Education, Edumacation, Ejucayshun...

David Bradley as Billy Caspar - 'Kes' (A Kestrel for a Knave) - 1970

Well, I’m not going to be all ‘missish’ about the supposed sanctity of the Polling Booth. We all know there is actually no such thing as a truly anonymous vote, so I am proud to say outright that I shall be voting for the Labour Party next week. Not just the Labour Party, but specifically the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn.

I like him. He’s seen a bit of life. He’s paid his dues. He’s the sort of dogged, charming old socialist I used to see around when I was growing up. Sometimes you wanted to punch them one when they came out with some daft theory, but most of the time, you forgave them, because just like Jeremy, whatever bollocks they came out with, you could at least be certain it was sincere, heartfelt, genuinely caring bollocks.

Like a lot of people, I’m tired of scrubbed-pink-faced 39-year-old public schoolboys in Savile Row suits with PPE degrees from Oxbridge and 15 years in the City telling us what we need. What we need are jobs that net us enough to pay our rent and mortgages and kiss off our debts. It’s no good telling us that every new housing scheme means more employment so we should all get behind the developers and rejoice at every bit of land we see being bulldozed for new ‘homes’.

1. We wouldn’t be in such a parlous mess with housing if Maggie Thatcher hadn’t flogged off so much of our council stock without replacing it,
2. building work is by definition, finite, and
3. we’re not all hod-carriers and plasterers.

Another thing we need is decent education for our kids that will give them a fighting chance in the bear-pit of the employment market. Furthermore, we need it to be good enough to compete with those whose parents can afford to send them to private schools.

Here’s where ‘Jezza’ and I part company. He hates Grammar schools and wants to do away with them. Perhaps it’s because he went to one himself, but I see them as the only real chance many smart working class children actually have to get to a place where they can seriously challenge the old order. It worked for Jeremy. I frankly doubt that if he’d gone to my school, he would be where he is now.

I saw 1970s comprehensive education first hand. It was all about lowering the bar so everyone could clear it. It was about making stuff so easy that everyone could get at least a C. The smart kids who weren’t fortunate enough to live within the catchment area of a Grammar school got bored, bunked off, became punks, and got arrested for trying to set fire to the school. Our most famous ‘old boy’, Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson of ‘Madness’, had joined the school when it still implemented streaming. He was in the top stream all the way through. He was tipped for Cambridge, but he decided to go on tour as a roadie for ‘The Clash’ instead. You can lead a horse to water, and all that... Thing is, at least he had that choice. He was smart enough, and those smarts were recognised, and nurtured – free.

I believe all education should be free. I also believe there would be no need for private education if state education was just as good. I am all for scrapping university loans in favour of grants again – as long as getting into university goes back to being as tough as it was when I was a kid.

Let’s get this straight. It was never ‘free’. It was always on the taxpayer’s buck, but because school exams were tougher, there weren’t so many school leavers qualifying for it. That’s why we could afford to offer it on the same basis as state secondary education. Now it seems nearly every kid qualifies. Back in the days of ‘free’ university education, you needed a minimum of six good O levels and three A levels to apply. CSEs didn’t count - even if it was claimed that a Grade 1 at CSE was equivalent to a C at O Level.

Now every year, we’re supposed to believe that more and more and more kids are clocking up record results at A level. We watch as nervous babes open their results on live breakfast television, and whoop with them when they see that their results mean they’re guaranteed a place at uni - yet mystifyingly, fewer and fewer of them seem to be able to spell, or give you the name of the capital of Peru without Googling it.

It’s little wonder when you hear of homework not being corrected, even at supposedly ‘good’ state schools, for fear of “stifling creativity”. That makes me uncomfortable. Somewhere along the line, someone has sold these kids out, and the finger is pointing at my generation - and the generation before mine. Seems to me that the crucial difference between qualifying for uni back in the ‘good old, free old days’ as opposed to the present day, was the difference between the O level and the GCSE we have now.

Get any teacher who’s old enough drunk enough, and they’ll admit the GCSE is a piece of piss compared to the O Level, and that we’re selling our kids short, but they’ll not so much as whisper it sober for fear of losing their jobs. The elephant in the room is that the GCSE is the CSE with a fresh lick of rebranding. Don’t be fooled.

Back in 1979, I remember sitting in my Headmaster's office being reprimanded for bunking off. He was trying to suspend me, and I was talking him out of it as I sipped my tea, bought from the out-of-bounds caff across the road.

He was exasperated. Finally, he exploded: "But you're different to the other children in this school. You're articulate, you're able to express yourself…"

I was furious, and exploded right back at him: "It's your fucking JOB to make EVERY CHILD IN THIS SCHOOL 'articulate and able to express' themselves!" I raged.

That’s it and all about it as far as I am concerned. By all means, give kids as much or as little as they can handle - without shame, without penalty - but I maintain it isn’t socialism to treat poor kids like crabs in a bucket, and deny them the chance to climb out.

Yes, I’ll be voting Labour, but I’ll keep on arguing this one…

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2017

MODERN LIVING = OLD-FASHIONED SELFISHNESS?

I am not sure when I first started noticing the noise my upstairs neighbour makes simply existing in his flat over my head, but I know that I literally live for when he goes out, and could willingly scream and break every window in the house whenever he returns.

From crashing through his door after a night at the pub, to slapping about, pacing up and down in his flip-flops burbling on the 'phone, every noise he makes seems to transmit through the ceiling and into my brain like a jack hammer.

He does seem to have some very bizarre routines. I mean, what do you do when you come home from work? I make myself a cup of tea, sit down, put my feet up, and switch on the news. Every time he arrives home, he seems to experience an urgent need to rearrange his furniture. Items are dragged, objects are dropped on the floor, and when he's finally satisfied with arrangements, a soft drumming begins somewhere near the wainscotting, rather like a rabbit's warning, thumping on the floor in urgent, repeated bursts. 

A little more to the right, mate...

I have often wondered if I am just being oversensitive. After all, he's perfectly affable, and we always enjoy a friendly conversation whenever we happen upon each other in the street. Indeed, following a wheedling and Englishly apologetic note from me, he's even managed to start walking on his stairs as opposed to thundering up and down, using them as gym equipment and making my pictures rattle against the walls, but still the random, almighty thumps continue. So startling can these actually be, that if they were to be played as disembodied audio on one of those 'name this sound' contests on daytime television, my money would be on "Greg Rutherford practising long-jump".

Yet still I question myself. Like Macbeth, pacing the battlements at Glamis, I soliloquise: "How is 't with me when every noise appals me…?"

But I know it's not just me. In fact, the man that my Facebook friends now know only as 'The Cockwomble' is seemingly some sort of a legend in our quiet little close. Early on in my tenancy, a neighbour collared me and asked me how I was "coping" living underneath this guy, and told me she was sorry for me. This same neighbour told me how one night, when she had arrived home from a rare evening out (she is a mother of two small children), and had been sitting in her car telephoning a friend to let them know she was home safe, she had looked up to see him, curtains wide, running… RUNNING across his floor (my ceiling), back and forth, and touching each wall as if in training for something.

Probably his next shag… because every time love calls, and call it does, frequently (I counted no less than three new 'girlfriends' in the space of as many months last year), I get to hear him on the job as well. For hours on end. No quickies for him. Inevitably desensitised by 5 or so pints down the pub before he staggers back here with his latest, on and on it will go - with relentless monotony.

I am obliged to hear as his partners start off enthusiastically enough; panting, squealing, and oink-oink-oinking overhead, then eventually falling silent as he continues to hammer away at the same tedious pace for an hour at a time (I've often found myself wondering if they've died). Then he'll thump to the bathroom to hose himself down, before going back into the bedroom to give them another hour's worth. Ear-plugs help...

This, I keep telling myself (with less and less conviction), is simply 'living with other people', and I find myself wondering if creeping age is the reason that I can simply somehow, no longer tolerate it. Pills don't help...

And yet, I was born and raised in London. For the first 33 years of my life there, I lived in a mansion flat on a busy road. The main arterial to the north as it happens. The difference, I suspect, has something to do with construction. The flat in which I grew up had been built in 1880, had solid walls, and had withstood the Blitz. Just a few cracks in the ceilings bore testament to this, but there was no question they needed 'fixing'. Nothing was going to come down. One gets the impression with the sort of late 1990s build in which I now live, that all it would take would be one good gale and the roof would be off. No wonder I can even hear 'CW' honking into a hankie blowing his nose every morning.

Knowing how thin the walls and ceilings are here, I creep about, mindful at all times of not clattering my dishes in the sink, or vacuuming at odd hours. You'd think Chummy upstairs would do the same and perhaps think twice about thumping around as much as he does.

But he doesn't think about it. Seems nobody does any more. When did we all get so utterly self-centred? I remember a time when it was the height of rudeness even to talk too loudly in public lest someone else be forced to overhear your conversation. Now people walk around shouting into mobile 'phones, blasting music out of their cars, and yelling in the street at all hours, and nobody dares say a thing - because people are literally terrified of each other. We're afraid of violent repercussions for requesting peace. 

Nope, not quite... just need to drag it across the floor one more time to be sure...

I remember when going to the cinema was a treat for all the family, and the worst irritation you could expect would be someone making a racket with their bag of Opal Fruits and rabbiting loudly about the plot to their companions. Such inadvertent oafs could easily be prevailed upon with a tap on the shoulder from your dad with an authorative finger to his lips.

Now, in our entitled world, we've got people blathering into their 'phones right the way through the movie, and threatening anyone who says a word about it with physical violence. If it's a gang of them out for a good time, they’ll be waiting for you outside. They're entitled to enjoy themselves, see…

I seem to remember watching a programme about Spike Milligan, that lovely fragile man who made so many of us laugh when we were kids with his funny voices and his many 'characters', in which he revealed that other people's thoughtless noise jangled his nerves so much that he actually checked himself into an asylum just to get a little respite.

I have a feeling it won't be long before I book my place too…

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2017

Why we must talk about suicide

It's the last taboo. It really is. You can talk about your job, your relationship, your piles, or even your periods (we're getting a bit better at this one – at least in the West), but if you express so much as a whiff of a suggestion that you might be struggling to find many, if any, cogent reasons to remain on earth, you will be instantly shut down.

"Don't say such things."

"Don't do anything silly."

"Don't even think about it."

"Don't be so dramatic."

"Think of your family."

"It's not that bad."

With regard to the last one, the bald truth is that if a person is actually contemplating offing themselves, then it definitely IS that bad, and frankly, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for anyone else to hear, such persons really do need to be allowed to talk about it.

I once had the privilege of working as PA to a Chartered Psychologist. She was about five feet nothing, and worked with addicts - mainly on narcotics. I frankly feared for her safety sometimes, and would often stay late to make sure there was someone else around when she took her last appointments of the day at around 7pm. I was ready to use my rusty Shaolin Kung-fu skills, or at least my 999 dialling finger, if anything got out of hand. It never did. Most of her patients, even the ones who carried razor blades to slash themselves, were just people in immense mental pain.

My boss mainly dealt with serious addiction, but plenty of her patients were simply exhibiting depression and anxiety, and were 'at risk' of suicide – or they had at least admitted to their GP that they did not wish to carry on living. I had the opportunity to chat a little with some of her patients before they were called into the office. Most just sat quietly, leafing through the magazines on offer in the cosy waiting room, but some would stop to chat to me.

Most were embarrassed, and would tell me that I must think their problems very silly (most were immensely wealthy), but I would always parrot my boss and say that what I thought about it was not as important as what they thought about it, and if their issues were making them feel like doing away with themselves, then there was nothing silly about any of it.

In fact, far from being silly, or an emotion that we must all quickly sweep up and tip into the negativity sin bin, I would actually suggest that every last one of us has had moments in our lives where we no longer wished to go on.

With something this important, we must listen. Yet we're discouraged from any kind of negative thought under a barrage of daily inspirational sayings on social media. Cod philosophy is set to pictures of sunrises and idyllic beaches telling us that if we don't live in a state of perpetual gratitude for the gift of life, we are bad people in need of correction.

I find myself wondering: why are we allowed to express only positivity? Isn't that against the laws of nature? For every positive, there is a negative, for every up there is a down, and for every high there is a low. Are they not all part of the overall picture?

Besides fear of censure for the crime of negativity, other popular reasons for keeping any feelings of hopelessness to yourself include:

Making other people feel uncomfortable

Making other people question their own existence

Making other people feel they ought to be able to help you (Part 1)

Making other people angry with you because feel they ought to be able to help you (Part 2)

Making God angry because He bestowed the 'gift' of life upon you

Of course, that last one is a few thousand years of religion poking its nose into human affairs. It does that a lot. The others are all about other people, and not the person in distress.

Life can be exceptionally hard for some people, and a walk in the park for others. No two people's life experience is the same, that's why it would appear to make sense not to generalise on anyone else's situation and their attitude towards it. Money helps, although there are those who constantly and smugly assert that "money can't buy you happiness". This may be true for certain aspects of life, such as the attainment of satisfying and requited human love, but it can certainly buy housing, security, and the occasional treat to take the edge off things, even if the emotional garden isn't all roses. For those living hand to mouth, whose poverty is literally killing them, it really doesn't help to be told this.

Neither does it help to be urged to think of all the things they have going for them. Perhaps they have a gift for entertaining others (Robin Williams springs to mind), or animals like their company, or they're living in a nice part of the world, or they have an enviable figure and are universally admired by both sexes. If a depressed state is preventing them from seeing these as sufficient motivation to keep on breathing, force-feeding them reasons to be cheerful isn't going to change their minds.

Neither will antidepressants – which have a habit of making patients taking them put on weight, which tends to depress people even more. All pills can do is rearrange a few chemicals in the brain to enable a person to keep on doing the things that are making them miserable, only more cheerfully and efficiently.

In some cases, pills can alter outlook sufficiently to enable a person to make changes that may give them more options. They can help to put someone in the right frame of mind to do the housework that may have been building up for months, or email out a few more job applications with a less desperate tone to them. I will not deny there are one or two benefits to be had.

What a suicidal depressive needs more than pills however, is to be able to talk about it. To vocalise their belief that life would be easier if they were no longer obliged to live it, and to express the euphoria and relief they envisage when they imagine that white light moving towards them as they move to the next dimension and leave all the grief and pain behind. Hard as it may be for others to listen to, especially if they are struggling themselves, such thoughts must be permitted to be expressed without fear of rebuke.

Of course, professional psychiatrists are more than equipped to provide such services. However, here again is where the wealthy but unhappy win out over the impoverished. They can pay for people like my old boss to listen to them in a comfortable Chelsea consulting room any time of the day they choose. For the less well off, counselling is only available on the NHS if you're prepared to hang tight and sit on a waiting list for a few months to years, and then only if your work is sufficiently understanding to permit you to attend appointments during the working week - which is why many working depressives never make it to counselling.

The poor do have the wonderful Samaritans service to call upon, and they're only a 'phone call away. However, I maintain that nobody with any serious intent to kill themselves will call them, as they will not wish to be talked out of it. Only those who actually wish to be saved will dial that number. When I voiced this to my GP during a discussion about depression and suicide, he said in some surprise: "that's very rational", to which I replied, "yes, watch out for the rational ones."

And we must. Most suicides tend to come as a complete surprise to families and friends. The funny chum who keeps everyone in stitches, who is always there for everyone else, and who is found hanging in their garage. We must not be surprised. We must be vigilant. There are always signs. More than the occasional reference to the past, and how lovely it all was, romanticised pictures on social media of Ophelia floating down the river covered in flowers but without any accompanying description or context, that sort of thing.

Keep a watchful eye, and bite your tongue when they finally start to speak, because shutting them up with a mealy-mouthed meme or a platitude might just shut them up forever.

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2016

Genteel slobbery

I see the Telegraph has come out with another of those 'lists' that Waitrose shoppers love to complete to affirm their middle-class status and reassure themselves they're 'posh': '16 belongings you will own if you're middle-class'.

Here's one I came up with as an alternative:

35 signs you have class but no money (well, your family may have had money, but some generations ago)…

1. Your Barbour is over 30 years old
2. So is your favourite winter coat
3. You don't have a dishwasher
4. The crocks in your cupboard are a jumble of 1970s Habitat earthenware, stacked with your grandmother's Wedgwood and Minton dinner plates
5. You have champagne flutes but they're covered in a thin film of dust
6. Ditto the set of crystal sherry glasses
7. Your cookware is over ten years old (your favourite saucepan is probably the one you used at school camp)
8. You drink your morning tea from a bone-china cup and your coffee out of a KitKat mug that came free with an Easter Egg 10 years ago
9. You don't have an AGA or a Rayburn, you have an old trooper of a gas cooker
10. Christmas trifle is made in a large Victorian crystal punch bowl drowning in sherry
11. You had a Chesterfield sofa at home, but it was ripped to shreds by generations of cats
12. You know how to write and address letters to peers and other dignitaries without having to consult Debretts Correct Form – but you can't remember how you know…
13. You know how to curtsey / bow if required, without toppling over, even when drunk
14. You know how to correctly introduce people of different ranks to each other, but again, you can't remember how you know…
15. You use correct spelling and grammar - even when texting
16. You say 'aitch' and not 'haitch' (Irish people are excused)
17. You drive an aged Ford
18. You use the back of A5 bits of paper watermarked 'Smythson' with your childhood address printed on the front as scrap / for shopping lists
19. Ref 18 - the address is die-stamped, not thermo-printed (to look as if it's die-stamped)
20. You buy your underwear from the local market stall and greet the stall-holder by name
21. Ditto your nightwear
22. Most of your woollens have at least one hole or trailing thread
23. You don't give a toss when people are surprised that you buy your jeans from Tu at Sainsbury's
24. You scraped an 'O' level in French
25. You understand basic Latin, and use it occasionally to emphasise a point – then have to explain what you just said…
26. You fix stuff around the house yourself using the Reader's Digest book of How to do Stuff Around the House, and if you can't fix the problem, you simply avoid the damaged area (particularly applies to rotted floors and stairs)
27. Your wiring is 'idiosyncratic' but you know how to jiggle the bakerlite switch it to make it work
28. You know how to climb over a 5-bar gate
29. You know how to shoot, but you don't shoot
30. You know how to ride, but you don't own a horse
31. You don't put on the heating, you just wear more clothes
32. You have a hot water bottle
33. You have a very old bottle of gin rubbing shoulders with an ancient bottle of cherry brandy in your drinks cupboard
34. You don't have a drinks cupboard, you use a shelf in the pantry
35. You don’t give a flying one what anyone says about you

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2016