Boys will be boys...

Quintin Kynaston School - sorry, Community Academy...

So now we know his name. Seems we know the name of his north London school, too. Mohammed Emwazi, aka 'Jihadi John', that murderous creature with the blazing dead eyes, swathed in black, who enjoys making home vids of himself slicing off human heads on desert plains and claiming it as the will of Allah, apparently went to Quintin Kynaston Community Academy.

So did I. Albeit some time before him, and before it started poncing about calling itself an “academy” (aka a comp with computers). 

It sort of made sense I should go there. It was right next door to my primary school. I would have the same commute, and the ILEA had just pumped it full of money to help it transition from a violent boys’ Secondary Modern that struck fear into the hearts of the locals, to progressive co-ed. They were going to take in “gentle girls” (I kid you not, yes, they actually said that). It was hoped the effect of 50 or so 11-y-o female innocents would foster more gentlemanly behaviour in its angry boys.

There was no entrance exam. Just an interview. Red flag number one was that at no point was I tested on so much as my maths, English, or even general knowledge. It was a done deal the moment I walked through the door. I was 11, and I was female. I would do. Sign here.

In my first week, during a getting-to-know-you session, I made the fatal error of telling my classmates that I loved horses and went riding at weekends (this made me something known as a “posh c**t apparently). Thereafter, during my first year, I was punched, stabbed with sharpened pencils, spat at, groped, goosed, (a finger actually found its way into my knickers on one occasion – I didn’t know whether to be mortified or glad he found a bloodied sanitary towel in there) fondled, tripped, and grabbed so the older boys could hiss graphic sexual suggestions in my ears as I hurried, head down, between lessons.

When my mother complained about the sexual harassment, she was told that it was all so new for the boys to have girls there, and that they would “soon settle down”. The 11 year old girls fleeing in fear from class to class were seemingly supposed just to weather it until the boys got bored. At no point was it deemed necessary to tell the boys to stop.

And yet, we were bombarded from day one with worthy lessons on “the male and female roles in society" as part of a rebranded, watered down version of Sociology for the under 5’s: MACOS (Man: a course of study). Women in the world had a very poor deal. We were shown girls carrying giant pails of water in grim parts of Africa. The girls suffering daily sexual abuse under their own noses however, should just “wait” for the boys to get tired of harassing them.

Then there were the lessons on racism. We were a diversely racially mixed class. Most of us had migrated from primary schools where we had known nothing else but friends of all colours of the rainbow. We were all given a piece of paper and asked to write down what the word “Paki” meant to us.

I chewed my pen, wondering what to say. In the end, I simply wrote 'Fehmina', which was the name of one of my closest friends from George Eliot. She had gone to Camden and I was missing her dreadfully. I was vaguely aware she was from a Pakistani family. That was all I knew.

“What’s Fehmina?” I was asked.

“A person.” I said.

After about a year or two of this, some of the better off kids were being pulled out and sent to private schools.

The rest of us carried on. Trying to learn, being given maths problems on brightly coloured cards that we could toss back if we couldn’t do them to take an easier one. At one point, a Jamaican Drama Group came in to give us all a poetry reading on how filthy the colour white truly was. “Fuck away with white” ended one poem violently. Having endured some 45 minutes of this, several of the white kids walked out of the hall. Accompanied, I may say, by their black friends.

“Racism is racism” said one of the black kids. “That was bang out of order.”

Yet the theme continued. If you were white, you were racist. End of. It was in your blood, your bones, your psyche. Non-British culture = good. British culture = bad. Or rather we were actually told that there was NO SUCH THING as British culture. Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali lessons were mooted. Great I thought. I loved languages. I still do. I can hold my own in Cantonese to this day. We asked if we could learn Welsh, and Gaelic and Irish too. We were told not to be ‘silly’.

“I believe racism is wrong.” I remember one bearded, History teacher in the obligatory brown cords and Kickers shoes announcing one day at the start of a lesson on pre-WWI European economy.

“No shit” said my mother when I told her. “I hope he also went on to say that pushing old ladies under buses is also wrong... or whatever?”

A selection of the posters displayed on the walls of my English classroom at QK

He didn’t. That wasn’t what QK was about. With SWP, and Rock Against Racism posters stuck on the walls of the classrooms, it seemed to be more about producing an army of voters who knew just about enough about the world to be pissed off, but not enough to rise to a position whereby they could do anything about it. That was the job of the party élite. Such as my teachers, many of whom had enjoyed the sort of education they were now denying us.

When Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979, my English teacher, whose classroom was plastered with posters of Blair Peach, the New Zealand teacher who’d been coshed by the SPG on an Anti-Nazi rally, clutched at the door frame and melodramatically howled that she felt “suicidal”. Naturally, the kids were concerned for her. Turned out she only wanted to off herself because the Tories had got in.

I didn’t like Thatcher much either. She would always be “Maggie Thatcher – Milk Snatcher” to me - “But Miss...”I ventured meekly, “it’s a woman Prime Minister. The first one we’ve ever had in this country. Can’t we find something to be glad about that?”

Definitely not. I was ‘watched’ pretty closely after that, too.

English wasn’t about finding things to be glad about. It was just a different form of Sociology. A chance to skew lessons to an agenda and to mould the willing brains of the young, and frankly, defenceless.

No happy Utopian endings: Orwell's "Animal Farm"

In IVth year English, we started reading Orwell’s 'Animal Farm'. However, it was suddenly dropped when it became clear that although it had started so well with a juicy revolution, it was about to end up with the pigs in charge, and the clear message that no matter who you vote for, the government gets in - even if it’s a Socialist one. Next thing we knew, Orwell was out, and we were starting a new book called 'That Crazy April' instead. It was an unsubtle, crappily written, story of female oppression within a family.

When I pointed out that as we were taking our ‘O’ levels in 12 months, could we please park the political agenda and get on with some Shakespeare and poetry so we stood a chance of wood-shedding it in time? I was told to “be quiet”, but the next day, the teacher presented me with three books to read, along with essay questions for each on which I was to write fulsomely by a set date. The books were Joyce's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', 'Beowulf', and 'Mansfield Park'. My mother did a bit of research on the essay questions, and found they were university thesis topics. My helpful teacher had even left her initials in one of the books. 'BB – Somerville' (and the year). I was 15.

That's how spiteful these people were if challenged.

Come the Vth, their own middle-class, privileged hang-ups were still being exorcised on us, and we were being shown films on the difficulties of being an Asian in Britain, presented by an angry woman in traditional dress. The films were all in Hindi with no subtitles.

“Now you know what it feels like not to understand a language” she fired at us, aggressively.

By that time, a lot of the kids were getting fed up.

“Fuck off”, said one girl, whose mother was rumoured to be an IRA operative (nobody messed with her). “I feel like that when I go to Spain, that’s why I take a fucking phrase book.”

By the time it came to options for our ‘O’ levels, the agenda became even more clear. They wanted us all to do CSEs. “There IS an ‘O’ level” the art teacher said cautiously when I went to see him, “but we would rather you did the CSE.”

“But it’s worth so much less.” I said.

Ah, but it cost so much MORE for the school to enter a kid for an ‘O’ level. It all became clear. Teach the kids just about enough to scrape a dumbo CSE, but make sure their mock results aren’t good enough to enter them for the ‘O’ level to save money, and make it look like they were entering record numbers of kids for exams. Even if they were shite exams. Keep the ILEA happy.

As an aside, at this point, the ILEA were working furiously to get my brother’s school closed down. It was “elitist” they said. Dame Shirley Williams (in her Gucci shoes), was pushing the kind of comprehensive school education I was receiving with everything she had – which was a lot. Head Honcho of the ILEA, (Westminster and Canford School educated) Sir Ashley Brammall, was also implacable in his determination to get it closed down. Even though many of the top brass within the ILEA and local Labour councils at the time sent their own children to private schools, it was ‘unfair’ they said.

St Marylebone Grammar School formerly the Old Philological School. 189 years of Eton level education for the smart poor in the heart of Marylebone, now offices. Only the listed library survives. Job jolly well done Lord Brammall and Baroness Williams.

Marylebone Grammar School was much loved by the local community. Providing free education of a standard for which private schools charged £thousands per term, it offered a chance to bright local boys of the sort of opportunities they might not otherwise ever see. University, contacts, careers. Working with other parents, my mother went to meeting after meeting, working up a petition to try to keep the school open and prevent the proposed merger with the neighbouring comprehensive, Rutherford. She canvassed opinion on the local council estates. Lisson Grove being the largest. She said that mothers were grabbing the petition out of her hands and saying “where do I sign? That school is the only chance my boy has got.”

After one particular council meeting at which she demolished the entire panel, the Legal Officer for the ILEA collared her as she lit a cigarette outside.

“Mrs Blake,” he said, “forgive me, but may I enquire as to your profession before you were married?”

“Actress,” she said. “Why?”

The officer apparently laughed in astonishment.

“To be frank, Mrs Blake, I thought you must have been a barrister.” He said.

It was all to no avail however. Without the money, power and muscle to back up her formidable brain, my mother and the other parents lost. The school was closed in 1981.

They no doubt sent up hosannas in our staff room. All the more kids for them to play with...

And yet, we played with them too. Whilst my friend Dreadlocks John openly smoked weed in the VIth Form Common Room, defying any of the “Sof’ teachers” to do anything about it (he more likely got “you go ahead, John, can I get you an ashtray...?”), I was drowning the school. Or at least trying to. I opened every tap in the basement loos and stuffed up every plug and drain. When I was caught red-handed by the Deputy Head, I explained it was a mercy killing.

I evaded suspension on the grounds that my parents had split up and I was “troubled”. I wanted to go down to the Remedial Room, but sadly, I wasn’t deemed troubled enough for that, so I had to rejoin my class on the promise I wouldn’t do anything “like that” again.

I didn’t. I took to the art of graffiti instead. Slogans. Orwellian quotes, paraphrased Sex Pistols lyrics, a piece of A4 paper with 'Room 101' painted on it and slapped on the Headmaster’s door as I ran past. When I was discovered by my art teacher daubing another bon mot on one of the walls with permanent marker, he was astonished.

“It’s YOU!” He gasped. “We’ve all been accusing each other in the staff room. We thought it must be one of the teachers.”

Of course they did...Because they worked extremely hard to make sure not one kid in their care could POSSIBLY be smart – and certainly not educated - enough to write the sort of stuff I was writing.

I took my O and A levels, and scraped through with bare passes. Like so many of my classmates, the higher education came later. Online, and out of my own pocket.

Of course, things are very different now. I understand QK is the darling of OFSTED. The showplace of the nation. A school that now apparently has a waiting list.

I’m sure some things don’t change though, and I feel fairly well placed to conjecture that had ‘Jihadi John’ showed any signs of radical, intolerant bullshit during his time there, nothing but hand-wringing understanding and “I’ll hold your jacket” will most likely have been the response. 

Emmeline Wyndham

Why I hate the Daily Mail

There are so many reasons to hate the Daily Mail. Its puerile Savile-like stalking of celebrities’ children (Suri Cruise is filling out nicely, eh? Check out the tasty tot in her latest outfit...), its obsequious hand-kissing walking backwards sucking up to Royalty (check out Camilla’s diamonds, isn’t it heart-warming to see rich people wearing Cartier?), its blatant xenophobia and racism, its sexism, its slut and fat shaming. The list goes on and on.

I can add another reason though. A personal reason.

It was such a kind thought. My chum, Sonia Poulton, an extremely busy investigative journalist, decided to take time out from exposing scams and dodging death threats to help me publicise my project: “Through Smoke”.

“I can’t bear to see such a great writer struggling to be heard” she said. So she made some calls, and plugged my budding book about perfume and my late mother’s obsession with it to her contacts at The Daily Mail.

Already a busy blog (www.thatperfumebook.blogspot.co.uk), what the project needed was a piece about me and what I was trying to achieve in a national newspaper, with the aim of attracting a publisher to turn it into a book.

“It would make a great piece”, she told the girls at the Mail. Ex-child television star (“Heidi”, BBCTV, 1974), working to ensure her mother’s great knowledge of scent did not go to the grave with her, putting together all the notes found in exercise books and on the backs of envelopes to create a lasting tribute to a woman who knew just about everything there was to know about pong, but who had died way too early of a massive brain tumour.

Sonia not only managed to get them interested, but knowing my financial situation as only a friend can, she managed to sell me to them as a journo more than capable of writing the piece myself – to ensure I would get paid for it too.

I eventually got a ‘phone call from a Sloaney sub-editor on Femail. She wanted more info. I supplied it. Could I get 2000 words to her by (date)? Me? You kidding? I’m the deadline queen. Absolutely.

I wrote 2000 words of love for a flawed woman with an awesome knowledge, and submitted it. I heard nothing. I heard more nothing. I called.

“We haven’t commissioned this yet, you shouldn’t have written anything.”

“But you said...” I began.

“Sorry you got that impression. I haven’t spoken to the Editor yet. We’ll be in touch.”

A few more weeks went by. I got a call from another editor. A freelancer this time. Could I get my piece over to her by midday? I was at work. I said I would get it to her by 6pm.

She called me again. She told me it was “the best bit of writing” she had seen in a long time. Trouble was, this was for the Femail section of the Daily Mail, and it had to be written in a “certain way”.

She sent it back with her “questions”. All in capitals. Shouting.

There needed to be more “emotion”. The readers would want to know.

How did I feel when my father left us? (I was fine about it. He was away filming so much, I was used to him not being there). Did I see my mother cry? (Only once, when she thought I was asleep and it was safe to do so). What were my thoughts when I saw my mother drunk at the kitchen table? (I don’t remember. Most likely irritation). Was I devastated when she died? (No, I sang the “Ode to Joy”. What do you think? I had been expecting it. All I felt was that there was a lot to do and a lot of people to call). What were my thoughts as I cleared my home OF 34 YEARS? (That I hoped nobody had told the landlord she was dead so I could have more time). How did I feel about not BEING MARRIED OR having children? (That the dice didn’t roll that way for me). Did I blame my mother for ruining my life? (My life isn’t ruined by not being married or having children).

Nowhere in amongst all this, was any more than a passing interest expressed in the subject matter: PERFUME. Had she asked what scent I was wearing at any of these points in my life, I could have answered: L’Air du Temps, Tabac Blond, Paris, Rive Gauche, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No 22... But she didn’t ask.

She rewrote the entire thing so it read more like a snivelling penny novel “poor me” whine, and sent it back to me to ‘check’.

I refused to sign my name to it.

She tried again to tease more “emotion” out of me.

“Have you any idea how grief and depression work?” I asked. “You’re numb most of the time. You can’t quantify your feelings. If it’s a glimpse of my tortured soul you and your readers want, they’ll have to ask someone else. We don’t do that in my family.”

I do understand that, she said. But I also know what the Editor wants.

“Ah, so it’s not actually the readers who want all this emo crap... it’s the Editor?” That made sense.

When they were finally ready to run the piece (only after another two freelance editors had been assigned to me to force me to be more “emotional”), I was assigned a photographer and a make-up artist to make me look the way the Editor wanted as well.

The Editor, one Maggie O’Riordan, apparently has very specific ideas as to what people should look like in her weekly corner empire of The Daily Mail.

No black items, no jeans, no boots, no flat shoes. All the things I wear on a day to day basis.

A plain one colour dress please, tan tights - no black allowed (we want your legs to look as bad as possible), and high heels.

I haven’t got any clothes like that.

We’ll send you some outfits to choose from. What size are you?

I was a 12. I am a 10 now. Probably as a result of all the stress...

Can you do tomorrow?

No I bloody can’t. I’ll be at work.

Ok, Sunday then.

On the day, I was presented with a hideous blue and beige print pencil skirt (no alternatives, that or nothing) two revolting oversized auntie-mum blouses with frilly flounce down the front and made of some hideous nylon material, and an array of ghastly, towering, spiked shoes. We compromised by allowing me to wear a top from my own collection, but I wasn’t allowed to wear it in any manner that might disguise my bloated menstrual stomach. No, it had to be pulled tight over it. Maggie, apparently, “doesn’t like” clothes to be flatteringly draped.

Maggie also prefers subjects, at least the female ones presumably, to have orange foundation trowelled inches thick over their faces (is that cruelty free base? I only wear BUAV approved cruelty free cosmetics. Of course not...), buckets of shimmering eye-shadow, and virulent pink lipstick (at least 8 coats).

I never wear pink lipstick, I said. It doesn’t suit my skin tone. Haven’t you got an orange-based red matt, or a plum in there? I asked, pointing to the make-up artist’s two suitcases full of pots and brushes.

No.

Maggie likes this colour.

Of course she does.

“You’re not the first to feel this way”, the make-up artist finally said kindly. “It’s just this is how Maggie wants things.”

“- And if you don’t do what Maggie says, she won’t run your piece, and you won’t get paid” chimed in the photographer.

Suddenly, the make-up artist spotted my signet ring.

“Does that ring come off?” She asked.

“What...this?” I looked down at it, sitting snugly, quietly and discreetly on the little finger of my left hand. At the lion’s head erased within a fetterlock, engraved by the lovely old chap who scratches the names of Wimbledon champions on the famous gold pineapple topped men’s trophy and the women’s Rose Bowl. My mother’s family crest.

“Yes.... when I die, and it goes to my niece.” I said.

Maggie apparently doesn’t like jewellery either. Even heraldic jewellery.

At least I won that one, but for a person who spends her life in flat boots, I still had to spend two hours on my feet in 4 inch red stilettos. My legs and back were on fire. No, sorry, no sitting shots. Don’t tell me... “Maggie” doesn’t like them? Bingo...

And so I ended up looking like a bloated 50 year old Chantelle Houghton in a brown wig, with her arse sticking out, smirking like an Essex barmaid. SMILE SMILE SMILE.

The pictures were appalling.

I got a professional cameraman friend to take some alternative shots of me, complete with some of the bottles from my mother’s perfume collection (oh yes, that was what the article was meant to be about, wasn’t it...? It’s ok, it would be completely understandable if you’d forgotten), but naturally, these were rejected. The quality was apparently not good enough. The quality of his photography to date has been good enough for films like Shakespeare in Love, but sadly, it would seem that if he ever wanted to work for the Daily Mail, he’d have to go back to snapper school...

Me in my own clothes, with make-up by cruelty free GOSH (and applied by me), with perfume bottles from the collection of the late Sally Blake. Pic by Simon Jones (definitely not good enough for the Daily Mail - sorry Simon...)

And after a few more months, and a few more exhortations to make it more “emotional”, the piece finally appeared, on the 12^th of January 2015. Both in the paper, and online.

It was a travesty. I looked awful. I came over worse.

Inevitably, fast flowed the comments from the readers. They who apparently “demanded” blood and guts.

“Whiney attention-seeker.”

“Trading on her dead mother's hard work.”

“Trading on a series she did 40 years ago.”

“Who cares?”

And lots more along those lines.

There has been absolutely no interest whatsoever from any publisher or agent following.

They wanted me to show more emotion? They finally got it when they printed the piece to which they put my name.

I cried my fucking eyes out.

Emma Blake

22 February 2015

Dinner Date

The food of love...?

"Dinner Date" ITVbe, 20 February 2015. Aka "Meateaters Mating".

Yes, the show that is all about young urban nothingheads looking to meet similar featured Thomas tonight, who declared "I 'ope she's not a vegetarian. I 'ate vegetarians..."

Well of course you "'ate vegetarians", Thomas. You eat everything else after all.

But then, that's your 'choice' isn't it? And as we all know, personal 'choice', no matter what that may be, is a sacred cow of the modern age that not even "Thomas" can (have someone else) slaughter and stick on his plate.

Why however, someone choosing NOT to eat something that you 'choose' to gobble up like the back end of a greedy refuse lorry, should be worthy of actual "hate" is a bit beyond me though, I must say...