stevehopwoodforex.com • Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job

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SteveHopwood [ Thu Nov 05, 2020 8:54 pm ]

Post subject:

Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job

One of my noobs at school is Bailey, a Y7. One way and another, today was only her second lesson. This bloody virus causes chaos everywhere.

I had finished with Charlie/Sam and was photocopying when Bailey approached. "Ahhhh," I intoned, "Fresh meat."

B gave me that level look reserved by small children for adults clearly in the final stages of dementia and replied, "Try to eat me and I will run away and get my dad to shout at you."

"Fair enough. Send me one of your fellow pupils instead."

"Can't. They would not be allowed outside of our year bubble." Damn. Foiled again.

Most kids, at some stage, will try to play the piano with their legs crossed. B went one better and had her right foot resting on her left thigh. I pointed to this and said, "If I ever see you trying to play the piano like that again, I will rip your arm from its shoulder and beat you senseless with the soggy end."

She pulled a face, said, "Yuk" and settled in for the next bit of the performance.

I was explaining the need for a good posture and relaxed fingers when playing. I played her the gentle intro to a song I am accompanying, then demonstrated what happens to the tone when the body and fingers go into a state of tension. It is a stark difference and one I do not need to pretend.

Later on, B's left foot found its way to her right thigh. "Which arm do you want to lose, angel?" I asked. Followed a few seconds of confusion, then her face cleared and foot was planted firmly back on the floor accompanied by, "Oops. Sorry."

Later on I was explaining why we learn to read the notation rather than write the letter names of all the notes in the score. The gentle into I mentioned earlier was, "On My Own" from the musical Les Miserables. Absolutely nothing to play but thick and black and terrifying looking when a child is just starting out and a 'long' piece has about 30 notes in it. The point I wanted to make was the length of time it would have taken to notate all of the score; easier in the long run to learn to read the code.

A point that was eventually well made but there was a bit of a diversion first. I showed B the score.

"Bloody 'ell" leaped from her lips.

Followed instantly by the realisation of what she had just said. Hand went instantly to mouth and the look of terror in her eyes was for real this time.

I did not torture her even for a second. I said with all the kindness in my voice that I could muster, "Never mind poppet. Stuff just comes out of our mouths from time to time. Gob utters before brain can intervene and stop it. I know the feeling. My brain only occasionally communicates with my gob and nearly always too late." Huge relief from Bailey.

"Mind, "I said, "something for you to think about." I paused briefly and then continued, "Picture in your mind, your scariest teacher." Every school has at least one; the sort of teacher that even Stalin would not have crossed.

"Is it a he or a her?" I asked. "A her," came the reply. Strange, but it is always a her.

I continued, "Imagine coming out in front of her with what you just came out with in front of me."

B looked a little pale. "Best not to?" I asked. "Definitely," she agreed with alacrity.

I love it when child and I are in total agreement.

I am not sure how much longer the school will remain open. I was chatting to one of the clerical staff earlier whilst waiting for the photocopier to become clear and she said that the town is a hotbed of the disease. It is rampant through the town. All I can do is hope for the best.

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Author:	SteveHopwood [ Mon Oct 12, 2020 8:03 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
A bit of an abortion at school today, with an entire year group sent home because of this fucking virus and others missing because of an exam. Nobody thought to tell me. Monday pm I am donating to the school because I like being there, but not when I sit around in the devastating heat twiddling my thumbs. There is an SHF/style email going around to all staff concerned in the morning with my list of grievances. Without the usual swearing. The afternoon was not a total waste of time. One of the singing kiddies that Miss wants me to rehearse with turned up - last thing in the afternoon. The ridiculously shy child was hopeless. Mind, I know how she felt from years gone by and was gentle to a silly degree. I was as gentle as I could possibly be, She is a child, after all. Even so, it took me 15 minutes to drag anything out of her. I had to sing along with her to make anything happen. Any child that hears me sing will need therapy for the rest of her life. Poor Olivia. We were finally starting to get somewhere when Miss bounced into the room. The combo of a child finally accepting that I am not a monster and the manic enthusiasm of Miss broke through her shyness. We managed a decent rehearsal. Long after the school afternoon had ended. That I had donated free of charge and mostly spent sat around twiddling my thumbs. OK, so not entirely wasted. I practised the requisite accompaniment for a few minutes. Not a huge challenge given the concertos by Rachmaninov and Brahms that I used to perform, but practise is never wasted. Especially at my age. Persuading parent of the children to buy copies of the books I am using has proven to be fruitless. The sheet music I use has become covered over the years, with stuff I really want the kids to work out for themselves when I photocopy the requisite pages. I spent a happy few minutes rubbing out said stuff. G introduced me to a really good eraser a few months ago and Amazon sent me one. So, not entirely a wasted afternoon. Mostly though. Hey ho.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:42 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
A lovely story from yesterday that I forgot to tell you. I possibly have the worst singing voice in the world. I threaten my pupils with it i.e. "Get it right child, or I will sing to you." Poor victims tremble with fear and get it right. I am a harsh man. Miss has me rehearsing with some Y11 singers in preparation for making early GCSE performance recordings in case we go tits up again here in the UK. Excellent chance of this happening. Olivier pitched up yesterday, badly prepared to sing, "On My Own" from Les Miserables. The intro to this song is syncopated and so hard to judge the singers' entrance if said singer has not listened to it on YouTube. Olivier had not. Really? Mind, there are advantages to having a child not learning something off Youtube. Guess what happened when some poor sap turns up with everything learned wrong? Yep; they learned it off wrongly by listening to some moron on YouTube. She was clueless. After a lot of attempts I intoned, "OK, sweetheart. You are going to be very sorry about what is about to happen. The only thingy I can do now is sing the entry for you. You are not going to enjoy this experience." I explained just how bad my singing is, but nothing in her previous experience had prepared her for it. I played the intro and started wailing at the correct place. You should have seen her face. Self-defence dictated that she learned to enter correctly very quickly. The rest of the rehearsal went smoothly. Olivier is a sweet child and probably needs therapy for the rest of her life. Hey ho.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
I am trying hard to get LSS to where she would have been today without this bloody virus and its attendant lockdown. You folks are probably as fond of her now as I am. We meet after school on Thursdays for a long session together. We have done two of these and today should have been out third. There are Maltesers in attendance. A highly nervous LSS came for her timetabled lesson and muttered, "Sorry Sir, but I cannot come after school." I replied, "No problem darling. It is an entirely voluntary thingy on both our parts. We can both cancel when need be." <Yeah. Like I am ever going to cancel for anything other going into intensive care for covid> It turned out to be an appointment she had booked before we started out after-Thursday thingy. As it happened, LSS needed an extra week to work on what we had done last week, for all sorts of reasons that it was hard for her. So the cancellation worked out for both of us. Julia turned up towards the end of LSS's lesson and so joined us. Come the end of the lesson, LSS said, "Sorry about today. I will make sure I am free next week." OK, so I had two cute little girls to torture so I replied, "You had better. I had Maltesers but you are not getting them. I will eat them myself, get fat and die." Imagine the scene. I was looking towards LSS on my right. Diminutive and equally cute Julia on my left. I said to LSS, "But I will never shout at you. Ever. I promise." (Ok, so I am not a total idiot. The extra sessions depend on LSS wanting them. Her behaviour over coming weeks will show this. She wants them? Great. She doesn't want them? I will cancel them. I am not getting paid, after all.) Back to the cuties and I pointed left towards Julia and announced tp LSS whilst looking at her, "I will not shout at you because I like you. I will shout at her because I hate her. LSS skipped off happily. Usual round mouthed look of mock shock from Julia. There came a point in Julia's lesson where I was demonstrating by playing something to her. I went horribly wrong. As I always intone to the kids, "We go wrong. Learn to play the piano and you will make mistakes. I make mistakes. We all do. Live with it." We are talking about lesson 5 here. I went disastrously wrong and said, "I have no idea what I went wrong there." Oh boy, but J was paying attention. She replied pointing on the score, "You played that note with this note, which meant you were playing the wrong notes together." This teensy tot comes up to my chest. I worship her.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:00 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
One more from last week and also concerning Julia. I say the most appalling things to her. She knows I adore her. Even so, I like to make sure from time to time that she knows this. So I said to her towards the end of her last lesson, "Darling, I say horrible thingies to you. You do know, don't you, that I never mean even the teensiest fraction of them? Not a thing? Even a thingy of atom sized proportions?" Julia gave me that look that young kids reserve for adults clearly in the final stages of dementia and replied, "I would not still be here if I thought you meant any of it even for a tiny fraction of a second. Besides, I love catching you out when you go wrong." This child will go far.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Mon Oct 19, 2020 8:00 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
School was an utter abortion again today. It was like it must have been on the decks of the Marie Celeste. Year 9 were sent home two weeks ago and are expected back tomorrow. The one bright spot in an otherwise endless litany of bad news. Years 12 and 13 were sent home last week and will not be seen again until after the half term break. News was sent to the staff at about 10.00 pm last night that Y8 were not being allowed back. First thingy this morning, Y10 were sent home. That leaves Y7 and 11 still receiving some on-site education. And not many of them from me. Hey ho. All I can do is be available to teach any child able to turn up for a lesson. It is pretty much all I can do these days. Charlie turned up, so that was good. Amy's bestie Gabby, not timetabled for a lesson, also pitched up and so had a lesson. Frankly, Miss and I were happy to teach any child who pitched up wanting a lesson. We would have roamed the corridors snatching children to teach them anything, were there kids on corridors available for snatching. Wales is going into a two week total lockdown on Friday. It surely cannot be long before we in England follow suit. Trouble is, huge swathes of the country have bugger all incidence of this bloody virus. Take where I live for instance, in the county of Nottinghamshire. This is a large county and I live about a 60 minutes drive away from the county town of Nottingham. Nottingham is in a high state of transmission. Misterton is over an hours drive from Nottingham. In the middle of nowhere. There are no people here to pass on the virus. Just over the river Trent is Lincolnshire, 5 minute drive away. Being in Notts, we in Misterton are subject to some fairly draconian lockdown rules that we are mostly ignoring. Residents of Lincs are about as free as it is possible to be. There is zero transmission here where I live - there is nobody to pass the damn virus on. I am not sure that our government has lost the plot but only because I am not sure it ever had a hand on the plot in the first place. Sorry. Rant over. "Better out than in" is a saying we have here in the UK.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Wed Oct 21, 2020 7:10 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
This one is not a funny either. Merely a continuation of the previous rant. Maybe one day we will look back on all of this with a wry smile. Doubt it. I received an email from school yesterday. It is half-term next week but the school is closed immediately and will not reopen until Monday 2nd Nov i.e. after the half-term break. I am starting to fear for our generation of kids. OK, so absolute poverty is subsistence farming in bare feet and appalling difficulty is getting crops to market to escape to the next level. Which is buying a pair of shoes so it is easier to get the crops to market. This makes it possible to transport more crops and so earn the money to escape to the next level. Which is buying a bicycle, then a motorbike, and so on. OK, so we do not have any kids without shoes here in the UK, so far as I know. We do have them going hungry when the schools are shut. This appalling disgrace marks us down as less than a civilised society. We call it, "Relative poverty". A better term would be, "Kids living in utter misery." I teach in what would have been an affluent coal mining area up until the 1980's. Education was regarded as a waste of time. Men would go down the mines and women would go into some sort of service industry, so why bother with learning? Towns such as ours hit the skids when all the coal mines shut during the 1980's. Yet the attitude to education persisted. So there were a lot of illiterate/innumerate people having kids largely denied education back then because of their parents' attitudes. And who are now relatively poor. And sending their kids to our school. Not all of them, obviously, but still a lot of them. Our town has made good recovery from the disaster of the 1980's, but still is not a wealthy area. Not many of our kids have a lot of parental money to back them up. So education is utterly vital to them, and it breaks my heart that it is being denied them yet again. OK, so the UK so-called, "Education system" is a basket case, but it is better than nothing. And children go to bed hungry. Not a lot of them, but enough to upset me deeply. I lack the heart to sign off with my usual cheer. Let us hope I have something comical/cute to report next time I post.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Thu Oct 22, 2020 8:34 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
Here is a story I told to Tommaso in my nightly email exchange. I have described our amateur graded exam system. These usually take place at a centre appointed by the exam board. It is possible to book 'Special Visit' appointments to one's own teaching studio so long as one has the facilities and can present sufficient candidates to fill out a minimum time period - 4 hours back when I had a gazillion pupils back in the mid 1980's. I was teaching umpteen pupils back then and so had no trouble arranging said visits. One time, the examiner was the then head of keyboard studies at my old conservatoire, the Royal Northern College of Music. Talented pupils are a rarity. There have been some throughout my career and two that would now beat me in a competition every time. Not a lot though. I have devoted a career to helping mostly average kids to make the most of the limited talent they have. I am happy to have done so and still doing so; there is nothing that humanises us more than exposure to the arts. I was young back then, and in awe of the head of keyboard at my old Alma Mater, so what he said at the end of the session thrilled me possibly the most that anyone has ever said to me. What he said amounted to this: anyone can teach the highly talented (only true to a certain extent but I know what he was getting at); the true measure of a teacher is what he/she can do with average children; I was doing a fantastic job with my lot. For sure, the results reflected this. What came of this is even better. I was contacted a few months later by a mother wanting piano lessons for her 11 year old daughter, Alex. She had contacted the RNCM and spoken to the head of keyboard who had been my examiner just a few months ago. He worked out how closely she lived to my area and insisted that she get in touch with me. Alex was yet another of those teensy kids a la Julia and LSS. She never grew in stature a lot. She grew hugely in musical understanding. She studied music at university and last I heard of her, had a thriving piano teaching practise in the area that Chris and I left 25 years ago. We have lost touch since, but I am sure she is still doing so. So, my influence stretches down through the un-average to the un-average that they are teaching, and guiding into musical careers, then they in their turn..... Like the lives that Tommaso saved throughout his career as a heart surgeon. They will not all have been the elderly on their last legs. And something for all of us teachers to hang on to. Children explode into our lives and light them up with the force of a supernova. Then they leave and move on and we rarely know what they get up to next. Fact is though, they are spreading our influence all the time.

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:04 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
Remember Gabby? Could not understand that I knew nothing of some drummer in some rock band? Always accompanied Amy to her after school lessons? I have nothing but admiration for this sweet child. She arrived with her parents, from Romania about 5 years ago, unable to speak English. You would not believe it now; her English is far better than many of her contemporary English-born kids. I always had a soft spot for her. Gabby is a final year GCSE music student taking piano lessons outside school. Miss asked me to give her a couple of lessons recently. We are doing a prelim recording of the kids' performances next week, in case we go completely belly up in the UK again; we need something on record so that Miss can make a convincing defence of her assessment when the exams are cancelled again next June. And they will be cancelled. The only people apparently unable to predict this are the lunatics that run what is supposed to be 'our government'. <hollow laugh> Gabby's playing is as bad as I predicted even without hearing her play. The standard of private teaching is lamentable in this country. I have helped her improve but all good instrumental music teachers will recognise what I am about to write: poor teaching had left her with a 'performance' that lacked anything that remotely resembled anything of any musical quality and there was a limit to what I could do in a short time. Said good teachers are nodding their heads solemnly - we know who we are. We have been there many times before. I offered the school piano lessons for Gabby for free; the school accepted with alacrity so I gave Gabby her timetable of lessons for the rest of this term. She looked at me doubtfully and asked, "Don't my parents have to pay for these lessons?" I replied, "No darling. I am giving you these lessons for free." "Why?" "Because I like you." Catch Gabby on a bad day and most people would probably hate her. A characteristic of 15 year olds is this: they are insecure. This insecurity often manifests itself as defensiveness/rudeness. See beyond the veneer and you see the child underneath. Her face clouded and she asked uncertainly, "You like me?" "Yes angel. I like you very much. You remember the times you came with Amy after school? The times we teased Mr P in his guitar room? The time I teased you about that drummer I had not heard of? I liked you as much as I liked Amy." She was still full of doubt so I moved in for the kill. "I am teaching you because I want to darling, else you would not be here." Gabby thought about it for a few seconds and then her face cleared. There is something about the way the kids say as I am about to write Gabby's reply, that charms me beyond belief. Not the words, but the way that they utter them. It buys them anything they could ever ask of me. "Thank you sir."

Author:	SteveHopwood [ Wed Nov 04, 2020 8:19 pm ]
Post subject:	Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job
Meet Gweynyth. 13 for now and due to turn 14 next week. About as cute as a 13/14 year old can possibly be. And terrified of me, or was. This little dab had one lesson with me before half term and before the school closed down. This was a long time ago in the life of a 13 year old. So, she approached me in a state of fear on Monday. I joke about the lack of trembling and awe in my presence these days. It is only a joke. OK, so a tad of awe I can quite enjoy. Trembling with fear and children do not even belong in the same universe, so I went to work on the Mr Softie Steve image big time. I am trying to catch up with all the lessons the kids missed recently, so I had two lessons with Gwenyth separated by the torture session inflicted upon Gabby. Come her second session and G approached me doubtfully. The trembling had gone so some progress there. The little love had relaxed completely by the time the end of our session approached. In wandered Miss. Miss doesn't muck around when she ladles on the praise. Manic sports commentators are quieter. She heard G do something worthy of praise and went into loud transports of delight. I decided to see if I could cement G's confidence. I intoned solemnly, "Don't praise her Miss. She is horrible and I hate her." I took a bit of a chance but trusted my instinct. I was rewarded with the characteristic round mouthed expression of mock shock on G's face. It was wonderful to see. I suspect we shall be hearing more of her in the future.

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