Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job

[SteveHopwood]

Some happy stuff from school today.

There were three girls thronged around the door to the room where guitar teacher Paul plies his trade. There frequently are kids thronged around the door, such is his popularity. I looked over their heads and remarked, "I see you have attracted the attention of troublemakers. Let me know if you have run out of detention forms." "Will do" answered Paul and I wandered off to teach.

I needed to photocopy a few minutes later so I wandered back up the corridor and The Throng was still there. I looked over their heads again and said, "I see The Troublemakers are still here. Let's give them a detention."

"Good idea," replied Paul, "go and get the forms."

"You wouldn't do that to us" announced one of the girls confidently, addressing herself to Paul. Looking at me, Paul intoned, "No I wouldn't, but he would."

The three of them looked at me slightly uncertainly for a few seconds - they do not know me after all. Finally the confident one's face cleared and she announced cheerfully, "No he wouldn't." I grinned at them, gave a double thumbs up and left for the photocopier.

---

Amy's personality is starting to emerge as she begins to accept that I really do like her. She and Charlie are in the same Y9 GCSE music group. Amy and I had just settled down in room 149 when one of the staff appeared asking if she could use the room for a large group ideally suited to it.

Amy and I upped and left for room 146 just up the corridor, to find the piano occupied by Charlie.

"Goodby Charlie" announced Amy uncerimoniously. "And you are late for Chemistry, so you will get a detention." Came an imperious sounding, "Go away."

Wow. Glad she doesn't talk to me like that. I would go away immediately. I asked her if detention was the inevitable sanction for being late for classes. Amy explained that there is a 5 minute leeway but that the Chemistry teacher is one of the school killer teachers and that the kids are lucky to get away with a leeway of 2.

Our lesson proceeded. She giggled every time instead of looking alarmed when I glared at her in astonishment at a lunatic mistake. She has learned also that she really is allowed to take some time to work stuff out and has lost a lot of the stress that previously came with her piano lessons. Phew.

Charlie came for his lesson at the end of Amy's. "Did you get a detention for being late?" I asked him. "Nope."

"Did she shout at you?" asked Amy. "Nope. She likes me" came the reply. Amy announced plaintively, "She always shouts at me. She doesn't like me."

How was I supposed to resist? I chimed in with, "Of course she doesn't Amy. Nobody likes you. I don't like you." She was all packed up and ready to go, so she glanced dismissively at me and returned, "Yes you do. See you later" and left.

It was one of those days where I was filling gaps in my timetable with extra lessons, so Amy and Charlie returned later, in the same order. I was back in 149 and these extra lessons were taking place during their GCSE music class in 146. Come the end of Amy's lesson there was no sign of Charlie so I said to her, "Go back to your music lesson and send Charlie down."

Amy replied, "OK. He has probably gone to sleep so I will tell him gently."

"What will you do if he is asleep and does not respond to your gentle instruction?"

<evil grin> "Pinch him very hard and tell him again."

Charlie was not bleeding when he appeared a couple of minutes later, so he must have been awake.

----

No idea whether Gracie was allowed to go to Guides or not - she is ill and so was absent from school today. I will ask next week instead.

[SteveHopwood]

G came for his piano lesson tonight. He proudly announced that he is going with a school party to see La Boheme in London, tomorrow.

Further enquiry elicited that he had no idea what La Boheme is. He thought that it was, "A piece of music like a Brandenburg Concerto." At least he know what a BC is - not something that your average UK 14 year old will do.

So I explained what an opera is and brought up a synopsis of the plot via Google that he read whilst waiting for dad to pick him up. Let us hope he finds it inspiring and not overwhelming. Three hours or so of music on a scale he has never experienced, in a language he will find unintelligible, could go either way.

HUGE kudos to his school for giving him and his fellow students the opportunity to find out. It does not happen enough in our maths-science, exam-obsessed disaster of an "education system" in the UK these days.

We shall see how it goes with this priceless young man. Fingers crossed that it is an inspiring event.

[SteveHopwood]

Gracie came for her lesson this afternoon. She missed last Thursday through being ill and so was utterly determined to do well this week. She explained, "I practised for so long on Sunday that the keyboard blew up."

I laughed because I assumed she was exaggerating, but then she explained that the thing had overheated and blown the fuse. Mum is trying to source a replacement power cable.

She played like a drain. This is a common problem. Most of the kids have some sort of mini-keyboard at home. The keys are smaller than they are on a piano. The instruments in school are full sized electric pianos with synthesised piano tone, key weighting and the full complement of pedals. This is a tad on the different side to the total rubbish they are playing at home, so the difference must be startling.

Damn. I forgot to ask her if she made it to Guides two Thursdays ago. It is half-term next week, so I will try to remember after that.

------

A clearly devastated Amy pitched up 10 minutes late. She is prone to panic attacks and was clearly well into one, so I sat her down and talked quietly to her. Amy has a Ukulele that she likes to bring into school. <subsequent edit - keep on reading...According to her,> she had set it down beside her whilst sat in the lecture theatre. Tutor groups were being dismissed at the end of the session and Amy's was one of the last to be sent off. Ukulele had gone. Some little scrote had picked it up on his way past and probably dumped it somewhere, as a cruel 'joke'.

I could not give a single stuff about this pointless little space-waste of a so-called, "instrument" but Amy loves it and I give monumental amounts of stuffs about her. We searched the most likely dumping places without success, so I took her along to the Head of Humanities and explained the situation.

Most of the school is covered by cctv, so HoH is going to review the relevant footage, locate the scrote and find out what happened to the instrument. We were at least able to send Amy home knowing that the school would do its best to locate the damn thing. I am sure it will turn up.

-----

Megan turned up before all this. We passed in the doorway as I wandered up the corridor to see if the music teacher was available for a conflab. The room was in its usual hotter-than-hell state when I arrived, so I had opened the window closest to the piano and the desk that Megan likes to occupy.

She had closed the window by the time I returned. I growled, "Did I give you permission to close the window?"

Megan gave me a look that would have softened the attitude of a tiger with lunch on its mind and asked, "Is it OK if I close the window."

I can sometimes be determined when attempting a wind-up but not in the face of that expression. I surrendered instantly. "You never need ask really sweetheart. There is no power on this earth that could make me let you get cold."

"I know." Awwwwwwwe.

[SteveHopwood]

I did not reveal the full extent of the chaos that Amy unleashed upon the school yesterday, following the 'theft' of her blasted Ukulele. Several of us turned the school upside down. Ok, so we were stopping short of strapping children down and applying the electrodes to extract a confession, but only because we could not find straps and electrodes, or any half-way decent suspects.

In defence of all of us, it isn't just me who adores Amy. This is true of any adult who comes into contact with her. She is that sort of child. We just wanted to relieve her misery. We were not thinking clearly; it was late in the day and we wanted to find the damn thing. Not a single one of us thought, "This is a standard issue teen nutcase, so let's check the classrooms she has been in today."

Instead we sent her home at the end of the day with HoH promising to review the cctv footage of the lecture hall first thing in the morning. No doubt poor Amy had a difficult explanation to make to her mum, followed by a largely sleepless night. Amy loves her precious Ukulele. I have come to thoroughly dislike it.

HoH arrived at school this morning in a clearer frame of mind. Overnight she had thought, "OK, so we are dealing with a standard issue teen nutter here, so what if she left the damn thing elsewhere and had forgotten." She sent out a staff-wide email asking if any of them had seen this blasted harbinger of woe and catastrophe.

To be greeted a few minutes later with the news that Amy had in fact left the damn thing in the Maths room. Maths teacher had stored it safely for passing on to Teen Nutter today. This blasted child had not even taken it to the lecture theatre.

HoH emailed me early today to say that teen nutter and blasted Ukulele had been reunited.

Looking on the brighter side of this fiasco, I have learned to spell Ukulele. My early efforts had the spell checker giggling at me.

Plus, I will be able to tease Amy without mercy for weeks about this episode. Plus plus, this particular teen nutter has probably learned a valuable lesson.

[SteveHopwood]

The attachment is one that Thomas sent to me yesterday, so not actually anything to do with me or the kids I teach.

Nothing I can do will persuade this board to allow me to include it as an easy to click link, so download and store it somewhere that you can run it. You will love it.

I think that all piano lessons should follow this path. Not entirely sure that Dommy, Amy, Alice, Nikki and co would agree.

[SteveHopwood]

Gracie was one of the kids at school this afternoon. Remember that she had blown up her keyboard?

Gracie explained that mum had not been able to replace the fuse. "I have tried to practise on the table, but it is not the same." I too have often practised on a table, making the requisite finger movements and can confirm that it is not the same.

"Never mind Gracie. There will be a power pack available."

"Mum cannot find one."

I had a strange inkling of what was to come.

"How old is your keyboard, sweetheart?" I asked gently.

"My granny gave it to me. She had it at university. It was in her attic for about 30 years." Work out some dates for yourselves, folks. "Keyboards" were a joke back then.

What I thought was, "Well of course she cannot find a fucking power pack for the damn thing. She would be lucky to be able to Google the make after all this time. Tell her to stop being so damn stupid and buy a replacement keyboard. She is paying for piano lessons, after all."

What I said was, "She is not going to find a power pack. You need to invest in a new keyboard."

"We would buy a piano, but there is nowhere in the house for it to go."

This is not as daft as it sounds. Not everyone lives in a house big enough to house the sort of 6' grand that mine does. Some people live in very small houses - especially after a parental breakdown and this is the case here.

"Tell your mum to buy a bigger house."

"Yes sir."

Then I remembered The Detention, so I asked if she made it to Guides that night.

Came the reply, "Yes. Not only did I go to guides but I got out of my detention. Grandad doesn't like my maths teacher - actually he doesn't like any maths teacher - so he showed me how to take a screen shot of the lack of homework information on the site, then took it with me into school." Sounds as though Grandad was as good at maths as I was.

Way to go, grandad.

So all is well that ends well.

[SteveHopwood]

Poor G had a hard time this afternoon. Aged 15, he is one of those disorganised teens who leaves everything until the last moment and still expects it to be ok.

"We need to play the ensemble on Monday" he announced. I knew what he meant. It is the slow movement from a Mozart piano duet that we are preparing for about this time next year - or were preparing until an interruption a few weeks ago and that we have not touched since. I decided to stick the boot in.

"What ensemble, Garner?"

"The duet," he replied confidently.

"You mean the duet that we started a couple of months ago, worked at for a fortnight and then left so that you could prepare a solo for a concert in school? A concert that you had undoubtedly known about for months yet only decided to mention a fortnight in advance? AGAIN.

I love it when kids start to sense the oncoming storm. His reply of, "Yes" was distinctly lacking in confidence.

"And which you could not play at the time we left it?"

"Ummm".

"Your teachers have been banging on about this for weeks - yet you choose to reveal it to me three days before."

G's reply got him into really hot water as it was just plain insulting. "They only told us about it today."

I roared, "No they didn't you cretin. They have been telling you about it for weeks. It is your fault that you took not a blind bit of notice. Stop insulting me. I am not a total idiot." <Ok so I am, but that is between you and I>

"Sorry".

I was not in the mood for mercy. "Listen, dimwit, there are two reasons why teachers put on this sort of event. The first is to attempt to reassure themselves that they will not have a class of dummies still asking what an ensemble is this time next year, about a month before the final deadline for submission of recordings. The second is to try to scare clowns like you into the realisation that you are actually required to present work of an appropriate standard and accept that any-old-rubbish will not do."

I continued, "And what, in your wildest dreams, makes you think you can give me three days notice of coming into your school to make a recording?" <He can of course, but best that he does not know that >

G is a boy for whom any old rubbish will indeed do - and proved it yet again with his 'performance' of the piece he was supposed to have prepared in the two weeks since his last lesson - I had to miss last week. Suffice to say that it took him six and a half minutes to stumble weakly through a Beethoven Bagatelle that lasts two and a half.

I wiped the floor with the poor boy. No roaring this time; just a relentless recitation of his weaknesses. It was cruel.I didn't enjoy it; I was relentless; I was Making A Point.

I happen to know that one of G's music teachers in school is a brilliant accompanist and wonderful man who adores the kids he teaches. I spent the rest of the lesson helping G revisit the duet and told him to explain to his teacher in school that three days is insufficient notice for me and ask him to play it. It will not be good, but lets hope this child learns from the experience.

Either that or I need to find a carpet cleaner that removes blood stains.

[SteveHopwood]

Another wonderful afternoon in school. Here are the highlights.

Megan was firmly ensconced at the computer when I arrived, so I fried as usual because I could not open the window.

Gracie arrived for an extra lesson - we have another on Thursday. We were working away when there was a loud sneeze from Megan.

"Bless you, " I said - it is something we say here in the UK.

"Thank you."

Another loud sneeze - mine come in twos and threes as well.

"Bless you, " I said.

"Thank you."

After a couple more minutes I became aware of poor Megan snuffling away, so I asked her, "Darling, I carry clean tissues in my case for just this sort of situation. You are clearly highly uncomfortable, so would you like some of them?"

Megan gave me her Tiger-taming look and replied, "Yes please."

A little later, Megan snapped the notebook into which she was writing with a self-satisfied sigh of pleasure.

"Sounds like you have just achieved something sweetheart."

"Yes," came the reply, "that is something I have been wanting to do all day."

Gracie was loving all this.

"Wonderful, " I replied. "We love having our Megans' all happy and content."

Another Tiger-taming look. I leaned behind Gracie's back and muttered, "Unlike Gracies'. They can be as miserable as we can make them."

"Yes. Definitely."

I turned back to Gracie to be greeted with the sort of withering look that would have made the Tiger give itself a stern talking to and resolving to do better in the terrifying human children stakes in the future.

Gracie had explained before the start of all this, that she still had no working keyboard at home and that mum was looking into bringing in an 'expert' to see if it could be fixed.

Every character in what you are about to read should be taken as a mental expletive: "£$%^&*()_"

"Tell your mum from me that she is wasting her money."

"I will. Not sure she will listen."

I can understand the problem - cash. There were years when I could not even have funded SHF, so I know what it is to be short of it. All I can do is the best I can for a child presented to me so I give her the best lesson I can.

Nevertheless, I Hatched A Plan. "Tell you what darling. Run a bath. 'Accidentally' drop your keyboard into it. There is no such thingy as a piece of 1970's electronics that would have survived immersion in water. Make sure it is not connected to the plug when you do so, or you might feel some pain, followed by feeling nothing more for ever."

Yep. Probably best not to suggest how a cute 12 year old can electrocute herself. Happily, bathrooms and plug sockets tend to be located far apart these days.

Charlie wandered in towards the end of the lesson. I think we are going to hear a lot about him in the coming couple of years. 14 year old GCSE music student; brilliant smile; great sense of humour; talented but wayward - thinks smashing up and down the piano in great fistfulls of unmusical and meaningless chords will gain him good marks; takes abuse really well.

Charlie settled in to a seat opposite the direction that the rest of us were facing.

Megan had been preparing to tuck into her lunchtime sandwich - known colloquially in the UK as a, "Butty".

She announced loudly, "Someone has fingered my butty." She held up a piece of tinfoil containing said butty, with a huge finger mark at one end.

I looked at the offending digit impression, then at Charlie and then back to Megan. I pointed to Charlie and said, "You know what darling, HE looks like a typical finger stabber."

Megan looked at him and replied, "Yes, he does."

I glared at Charlie and demanded, "How could you be so cruel as to finger Megan's butty?"

He smiled that smile back at me.

"You have spoiled it" I snarled.

He smiled that smile back at me.

Megan announced, "I am still going to eat it" and took a huge bite.

I looked at Charlie and said, "You know what Charlie? I am guessing that Megan fingered her butty herself just to try to get you arrested." Megan smiled sweetly at me and continued with her lunch.

I do get some teaching done folks, I promise.

It was time for Charlie's lesson so I said to Gracie, "OK darling. I have had enough of you, so go away and I will dread seeing you again on Thursday."

She gave me her Tiger-quelling look she gave me earlier and marched off chuckling. She enjoyed herself today. So did I; there is no pleasure in this world that matches having a group of happy kids together.

[SteveHopwood]

Some lovely stuff happened in school today. Gracie's lesson a couple of days ago was an extra; today was her timetabled lesson. Megan was ensconced as usual.

Gracie made the same gormless mistake for about the fifth time so I growled, "Do that again and I will stab you with the sharp end of my pencil." Actually, it was very blunt but hey ho.

She avoided the mistake, so I snarled, "Avoided agony. Good plan."

I carried on, "Actually sweetheart, I could stab you as much as I wanted. Your thick blazer would protect you."

Came the response, "My blazer is not all that thick."

"So it might in reality be quite bright. After all, it stands to reason that a bright child would be wearing a bright blazer."

"True."

Gracie already knew that there was something coming. Megan has learned this also, and I could see she was ready.

My jacket was hung across the back of a chair. I continued, "I wonder if my jacket is equally bright?" "Jacket," I demanded, "how bright are you?"

I left a few seconds of silence and then said, "Well, we still have no idea how clever my jacket is. We do know that it is rude."

The girls' enjoyed my lunacy.

I wrote earlier that I might have difficulty winning with Amy. I was wrong. She is emerging from her shell magnificently.

She pitched up today for the first of her two lessons holding 5 pages of photocopied trash and asked, "Can you help me learn this for my ansebly."

Anyone who has ever had any dealings with children knows how hard we work to understand their mis-pronunciations in such a way that the do not feel like an idiot. "Ansembly" defeated me immediately.

"Not sure darling. It looks like time-wasting rubbish to me. When is your ansembly?"

"Not sure, but in a few weeks."

"What is involved?"

"My friend is going to make up some guitar chords and I am going to sing the lyrics."

The penny dropped with a clang that you probably heard however far away you live from Misterton. It is for the same ensemble thingy that Charlie enlisted my help for.

For those of you for whom English is not a great language to understand, "ensemble" is pronounced, "on som bull".

I corrected her pronunciation of 'ensemble'.

We worked on the damn thing. Come the end, I said I would ensure that the pages were in order by looking at the bar numbers. This is not always an easy thingy to do but I did the first three pages. It took time.

After a while, Amy giggled, pointed to a number at the bottom of the page and announced, "That is the page number. It is easy to get them in order."

I said, "Amy, you missed the chance of a huge wind-up there. You should have watched me struggle through to the end and then announced the page numbers at the bottom. Do better next time."

Wicked grin followed by, "I will."

"How do you pronounce, 'ensemble' ?"

Fleeing rapidly towards the door, "Ansembly."

It seems I did not really have to worry about this glorious child. Megan was just a wreck at this point.

[SteveHopwood]

One from today that I forgot.

I was really, really rude to Charlie. He took it in his usual great humour.

I said, "Charlie, you take abuse sooooooo well."

He smiled that smile and said, "Yes. I am used to it. You just wait until I start to dish it out."

I cannot wait.