The Capital Lettters Are BACK

The bandages are off and what you can see if you look at the photo is the inch-long wound that's been left behind following my ganglion and metacarpal boss extraction/planing just under a fortnight ago. It is minging enough, but when you add in the fact that 1) the gash itself is slightly blackened with the remnants of the indelible marker line, drawn on by the surgeon to show him where to make the incision; 2) either side of the cut, there are weird, corpse-like, wrinkled splits of skin caused by the adhesive sutures that I've been wearing for two weeks, and 3) the clear lesson I think we've all learned about not sunbathing while wearing a rectangular bandage... well, I am sure you can agree that it is not a pretty sight. Still, it's done now and is unarguably a MASSIVE improvement on a bean-sized, mostly-painless lump that no one but my dad ever noticed. Definitely worth it.

During my recuperation, several things have happened to me, the most life-altering of which is that I have accepted a place on an MA course in Creative Nonfiction (think true stuff written in a narrative, story-like way: Bill Bryson, Jon Ronson, Lost Looking For Fish), starting in September. This will involve lectures on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings from 6-9pm, plus reading approx. one book a week, plus writing a full, long-form work of non-fiction, at least 60,000 words long, to be submitted in two years - or else I fail. I was offered the place a while ago and went through a fairly gut-wrenching process as I decided whether or not I could or should do it, the world doesn't need any more books, what right do I have to write etc. etc., but in the end, lack of a better idea pushed me over the edge and I paid my deposit on Monday. I'm now skint as all my savings are locked into a special account until next February, so I am getting a lodger. The one I want is a 44 year old man who lives in Yorkshire with his wife and three daughters, and only needs the room on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It's all go.

In the meantime, I have been wincing over the government's climbdown over the NHS (although OBVIOUSLY I'm glad that they've realised what a lot of mistakes they were making, the whole process has still been a sad waste of everyone's time and money); crying at Terry Pratchett's assisted dying documentary (Monday night - watch it on iPlayer if you missed it - I wasn't crying because I didn't think they should die with assistance, I was just crying because nice people dying before they want to is sad); eating doughnuts but not gaining weight (I appear to be in that cruel, all-too-brief, magic metabolism zone); spending many pounds having my hair cut and dyed to the point where absolutely no one has noticed; going to my favourite London night out of the year, the UK Beatboxing Championships finals, where the crowd is more genuinely diverse than at anything else I attend, a broad sweep of audience by gender, race, age and social group. Plus it's purely about talent - no interviews with the finalists, no sob stories, no Dead Wife Daniels, just young lads - still no girls on stage :( - who practice hard and are very very good at what they do. Tickets £11. Amazing. Oh, and I saw the ridiculously sad Senna, and was a bit ashamed when I admitted to myself that I wouldn't have been quite as sad if he hadn't have been pretty much one of the most attractive men I have ever stared at. Because apparently, in the appalling world of my head, ugly people dying in Formula One accidents isn't as tragic. Seriously, I don't deserve to say things out loud.

Square eyes

No way to catch up on all that's been missed, so let's dive right in. I've been off work today, trying to finally kick a cold that I've had pretty much since 2010. It has been driving me SPASTIC so this morning I realised that something drastic had to happen, and by drastic I mean static, and by happen I mean not happen. I have lain very still indeed all day, and weirdly, I do feel better.

While I was lying still, I watched a lot of television - two episodes of Stephen Hawking's Universe, which I found annoying, ostensibly because I don't really like speculation and doubt, but probably because I am simply not clever enough to understand him, so watching him talk makes me feel thick. I also watched three episodes of Masterchef, where I became increasingly convinced that Jackie must be giving a lot of incredible blow jobs to Greg and/or Jon, because there is simply no other possible explanation for the fact that she is still in the competition - she has childish tantrums, jumps up and down with stress like a bizarre combo of Su Pollard and my old ukulele teacher, she dropped her Phad Thai on the floor in a panic about four weeks ago and had ten minutes to make another one, and then in the food critics' test episode, she was running so behind schedule that she cut her thumb and was banned from cooking her pudding. Yet she still got through. Triumph despite obvious weakness is my bete-noire and weirdly something I've been talking a lot about in therapy. Can't handle frailty - it should be non-existent, and, if it's not, it should at least be hidden. She wears her faults like poshos wear Jack Wills: loud and proud. Anathema. Get her off.

Then I watched the last three episodes of Jamie's Dream School, which was about as frustrating a programme as I've ever witnessed - it's basically The Secret Millionaire, but without the secret and where the beneficiaries don't realise they need any help and so swear and shout instead of saying thanks. What could have been a fascinating experiment into how to change the behaviours of some of society's most determined cast-offs became an excruciating, upsetting farce, where thousands (millions?) of pounds of expertise and facilities, and some of the most experienced and respectable experts in the world came to teach 19 young people, most of whom didn't give a flying fuck. Just like most of the naive, entitled upstarts at private schools have no inkling of just how lucky they are (and I wholeheartedly include my teenage self in that), these kids didn't seem to understand what they were doing at Dream School - and certainly, four weeks was never going to be enough to get them qualifications.

Instead, they got an unrivalled taster course into privilege: students went sailing with Ellen MacArthur, cooked stirfries with Jamie, oil painted on seemingly unlimited canvases with Rolf Harris, used top of the range photography and lighting equipment with Rankin, went swimming with Olympic gold-medalist Daley Thompson, ran a scene from Romeo & Juliet onstage at The Globe with Simon Callow, had science lessons with Robert Winston that were so good I was seething with jealousy and music with Jazzy B in a room packed with production equipment, mikes, synths, percussion. I get the concept - this is Dream School - but if it had worked, the message would have been devastating: kids won't change unless they have world-class facilities and celebrity teachers.

As it was, the kids (and I kind of loved them for this) remained steadfastly unimpressed, smoking, swearing and storming out with boring frequency, except for a fortunate minority who were given a fast-track into some of the best work experience placements in the country - one wannabe lawyer had a meeting with Cherie Booth, another girl did a day's work at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant while a third spent a morning in surgery at St. Mary's Hospital. Inspirational work experience is hard to come by, and is of course only available to those with the contacts or the confidence to find a place, and the money to afford not to work while they're doing it. It's hardly a fair system and I was profoundly disappointed that, in the end, this had to become the programme's only success story.

I'd hoped Dream School would say something profound about the problems in education, and make some practical suggestions about changes that could be made nationally and which would make a perceptible difference to those students while they are still at school. The kids on the programme were disruptive and angry for very good reasons - just like the hundreds of thousands of disruptive, angry kids across the UK. I wanted to explore how best these kids can be helped while they're still in education. Unfortunately, a well-meaning but fundamentally weak headmaster, combined with the clear uselessness of a four-week timespan, meant that Jamie's Dream School only had one lasting message: 'You lot haven't got qualifications and we can't give you any, so if you just shut up for five minutes, we'll throw a ton of money at the problem and give you an unparalleled celebrity leg-up. It's up to you what you do with it - you might be inspired to change your life forever - but whether you like it or loathe it, it'll make great TV. For those of you not at Dream School, I'm afraid the problem's the same as it's always been - the noisy minority ruin it for everyone, and we don't have the authority to change that. You can't all have Rolf Harris teach art. In short: you're fucked. Soz.'

I'm not advocating caning. To be honest, if you'd given me those same 19 kids and the same budget, and one month, I would have sent them all into therapy. Wouldn't have made quite such dramatic TV, and poor old Jamie wouldn't have been able to polish his halo or show off his celeb contacts list, but I guarantee a bit of introspection would have helped. That and some basic English language skills, which weren't addressed once in the programme. Communication and meditation. Janey's Dream School. How about it, C4?

Harrowing

What with all my "tedious" navel-gazing (copyright A. Reader, 9 January 2011) and pontification on the subject of love and relationships, you'd be forgiven for expecting me to be a Full and Vocal Member of The Valentine's Haters Club. Actually, I kind of like it. I know, I know: it's horribly commercial, and yes, I know that Real Love happens 365 days a year, and I am fully aware that restaurants put their prices up just to cash in, and I know that the whole thing seems designed to make people who are alone feel much worse about themselves, increasing the sense single adults often have of being second class citizens.

But hey. At its loosest extremes, it's about telling people you love them, and I'm all for that. I just stretch the boundaries a bit, and send cards to my parents, and a few friends, and then yesterday Grania came to my office early in the morning and dropped off a small, red, heart-shaped helium balloon on a stick, so anyone who cared could see I was loved. I put it under my seat on the tube home so as not to be too unbearable, but I still enjoyed seeing it waggling along beside me as I went up the escalators. And I got a card from Astrid, and one from my dad, and then I got changed and wore a heart necklace and heart earrings and a vest-top with hearts on it, and three single girlfriends came over and I made a three course meal including heart-shaped lamb burgers, and we drank a lot of wine and I felt pretty happy, all things considered.

Doubtless, it's a good deal more fun to look down one's nose at those willing morons who allow themselves to be duped by Hallmark and Cafe Rouge into spending their hard-earned cash on cardboard and marked-up set menus; to tell oneself that one is a vastly superior specimin because one doesn't buy in to all that capitalist claptrap, because one refuses to let one's emotions be controlled by such a cynical and commercial endeavour. But I just can't do it. I'm a sucker for love.

Kate and I did the next section of the Capital Ring on Sunday, from Greenwood to South Kenton. It was grey, windy and drizzling, and by the time we reached Harrow, the only photo I'd taken was of a decomposing dead fox floating in the Grand Union Canal. I was boiling from the climb and my rucksack had created an attractive sweat patch on my back, meaning that I became absolutely freezing as soon as we sat down in the Blues cafe in Harrow for a bowl of tuna pasta. The room was slightly less frosty than the waitress, but more potent was the thudding fug of oppressive, eternal Sunday mid-afternoons that one can only understand if one has been to boarding school, where you're bored out of your tree with nothing to do and yet painfully aware of a conflicting sense that tomorrow morning is approaching at speed and that the ever-craved weekend will shortly be over for another five days. You're thrilled for the change in routine that is heralded by the arrival of your parents to take you 'out' for lunch, but then are cripplingly embarrassed by their every move and spend the longed-for, fantasized-over, hour-long pizza lunch fervently wishing that your mum was more glamorous and that your dad's voice wasn't so loud, desperate for them to stop asking stupid questions about such OBVIOUS stuff but then spitting with rage the moment the subject meandered even a millimeter from yourself. And then they tell you they love you and kiss you goodbye and you don't even want to be seen with them in case someone sees you together and finds another reason to think you're uncool, and then they get in the car and start the hour and a half drive back home, and you're left alone in the cold gloomy evening, filled with sadness and regret and self-loathing and homesickness and a physically painful feeling of loneliness.

Surrounding us in the cafe were many clusters of hopeful parents feeding their costly offspring, following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill and Baby Carrot, oops, soz, Benedict Cumberbatch in being educated at this esteemed establishment. The MILF next to us chatted to her penne-chokingly handsome teenage son about the upcoming BAFTAs and other hip things, and then casually paid for the meal with one of several crisp £50 notes and five one pound coins. On the table behind Kate, two slightly uncool brothers sat opposite their slightly uncool parents and discussed forthcoming sport fixtures over burgers, pizza and a chicken caesar salad. So much money, so many extraordinary facilities, so many privileged, forlorn boys walking outside in the drizzle wearing tailcoats and a mournful gaze. It was all just desperately sad.

Why do I feel sorry for these young men? Because it's not about love. You can pay many thousands to send your son to Harrow, or Eton, or St. Mary's Whatever. They can grow up with like-minded friends on tap, an unrivalled circle of influence, guaranteeing them entry into society's highest echelons, a free ticket into advantage that never expires. They can wake up on a Sunday aged 14 and have a golf course at their disposal, a running track, swimming pools, tennis courts, squash courts, a judo room, an art school, theatres, photography and film facilities, music rooms, recording studios, computer labs, open fields, a farm, and wealthy parents to take them out for pizza. They can be educated by top teachers for five years and come out with top grades and places at top universities, where the grooming process can continue. They can have every head start it's possible to have. But they can never be normal. They can never un-go to boarding school. And although it was wonderful in so many ways, and although parents are only doing what they think is best, the fact is, it breeds difference and it's unfair. And - vitally - for every over-confident Churchill or Carrotbatch, there are men and women who were permanently scarred by the experience, who will never fully recover from feeling abandoned during those formative years.

I'm not blaming boarding school for the snake. I just... I just wish it didn't need to exist. I wish state education was so good that even the richest felt that private education was unnecessary. Some are more equal than others and I wish it weren't so. I just want us all to be friends. Underneath the confident tone of voice, I am, as an ex-boyfriend once told me, just a big bundle of love. I think he meant it as a compliment.

I'm also massively hormonal AGAIN, and hungover and needy, and all I want to do is eat dark chocolate with sea salt and then lie in a huge bed, enveloped in some strong arms, and sleep. What I do NOT want to do is schlep over to west London and have a FREAKING CHOIR PRACTICE.

Also:

Props to the ever-reliable NewsArse! for this pert summary of the problem with the Tories' pathetic schools policy:

I’ll run the best school ever - until my child leaves, confirm parents
Parents across the country have reacted positively to the Government’s plans to let them run their own schools, claiming they will run the best school this country has ever seen, right up until the point that their child leaves, when they will probably lose interest. Felicity Downing, a parent keen on the scheme said, “Yes, I will dedicate my life to making this new school the very beacon of educational excellence, right up until my Sophie gets her GCSEs. Then I’ll obviously want to sell off the land in the hope of saving about £20 on my council tax bill.”

But just to even things out with a bit of anti-LibDem material, I have just finished The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa, a fantastic novel that I bought because I found out it is Nick Clegg's favourite book. The writing is unquestionably brilliant throughout and I haven't underlined so many beautifully-observed phrases since I read What A Carve Up!, but this passage about the qualities necessary to govern, in particular, made me smile:

"...what would the Senate do with me, an inexperienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception, essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others. We of our generation must draw aside and watch the capers and somersaults of the young around this ornate catafalque. Now you need young men, bright young men, with minds asking 'how' rather than 'why', and who are good at masking, at belnding I should say, their obvious personal interests with vague public ideals."

Cleggshell.

Problems? Yep. Solutions? Not so much.

FFS. The news in this country may be one of the most free on the planet, and I do count us lucky, but seriously, when The Guardian editor picks this as a recommendation, I do despair. Seriously? This is what is important right now? Which decade healthy, happy, becoupled women should choose to get up the duff? ARGH.

I'm emailing a guy at the moment who's an education journalist and briefly hinted at my feelings of depression re. the academies situation. He said he'd always assumed the Tories would get in, so he's been thinking of it as a depressing reality for months now - but he agreed that it is an appalling idea. This from someone who comments on education policy for his full-time job.

And now I'm reading a book - a brilliant book, mind - about South Africa, called Ways of Staying by Kevin Bloom, a Jewish South African whose liberal nature struggles to come to terms with the murder of his cousin. I didn't understand the title at first, but turns out it's about how to remain in a country when, all around, there are so many signs that you should leave. The writer is enviably observant, putting in crisp details about, for example, interviewees' hand gestures and plate management, all of which paints an extraordinarily vivid picture. The country's certainly beautiful, and certainly interesting, but... I'm getting the picture that it's a dark, bloody mess. We're discussing it next week at book club, and with several members of our group connected personally to SA, I fear it may be a fairly feisty evening. I will take my mace.

My fictional husband is going to cheat on me. Africa's crumbling. The global economy's a disaster. China's human rights are appalling. The middle east is as corrupt as it's possible to be. Pakistan is bubbling. Iran has The Bomb and isn't scared to use it. The UK is moving into a new era of educational segregation. There is awful stuff happening in Jamaica. And I still firmly believe that all we can do is work to collapse the gap between rich and poor. Poverty in itself does not drive people to violence and other crimes. Inequality does. I read about South Africa and feel sick to think of all us Western tourists driving from airconned hotel to fenced-in restaurant when there's so much darkness and hatred a stone's throw away. But it's here too. The violence is not as bad, thankfully, but the envy, the anger is here too. The difference is, we haven't been colonised recently. Not since the Romans.

But am I working to collapse the inequality gap? Erm. No. Far, far from it. And instead of confronting this, I wiggle my big beak further down into the sand and enjoy the feelings of the hot grains moving in between the feathers on my neck and head.

Anyway. So the macro state of affairs is all a bit depressing. In happier (micro) news, from inside the Bubble of Denial... I learned how to play Don't You Want Me by The Human League at ukulele class last night, my mail-order tent arrived and Glasto is less than four weeks away. Phew.

A cornucopia of issues

So I'll update you on my existence and then we can cover this heartbreaking academies project and other hellish current affairs developments.

Friday night I went to see the Chemical Brothers (or as my 26 year old companion Chris insists on calling them, 'The Chems') at The Roundhouse. Last time I saw them perform live, I was eighteen and had told my parents I was staying the night at my friend Daisy's house but in fact we went to a Prodigy gig at Brixton Academy and took speed that our druggy friend Nick had put in a bottle of Ribena for us because we didn't want to snort it. The Chems were the support act but we'd drunk our Ribena too early and I was completely mental during that forty minute gig and then basically started aching and being tired during the main set. The next day I felt like my bones were eroding and Daisy and I compared notes about how horrific our comedowns were, but in retrospect I'd taken about half a gram of speed dissolved in a sugary drink, a combo which was about as likely to get me high as a Tracker bar. I think I was just unfit and six hours of dancing had given my body a shock. ANYWAY. Fourteen years on and the Chemical Brothers have a lot less hair and, personally, I think their music is a bit less exciting than it was when I first listened to Exit Planet Dust or whatever it was called. But it was a brilliant gig all the same, even without the alleged benefit of speed or Ribena - lots of dancing, lots of holding arms aloft to interfere with the amazing laser shows, lots of spilled pints and excitement about Bono's back injury that was possibly (at that point) going to exclude U2 from headlining at Glasto. Come on Bowie.

Saturday morning I was my own middle-class nightmare as I was awoken at 7.30am by the delivery man from Ocado, and proceeded to make my own garlic bread for the countryside gathering that lots of us went to and cor was it lovely. Old friends, hay bales to sit on, delicious food, Pimms and champagne in the sun, laughing, chinese lanterns after dark... a magical time and a blast from the past. Hungover and giggling uncontrollably on Sunday, work and choir on Monday, work and work-sponsored wine tasting last night - we tried bottles from Greece, Georgia, Italy and France and it was interesting. Apparently wine is thought to have originated somewhere around Georgia in 6000 or 7000 BC. Amazing. More interesting was the conversation I was having with my colleague before we sat down. I'd pointed out a guy from our floor who was also at the tasting, and indicated that he was thought to be a bit of a player. My colleague, let's call him Mike, said that didn't surprise him at all. Mike is in his early fifties and has been married nearly thirty years, and he told me that having a black-and-white attitude to infidelity is fairly naive. My jaw dropped.
"Do you mean that cheating is the norm?" I asked.
"I have no idea," he answered. "But it can't be a deal-breaker. Men are ruled by their pants. If it's going to be the end of your marriage if he fools around with another woman on a drunken night out, then you're going to find it hard going."
"Hang on," I said. "You're telling me that I have to be prepared to put up with infidelity if I get married?"
"I've never cheated, but I think it's not practical to say you will end a 25 year marriage on the basis of a one night mistake."
"Obviously I know he'll want to shag another woman at some point, possibly hourly," I said, just to show that I'm not too much of a purist. "And I'll meet other guys I find attractive too. But I've always hoped that, if he finds himself wanting to sleep with someone else, he'll come to me and tell me, and either we deal with it or we decide to break up."
"It's a nice idea, but I think your standards are impossibly high," Mike said. "These things are - normally - not premeditated. The guy gets drunk, goes home with the wrong person, wakes up remorseful - and just because of that, you're going to end a 25 year marriage, with three kids involved? It's not justified. No one is perfect."
"But that's just such a bad attitude. If he does it once and gets away with it, what's to stop him doing it again, over and over? I see what you mean, that ruining 25 years for one shag seems over the top, but if you can't trust him, then surely the things that make a marriage fun are mostly destroyed? And that's the worst bit - once you've been lied to once, once you've been made a fool of, your next relationship is affected too. You become paranoid and insecure, and having once been a laid-back cool girl, you move to be a divorcee with three kids who can't trust anyone else. Just because your stupid husband fancied a shag with someone else. The cheating moment itself may only last ten minutes but the effects are long-lasting..." Mike looked at me sadly - he clearly understood my point of view but still thought I was being hopelessly unrealistic. I felt totally powerless. And a bit sad. Really quite sad, actually. My first long term relationship ended because I was sorely tempted to cheat on my boyfriend. I didn't though - I spoke to him about it and we agreed that neither of us were happy, and we broke up. If my husband of 25 years wanted to cheat, I'd hope he would come and talk about it with me. But I guess if it just pops up out of nowhere, he's unlikely to phone me from the cab he's taking back to her house, with her kissing his neck as he explains his predicament. Meh, I dunno. I just hate the whole thought of infidelity. It really makes me feel sick. Desire to sleep with someone else I'm fine with - but actually going through with it, and lying to the person who's been there for you for the past quarter of a century... I just can't see how I should be laid back about that prospect. And that whole argument about men being rule by their pants, it's pathetic. It may be true, but it's pathetic. Women have just as strong a need to be loved and flattered and fancied. Maybe the chemicals are different and men genuinely can't control their urges. But I don't believe that's true of all of them. Some of them are honourable enough to keep it in their pants. I won't get married until I find one like that. And I refuse to be grateful if he is. Fidelity should be a given, not an unexpected bonus. Conversing with Mike was unexpectedly depressing. Glad (in many ways) that I'm not married to him.

In other news... It's my country's economy that's going down the pan, but I did laugh when I read this extract on The Graun's website, detailing some very-much-predicted issues with the Conservatives' budget in yesterday's Queen's Speech:
'Osborne was forced to abolish child trust funds altogether after the Tories overestimated savings that could be made on the basis of advice from the Whitehall efficiency experts, Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read. Gershon had said that £1bn of the £6bn cuts would come from savings in government IT projects, while up to £1bn would come from a recruitment freeze across the civil service. The Treasury said yesterday that IT had produced savings of £95m, less than 10% of the amount initially identified, while the recruitment freeze would produce savings of £120m, slightly more than 10% of the amount estimated by Gershon in that area.
Labour had lampooned a two-page document produced by Gershon during the election campaign outlining his efficiency savings. Liam Byrne, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said tonight: "We warned the Tories that their plans were wrong. Now they're having to break both parties' manifesto promises and wipe out child trust funds because they wouldn't listen."'
I've no problem with child trust funds falling by the wayside, but it does show that complex descriptions of proposed financial savings made by a party while in opposition should pretty much always be taken with a shedful of salt.

Meh, no energy to carry on typing - suffice to say, this new academies drive by the Tories (and, yes, the LibDems) is exactly what I feared most - schools being run outside the jurisdiction of the local councils, ostensibly to free up teachers from national red tape: a good aim but a terrible solution. Academies are privately funded by businesses or individuals - how can this fail to create a massive disparity between different schools in different areas? It also opens things up for a plethora of faith schools. Agh. It's a disgrace, seriously. I can't even really believe it's happening. The whole thing makes me massively disappointed and LIVID with the LibDems for sanctioning such a lot of bollocks. I'm still glad I voted for them, because the vaguely-hinted-at referendum on AV in 2011 will mean the next election is slightly fairer than it would have been, had the coalition not been formed. But the Labour leadership candidates look pretty uninspiring at the moment so right now I really have no idea who I'll be voting for in 2015. With the education system going down the pan thanks to a 'solution' that will make the existing postcode lottery situation look like a pleasant dream, this country might be so freaking scary that I might not even be here next time around. Grumpy grumpy.

School daze

I don't get paid to write this blog, and it's meant to be a personal record, so I don't tend to take the writing process too seriously. But this weekend I went back to my old boarding school for a fifteen year reunion, and I have lots to say. I want to write about it well. But I am so dead with exhaustion, I don't know how it will come out. I'll start it now, and if I have to abandon ship half way through, I apologise. It's possibly not the writing technique Charlie Brooker would use, but then I'm not Charlie Brooker and this isn't a weekly column for a national newspaper. As far as I'm aware.

I sent the first email about the reunion last August, to the school, to see what they thought about a group of us coming to spend a night there sometime in 2010. Eight months and hundreds of communiques later, 30 old girls and a clutch of older teachers returned to our even older school, drank tea and then, once the teachers had left, had a tour and a lot of good food and wine, and not enough sleep. The school buildings have changed a fair bit, but everything is basically the same in all the good ways, just a bit more modern: totally recognisable to me, and still familiar.

But what was personally surprising was how little emotion I felt. I had the very potent sense of being a completely different person to the girl I was at school - not just the expected progression of feeling older and wiser, but absolutely and unbreachably separate from that other Jane, a distant relative with whom I have no desire to be friends or penpals. My school days were immensely happy in part and I made some friends for life, of that there is no doubt. But I was also miserable at times, like any child, and there is much of that period that I have happily left behind forever; it's not locked away or festering in a pit of denial, it's just... it's gone and I grieve it not. I am infinitely happier now than I ever was in my teens - even at my most miserable these days, I am markedly better off - and I think I enjoyed the reunion as a fun gathering of people whose company I enjoy in the present, rather than an opportunity to nostalge about the past.

The other oddity was seeing the school as part of a group of parents. Of the 30 of us there on Saturday, many are now mothers, and the conversation inevitably turned to whether we plan to educate our children privately or not. In helping us to organise the reunion, the school is, I'm sure, hoping that several of our number choose to send their daughters there in a few years, but even if the desire is genuine, the reality may make it impossible for all but the wealthiest. With fees now around £28k per annum, plus extras, this means that, for every girl they send to the school, a parent needs to be earning around £55k before tax. If you have, say, two kids at private boarding schools with no scholarships, that's around £110k per year on school fees alone - no mortgage, no holidays, no debt repayment, no theatre tickets. I just cannot imagine ever being able to afford that - but many people I know will find the money somehow.

Fortunately for my bank balance, I still don't see myself sending my fictional child to private school. Of course, my opinions will all change the moment I give birth, but right now, I still have a problem with it. Looking round the school over the weekend, I was shocked at the difference in experiences a girl would have there vs. a state-run comprehensive. The facilities are exceptional - a vast fitness centre with a dance studio, a massive theatre and drama department, an incredible music block with an inspirational young head at the helm, and some of the best academic records in the country. Going to that school for seven years would be amazing. But... it's an amazing bubble. As longtime LLFF readers will know, I left school without any grasp of general knowledge. I'd been spoonfed to get top grades in my exams - but I couldn't have told you what communism was, nor defined the major differences between the political parties. I knew a bit about WWII, but nothing about WWI. I knew something about Shakespeare, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you who was on the throne at the time he was writing. My knowledge was a collection of essays, pre-written in my head. The only stuff outside those topics was Take That and outrage that my friend's brother appeared to find my pale skin, under-developed facial features and deep-seated insecurities eminently resistable.

I left school aged 17 with three good A levels and the unearned social self-confidence that is both part of the appeal and one of the biggest flaws of private education. Would I have been happier if I'd gone to a local state school? Who can say. Given that I have depression and believe that I definitely was a sufferer while I was at school, the chances are I would have found those years a struggle anywhere. As it was, I got good results, developed a lifelong love of choral singing which I'd hate to have missed out on, and made fantastic friends. I consider myself lucky to have gone there. But god it was a bubble. I was a naive dickhead when I left - I knew jack shit about the real world and, fifteen years later, I still feel like I'm playing a game of catch-up. Do I really want to spend £55k p.a. (plus at least 15 years' inflation) to turn my kids into naive dickheads with great A level results?

More than just a debate about my own kids elect, there's the bigger discussion about the UK and humanity. On a broad political level, I believe passionately in equality of opportunity - and there's no doubt that the continued existence of private school is about as much of a two fingers up at fairness as you can get. These days I rarely feel as though I am in an environment where the majority of people are ridiculously wealthy and privileged, so Saturday was an odd sensation for me, as we all chatted and laughed while being served canapes and glasses of sparkling wine by a wonderful team of caterers who live in the local town. I was deeply uncomfortable with a strong sense of them and us - not that we're bad people and not that they hated us, but just that it's not FAIR and, although I know life isn't fair, surely we should all do our bit not to perpetuate systems with which we wholeheartedly disagree?

If I were Prime Minister, it would be my number one priority to bring state school standards up to those of the private ones, with the explicit and stated intention of closing down all private schools within a certain number of years. But that's a fantasy - the reality is that state schools are very hit and miss, some excellent, some rubbish, and depending on where you live, the options can be free and great or terrifyingly bad. Until state education is a lot better, I wouldn't want to deny wealthy parents the opportunity of paying for private. But I'd like to get to a point where the richest don't have the need nor the desire to segregate their own from the hoi polloi, where we can all happily grow up together as equals, free from this apartheid that still feeds the old British class divides. What sounds like utopia to me probably sounds like a nightmare to others, but that's what I was thinking about on the journey back to London yesterday. And it's SO lucky that I have my opinions on this all sorted out, given that I am unattached and about as likely to get pregnant as my own mother. PHEW.

Thinking man's malt loaf

As you can't fail to have noticed if you've been concentrating, I have a Master's degree in English Literature. I talk about this all the time, because I generally assume that people think that I'm stupid because I'm a girl and I can't back up any of my opinions with statistics because I have numeracynesia and can't remember anything except song lyrics. My MA was a brilliant thing to do, I loved it and I briefly learned lots. But after it finished, I still felt, well, not paranoid, but like I'd only just scratched the surface of General Knowledge. And, three years after I graduated, I still have the sense that I'm pedaling frantically to catch up - my geography still sucks, my concept of world history is vastly improved but still shameful, my British history is patchy at best, my economics is woeful although less so having worked in a bank for 2.5 years, my understanding of politics is as easily penetrated as a 17 year old slapper on pills, and my literary insight is best summed up by the fact that I recently re-read a book without realising.

But last night, in a swing of Copernican proportions, the power balance shifted into my favour when I went to a three-hour-long Brecht play, armed with no prior experience of Brecht whatsoever bar a cursory glance at his Wikipedia page in the afternoon, yet I understood the plot, found it enjoyable and thought-provoking and I didn't fall asleep. OK, sure, it was well-directed and well-acted, and the questionably modern translation was suspiciously easy on the ear, but doesn't that mean I am slightly brainy? I think I must be. At one point in the interval I was cross-referencing it with Beckett. Ness and I even managed to critique some elements of it, deciding that the music, far from giving us a jolt or jarring with the rest of the play, fitted in so nicely that it didn't really serve its purpose. Get us! We were criticising the music because we liked it, because it didn't make us uncomfortable enough. Looking back on it now, it's a bit like when you re-read one of your university essays and have a kind of out-of-body experience, because you can't remember ever learning about that topic, let alone being able to write so coherently and convincingly on it. Anyway, for what it's worth, Mother Courage and Her Children was a great watch - not perfect, but fascinating all the same, and I'd recommend it, if only to prove that there's more to Fiona Shaw than just playing the woman with caviar on her face from Three Men and A Little Lady. Ah, popular culture, I cannot resist thee. I feel comfortable around you. We belong. I nuzzle up to you and we spoon. Brecht sits outside in the wingbacked chair, doing sudoku.

A different type of class...

Much as I might like to believe otherwise, the fact is that Summer 09 is on its way out, and, steeped in that back-to-school feeling, September will shortly be upon us. Christmas is in about a week and a half. So with that in mind, I decided to investigate my possible options for self-improvement in the Autumn term. First up was hairdressing - and this is still a likely plan, but the course I like doesn't start until January 2010. So I bought a copy of Floodlight, London's part-time and evening course bible, and highlighted the ones that tickled my fancy. Here, for your edification, inspiration and possible amusement, is the list of contenders:

• Comic Book Art for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Human Evolution at Birkbeck
• Lindy Hop Swing Introduction at City Lit
• Rock and Roll Jive Dancing at Bishopsgate Institute
• Drawing for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Drawing Level 1 at City Lit
• Folk and Pop Guitar for Improvers at Morley College
• Current Affairs Part 1 at City Lit
• Improve Your Memory at Morley College
• Jazz Singing at City Lit
• Tai Chi Beginners at Lambeth College
• Antique and Modern Furniture Restoration at Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute
• Doing Up Junk at Havering Adult College
• Developing Your Fiction at Birkbeck
• Short Story Writing at City Lit

I don't know what it says about me that my interests are quite so ridiculously varied, but anyone who's thinking along the 'Jane of all trades' line wouldn't be far off the mark from where I'm sitting. Why can't I just have one interest and commit, for goodness' sake? Why must I spread myself so thin? Don't answer that. I think we all know why - and for anyone who's really not sure, something about wanting to be liked, wanting to impress, wanting to fit in while wanting to stand out is probably on the money. Anyway. That's the way things are. Now to decide. What do you reckon? I was going to write that I'd promise to do the one with the most votes, but I panicked. I'm certainly doing Improve Your Memory as that's only a one-dayer and I need it more than any of the others. And Tai Chi is out as I am saving that for when I get too old for yoga. Jazz Singing... I think probably not. In fact, they all make me feel a bit panicked. But I'm young and free and this is the perfect time to start something new. Although I don't feel like doing anything because I have an as-yet-not-visible spot brewing on my chin that is so painful it hurts to sit still. I think I should be sent home early but I don't think it'll happen.

Oops

Well, now I've upset my mum with what I wrote yesterday. And I didn't mean to do that, really I didn't. I probably sound spoilt and ungrateful for all the sacrifices they made to put me through school and university. And for that, I apologise wholeheartedly. I know they were doing their best and I am incredibly lucky and grateful to have such loving and wonderful parents. I guess I just struggle with middle class guilt, and it's made me into an inverse snob, and I should keep schtum. But then... I do find class issues endlessly fascinating, and keeping schtum is, surely, one surefire way to perpetuate the status quo. Really all I wanted to say was that I don't like posh people who think they're better than non-posh people. Anyway. I feel better now I have got it off my chest, and I have always known that my opinions are riddled, RIDDLED with contradictions and half-baked rubbish (mmmm, half-baked...) and, let's face it, it's easy for me to say I don't want to send my kids to private school when a) I don't have any and b) I would never be able to afford it. Current fees at my ol' alma mater are £9300 a term, although you do get a £300 discount if you pay by monthly direct debit. Phew. But were I to wake up tomorrow and find myself in the possession of a toddler and a multi-million pound inheritance (the thought is strangely terrifying), I don't know what I would do. I know what I think is best for the country. But can I put my (fictional) money where my mouth is? There's only one way to find out. I better get pregnant.

Confusion leads to sanctimonious rant

Yesterday I read this article which explained how independent/public/private/fee-paying schools in Britain try to justify their charitable status. I doubt it will be surprising that I didn't agree with its contents. Then last night I went to a gig at the Royal Festival Hall. The turnout was pretty broad, fairly white, but a wide age-range had turned out to see 19-year-old folk starlet Laura Marling perform with her posse of other rising folk starlets. I have had Laura's album for about a year having bought it on the strength of the 30-second snippets on iTunes and its Mercury Prize nomination. And I really like it. She has a beautiful voice and sings with clarity and honesty. It's not the world's best album, but given her age, it's an impressive debut. I was looking forward to seeing her live. The lights dimmed, and a large screen lit up at the back of the stage. Footage filmed by Laura showed her interviewing some of the other musicians in her group of comrades. Everyone was attractive and supportive, full of mutual love and respect. It would all have been simply wonderful, except I was too busy bristling uncontrollably: the accents from the people on screen were as Sloaney as Prince Charles drinking Earl Grey in a Barbour, standing on a croquet lawn with a black Lab. I couldn't bear it. The singer I'd come to see wasn't a carefree hippie - she was a privileged toff. A privileged toff just like me. I was furious.

I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Eton. This isn't a recent problem but lately I've noticed it getting worse. The Glastocrush has just moved in from the decidedly gritty Uxbridge Road to a friend's place in Holland Park. The houses are stunning, the delis are exclusive, the pubs are full of well-behaved Harrovians, the pavements are wide, the flaneurs are carrying Alexander McCall Smith, the dogs are not bred to kill and people turn their James Blunt CDs down after 10pm so as not to wake the baby. It couldn't be more different to my hood. Most people would, I'm sure, secretly love to live somewhere so luxurious and safe. What's not to like? But for some reason, it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I can't work out why. Then the other night, when I met a guy my age who had never had a job, instead of being jealous, I instinctively went on the attack. And when someone talked about rolling back the rug in their parents' house at Christmas time and doing some reeling, I found myself panicking.

What is going on? I, after all, was privately educated, at vast expense to my parents. I know the Dashing White Sargeant. I can hold my own at a dinner party. To my distinct irritation, I don't sound or look remotely out of place in Fulham. I've been to the Feathers, the 4th of June, Boujis and Cartier Polo (although admittedly the last was as a waitress). I know not to hold a knife like a pen, not to butter the bread all at once, to tip the soup bowl away from me and pass the port clockwise. I write thank you letters in fountain pen. Several people I know are friends with members of the royal family. Despite all attempts to adopt a more estuary twang every now and then, on the whole, my rich, plummy accent would sound fantastic on Watch With Mother. So how can I be negative about posh people when I've had exactly the same advantages, when I am one of them? As a result of my spoon-fed education, I received good exam results and went to a good university where I got a good degree - all in all, a good start in life. Spending seven of the most formative years of one's life (11-18) at a small boarding school means that you make close friends - I've just looked at my phone's contacts list, and out of our year of around 50 girls, I still have the phone numbers of 20, and see most of them regularly, just under fourteen years after we left. I am incredibly grateful for those friends. And there's no doubt that, while my schooldays were occasionally miserable, and the education I received was questionable, I did have moments when I had a brilliant time.

Still, if I could ban private education, I would. As discussed when I was loving my politics course, I believe strongly in equality of opportunity, and I'm fairly clear that private education simply doesn't allow that. I can't change my past, but I can state my belief that, in an ideal future, all of Britain's schools would be run by the state. I am convinced that only with the intervention of parents will schools improve, and the more rich, powerful parents who choose to withdraw their children from the state system, the more that state schools will decline.

I guess that, while I am not exactly ashamed of the fact that I had a private education, I want people to know that I don't believe it is fair, or right, and that I do not support inequality. And I guess that, while I think it's fine to have been to public school, what is not fine is to act as if the undeniable privilege and advantage that comes from that experience is a birthright. Basically - I'm fine with toffs as long as they are, like me, slightly uncomfortable with their toffness. Revelling in the toffness is, to me, a bit gross. Never making an effort to leave the bubble is, to me, a bit gross. Whether it's the yummy mummies in Holland Park, the chummy guffaws from the men's bar at a centuries-old golf club, the chattering at the organic farmers' market in the Oval or the clink of gin glasses from inside a gated community in South Africa, there's something that makes me cringe about this unspoken preference for PLUs.

I know, I know - people will always be different and birds of a feather will always flock together. And the hypocrisy of me saying 'Love all the people' while saying 'I don't like toffs' isn't lost on me. I guess what I'm trying to say is, things aren't great now. The divides are massive. Let's not exacerbate them by saying 'My four year old's education is worth more than yours.' Different is not better or worse. It's just different. Pitbulls aren't worse than spaniels. Garage music isn't worse than Mozart. Cannabis isn't worse than yoga. Everyone lives their own life. Judgment is wrong - right? You can't live in London and ignore the poverty, the gangs, the total hopelessness of many of your neighbours. You can't live in a rural village in your gorgeous converted farmhouse and pretend that there's not shit going down all around you. Well, you can. You can be an ostrich. But that seems so sad, so final. It's giving up. And I don't want to give up. Surely it would be preferable if we worked at this together. If we can't send our kids to the same schools, then what chance do we have?

That said, my friend once told me that she was all up for state education for her daughter until she looked round her local primary schools, one private, one state, and said the difference was so palpable as to be horrific and made her do everything in her power to find the extra thousands she needed to send her daughter to the private primary. You can be a liberal all you want, she seemed to be saying, but once you become a mother, everything will change. So, like her, I reserve the right to be a complete and utter hypocrite.

Early Autumn summary

So on Friday after work, I rushed over to King's Cross to meet Astrid and various others for our choir trip up to Cambridge. After a packed train journey with no possibility of snack facilities, five of us pelted into a handy M&S Simply Food for post-train nourishment, fearing (rightly) a long rehearsal period before dinner. Armed with a selection of sandwiches, couscous, vine leaves and jelly babies, we hailed a nearby cab and within seconds of pulling away from the kerb were vigorously enjoying our hard-purchased snacks. But not for long.
"Are you aware," the driver shouted over his shoulder, "that there is an £80 soilage fee?" We snickered. Soilage is, after all, a very funny word.
"And I will charge," he continued ominously. Some of our number stopped eating. I, however, was halfway through a hastily-purchased ham-and-mustard-mayo-on-wholegrain and extremely loath to return it to its triangular case.
"Really?" I asked in my most pleading tones, weighing up the likelihood of a soiling incident involving a ham sandwich. "What if we absolutely guarantee that we will not soil?"
"Yes," continued Deborah. "What if the soilage is of a crumb-based nature and easily brush-offable?" Eventually, the driver's icy heart thawed and he agreed that, so long as any soilage was contained on our person, or brushed away immediately from the vinyl flooring, we might be allowed to continue our munching.
"£80 seems such an arbitrary amount," I remarked quietly to no-one as we continued on our way.
"Do you want to know why it's £80?" barked back the driver, who had hearing like a bat on kryptonite. He didn't wait for an answer. "The soilage fee used to be £20, but it was £80 on the streets. So it was actually more cost-effective to hail a cab and soil in there." You learn something new every day.

All too soon, we arrived at the stunning Queen's College, which dates back from the 15th century. The city and the college were as awesome and breathtaking as I remembered them, and once again I found it extraordinary that each year, thousands of little 18 year olds head off to Oxford and Cambridge, eagerly becoming part of this ancient and remarkable tradition of learning and pomp, while the rest of us either go somewhere a lot more like Real Life, or choose not to bother with further education at all. It doesn't suprise me at all that Oxbridge graduates are so often over-confident - I imagine I would be too if I'd passed the entrance exams and made it through the course. I couldn't have gone, of course: even if I'd have tried and succeeded to get in, I would have been miserable. There's no way I could have engaged intellectually to such vertiginous levels at that age, and I know people who were so terrified of wasting time while revising for their Oxford finals that they used to run to the loo to save valuable seconds. Not my idea of fun. Then again, perhaps it's not meant to be fun. Perhaps it's an in-at-the-deep-end experience from which you'll benefit for the rest of your life. That all requires a bit too much long-term thinking from a teenager though... Either way, there's no denying that they are simply incredible, unique places and I find them intriguing and compelling and fascinating while, simultaneously, feeling as though there is something a bit uncomfortable and weird about it all, so far from normality that it's almost alien - and not necessarily in a good way. But hey, I'm probably just jealous.

Anyway, enough with the seriousness. We went straight to the chapel, rehearsed, giggled a lot when the voice of one of the hidden sound guys unexpectedly asked "Can you hear me?" through an echoing PA system and Aiden said "God?", did some recording, went back to the incredible Lodge, had delicious food, drank a lot of lovely wine and then repaired to the Music Room, where there were books signed by Elizabeth R. and a fantastic baby grand and a harpsichord that's doubtless older than Cliff Richard - and suddenly it emerged that I am about the only member of the choir who isn't a professional pianist, as performer after performer emerged to regale us with Chopin and Oasis and Debussy and Celine Dion. It was all going wonderfully and then we were sent to bed. Clearly feeling rebellious, Astrid and I stayed up chatting until far too early in the morning and regretted it on Saturday morning when we were hit with the unpleasant force of an 8am start and a day's full-on singing, knackering at the best of times. Miraculously, the recording session went well and I headed back to London late afternoon, fell asleep on the sofa, woke up in the evening, watched and sang along to the Last Night of the Proms, tried and failed to avoid feeling patriotic and then went to sleep.

Today I slept in far too late, read a book, worshipped at the altar of Rodney 'Yoga God' Yee for an hour and then went into the deserted City to meet Kate and go to see an obscure production of Hamlet for which I'd bought tickets on a whim a couple of weeks ago. I usually don't 'do' theatre any more these days, unless it's a) a musical, or b) at the National, or c) I really, really like one of the actors, or d) if it's Avenue Q. But this production has had rave reviews so, on this occasion, I made an exception. The troupe is called The Factory and the gimmick is, they perform anywhere and everywhere, never the same venue twice (our performance was in CASS Business School near Old Street) and they all rehearse the lines of several characters in the play and then switch around at unexpected moments during the performance. The audience were asked to bring props along and these were incorporated randomly into the scenes. I thought it might be fun - but it turns out my four rules of theatre-going were spot on. It was absolutely unbearable, winning the dubious honour of being the only play I've ever wanted to walk out of before it had even begun, as when we walked into the first scene's room, the cast were wandering around the audience doing the most unbearable warm-up exercises, sounding every bit like the pretentious, self-conscious luvvies they so clearly are. One man was doing elaborate Pilates moves on stage while others were doing rubber lipped exercises and saying 'Ya Ya YA Ya YA Ya' in top projection mode. I groaned and Kate rubbed her hands together eagerly.

The conceit of switching actors mid-soliloquy was distracting, entirely unnecessary, whacky for whacky's sake, and showed just how little the production team cared about the words - the meaning of so many speeches was utterly lost. This was an arrogant production, impossible to follow unless you know the play intimately, seemingly a self-indulgent ruse to allow a group of drama school toffs to show off their ability to switch between parts unexpectedly. Their memories for the lines were undeniably good and there were several talented actors - but on the whole, I found the experience awkward, cringe-inducingly self-conscious and painfully smug. Kate loved it though, as did the Evening Standard and almost every other reviewer, so go figure.

Now I'm at home, drinking mint tea and about to head to bed. One final nugget: I've done a lot of research, Faithful, and the truth is this: Lenor is, by far, the best fabric softener I have ever sampled.

A Few Lessons

Management-speak seems to find that the noun ‘lesson’ is inadequate and has replaced it with a new bastardisation of the verb ‘to learn’, as in ‘What learnings can we take from this meeting?’ It drives me mental and I have previously felt very superior to such office gimps – but then I caught myself almost titling this blog ‘A Few Learnings’ and then felt suicidal. How quickly it seeps in…

I’ve had an interesting few days and feel like I’m on a strange new path. In a good way. On Saturday I went to The Institute of Ideas’ third annual Battle of Ideas – a weekend of talks with a broadly liberal theme. Assuming you didn’t fork out £45 to attend, I’ll give you the choicest nuggets from each of the four talks I attended.

Talk 1 was ‘Demonising Parents’ about how mummy and daddy are on the receiving end of a lot of blame, from lunchbox contents to story time, and how crippling this can be. My favourite comment from this session was on a grammatical issue when one speaker pointed out that ‘parent’ is a noun. The verb form (ie. ‘parenting’) is a relatively recent development; the verb used to be ‘child-rearing’ and the speaker made the point that the focus has largely shifted from the child to the parent – a lexical example of how language echoes our culture. Gripping?

Talk 2 was Eat, Drink and Be Merry: Banned, all about how everything is too regulated and we’re victims of a nanny state who won’t let us smoke or have any fun. The arguments usually run that healthy, clean living types shouldn’t have to pay their taxes so that irresponsible libertines can go to the NHS to have their problems solved. But really, where do you draw the line between self-inflicted illness and the other? The ‘learning’ here was that, before any new legislation is passed, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Is this law worth the loss of freedom that will occur as a result?’ – the implicit answer being, of course, ‘No.’ What was interesting was looking throughout British history and seeing that there were clearly defined periods of libertinism versus periods of dramatic self-flagellation and we’re obviously firmly in one of the latter. Can’t wait for the tide to turn – hopefully I’ll still be able to walk.

Talk 3 was The Resurrection of Religion: Moving Beyond Secularism or Losing Faith in Politics? And weirdly, even though this is probably more my ‘area’, I slightly flagged at this point. I think the highlight for me was the discussion of faith schools – one speaker made the point that if one were to insert the word ‘politics’ in place of ‘faith’ and imagine an institution where one political leaning was espoused and all others were demonised at worst, barely tolerated at best and where certain texts were banned while others were held up as unassailably true – well, we’d never allow it. Religious followers on the panel held that religion and politics could not be equated but I’m not so sure… Ooh, the other gripping thing was that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in blood transfusions – and don’t allow their children to have them. As a liberal atheist, that’s pretty hard to take – but should we step in or is it their right to make such decisions on the part of their children? Surely the latter – if only because legislating on such an issue would open a vast can of worms that could only end in Big Brother disaster.

Talk 4 was my favourite. Rethinking Immigration: The Unheard Debate covered a huge and persuasive area – kicking off with a statistic that surprised me: apparently only 3% of the world’s population live outside their birth country. One of the speakers put a convincing case for opening all borders and allowing totally free immigration worldwide, something that, in my ignorance, I’d never even considered before. They also argued comprehensively against using a points system to predict who will be a useful addition to a country, citing the examples that Barack Obama’s father was a goatherd and that Sergei Brin, the founder of Google, was a first generation migrant to the US from Russia.

As a bonus, I also caught the tail end of Age of the Metropolis: What is the Future of Cities? and heard this gem: ‘If you would dare to know, live in a city. If you would rather be known, but not know, live in a village.’ Brilliant.

I had planned to go to a triple bill of French films at Riverside Studios last night but felt so virtuous after Saturday’s knowledge-fest that I ended up watching a video of the X Factor and eating Skippy peanut butter off a knife. You win some, you lose some.

Walk or web?

It is possibly slightly shameful that, when I dropped my laptop onto my bare right foot yesterday morning before work, I was more concerned about whether or not I’d broken my computer than whether or not I would be able to walk without crutches. The pain was excruciating but my priorities lay elsewhere. A brief incident, admittedly, but a frank symbol of my continued internet slavishness.

News just online is that 49% of secondary schools in the UK are rated ‘satisfactory’ or below, with ‘satisfactory’ roughly equal to ‘not good enough’. This raises several hundred questions but the one rattling loudest around my almost-empty skull involves the concept of ‘good’ when it comes to schooling. I have no doubt that my (expensive) education would have fallen into the ‘excellent’ category. In the year that I took my A Levels, we were top of the small schools league table, with something like 98% A-C grades. In addition to the academic sphere, we had excellent drama and music facilities, relatively pleasant surroundings, myriad opportunities and I made several friendships there that may last a lifetime.

But in conversations over the past few years with some schoolmates, we have admitted that our education was not all it was cracked up to be. Yes – most of us left at 18 with top grades and flew into excellent universities. Like racehorses, we had been trained how to pass exams but, when released into the wild, had about as many survival skills as Red Rum in the New Forest. Our general knowledge sucked big time – mine is still a source of almost daily embarrassment. It was only when I took my MA in 05/06 that I learned anything about major political and ideological concepts. Our geography is, almost without exception, appalling. Our historical knowledge concentrated on particular periods defined by the exam syllabi – outside the Second World War and the Trades Union Act I had huge swathes of murky half-knowledge that, over a decade later, is only just starting to brighten. Politically, we had no clue, although it’s possible to argue that we weren’t missing much.

My point, and I’m fully aware that it’s not a new one, is that good grades do not equal a good education. I fear that we suffered because we were girls – because, both at school and at home with our families, we were not expected to have opinions and knowledge in the same way that boys were. This may be massively over-simplistic, but I’m not alone in having these suspicions. Exams should remain a part of education, of course: I’m fully up for the International Baccalaureate which pushes six or seven subjects at 18 rather than three or four – this would help provide a bit more breadth to young adults. But there’s a lot more to life than exams – and until the league tables take other things into account other than grades, the system of judging education will be unhelpful and ultimately negative, breeding more generations of miserable failures versus swots who’ve cribbed exam essay titles to regurgitate at speed – but who couldn’t name the leaders of the three major political parties, or tell you whether Elizabeth I was alive at the same time as Shakespeare without watching a Tom Stoppard film. Which is how I worked it out.

Fragment: consider revising

Lots to say today, especially given that I’ve recently returned from a delightful and festive birthday lunch for Laura. I am now back at my desk, very chatty and slightly redder of cheek – and hopefully working slash blogging capably and without (noticeable) error.

In general, I’m not a fan of The Times newspaper, but this dislike is largely to do with vague, indiscriminate political issues rather than any precise gripe. However, through my morning haze on the tube this morning, I noticed a front page headline that sparked a specific degree of irritation. The headline read as follows: ‘Children who can’t write their own name’. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t news. Strictly speaking, it isn’t even a sentence. When typed into Microsoft Word, it is underlined in green and the right mouse-click reveals the beloved grammar hint, ‘Fragment: consider revising’. Children who can’t write their own name what? Should be culled? Are well thick innit? Exist in their thousands south of the equator? I know I’m being pedantic but if you can’t get news from a front page headline on one of the UK’s most popular papers, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

The story to which The Times ‘journalist’ was referring was that young children today are, apparently, woefully ill-educated – while The Guardian and this morning’s Today programme were covering the news that primary age children are stressed to the point of severe anxiety by the sheer quantity of exams they have to sit in addition to the daily threats of terrorism and local crime. Which is it to be, lads? Are they overworked or under-taught? Or both? In a shocking revelation, some pupils, reported a Guardian journalist, “said the tests were ‘scary’ and made them nervous”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not into terrorising six year olds, but surely an element of school must be about attaining goals. If parents want their kids to spend their formative years wafting around making collages out of leaves or creating wonky music using bongo drums and those miniature cymbals that everyone always coveted at junior school, then that’s fine as long as they’re then prepared to accept ‘children who can’t write their own name’ – and, presumably, sub-editors who can’t formulate a grammatical headline. Or maybe there's some middle ground. Meh, I knew I should have watched BBC Breakfast - they would have been seated firmly on the fence.

In actual news, Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his film, An Inconvenient Truth, less than a day after a British high court judge ruled that it could only be taught in schools as long as there were written guidance notes to accompany it that represented the other viewpoints. What was really adorable was this note that was written at the bottom of The Grauniad’s online coverage: “Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.” Of course, it’s pure hypocrisy for me to find errors in The Guardian adorable and lynch The Times for theirs, but c’est la vie.

Finally, I note that there has been some unexpectedly good news for the hospital chief responsible for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospitals, the trust that was recently accused of causing the deaths of more than 90 patients over a two year period: she was given a quarter of a million pounds to quit. I’m going to kill 90 bankers and see if they offer me £250k to resign. Whaddya reckon? Fingers crossed that some mentalist doesn’t actually go on a shooting spree in the next week as this entry might make me a suspect. I didn’t do it, honest guv’nor. Happy weekend.

Political impasse

I care about politics, I really do. I watch the news, I read the papers, check in online, keep up to date with the issues and sincerely and passionately believe in certain causes. But after another uninspiring party conference speech from a man trying to persuade us to let him dominate our lives, affect our bank balances, our health service, the education of our children and those who surround us – well, it’s enough to make me return to the old days, when things were simpler and I amused myself by timing myself to complete the Heat crossword and worried about whether my jeans were low-rise or merely hipster.

Admittedly, I have been reading a live feed of David Cameron’s conference speech this afternoon on the Guardian website, which probably wasn’t the most objective of arenas, but a) if people can’t sift through a bit of left- or right-wing bias in a newspaper, they need to wake up and smell the propaganda, and b) who needs objectivity in the current political climate? Let’s face it: there’s a fundamental dichotomy between what will win an election and what needs to happen in this country (and much of the Western world). Any policies that could improve anything will be massively unpopular. To impact upon anything, we need to plough money into several areas. Drench schools with cash, get the crème de la crème as teachers. But to raise more wonga, the government would have to a) deprive other areas that are currently receiving government funding or b) raise taxes. And no-one serious about winning an election can do either.

It’s a Catch 22 and both major parties have hit on the same non-solution – spend a similar amount of money as before in slightly different ways. It’s half-arsed, half-baked and it won’t work. Now it looks like we’re going to have to watch this bunch of yes-men spend millions of pounds of our tax cash fighting an election by telling us things will change – when they can’t. Pah. I’m already knee-deep in election languor and the date hasn’t even been set. And if they can’t keep my interest – someone who claims they genuinely care about politics – what hope have they in persuading the 40% of non-voters in Britain to walk to the polling station? Call this a democracy? What a joke. I’m going to conserve my energy for celeb spotting and important events that might actually affect me, like the launch of the delicious new DKNY perfume that Laura has informed me is called “Something mist or mist something.” I recommend you give it a sniff.

Role reversal

It's Tuesday afternoon and I’m sitting in a classroom with an Excel spreadsheet on the OHP in front of me. Around me are seven other adult learners. We’re all here to improve our Excel level from beginner to intermediate. Last week I studied intermediate PowerPoint. Tomorrow I will be doing Excel advanced. And, geek that I am, I'm loving it.

But it’s not just me and my fellow spreadsheeting friends who want to learn. All around me on the tube this morning were people reading – and they were not buried into the large-fonted, escapist fiction as were the commuters I remember from yore. These happy travelers were blocking out the sweat and cough particles by engrossing themselves in non-fiction titles such as Freakonomics and How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World. I was reading a book about cultural theory. Those who weren’t reading books were buried in papers. In fact, the only people who weren’t challenging their minds were a group of betracksuited teens playing tinny Parental Advisory hip-hop on their mobile phone for the carriage’s enjoyment.

All these urges to learn, to improve one’s mind – where were they when we were at school? With a flash of inspiration uncommon to a creature of habit such as myself, it occurred to me that the system's got it all wrong. The whole ‘youth is wasted on the young’ idea is all too true – and the solution is all around us already. Child labour.

Sure it's 'illegal' now - but who's to say it should stay that way? Not me! Imagine a world where from primary school age, you are sent to work for most of the day, and educated in the evenings. Admit it: it makes sense – children are much more resilient than adults and surely wouldn’t mind the longer hours. They’d work for almost no wages of course, and the (adult) managers could consequently sell the goods at vastly reduced prices, to allow the adults to go to school for 80% of their time and still be able to afford to buy what they needed.

Everyone’s a winner. We’d work almost full time until we were 25, with just education in basic literacy and mathematics in the evenings. Then when we were desperate to learn more, we’d go back to school and university. The whole syllabus could be covered far quicker given our hunger for the subjects and there’d be no discipline problems because we’d all want to be there. After we left university in our mid-thirties, we could go on and pursue management jobs – or retire. Let the Child Labour Party take over at the next election: you know it makes sense.

Stop the press

In a dramatic piece of breaking news, a link has been found between the over-sexualisation of females in the media and countless millions of insecure and unhappy girls. I'm sure I'm not alone in struggling to see how this is new knowledge.

For the past several centuries, certain types have been idealised and then idolised, from Cleopatra to Casanova, Grace Kelly to Kelly Brook (but, interestingly, not Henry Kelly). People’s self-images have always been affected by the portrayal of others – whether in novels, on TV, in films, advertisements or in the music industry. Primitive make-up used by beauty-seekers centuries ago led to skin poisoning and death. Victorian women squeezed into corsets so tight that they damaged their internal organs. And in the Fifties, female stars were regularly described by their measurements (34-24-34) – and ‘normal’ women whose figure didn’t conform to the Barbie girl ideal felt overweight and unhappy with themselves.

Of course, modern technologies have allowed far more unrealistic ideals to emerge – see this film for proof. But whether our beauty idols are genuinely fictional (e.g. Jessica Rabbit), or fictionally genuine in the sense that their beauty is not as it appears (e.g. every celebrity female), is strangely irrelevant to most of us. Most of us are well aware of modern airbrushing techniques (see left for more evidence). We know celebrities put themselves under insane pressure to look good – and that it can involve impossible fitness and diet regimes, 24-hour make-up assistance or drastic surgery. But sadly, despite our own fulfilling lives, and our limited time and money resources, we often chastise ourselves for our inability to compete with these racehorses.

In the UK, most women desire to be thin, toned, tanned and facially beautiful. In Southern India, women should be plump and dark skinned, whereas in Northern India, they should be thin and pale skinned. The fact is, whatever the individual criteria set by your society, there will be criteria, and either you fit the bill or you don’t.

My own childhood was utterly devoid of anything cool. At the boarding school I attended, fashion was a bizarre combination of comfort garments for the critically obese and ethnic skirts from Kensington Market. For several years, I rarely deviated from my unofficial uniform of a deeply unflattering men’s rugby shirt teamed with a long, shapeless skirt and a pair of elephantine Doc Marten loafers. My hair was long, straight and a non-shade of dark mouse for nearly a decade. I remained untouched by any glimmer of fashion sense until my twenties – and I would say that most of my friends were similarly unfussed.

Yet this lack of external pressure did not protect me from insecurities. There weren’t any teenage popstars to taunt me and I had little interest in boys at the time, but I was still painfully aware that I was on the porky side of slender. I felt overweight from around the age of seven, and was massively under-confident about my appearance until relatively recently – and shamefully, I expect a good deal of my current confidence has to do with being fancied by boys (even if it’s only one or two every few years).

Sure, since Britney donned the school uniform and started a new craze, the pressure on girls to emulate and conform – largely in order to win the interest of the opposite sex – has certainly entered a younger domain. Primark is selling thongs for young girls (since when has a primary school kid worried about VPL?) and last year I saw a nine-year-old wearing high heeled boots and a pair of jeans that said ‘SEXY’ on her ass. And don’t even get me started on the outrageous, whore-like Bratz dolls with their transvestite make-up and penchant for burlesque accessories.

The modern world is chock-full of reasons for young people to develop insecurities – only a fool would need the news to tell them that. The solution – as ever – lies in better education, improved facilities for young people, rock-solid family units and positive role models. But while we’re waiting for that nirvana, if a report can make a drop in the ocean, I’m all for it.