Hermit

I was tackling my international ironing crisis and listening to Radio 4 (no Radio 4, no ironing, the Test Cricket is a constant hazard), when they interviewed a professional hermit.  She is a retired headmistress who has always enjoyed her own company.  She lives in a house at the edge of a small village, grows her own food and does the odd job to pay the bills, and generally just doesn't see anybody.

I was checking my blogger's profile today, clicking on my interests to see if there is anyone out there like me, but as usual,  I find only one person in the whole wide blogging world who shares those passions;  me.

I feel out of sinc with the modern world.

So it seems to me that Hermit would be an ideal later in life career choice for me.    JC is also a hermit, so we could be the world's first married hermit couple.  In the Ariege Pyrenees, panoramic mountain view.   Being philosophers.  I wonder if there is a hermit support network?

Yes cruel world, I'm ready.   Someone has to have time to do the philosophy to get us out of this mess.

(Propelled into action by our 'neighbours' intent upon massacring our garden and threatening us with legal action.  Can hermits indulge in the odd chainsaw massacre?  There's nothing about it in the job description).

Mark Fixing

Rumours are circulating at R's school that some enterprising renegade has hacked into Pronote, the Mark-Obsessed Website, and upgraded his or her marks in every subject for the entire year.

'How did they notice?'  I asked R (it seemed strange to me that a pupil would receive such individual attention when all the teachers are entirely tied up with box- ticking and forming-filling for the six-hundred).

'Because the marks were too high'

'What happened to this person?'

'Parents called in, detention, report, warning about being expelled...'

I am left with the question:  what kind of education system invites such behaviour?

R is left with the question;  what would have happened if this person had not been quite so generous with the marks, could he/she have got away with it?

Play Bach

JC and I took the difficult decision to commit ourselves passionately to a production of Bach's St Matthew Passion (excerpts, liberally translated into French)  JC is narrating, I'm doing two solos, there will be no fudging at the back.

It isn't the passionate part that is difficult, this music is clearly labelled Made in Heaven and the passion comes with the package.    It is the commitment part which is difficult.    We did the responsable thing and calculated whether we could realistically put in the time required, realised we couldn't, and went ahead anyway.  Consequently we have in our home a washing crisis which has reached international proportions, and most of the time JC looks like a tired shrivelled overworked and very tired worm which is particularly tired.

I say a production of Bach's Matthew Passion because I disover that it is musical theatre.  You can 'understand' the text of the story and the sequence in which it appears, and it is easy to have an emotional reaction to the music without knowing or understanding the story at all, but added to all that, once you really get into it and sing it and live it, there is the musical story;  a glorious musical light show, a musical understanding which passeth all understanding. Just how did Bach do it?

I have become seized with the desire to sing;  a desire as precise as a point of light and as loud as a thunderous roar.

Computer Rebuild

"Great, look Mum, your new computer's arrived" said B as he walked through the door.  "I'm going to build it!"

"What, now?" I said faintly (see photos for explantion).

B ripped open the box and began distributing bits all over my office/the room where R sleeps which already looks like a tart's boudoir/council tip.

"You want me to build it upstairs?"

"YES"

But he couldn't hold out that long and is building it as I write on the landing outside my bedroom.  He comes in and shows me the mother board, the newest fastest B ports, the really good RAM.  I try to look enthusiastic.

"Here is the box - um you could paint it..." he tailed off as he saw my face "we got it in a brocante"

"Only that shade of grey fails to show the dust...but does it have to be so BIG?"

"It's so you can have a really cool computer which you can upgrade whenever you want".

  

He whistles happily.  He starting whistling at 4 years old, it was the one area in which he excelled from an early age.

Latest Mark Debacle

R opened Pronote, the Mark-Obsessed Website, to gloat over his latest augmentations, when SHOCK HORROR

1
out
of
20

R paled, whimpered and scrambled for his school bag to check for all the things which he could possibly have been marked on - could he have undergone a test without his knowledge, had he filled in the wrong form, was it a score for having a crumb-free bag (fair)?

"I don't understand it, I don't understand it" he quavered.

"How will you check if it is a mistake if the teachers don't listen to you?" I asked.

"I WILL ask the history/geography teacher, I will go and see her after class"

"Ah, so that IS possible!"

The very next day R asked the history/geography teacher, and she did not apologize but blamed a bug in her computer for the score appearing as 1 out of 20 instead of 13.    She also blamed a bug in her computer for the poor soul whose score was published on Pronote, the Mark Tracking Software, as 20 out of 20 when, alas, it was 2 out of 20.  Then she used her computer to show them a film about the Middle Ages - and a First World War film appeared, at which point the history/geography teacher got a bit hot under the collar and said her computer was totally crapped out.

FAMILIES OF THE " PRONOTE VICTIMS"  SUE FOR MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DISTRESS CAUSED BY DISASTROUS MARKING DEBACLE!

French Bac in English

I'm English, my son is bilingual, but this does not mean he will be able to pass the French bac in English with ease.  He will need to understand what the examiners want, and to practice how to produce it;  so I've been looking through some past papers   (bac is the equivalent of A-levels, taken at 17 or 18 years old).    

All candidates for the bac have to perform in a wide range of subjects (philosophy, language, sciences, maths geography history and more).  French students are not free, as British students are,  to drop subjects (including foreign language) when they take the bac and specialise in 3 or 4 preferred subjects.

You can pass your bac with or without 'mention'.  Mention can mean:

Mention assez bien (literally good enough, or quite good)
Mention bien (good)
Mention très bien (very good).

I feel I should get a 'mention tres bien' very good in English for the following reasons

• I am English
• I am old and wise
• I am gifted in English and once won the school prize for English Achievement
• The level of English can't be that hard given the wide range of subjects, surely?

I set myself the challenge of doing the English bac for the students who choose to specialise in language (rather than say, maths or the technical bac) and started with 'comprehension'- English comprehension, surely this at least is in the bag! 

I read the text which was two pages of a novel by Kate Atkinson.     I didn't understand much of what was going on, so I read the questions, and I didn't understand the questions, and as for the answers, don't even ask.

I went to find my reading glasses and tried again, but it wasn't any better.  The text was devoid of context,  and littered with obscure vocabulary, subtle psychology and irretrievable cross-references.

Luckily JC enlightened me on the logical and staged French technique.

1. Read the text
2. Read the questions
3. Re-read the text like a detective looking for clues to answering the questions.

After I did this I had some idea what was going on and set out to give a Mention Très Bien answer.

Here is the question, B's answer (the first time he has ever tried such an exercise with no teaching preparation, and in a short time -  I'm impressed).    Then my answer, and a standard answer from the book which would earn the candidate a 'mention très bien'.  

Question;  explain why Frank found himself unexpectedly tongue-tied (50 words).

B's answer:  He found himself tongue-tied because of all the prettiness of the bread and cups, which prevented him from talking about death and the different ways of dying.  He understood that 'the smell of death clearly had no place in the parlour of Lowther Street'. (line reference).

My answer:  Frank felt tongue-tied because the reality of war ('the smell of death', 'trench foot' and 'rats') was so different from his civilised surroundings, so unsuited to polite conversation, that he struggled to find something he could talk about.  Even the mention of the bad tea in the trenches shocked the sisters, so he knew he could not talk about his life as a soldier.

Model answer:  There is such a sharp contrast between the horror of what he has experienced and the softeness and cosiness of this environment, that he cannot find words to express himself and he remains speechless.  His world is far from this one, and he understands that there's no way for the women to grasp his everday life.  Moreover, the warm welcome makes him feel even more ill-at ease and embarassed.

REMARKS

Although my answer was well-written, logical and justifiable, I think I would just miss the mention très bien by not referring explicitly to the contrast between the soft and warm welcome and the cold and hard realities of war.

Another remark:  Sapristi Knuckoes (Goon Shows circa 1950)

Fire Flower

I've just heard on Radio 4 that Wilko Johnson (from 70s band Dr Feelgood) is dying of pancreatic cancer, he has nine months to live, twelve if he accepts treatment which he doesn't.  Instead he is going on a farewell tour.  He describes how knowing he is dying has shaken him up into feeling alive, he says "...just walking down the street you really feel alive, you see every little thing and feel every cold breeze against your face, every brick in the road, there it is."

As young womanhood draws to an end, I become aware of the intensity of life within life, and of what went before and what is to come...here are my thoughts in the secret night, dedicated to women of a certain age (and before, and beyond).

Fire Flower

Forty-nine, time decreed

Fire awakened

From its bulb deep in the heart of life

Grew a thick trunk in mine

Flowered in my face.

Red petals cup my chin

Red petals touch my cheek

Heat rolls and unrolls

In the secret night

In the sage day

In the secret night I lie

In the glorious bright bright

Of life and life within life

Tears of marvel

Tears of gratitude

Run helpless into the fire

And sizzle

In the sage day I stand

At the stake

As the blood boils

And it burns away;

Attention wanted and unwanted

The hunt and the hunted

The role enforced and fallen upon

The giving and the taken

The beauty

The duty and the rage

The water gives up its hold and its bonds

Is released into the sky

In the sage day I stand

At the stake

Look into my eyes

I stare out pure and sharp

Here I am

All that is behind this life of woman

All that went before

And will continue to be

(now there's a curious thing, a bug in the system has made AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE double sized on my 'view'...)