Category: And another thing…

The Bog Standard Advisor: Nottingham Town Hall.

IMG_1445Nottingham Town Hall is a highly salubrious venue when it comes to visiting the city’s glorious past and the many artefacts that reflect its long industrial history. It sits in the pride of place of Market Square and naturally attracts a lot of street vendors, mobile tea and coffee units and neighbouring restaurants.

What is less known about Nottingham Town Hall is that it is home to some very comfortable gentlemen’s toilets.

You can sit down in comfort, wash your hands at ease knowing full well that there is clean hand towel nearby and there are even baby changing facilities in the same room as the urinals.

IMG_1446Some might baulk at the idea of this kind of adjacency but there’s no getting away from it: if you’re half inclined to be taken short whilst you’re in the middle of Market Square in Nottingham, heading over to the Town Hall will provide you with quick, reliable and comfortable relief in a way that the local McDonalds Fast Food outlet will never be able to.

 

 

 

The Bog Standard Advisor: what’s it all about?

There are endless restaurant reviews across the world, reviewing every edible thing from eggs to echidna and back again.  One thing they all have in common is that they review and comment on the facilities which involve putting food and drink of various quantities and qualities into the human being.

What they frequently omit to mention are the facilities which involve disposing of the waste products that emerge once those food and drinkstuffs have been processed by aforesaid human being: namely, the toilet.  Or WC. Or Crapper. Or John. Or Bog. Or whatever you want to call it in your home town or metropolitan lair.

This bog-blog is going to address those deficiencies by irregularly reviewing toilets (WCs, crappers, johns etc.) that one has had the pleasure or displeasure to visit.  It will, without fear or favour, name the guilty and praise the innocents when it comes to advising the world’s public about which toilets (WCs, crappers, johns etc.) to use and which to avoid like the plague, just in case you stand a chance of catching nasty from the water system.

Watch this space… but don’t stand too close, just in case.

I am Peter? And I am? your workshop leader? For today?

Ok Peter, I get the message quickly that you are about to run this session today but what really perplexes me is your constant inability to talk in a straight line. You’ve developed that really annoying tendency Peter which turns a statement into a question by placing an upward intonation at the end of every sentence.

And worse still Peter, that high rising terminal is creeping into every part of your syntax so that after just a few minutes of your session, I’m left wondering whether you think I’ve never heard the name Peter before, whether you actually exist, whether you think I’ve ever heard of such a thing as a workshop leader and whether you’re suggesting you’re going to inflict your rising questions on me not just for today but possibly for tomorrow as well and heaven forbid for the foreseeable future.

It doesn’t instil confidence in me Peter that you know what you are doing and it doesn’t predispose me to liking you or engaging with the content you’re trying to impart. In fact Peter it makes me want to leave the room and go find someone else who knows his or her own name, knows what they’re doing and knows today’s date.

Just imagine Peter if you met a surgeon who introduced themselves like this: “I’m Doctor Smith? And I’m going to remove your appendix? later today?” What would you rate your chances Peter of getting on and off the operating table in the right number of pieces?

Or you’re on a plane about to take off and the pilot says, ‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen? We’re about to take off?” He may as well add, “if that’s all right by you?”.

See Peter, it just doesn’t instil confidence Peter in you as a human being or as a workshop leader. So please Peter, just cut out the questions and start speaking in straight lines again.

Francis Keith Aitken: A Life of Quiet and Steadfast Influence.

In February 1932 a young architect made a remarkable journey by boat and train from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, up through Central and Eastern Europe to a large naval port, Stettin, in Pomerania, North Germany.

This journey was taken at a time prior to a period of extraordinary upheaval across the continent: the rise of National Socialism, the onset of the Second World War, the division of Europe, liberation 40 years on of Eastern Europe and the subsequent tragic conflict in the Balkans.

This architect who had, to his evident irritation and discomfort, just been made redundant by the Sudanese Government (on the orders of the British Government) travelled through places whose names and memories are inextricably linked with the tragedy and romance of our century – Constantinople, Belgrade, Budapest, Berlin.  He was armed solely with a pocket camera and passport, which he very nearly lost in Prague.

We should all give thanks to the young Czech train conductor who returned that passport and who allowed that memorable journey to continue. For what was the ultimate purpose of that journey? It was to meet and marry his fiancee, a young ‘Hortnerin’ in Stettin and so step out together on the longer and more demanding journey of a stable and happy marriage which lasted over 61 years.

The international spirit and steadfast nature of Keith and Lotti’s marriage has swept through our four generations of grandparent to great grandchild, in counterpoint to the political upheaval of the age,. And it has been Keith’s quiet and consistent ability of practising a benevolent internationalism which has created his extended family gathered here to day from across the world: from Germany, from Africa, from South America.

And it is this positive and unwavering influence that I would like us to thank him for: his influence which instilled a belief that the world belongs to all of us; that we would do well to tend and care for it; his tolerance which valued all cultures and beliefs and which accepted people as they are: and the proof that the meeting of a young architect from Cardiff with a young Hortnerin from Stettin can provide us all with a beacon of hope and aspiration.

In a world of change and chaos, you  have been constant and your love, quiet and steadfast. We thank you from all our hearts and from across the globe.

As Shakespeare said:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud capp’d rtowers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded in a sleep.

Testimonial for Francis Keith Aitken, August 1993

Dave Kinnear, Raconteur, Co-member of Everton Park and Bootle Sports Centre Squash Teams

A raconteur, according to my online dictionary, is someone who tells anecdotes in a skilful and amusing way.

Dave Kinnear was not a raconteur in the usual meaning of the word.

True, he would tell stories at great length – and who knows how many weird and wonderful stories he’s related over the years – and true he had a kind of storytelling skill – if converting a straightforward story into a complex mix of diversion, cul-de-sac and red herring is a skill, and true he would be amusing – albeit in a baffling kind of ‘Help, I’ve lost the plot, Dave!’ kind of way.

But more than all this, Dave was an urban myth, a legend in his own story life time – and the legends he is part of, are legendary.

Once, there was this fella who reckoned that he had been part of all his families stories – even though he hadn’t been born when they’d taken part. ‘I know these things!’ he’d say, mystically.

Once, there was this fella who persuaded his ill brother to let him drink his medicine – to stop this brother getting into trouble.

Once, there was this fella who had such a deft little wrist shot on the squash court – that his opponents would find themselves on court red faced, high tempered and fuming at the innocence of that squash shot which always had them running the wrong way, or left them flat footed or left them just looking plain silly.

We – his squash mates from Everton and Bootle – met Dave over 10 years ago at Everton Park squash courts – quite how, we can’t quite remember although Dave would have known…

We got playing together on Wednesday nights and before too long we had been signed up to the Thursday night league, complete with so called training on Sundays – again, quite why and how is fuzzy – but Dave would have remembered.

And before we knew it there we all were, driving around Merseyside over many cold winter Thursday nights to play at clubs we had difficulty finding in the squash league schedule – Burscough, Birkdale, Xaverien – pronounced for some reason that Dave would have explained – as SFX.

Dave, with his storytelling, anecdotes and explanations provided the social glue for our team.

Once, there was this fella who told stories in such complicated and detailed fashion, that his audience frequently turned to stone, complete with puzzled expressions across their stony brows.

But what his audience didn’t know was that Dave knew stories of before he was born, and consequently had so many stories to get out to his family and friends – and had so much to say – and so little time to say it – that he couldn’t be wasting time with the craft of telling his legends – so just got on with it, talking to everyone, conversing with everyone, remembering everyone and everything – and becoming a master raconteur to us all.

Dave, you’re a bit of an urban myth in our eyes – thanks for holding us together.

Nick Owen
Bootle EP Squash team
6 March 2006

What if Robin Williams met Anna Craft? What does losing 2 big C Creatives in a week tell us about us?

We’ve lost a couple of giants in the last week, both of whom speak of and for creativity albeit in very different ways: Anna Craft with her little ‘c’ creativity and Robin William’s big black dog of Creativity.

There can’t be many people out there who’ve not encountered Williams in his various disguises but probably a whole lot more who have never come across Anna’s work on creativity and learning. Whilst Williams’ creativity was bombastic, totalising and indisputable, Craft’s was more nuanced, subtle and ambiguous: with Williams you felt a target on the wrong side of the monologue but with Craft you did at least have a sense that you were in dialogue with her, previous generations and yourself.

Between them, they encapsulate the spectrum of difficulty of what it is to define, discuss or demonstrate that most infuriating of phenomena: the ‘c’ word. Is it all about individual genius which borders on insanity and can only be understood by defaulting to understandings of mental health, childhood trauma or drug fuelled psychosis? Or is it about more subtle ways of engaging with and imagining a world of possibilities? Or both?

Let’s do an Anna and ask ourselves, ‘What If they met on their own respective stairways to heaven? What might they have said to each other as they made their way through purgatory? And what insights might they generate as they waited to find out their future destiny? And where would that leave the rest of us?

Would Robin admit to a life long secret desire to be a nursery school teacher? And Anna to a thwarted ambition to entertain millions through her latent desire to be a rock guitar hero?  We’ll never know for certain of course: but one thing they could both agree upon is that without them gracing the earth for their short days, we would all be a lot poorer in understanding what it is to be human.

But if you do have an inside track on their conversation as they made it up into the stars, it would be great to hear about it!

 

 

An Open Letter to Ed Balls: everyone has a theory about something.

Dear Ed,

(I hope you don’t mind me calling you Ed: we’ve never met, but I have a theory that you wouldn’t mind, you being the affable kind of bloke that you are. I’m sure we’d have a few pints in my local, The Fly and the Loaf in Liverpool, and I’m sure we’d leave on good terms, having disagreed to disagree on many countless matters including what the best German lager in town is. My argument would be that it would be Veltins, but my theory is that you would probably disagree. No matter: that’s not why I’m writing to you right now.)

In your call today for there to be “more to education than theoretical learning”, you’ve joined a long line of distinguished politicians and educators who have deep philosophical reservations about the concept of theory and its relation to practice. My theory about you and your colleagues is that ‘theory’ is an alien concept which has no place in your so called ‘real world’ of pragmatic learning which promotes and drills skills, skills and yet more skills into learners. In this ‘real world’ learning is ‘delivered’; ‘academic’ is an insult and the person who suggested that teaching and learning is not a simple causal relationship should have been shot at birth, or whenever it was some lefty trendy academic theoretician invented him or her.

The trouble is, Ed, is that we all love a good theory. This includes you with your theory that there is more to education than theoretical learning. Of course there’s more to education than any one form of intellectual engagement (there’s another dirty word for you, Ed – intellectual): there’s practical engagement, there’s emotional engagement, there’s social engagement, there’s sensual engagement: there’s lots of forms of engagement but my theory is that your forensic like focus on the word ‘theoretical’ is to try and assuage the leading educational commentators of the Daily Mail (who they?) and its acolytes (who they ditto?) that you are following their theory free zones like all good pragmatic, cautious and entirely uninspiring commentators before them.

Perhaps Ed, if you had offered the theory that learning is more than any one fashionable fixation and will always perplex us in its difficulty and complexity, you might have persuaded a lot more of us that you were the politician to lead us out a neo-Govian future. But my theory (cough – spot the Monty Python reference) is that you didn’t because you can’t and so we won’t.

More’s the pity.

Best wishes and mine’s a pint,

Nick

Bring on the ‘Un-look’ button: it’s time for a Social Media vaccine!

Every now and then there’s a furore in Social Media Land about some wisecrack’s recent film, photograph or audio track. Its notoriety spreads across the web in a matter of minutes and before you know it, the producers of aforesaid media deposit can claim levels of popularity unrivalled by any other film, photograph or audio track since… well, since about an hour ago.

It’s about time someone invented an ‘unlook’ or ‘unclick’ or ‘unhear’ button for those media exudates. The likes of the two bit film production companies who operate out of a bedroom in Neasden and produce their sleazy and dumbed down media offerings about Liverpool benefit from the likes of YouTube precisely because of its viral nature: you watch their clip, your viewing gets logged and as the views go up, their message spreads and they justify their effort because of the rapidly increasing viewing figures.

If there was an ‘unlook’ button on YouTube, you could see what all the fuss was about, click ‘unlook’, remove your viewing figure from their viewing figures and prevent their work from going viral. 1,000,000 flies might eat shit but we don’t have to join them. Its about time we realised that ‘going viral’ is how Corona Virus operates and the sooner some one can invent an antiviral, social media agent, the better.

An Open Letter to David Bowie: Scotland needs You!

Dear David,

We have thought for some time that your absence on the contemporary UK political scene has had a deleterious effect on the output of the once impressive BBC 1 programme, The Brit Awards.

Since your demise, the programme has struggled with ratings and the quality of the up and coming acts is not what it was. I remember the day when your first appearance was marked with shock and surprise in lower suburbia. Then there followed years of neglect by you of the political life of our shores save for one misinterpreted Nazi salute at Victoria Station in London in 1976.

But no longer: your intervention last night on the impending referendum on Scottish Independence was an act of genius, produced and performed in your own inimitable style.

Dressing up as Kate Moss was the first clue.  We all knew the moment that ‘she’ walked on stage that it was really you tottering along in those high heels, trying to avoid the cables and rubber mats which threatened to reveal your carefully dressed secret.  The second sign was when some lackey pretended to mime Kate Moss’s voice in a gruff Bromley accent.  You mimicking kate Moss who in turn mimicked a middle age Bromley-ite mimicking Kate Moss?  Only you, David, only you.

But you saved the tour de force to the last minute:  ‘Scotland, stay with us’ mewed ‘Kate’. Simple. Direct. Powerful.  Momentous, in the only way you knew how.  Some might say that your opinion was trite; that it was vacuous; that it showed staggering hypocrisy given your place of residence and given your tax affairs; that it was the signs of a worn out rocker who couldn’t summon up anything like a half decent album and who should have hung up his heels at the turn of the century.

But not us.  Your rejuvenated and disruptive intervention at the BRITS last night gave all us long standing David Bowie fans cause for hope and a belief that there is life in the old dog yet.  There is one more album to come, isn’t there David? Something which will summon up all that was brilliant about Man Who Sold The World, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane: there is, isn’t there David? There is more to come, isn’t there?

Mr Bowie, perhaps you could be so kind as to tell us when you will be gracing the public stage with your wit and repartee? Your suits dazzled us, your shoes were a mystery to my younger brother and sister and your hair do left my school friends and I in fits of giggles. Pray, please be so kind as to tell us by return of post when we can expect to hear something that will match the emotional depths of the haunting refrain that was ‘The Laughing Gnome’.

Your favourable response is eagerly awaited.