steer the post in a bizarre direction.

The waiter looked puzzled and said “Que?”

“DO YOU SELL FAGS?” he shouted. “YOU KNOW FAGS! DO YOU KNOW WHAT A FAG IS?”

I stared at Mrs PM and she began to giggle. I was mortified.

“CAN I HAVE SOME FAGS?” his voice was getting louder as if the volume of his voice would somehow make the Spanish waiter somehow, miraculously, be able to speak English.

“FAGS!!!!!” he yelled, miming the act of smoking.

In the end, the waiter asked somebody who spoke English and the man walked away with a packet of cigarettes, muttering something about “bloody foreigners”.

As I said earlier, I travel to foreign places and embrace the culture; I am usually armed with a phrase book; I sample the local cuisine; I imbibe the local beer and wine; I visit places of interest and respect my foreign friends.

It’s a crying shame that a few British people adopt a superior attitude and simply refuse to mingle with interesting foreign cultures. Worse are the young thugs who go on holiday to get drunk and create mayhem.

One of my favourite bands, Thunder, wrote a song inspired by this last group called An Englishman On Holiday. I’ll leave you with the lyrics to that song, which, as funny as the lyrics are, sadly, do ring true.

Laying down in this Spanish bar; that last slammer hit me like a car
I've got the 6 a.m. Balearic blues, can't even focus on my own tattoos
I had a fight with this German guy, I saw him give my little girl the eye
While he was trying hard to be so cool, I hit him with a stool
Oh yes, alright, I'll be going all night
Gonna drink 'til they take me away, I'm an Englishman on holiday
Every year I get to do the same, I meet the boys and get on the plane
We like to sing and shout out "here we go"
'Cos they're the only words that we all know
We've got the loudest shirts you've ever seen
We're gonna take the beaches like a team
We've got so much duty free to drink, enough to float a ship
Oh yeah alright, I'll be going all night
So light the paper, get out of the way, I'm an Englishman on holiday
We never look for trouble at the start, but it always comes our way
We've got our pride and we just can't walk away
This morning I woke up inside a cell
They dragged me screaming out of my hotel
I don't remember what it was I did
But I've got this drummer banging in my head
I've got to get out 'fore I miss the plane, next summer I'll be back again
I'll be fighting for the Union Jack, if they let me back
Oh yes, alright, I'll be going all night
Gonna drink 'til they take me away,
I'm an Englishman on holiday...

American English

As a child, I wondered why Americans couldn’t spell. I thought to myself “Surely Americans should be able to spell basic words – after all, don’t they have spelling competitions?”

I couldn’t understand why Americans couldn’t spell words like colour (color), favourite (favorite), honour (honor), analyse (analyze), analogue (analog), encyclopaedia (encyclopedia), manoeuvre (maneuvre), cheque (check), defence (defense), through (thru) and plough (plow).

Eventually somebody pointed out to me that Americans spell some of their words differently.

“No!” I said with more than a hint of incredulity.

And then somebody told me that Americans use different words for everyday objects.

“NO!!!” I said.

I was young and naïve – and stupid!

The good news is that over the years we have been exposed to America via music, films etc. and now most British people are fully aware of the subtle differences between our tongues.

I’ve travelled to America several times and had to smile at some of the differences, even though I’ve understood what was meant. Occasionally I have said something to an American who has stared at me as if I have just crawled out of a primeval soup, simply because I have used British words rather than their American equivalents.

For example, I was in a café (diner) in New York and, having finished my meal, I called the waitress over and said

“Can I have the bill please?”

She stared at me for a second and said “The what?”

Thankfully I recalled the correct term.

“Can I have the check, please?”

I have been caught off guard myself though.

For example, I was walking around the French Quarter in New Orleans, enjoying the ambience of the place when a gentleman walked up to me and said

“I like your sneakers.”

“My what?” I said.

It was only when he pointed at my feet that I realised he meant trainers.

Here are some other examples:

British	American
Aubergine	Eggplant
Autumn	Fall
Bloke	Guy
Bonnet (car)	Hood
Car Park	Parking Lot
Caravan	Trailer
Cashier	Teller
Chemist	Drug Store
Courgette	Zucchini
CV (curriculum vitae)	Resume
Diversion	Detour
Exhaust Pipe	Tail Pipe
Estate Agent	Realtor
Fairy Cake	Cup Cake
Film	Movie
Headmaster	Principal
Holiday	Vacation
Ice Lolly	Popsicle
I’m tired	I’m beat
Lorry	Truck
Maths	Math
Motorway	Freeway
Mucking Around	Goofing Off
Nappy	Diaper
Off-License	Liquor Store
Pavement	Sidewalk
Petrol	Gas
Postman	Mailman
Post Code	Zip Code
Rubber	Eraser
Rubbish	Garbage
Semi-Detached House	Duplex
Solicitor	Lawyer
Sweets	Candy
Tap	Faucet
Take Away	Take Out
Toilet	Restroom
Treacle	Molasses
Wardrobe	Closet

In some cases, the words used could lead to utter confusion. For example in America the equivalent of the British First Floor is the Ground Floor so the British First Floor is the American Second Floor. This has caused trauma in hotels where I've found myself trying to get into the wrong room.

Here are some more examples:

A British scone is an American biscuit and a British biscuit is an American cookie.

British crisps are American chips and British chips are American fries.

British jam is American jelly and British jelly is American jell-o

American soccer is British football and American football is a poor version of British rugby. Only kidding - my problem is I just don't understand American Football.

Some American words annoy me a little because to me they just don't sound right. Take for example math. As far as I am concerned, it really should be maths because maths is short for mathematics. Call me pedantic if you like but whenever I hear it on an American TV show, I find myself yelling "MATHS! IT'S MATHS!!!!!" at the screen.

Another one is aluminum. In Britain, the element is called aluminium. "IT'S ALUMINIUM, NOT BLOODY ALUMINUM!" I scream. My TV does bear the brunt of my rants sometimes. And the final one is already. Now this word of course is used by British people but Americans use it in a really bizarre and irritating way. For example - "Tidy your room already" and "Shut up already". What does that mean?

Apart from that, I can cope with the other variations - in fact I prefer some American words, like goofing off and garbage.

There is one final word, commonly used in British and American English that could lead to major confusion and possibly violence. Next time I see a woman in America who happens to own a small but magnificent horse-like beast that brays I shall choose my words very carefully if I want to complement her on having such a splendid creature. I wouldn't want to have my butt kicked.