Middle Age Fanclub

Poetry Blog: Big Garden Birdwatch.

Ornithology. Birding. Twitching. Whichever way you look at it, it amounts to the same thing. Bird-watching. And whichever way you look at it, it’s what’s led me to this. The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch; an annual event where those who take part log the birds they spot in their garden across an hour of one of three days in January. What is the world’s biggest bird survey, is something that we’ve taken part in, as a family, for several years now and it never gets any less tense. What should be a bit of fun, counting and identifying the birds in the garden, can actually play havoc with one’s heart rate and blood pressure. Surely, I’m doing it wrong?

While we’ve done it for quite a few years now, we’ve rarely had a really successful one. And by successful, of course I mean dramatic exciting, like an emu leaping the fence and having a go on the trampoline. (Well somebody needs to; ours is reduced to garden sculpture status these days). However, some would say that you’re missing the point if you’re only in it for the drama. The whole point is just to log what you see, however big or small the numbers or birds because that’s what helps the RSPB out. But as with anything, it’s always nice to stand out a little bit.

We have had some more remarkable birds in our garden in the past, but never on the day of the Big Garden Birdwatch. We’ve had a kestrel perch on our fence right next to the window as we were eating dinner at the table. I think we once, briefly, had a sparrowhawk, but its identity was shrouded somewhat by a huge camelia at the back of the garden (get me with my subtle garden based bragging!) and a heron landed on a neighbour’s roof one day. We sporadically have a Great Spotted Woodpecker that visits too. But we’re ‘reduced’ to our regulars more often than not on the day of the BGB. And rightly or wrongly, I’m always a little disappointed.

However, it’s always a bit of a thrill to take part and this year I felt inspired enough to write a poem.

Big Garden Birdwatch

Drawing the curtains, more in hope than anything else,
I'm bouoyed by a blackbird, rallied by a robin.
We plant the feet, scan the immediate horizon and stay as still as we can.
Away we go. A tense hour awaits and maybe this will be all we see.

Armed with a poster to confirm our bird spots and two pairs of binoculars at hand
we scope every inch of the garden for more.
Every so often something flits across our line of vision, but it's difficult to tell
if it's in our trees or those in the fields behind. This struggle is real.

But then, the pulse rate quickens at the sight of something on a feeder.
We struggle to focus our sights, finding it, but losing it just as quickly.
And then. There's yellow, no mustard, a black marking...
We check the poster to confirm a coal tit. I was hoping for a vulture.

A period of silence then ensues and we exploit this, taking turns to make breakfast,
keeping one eye, at least, on the prize at all times.
Within minutes, a burst of activity scatters toast and brings a clutch of sparrows,
but no sparrow hawk, a lone blue tit, but no blue macaw or kingfisher.

Suddenly they seem to be everywhere; sparrows scattered around the branches
Only everywhere's a slight exaggeration, but we almost have a five bar gate.
Close, but no cigar. Near, but still a bit too distant.
We mark them on our poster and frown, underwhelmed by our visitors so far.

We scan the garden for anything we've missed. Minutes tick by with nothing but hope.
And then one of our ubiquitous woodpigeons thunks on to a branch gaining our attention.
As I go to make a note a flash of red pulls me back.
A focused gaze shows not only red, but yellow and black - we've struck gold...finch.

These two have strayed from nearer the estate's equator to the frozen North of our silver birch
Never once seen before and probably never to be witnessed again.
From that mighty high, it's all downhill from here.
Typically, a magpie lands and no other species dares enter our birdwatch for the remainder of the hour.

We pack away our equipment and return to the more uniform duties of the day,
the birdwatch over for another year, but a moderate cause for celebration.
No doubt now an eagle will land, perhaps a dodo even,
But outside of our golden hour, although a thrill, none of them would count.

Hopefully, that gives an idea of not just our experience, but the large majority of Big Garden Birdwatch experiences. I imagine lots of us set out hoping for something that we deem ‘exciting’ to happen and in a way, miss the point of the whole thing. It doesn’t matter; I still I’ll always retain that approach!

I think in many ways, that’s what made the appearance of the two goldfinches so good. As I mention in the poem, if I head further down the hill on our estate (south towards the ‘Equator’ if you will) there are certain places where you’ll see them in the trees. But we’ve literally never had them in our garden before. So what a time for them to arrive.

A few notes, if you like, about the poem by way of explanation (or perhaps I’m just trying to sound like a proper poet). I deliberately used alliteration in the second line to convey the sense of excitement in our house at that moment. Myself and my son were first downstairs and we knew we’d be doing the birdwatch, but having done it before and spent an hour seeing two or three birds enter the garden, it was a genuine thrill to see two within a second! So I thought the alliteration there was apt.

The line, ‘The struggle is real’ is sarcastic. I’m laughing at myself a bit there as I do get a bit carried away with BGB day and actually, I shouldn’t be quite so serious as to be surveying the entire family as to whether or not ‘that bird’ is in our tree or another that’s beyond our fence. It’s a dig at my seriousness as much as my eyesight! Middle age means that I can’t accurately see which branches belong where nowadays! A little later on, the lines about a vulture, macaw and kingfisher are the same; me gently mocking myself (and possibly lots of us who do the BGB) and my hopes that something rare will suddenly decide that it needs to visit my particular corner of the planet so it can get ticked off on a survey. I don’t know if I think I’ll achieve some kind of fame and notoriety by being the bloke who spotted the particular bird that no one else saw!

Two other things to explain: the ‘five bar gate’ in the 5th stanza is just a way of keeping score. Four marks on a page and then when you get to a fifth, you cross the four to make a gate. The other thing was the ‘thunk’ of the woodpigeon. This is the noise I like to imagine these ‘thick set’ birds make. I know it’s not as they’re actually quite graceful in real life.

So, I hope you enjoy the poem and I hope that if you are someone who participates in The Big Garden Birdwatch year after year, you can recognise certain things in it. And I don’t just mean birds. Hopefully, the excitement and element of competition is not just to be found in our house!

Book Review: Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo

They say that everybody makes mistakes. I only have to think of a few haircuts from my twenties and several outfits from the 90s to realise that it’s likely to be a fact. Come on, we’ve all done it. From one night stands to long term relationships and choosing Betamax over VHS, we’ve all made mistakes. And while the consequences range in levels of seriousness, it’s rare that our life is put in serious danger.

In ‘Midnight Sun’, Jo Nesbos’ hapless hitman, Jon has made a big mistake. In fact, to paraphrase Julia Roberts’ Vivian in Pretty Woman, it’s not just a big mistake, it’s “Big. Huge.” But unlike Vivian, he won’t get to go shopping. You se, Jon has double crossed Oslo’s biggest gangster, The Fisherman. When his trigger finger didn’t want to work, Jon agreed a deal with a small time criminal in debt to the Fisherman and like most hastily arranged plans, it didn’t work out. Like I said, big mistake. Big. Huge.

‘Midnight Sun’ is set in the remote, icy wastelands of Finnmark in the north of Norway. The title refers to the fact that for certain months of the year, the entire place has continuous daylight, 24 hours a day. This is the most northerly part of mainland Europe; perfect if you’re thinking of running away, have a high boredom threshold and don’t mind the cold. Surely even a man with the reputation of the Fisherman can’t find you here? Although, let’s face it, that continuous daylight thing isn’t exactly going to help.

Midnight Sun is something a bit different for Nesbo. No multiple gratuitous murders, not so much of the ultra violence that we might find in some of his other novels, no particularly complex criminals and not even a hint of his infamous hero, Harry Hole. Sure it’s pretty heavy on the underworld and the seedy side of Scandinavian culture, but it’s a lot more of a simple tale than we’re used to. A cut and dried thrill of the chase kind of novel with a man on the run and the ever present threat of the bad guy hunting him down. And despite the fact that Jon runs to the middle of nowhere, you’re always aware of the fact that he can run…but he can’t hide.

There are the usual quirky characters as well as a girl for our hero to fall in love with. Both seemingly staples of Nesbo’s writing. Because the novel is set in the Finnmark region we find a clutch of Sami people – the indigenous people of the area – although the main character does seem a bit of a caricature, despite my lack of knowledge of the Sami. We also find Lea, a beautiful, mysterious and, it would seem, decidely off limits woman, being as she is, married to the local gangster. So not only does our hero Jon appear to have someone hunting him down, he also has to switch off his feelings for the woman that he inevitably falls for.

It’s sub-plots like this that always make Nesbo’s writing a little more interesting. While reading you’re always waiting for an explosion of action or violence, for a character to make the wrong decision or to be somehow outwitted. And it’s this type of thing that makes Midnight Sun such a good read. The main character is flawed – a hitman who can’t bring himself to ‘hit’ and who has messed with the wrong people. His back story reveals a motivation for the path that he took and so, as a reader, we can live with his mistakes. It seems inevitable that he will pay the price for his mistakes, but Jon is human enough for us to be on his side, despite his flaws and you’ll find yourself willing him to live, despite the inexorable nature of his fate.

Midnight Sun has everything you want in a thriller while retaining something a little bit different. There aren’t bodies everywhere, but there’s just enough jeopardy to keep you on the edge of your reading seat. And when violence does rear its head, it’s shocking, yet believable; Nesbo doing what Nesbo does best. The setting isn’t somewhere that the vast majority of us will be familiar with, but Nesbo captures the area’s stark beauty brilliantly and during my reading, I could easily envisage the town and the wilderness where Jon sets up camp. The ever-present sun lends the whole place an eerie quality that simply adds to the danger that our hero finds himself. He’s a sitting duck, resigned to his fate. But can he escape a fate that he seems perfectly willing to accept?

I give Midnight Sun…

Close Encounter

Here in the U.K. our first lockdown was quite the experience to go through. It was often eerily quiet with the majority of people unable to work. Large swathes of the population simply stayed indoors and those of us who took our daily exercise allowance found that the streets were often theirs.

Within weeks, people started noticing that in amongst all the quiet, birdsong was prominent. Suddenly, with no traffic noise, the sound of birds singing and chirping became noticeably louder. And I think lots of us found that fantastic. At the time, the weather was great and I can distinctly remember that we would do our Joe Wicks workout from 9am and then afterwards we’d go and do some stretches to warm down in the garden. Listening to the birds at that point become a regular part of our day.

Life has moved on since that point. We’re back in lockdown, but there’s a distinct difference; more people out and about, more cars and less in the way of wildlife as a result. This all changed for a fantastic few minutes for me on a recent Sunday afternoon. The pictures tell the story, but I’ll fill in the gaps. I had been meaning to fill up our bird feeders for a couple of weeks, but just hadn’t got round to it. However, I had a bit of time on this particular Sunday, so I wrapped up and out I went. As soon as I’d done, I felt like I was being watched. And then I heard some beautiful birdsong. Closer inspection of our tree revealed a small bird and when I watched for a further few seconds, I could see it was a robin. What happened next was just lovely and the poem tell the tale for me.

Close Encounter

I hear you before I see you,
a bright chirping preceding your bright feathers,
and then, only feet away, fearless, your red breast makes you known.

The feeders full, you're first to the banquet,
yet it seems you want to pause a while to chat.
I move slowly, but needn't bother as you simply stand and stare,
perfectly relaxed about our meeting despite your vulnerability.

Perhaps you're thanking me for the food.
Perhaps you're just wondering why I'm still here and why this took so long.
I neither know nor care; you've made my day,
brightened a cold and gloomy Sunday afternoon.

Robin. Little bird not even the size of a tennis ball,
yet bold enough to sit within arms length and attempt to hold a conversation,
I could stay here and stare at you for hours.

It doesn’t seem like much happened, but it was just a lovely few minutes. I didn’t even think to write about it until I posted some pictures of the robin on social media and a friend suggested it. Thanks Ruth!

I can’t stress enough just how close this bird got. I think it comes out in the images, but, if it doesn’t it was about three feet away. Close enough to make itself known, but far enough away to show it was still a little wary of me.

At first, as I tried to take pictures, the robin jumped down from the tree and would settle on a branch of a shrub below just long enough for me to see it, and then jump off. It was like it was toying with me. Then, after a minute or so, it just perched on a branch just above head height and started to sing at me, allowing me to click away and take some pictures. Annoyingly, I didn’t think to video it, instead spending a few minutes just watching – and yes, alright, I talked to it as well – before heading back inside, content to leave the robin alone and go and tell my wife about what had just happened.

I’m hoping to see it again and have another chat this weekend. Let me know what you think of the poem in the comments.

Graeme Jones; manager in waiting or just a coach who got lucky?

It felt like we’d waited for years. We’d looked on as the predictable happened again and again. Watched the same mistakes being made over and over. And then it happened. That’s right, we got a coach in who wasn’t called Steve. Finally, a difference, a breakthrough! Of course, I’m being daft for the sake of it and as good as it was to see a new coach come into the set-up, the performance and result on Saturday were much better and much, much more important.

Much has been made via social media about the impact of Graeme Jones at the club. But how much of Saturday’s dramatic upturn was down to him and how much – as Steve Bruce has been hinting at – was coming anyway?

The answer of course is that it’s difficult to tell and I’ve found some of the coverage on the likes of Twitter over the weekend a little bit uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still completely anti-Bruce and have been since he was appointed. Whether we gave the bloke a chance or not, I think the trouble we find ourselves in at the moment has been inevitable since day one of his tenure. But can one man, who let’s not forget is working as part of a team of many coaches, make that much of an immediate difference?

It’s a interesting one to ponder. Part of me doesn’t doubt Jones’ impact. The so-called ‘new manager bounce’ is a common factor in top level football. We’ve witnessed it time and again with people like Sam Allardyce being hailed as some sort of hybrid Red Adair/Jesus figure for his work in fighting relegation at various clubs over the years. People seem to happily ignore the influx of players that usually follow his appointment, preferring to think that he has some kind of magical powers. He probably has, but I suspect they’re only relevant in making pies disappear. And pints of wine. All the same, it is possible that bringing in a new face gave the players a bit of a lift. Personally, any face that wasn’t Bruce’s or Agnew’s would probably make me try a bit harder.

So what do we know of Graeme Jones then? Well, his track record is fairly common knowledge and it shows us that he’s worked in some very high profile jobs. And wherever he’s been he’s been part of a coaching set up that has presided over some very good football. Working alongside Roberto Martinez, he worked at Swansea and Wigan, both low profile clubs that achieved amazing success in relative terms. These weren’t clubs where untold millions were spent so you’d have to put it down to excellent coaching as the reason why they performed beyond the sum of their parts. Then when Martinez went to Everton, Jones followed, so there’s experience of working at a high profile, ‘bigger’ club too, depending on your view of Everton.

After Everton came working with the Belgium national team, again as part of Martinez’s set up. That’s Belgium, the number one ranked international team in world football. So, safe to say that Jones has got a bit of pedigree then. After all, it’s not often you get some absolute duffer working with the best players in the world.

So, apart from anything else, Jones is a really good addition to the coaching set up. It was needed too, in my opinion. I can’t shake the opinion that Steve Agnew is not the answer to any positive question that I might have about coaching and I can’t see past a certain ever-present gormlessness when I think of Clemence. I don’t particularly understand Steve Harper’s role, certainly not in terms of the first team and I get the impression that although Ben Dawson has been promoted from the youth set-up and may well be highly regarded, his input won’t be taken on board by our dinosaur of a manager.

A lot has been made of certain images that appeared on social media over the weekend. Jones pointing and shouting while Bruce and Agnew just stand and stare and Clemence, comically, isn’t even looking. But how much can we read into that and the videos that surfaced? I’m torn. Part of me says that we can take quite a lot out of them. I’ve made the point that this type of thing hasn’t been seen this season under Bruce. All I even seem to hear Bruce shouting is the word ‘Up’when we manage to clear a ball, although I can recall a few ‘Go On Jo’ cries to Joelinton. However, social media (again) revealed that this might have just been encouragement to go and get his hair cut rather than anything football related. It certainly hasn’t seemed to inspire if it was meant in a footballing sense. So Jones standing in the technical area seems to me to be a lot more productive and positive than what we’ve witnessed so far this season.

As a coach myself – alright, it’s only Under 12s, but the game’s essentially the same – I’m definitely more an advocate of that style of management than those who stand and watch and tell me it’s better to ‘let them take responsibility’ or ‘let them make their own mistakes’. Even elite footballers need direction. And if Jones having a bit of animation about him made Jonjo Shelvey realise the value of hard work, then he’ll do for me!

Tactically it’s hard to argue that it was solely Graeme Jones that made the difference. But then again, we have a manager who has admitted himself that he’s not a fan of tactics. However, the odds of someone having input into at most a couple of training sessions and that being the sole reason for the performance we saw at Everton on Saturday, have surely got to be low. Jones – as stated previously – seems to have pedigree in terms of being a forward thinking coach, so he’s made something happen, but to what extent is surely anyone’s guess? Unless of course, you’re one of Twitter’s famous insiders with eyes and ears at the training ground…

Then you read Steve Bruce’s post match comments. Firstly, his affirmation that we’ve seen signs of this performance being in the offing. I disagree. Especially when he says the signs were there in the second half at Aston Villa. Sure, we didn’t concede again, but we still couldn’t string passes together, continued to look backwards or at best sideways instead of forwards and were ordinary at best. Against Leeds we toiled again in the first half and it was difficult to see what was keeping Bruce in a job. The second half was better, but the result remained the same – a loss, no points and an inability to put chances away.

After the Everton result Bruce also talked about ‘getting after the ball’ and playing ‘on the front foot’, but if you give those statements a little bit of thought they really just equate to putting effort in. So with his ‘nearly 500 games’ and twenty odd years of experience how had Bruce been unable to coax a bit more running, tackling and attacking out of a squad of professional footballers for such a long time? So you could read into that the fact that, of course, Jones has had an immediate impact. Certainly the signs that Bruce had talked about haven’t been so evident that such a dramatic change in fortunes could be said to have been just around the corner. It certainly adds fuel to the fire.

Talking about his time at Luton, Jones said that he’d wanted to attack teams but realised that they couldn’t beat every team without better players. So certainly no genius there then. But when you dig a little deeper into that it’s possible to see how we might actually be benefitting from his coaching right from the off. The fact is – and suspend your knowledge of what you’ve been watching for the entire season – that he is now undoubtedly working with better players. So is it really too much of a stretch to think that our more ‘front foot’ attacking and snarling approach on Saturday might not be down to the prompting of a certain Mr. Jones, rather than a man who’s coaching has failed to produce such a performance all season? It’s certainly hard to ignore the fact that Bruce has had Wilson, Saint Maximin, Joelinton (I know, I know), Almiron et al at his disposal for some time and produced a relegation battle.

Overall, I must admit, I feel optimistic about Graeme Jones. Is he waiting in line for the big job? I feel it’s possible. Could he do it? I really don’t know. I’m fed up of reading that a coach we’ve brought in is highly rated and then watching as their input makes no difference. Ian Cathro springs to mind here, as well as several who’ve had involvement with the academy over the last few years. But you can’t ignore Jones’ pedigree and experience, can you?

I am fully aware that we’ve won one game during his time in the set up and for all I know it was a moment of coaching genius from Steve Agnew that had the desired effect. But I have to ignore the rational side of my brain there. I had no faith in the management team 18 months ago and still no faith in them when we were getting beat at Villa. And while I laughed at the ‘Graeme Jones is my manager’ brigade on Twitter over the weekend, his arrival could just well have made a big difference.

Perhaps Tuesday night against Palace will change all that and a lot of us will end up with egg on our faces, so to speak. But I for one, can’t ignore the presence of the faint whiff of optimism in the air again. Fingers crossed for Graeme Jones’ Black and White Army and let’s get carried away!

How to survive the pandemic – 5 Top Tips that might not be all that serious!

It’s fairly safe to say and certainly not anything new to learn, but it’s been one hell of a year or so. Since news of Covid-19 broke in early January of last year, things have gathered momentum somewhat. As the virus crossed continents our moods changed and then as the world was locked down things plummeted to new lows. And since then, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of decidedly average highs and Mariana trench sized lows.

Here in the UK, we’ve been hit hard and people have been forced to battle to survive not just the virus and it’s various strains, but the boredom and isolation of successive lockdowns as well as the idiotic behaviour of their fellow Brits. As I write news broke just a few hours ago of a school hall in London being hired out and unbeknownst to the school itself, playing host to a wedding where 400 people attended. Thousands have died, but it pales into insignificance at the thought of not having your 3rd cousin’s neighbours and their postman at your wedding, right?

Aside from problems like this, something that has most likely affected a large percentage of people is the sheer boredom of it all. Within weeks I’d painted every fence panel we have as well as our sheds. I’d trimmed shrubs and trees, cut lawns regularly enough that they could have hosted Wimbledon, walked every available route around our town, read book after book, watched television until my eyes hurt, skillfully sidestepped the sensation that became Zoom quizzes and exhausted myself exhausting every possible Joe Wicks video on YouTube. I daresay many of you were exactly the same. Although, perhaps it was just me that approached Zoom quizzes with such grumpiness and cynicism.

As we come up to almost a year of living in a pandemic, it seems boredom is at its absolute zenith. We can’t exercise as much – well not in the northern hemisphere anyway; it’s bloody freezing. And just when you think you’ve pretty much learnt to live with every Covid related u-turn that life throws at you, something else comes along and smacks you right in the chops, sending you back to square one once more. So, I had a little think and I hope that I’ve come up with some top tips that you can try out to make living through the pandemic that little bit more interesting. As usual with me and lists, they’re in no particular order.

Top Tip 1

**Simon was determined to have a risk free walk…even if it meant taking the long way round again.** Photo by Jenny Uhling on Pexels.com

Perfect your ‘anti-people skills’. Avoidance tactics are never more important than in a pandemic, so these skills include: never venturing near anyone at all, including your own family, walking in zig-zags in order to avoid fellow government sanctioned fitness freaks and fresh air junkies (you may want to never get used to walking on the same side of the road for any more than a few hundred yards), squeezing onto kerbs like a tightrope walker if you can’t get across a road to avoid oncoming humans and holding your breath like a free diver whose life depends on it. Because your life might depend on it.

Top Tip 2

**Spotting that a Maths teacher had committed an apostrophe crime, Yvonne stifled a sob and prepared a suitably caustic, mocking email to her colleagues.** Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Alleviate the at work boredom by writing sarcastic emails. This is also a lifestyle choice for me personally and there was no need for a pandemic to invoke this as a rule. However, in times of pandemic and as a teacher working alone, isolated all day in a classroom full of desks, chairs but no other humans, a slice of sarcasm often comes in handy. And while not revealing actual subject matter of work based sarcastic emails, I can reveal that the IT department remains, as always, a wonderful target. Always was and always will be. Furthermore, the silly ‘If you had to…’ style email is always a favourite.

Top Tip 3

**Shit just got real in Sandra’s house. Someone was knocking at the back gate.** Photo by Kony Xyzx on Pexels.com

Alleviate lockdown boredom by turning knocks at the door or tradesmen’s visits into a new and exciting game. We’ve done this for years in our house, as we much prefer not to answer the door to people until we’ve actually sussed out who they are. If you’re a relative you’re probably getting in…depends on the relative. So, in Covid times, imagine there’s a knock at the door or even a visit from the window cleaner. Now role play! Make sure you hide and shush as much as is possible. Shuffle on your front like an expert sniper and try seeing how close you can get to the window without its cleaner detecting your presence. I find chairs and sofas are perfect allies for this game. Try it. Next time there’s a knock at the door or you hear the rattle of a ladder, enter stealth mode and act like there’s a zombie apocalypse. Those confined to barracks hours will simply fly by!

Top Tip 4

**These days, Emma found that calling lemons ‘Shit limes’ was her only source of fun.** Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

See just how much you can get away with while wearing a mask. Local ruffians breaking lockdown rules and ‘hanging’ outside a closed off license as you walk by on a Boris appointed walk? Don your mask and stick your tongue out at them. Those cheeky scamps deserve your derision. Has a dog jumped up at you while tied up outside your local supermarket? Remember, you’re wearing a mask – it’s mandatory – so you’re free to call said dog a ‘massive arsehole’ or any other insult that you deem necessary. No one can see you doing it, no one could prove a thing. And surely no one’s going to ask if you just called that terrier an arsehole, are they? This game can also be played inside said supermarkets where volume control is your own issue, but the mask will cover your mouth so no one can prove a thing. So if you fancy making snide remarks at those supermarket dawdlers, now’s your time to shine.

Top Tip 5

**“Good evening Wembley” cried Ian before pointing and winking at the fridge. “My name is Ian and I’m on a mission to rock!”** Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

The pandemic, coupled with several lockdown situations, have robbed people of a sense of normal life. We are missing out on many aspects of our social lives and this in turn has had an effect on the mental health of millions of people. Sport continues via almost endless TV coverage but one place that remains largely uncatered for is music. Yes, various bands and solo artists have put on Zoom gigs, but it’s not the same as the excitement of attending the real thing. So I have a solution. Kitchen gigging. Put simply, ask Alexa to play songs by your chosen artist and then sing along. Are you in the band or the audience? The choice is yours, my friend. Me? Usually the singer, as you ask, but I play a mean bass guitar too. You may want to factor in other additions to add realism here, otherwise or you’re literally just singing along to songs next to a sink. My sources tell me that footstools make great front of stage monitors, brooms or mops are ideal microphone stands, while a pile of distant balloons and a squint can give the illusion of a passable audience. They tell me that the key here is to have a large enough space to dance or throw other wild shapes, a vivid imagination, no shame or dignity and to remember that the words aren’t important; this is a live gig so you’re free to go ‘off piste’ as it were with the lyrics. You can even pause said device for a bit of pre-song banter with your ‘crowd’ for added fun. My sources also tell me that this is a whole host of fun, it’s extremely cool and that even in middle age, you can play the pretend rock god. Obviously, I have to take their word for it…

So there you have it. Just when you thought you might allow the share size crisps and 12 packs of lager to seduce you into extraordinary levels of lockdown weight gain, I give you five tips to help you get through our current crisis!

I’d love hear what people thought, so feel free to let me know in the comments. Similarly, if you have a go at window cleaner zombie role play or insult the odd dog, let me know how it went. And if you have any tips of your own, I’m a very keen listener! I hoped you enjoyed the blog!

Poetry Blog – ‘Early Morning Run’

If you’ve read the blog before or are a regular reader (I don’t know if I actually have regular readers, but there you go…) you might already know that I’m a big fan of running. I’d been a sporadic runner for most of my life until the first period of lockdown when I found the time to really work on my fitness and found myself running on a far more regular basis.

In the past, I’ve dabbled with early morning runs. I’ve always thought they were a good idea and it doesn’t particularly bother me that I have to get out of bed early. I’ve never been one for having a lie in and although I wouldn’t call myself a morning person, I can just about function at that time of day. However, I’ve never taken early morning running this seriously before. In the past I think I’ve just been of the view that getting out of bed and doing a bit is enough. Nowadays – probably because I’ve got myself a lot fitter – I take things more seriously.

So since early November last year I’ve been getting up before 7am every Sunday and heading out for a run. My wife thinks I might be going mad or perhaps having some kind of mid-life crisis, but I’m definitely not! I’m just enjoying running. I don’t think I’ve ever ran this early before, but it’s enabled me to experience quite a lot of brilliant things. I’ve ran along long straight roads with barely a vehicle in sight and watched as the sun comes up. I’ve been able to start my day in absolute solitude, gathering my thoughts and just feeling completely and utterly relaxed. I’m calm while running, rather than panicking about how I’m feeling, whether I’d be able to finish, the pain in a muscle etc. And I’ve had time to think, which has helped me a lot with things that I want to write about. I’ll be taking a dictaphone out with me soon!

With all the solitude, the calm, the energised feelings I’ve had after running, it felt obvious to write a poem about my early morning runs. I’d even been taking photos to help me remember certain things. And so, I sat down and wrote some notes. Sometimes these turn into lines from a poem, other times they just stay as bullet points, until I get the urge to sit and write the actual poem. In the case of this poem, I wrote minimal notes and spent a chunk of one Sunday morning, post run, just writing the poem. There were a few bits scribbled out, I suppose as part of a drafting process, but in the main this was a poem that was written as a first draft. Maybe that says something about my enthusiasm for the subject matter…

Early Morning Run

Although a pre-7am alarm on a Sunday is very much the stuff of nightmares, it’s done now. There’s no going back. I roll from under the covers and stumble like a broken robot across the blackness of the bedroom to halt the alarm, then, after a brief flirtation with the cold tap to awaken my senses, I’m downstairs, my body protesting as I stretch. Finally, when there’s nothing left to delay me, I leave the relative warmth behind.

Outside, a pattering against nearby leaves alerts me to the drizzle. My heart sinks slightly, but I turn and run. As I climb the first hill, the early morning fog rolls down at me. I push on, my bare arms and legs slowly adjusting to the biting cold and by the top, although catching my breath, I’m into my stride.

The centre of town is a place for ghosts, only the gentle pad of my feet on concrete can be heard and there’s only me to be seen. The sun fights a losing battle with the fog as I plod on and the only light to be seen belongs to the occasional cars of shift workers heading for warmth. I afford myself a few quiet words of encouragement, tell myself it won’t be long before I’m in their shoes.

On the outskirts of town I run on the empty road, giving up my territory every so often as early morning haulage thunders past and shakes the pavement. I relax, the only soul for miles around, alone with my thoughts and the constant voice in my head offering platitudes, encouragement, advice. Shoulders back, straighten out, head up, lengthen your stride, keep going.

Further down the road, as I tire, a shiftworker emerges like a high viz beacon and we exchange nods, perhaps each wondering which of us has made the worse decision on this cold Sunday morning. And then, the long downward stretch that signals my way home claws its way from the grasp of the fog and I quicken my pace, as if acting on instinct.

A lone gull lands upon a lampost above my head, like some kind of vulture, but it’s too late. I’m gritting my teeth, summoning last reserves of strength and fighting fatigue; this scavenger will have to wait. I open up my stride as best I can and drive for my finishing line.

Finally, I’m home and fumbling for a key with which to silently open the door in order not to wake my sleeping loved ones. Inside, I move to the kitchen, gulp down water, gorge on fruit and then stretch, thankful to be back, my body aching, but my mind cleansed.

Just a brief explanation of a few things in the poem. The line about stumbling across our bedroom ‘like a broken robot’ is me trying to communicate just how tired I feel when I wake up. There are days when my legs just don’t seem to work and the stiffness means my steps are ragged to say the least. It fascinates me that within about twenty minutes, I’ll be running at pace up a hill! Later on in the stanza I mention that ‘my body protests’ at stretches. I know I should warm up, but I seriously don’t want anyone to get the idea that I’m some kind of ‘proper’ runner!

In the fourth stanza, I mention the voice in my head. that might not be wholly truthful. Often I’m actually talking to myself while out running. While there are times when I thoroughly enjoy it and feel totally strong, there are more when I can’t work out why I’m working out, so to speak. And so, often I’ll have a little chat to myself and tell myself that things aren’t that bad or try to kid myself on that it’s all in my head and that my legs are, in fact, strong.

In the fifth stanza I mention a long downward stretch. I’d like to point out that while it’s long, it is barely downward at all and that some of it means going back uphill. I almost changed the poem at the point as I couldn’t stand people thinking that a huge chunk of my run is down a big, steep hill. It’s not. But it’s downhill enough for me to pick up the pace!

The gull in the sixth stanza genuinely frightened me. At first, out of the corner of my eye, I genuinely believed that it was a bird of prey and that it might just take a swoop at me. Seeing it was a gull was a relief, but I still looked at its massive beak and felt a bit of trepidation!

Let me know what you think in the comments. I hope you enjoyed the poem as much as I frequently tell myself I like my early morning runs!

Can we talk about last night again?

A lot of us will have felt exactly the same yesterday. We’ll have spent the whole day nervous, dreading 8pm rolling around and wishing that we could just avoid it and tell whoever we’d passed the remote control to put a film on. Sadly though, the aforementioned dread will have been punctuated far too regularly by the hope that has you asking, ‘What if’? because that hope is very much all we’ve had for years. And sadly, the majority of us will have sat through every last second of yet another dreadful performance, wishing we hadn’t have bothered..

It should be abundantly clear to anyone with eyes that it’s just not working at Newcastle United. Steve Bruce is failing. And I think I’ve said this before in a previous blog, but we knew that this would happen.

Last night was nothing remarkable. We’ve looked appalingly doomed for a long, long time now. There’s little in the way of ideas and imagination, there’s no heart, no desire, no fight. People might tell you that nobody gets relegated in January, but as far as I can see, we’re down.

We’re now midway through yet another morning after the night before and nothing has happened. No one at the club has taken what would surely be the right action. Steve Bruce remains in a job having overseen 10 games without a win and far too many hours without a goal being scored. He’s still gainfully employed, having failed to inspire any kind of performance from his team for months. Is there another club where this would happen?

So where do we stand? Well, while the pundits point to a seven point gap between us and the bottom three, we have a club that resembles a liner that’s lost all power in the middle of the ocean. And someone’s begun to put holes in the hull. And someone else has removed the rudder. The crew can’t be arsed and are busying themselves sitting on deck gazing out to sea while the captain stands on the bridge telling an empty room that everything’s alright.

Our manager – and I’m praying I’ll have to edit this as news breaks that he’s been sacked as I’m typing, but I don’t believe in God or Lee Charnley – has become a paranoid shell of a man. In recent weeks he’s criticised the fans for their ‘histrionics’, he’s desperately chopped and changed personnel, discovered players that he’d previously ignored and then dumped them within a game (Longstaff, Dummett), had a snide dig at a previous manager (“the mighty Rafa”) and amazingly labelled a performance that he presided over as manager as “absolute shite”. His mismanagement is absolutely astonishing. To put it in context, in recent years we’ve had Pardew headbutting an opposition player, as well as blaming the grass and ‘science’, Carver saying a player got sent of deliberately and Joe Kinnear acting like a homeless drunk in press conferences, yet calling his own players “shite” has to top them all.

Last night though, we reached some notable new lows. The performance on the pitch was dreadful, again. Bruce is picking talented players, but his coaching seems to have rendered many of them as completely ineffective. The £40m striker who he has repeatedly failed to get a tune out of was left on the bench all night. Possibly rightly so as well, but…£40 million and if we’re being informed correctly, rejected by our previous manager as clearly not worth the money! He picked a target man for the second game running and, for the second game running, subbed him just as he brought on two wingers. He picked Jeff Hendrick. He picked Jonjo Shelvey. He put them together in the centre of our midfield, while playing arguably our most effective central midfielder in central defence. And at the end of the game, not only did he tell the media that he was encouraged by the performance, he also said (and forgive me if these aren’t his exact words, but I wrote them down as he said them and still can’t believe them) “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve got enough (talented players) to attack.” This after 18 months in the job.

The popular view is that he’s ‘lost the dressing room’ and we can’t really know the truth here, as we don’t have access to said dressing room. But how can this not be true? He is openly blaming the players, while occasionally slipping in the fact that he takes responsibility. All the evidence that is needed is surely on the pitch. The lack of desire is alarming. You don’t need to head to social media to view that clip from Leicester away from a couple of seasons ago to see that this is a shell of the team we once had. This is a manager with blood on his hands.

Let’s look at a couple of case studies as evidence, if you will. Firstly, Jamal Lewis. Before he signed for Newcastle and Bruce, he was heralded as an exciting, attacking wing-back, albeit as part of a Norwich side that got relegated. But he was good enough for Liverpool to take an genuine interest and look at signing him. Now, he is a player that I don’t like watching. I find it genuinely quite a painful experience. Here is a young player who had the footballing world at his feet not that long ago. And yet now, he’s a player who looks terrified of the ball. In an age of attacking wing-backs, I watch him move forward and know that he won’t attempt to beat the man and get to the byline. Instead, he will check back, look behind imploringly and then lay the ball off to a safer option. Often this is the beginning of a short chain of events that I like to refer to as ‘passing back to the keeper’ or turning attack into defence. While defending he is regularly caught ball-watching, possibly as a consequence of the kind of eroded confidence that just wants anyone else to deal with the ball. I won’t blame him and I won’t criticise him, even though I’m one of those Newcastle fans with unrealistic expectations. But I will wonder what another manager might have made of him.

Then we have Callum Wilson, our number 9 in all but number. Wilson is a player who should be at the peak of his powers; he certainly arrived in this state, in my opinion. Sharp, energetic, wily, quick; everything we wanted in a centre forward at a club where we worship centre forwards. Fast forward five months or so and he’s another who looks a shadow of the footballer he once was. The service he desires is frustratingly unforthcoming, but this is not the end of his story. For me, the change in Wilson goes beyond that. Remember the smile, the wink, the salute? Remember the guile that had him bullying centre halves? All gone. Playing football looks like a job to him nowadays; a chore. Sadly, he looks a spent force. And again, I’m not blaming him. I rate him as a player and was thrilled when he signed. But last night, while Villa players smiled, encouraged each other and generally pinged the ball about without a care in the world, Wilson looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And he wasn’t alone by a long way. That’s the fault of one man and his staff.

The final word on Steve Bruce and Newcastle United must go, bizarelly to the two men on pundit duties last night. This is simply because, in terms of the strange and wonderful world of Newcastle United, they made some of the strangest comments I’ve heard, post match. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jamie Redknapp and Darren Bent. Firstly, Redknapp blamed the state of the club on kids in Newcastle. Apparently it’s their fault that the team are so awful because they’re not good enough to play in our academy. Lost yet? Me too. But Jamie actually asked – and admittedly I’m paraphrasing here – “Why aren’t they playing football in the streets?” The incredible assumption seems to be that we should be producing first team ready superstar footballers, year in year out in order to allow us to win a game of football every now and again. He referenced names like Beardsley, Waddle and Gascoigne (two of whom didn’t come through the academy) and claimed that we don’t produce the likes of these players anymore. But who does Jamie, who does?

With his frankly weird claim, Redknapp not only referenced players from decades ago, but also ignored players who have come through the academy to take their place in the first team at the club. Without resorting to Google, I can remember the likes of Dummet, Taylor, Carroll, Clark, Watson, Hughes, Ameobi, Howey, both Longstaffs and Caldwell. Now, I understand that they are by no means world beaters, but they are proof that we can and so produce players. I also understand Redknapp’s frustration at having to sit through what he sat through, but what else can he reach for in order to avoid blaming Steve Bruce? Picking on school kids was a new and incredible low.

Darren Bent meanwhile, brilliantly blamed our strikers, who he said “look like they’ve never played together before” and asked “why aren’t they working on it in training?” I would imagine they are, Darren. And whether they are or they aren’t, whose fault would you say that could be? I’ll give you a clue, looks like an over-baked potato, belongs in the 1990s and his name rhymes with please resign and get out of our club. OK, it doesn’t but you can guess it from the other clues, surely?

We play Leeds on Tuesday night. I live in Leeds. My wife and son both support Leeds, as do friends and colleagues. I work in a school with pupils who are Leeds fans. I’ve never been so grateful for a pandemic and school closures.

I have some more questions about music – the 2nd in a slowly ongoing series.

For those of you who didn’t read the original article (the engagingly titled, I have some questions about music…), I wrote something a while back about the kind of things that occur to me while listening to or just thinking about music. It wasn’t very serious. That was deliberate. I do take music very seriously; I have been surrounded by it all my life and can be quite obsessive about certain bands, singers, writers or songs. But these were simply silly questions that had cropped up along the way.

In the original article I wrote a list of deliberately silly questions that popped into my head. It was meant to be humorous and judging by the comments, at least a few people got the joke, which is always comforting where attempts at humour are concerned! Some of the questions were things that had whirled around in there for years, while others might have just cropped up as I was writing.

Anyway, because I’m always listening to music I have some more questions, so I thought I’d best write an article and share them!

Does anyone really, truly know the words to the songs of AC/DC? Now please don’t misunderstand me here. I’m a fan of AC/DC and have no reason to mock them. Well, at least not in any cruel kind of way. But, come on…we’ve all heard Brian Johnson’s voice? Surely, not one of us hasn’t heard him and thought, ‘ooh, annunciate man!’ And it was much the same with Bonn Scott, the original front man, before him. Johnson especially sings in what can only be described as a high pitched shriek and he’s definitely not concentrating on making himself understood. Sometimes it can sound like someone pressed ‘Record’ just as he trapped his genitals in his zip. He could be singing your own name and you wouldn’t recognise it! Let me give you my favourite example. It’s the song ‘Thunderstruck’. Now you’d have to listen to it to really make this question work, but for those of you who know the track, I’m right, yes? Officially, the lyrics start as follows – ‘I was caught in the middle of a railroad track (Thunder), I looked round, and I knew there was no turning back (Thunder), my mind raced and I thought what can I do (Thunder), and I knew there was no help, no help from you (Thunder).’ Now for this section, I can make out about 50% of the words, but as the song goes on and they head to Texas, Texas is one of only a few words that are clear. In fact, in an ironic twist, Johnson even repeats it – “Texas, yeah Texas” – just so we know for certain where they went. I have no idea why Brian and the boys have gone there. They definitely met some girls (of course they did, they’re in a band), but other than that nothing is made overtly clear from Brian’s howling. Similarly, with their huge hit ‘Whole Lot of Rosie (a charming tune about, shall we say a curvy girl) nothing is clear at all. Her vital statistics are mentioned at one point and to be honest, they could be any three numbers picked out of thin air because for me there’s no way of knowing what’s been said…or screamed. So I’ll ask you again…does anybody really follow the words to AC/DC songs?
Is it just me that worries about Liam Gallagher having back problems when he gets older? Now, the short answer here is probably yes. But wait and let’s have a little think. Liam is known for a few things that make him quite distinctive. His voice stands out. His swagger, his hair and his style all draw the attention too. But can we talk about the way he stands before a microphone? Because here is where my worry lies. Most frontmen and women stand pretty much in the same way when faced with the most used tool of their trade. Face on, up straight. I mean let’s not make singing too complicated, right? And then we have Liam. Firstly, observe some evidence.

Now I’m sure we can agree that these images are a recipe for back pain in later life. If the instruction had been, ‘make the letter D using only your own body and a microphone stand’ he’d be winning. But it isn’t and it wasn’t and that posture is a chiropractor’s nightmare (or dream, depending on their scruples, I suppose). Liam sings brilliantly and will take some beating as a frontman. But if we observe the three images on the top row there, I can’t be the only one wincing a bit. It’s like he needs a barstool, but everyone’s refusing to let him have one. Maybe the other members of Oasis didn’t want anyone thinking they were Westlife. And then on the bottom two images, that tambourine is going to put him off balance and even the biggest ambulance chasing lawyers would struggle to argue that this particular accident at work wasn’t his own fault. That last one just screams ‘HEALTH AND SAFETY NIGHTMARE’! His back’s in danger, his teeth, his nose if it flips up in a gust of wind and even his toes if he momentarily loses his grip. Put simply, it all adds up to the fact that I’m asking a very pertinent question about Liam Gallagher’s back.

3. Who is responsible for the incidental music that we hear in certain stores? (E.g. the ones that won’t pay for proper songs that you actually recognise). This is a predictably flippant question, but it’s one that’s bothered me for ages. And within the question, there are more questions. For starters, I need to know if this is somebody’s job? Are there actual composers or musicians out there who write the stuff that often mimics heavy rock, pop, country or reggae specifically for supermarkets and shops? I hear it most in budget stores like Home Bargains or B&Ms (think Target if you’re American, maybe Lidl or Aldi if you’re European) and I can’t deny that some of it is actually quite catchy. Quite often I’m driving or walking home singing along to a song that I might never hear again, unless said stores never change their playlist. In context (of all music ever, including what we can probably, reasonably agree to call ‘proper’ music) it’s bloody rubbish. The lyrics are limited (said John Lennon here) and the tune will invariably be straightforward and largely inoffensive. After all, this is music to walk round a shop to. It’s background noise by definition. And yet, it fascinates me. I wonder if it could be music that the ‘big guns’ rejected. Are we, while wandering aimlessly around Home Bargains looking at cut price chocolate and skin care brands that we’ve never heard of, actually listening to the early, less immediate work of a superstar. Is there a lost Elton John track being played right now in Wilkinsons? Was that distinctly tame rap in the background as you walk down the pet food aisle, actually penned by one of the Wu-Tang Clan before they hit the big time? Who knows? But I’ll tell you what fascinates me most about this ‘never quite made it’ music. Is there an anonymous looking man or woman (possibly in possession of a bit of a mullet, coupled with a mid-range ‘designer’ tan leather jacket) strolling round these shops making a mental note of the tunes and thinking to themselves, ‘Oh, that’s one of mine’? I sincerely hope there is! Imagine, you’re whistling along to one of these tunes one day and someone stops you to point out, ‘I wrote this’. Priceless. I’ve told myself I’ll do it one day – just tell the lie and walk off with the person’s puzzled expression etched on my mind forever and ever.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the questions. Maybe some of these have been bugging you for years too. I’ve no doubt, over the passage of time there’ll be more questions and a third instalment for this particular blog. Until then, let me know what you thought or maybe even of any questions you’d like investigating.

Book Review – The Soundtrack to My Life by Dermot O’ Leary

Dermot O’Leary, for those who don’t know, is the presenter of The X-Factor in the UK. He also hosts a radio show on BBC Radio 2 and appears almost ubiquitously on TV as a presenter, talking head or just as the face or voice of various adverts. In short, you could be forgiven for getting a little irritated by him!

As the presenter of The X-Factor he is quite a divisive character. Not in the same way as say, Simon Cowell, but divisive all the same. There are probably thousands of people who just don’t like him because of his association with the behemoth that is that particular franchise. Whether that’s fair, I don’t know and I daresay, Dermot O’Leary doesn’t particularly care.

For the record, I like Dermot. But then again, we go way back. I remember Dermot as the fresh-faced presenter of a programme called T4 years ago, which for many of us represented perfect hangover TV. As such, I feel like I’ve followed his career a little bit ever since. Personally, I find him funny and quite an engaging presenter and while I might not like watching The X-Factor, I would gladly watch him on other shows or tune in to his radio show simply because he seems like the kind of bloke I’d be friends with (You know, if massive TV fame hadn’t got in the way!).

And this is sort of where the book comes in. It’s part autobiography and part discussion of music. Dermot whisks us through his forty odd years on the planet via the medium of music, linking various anecdotes to many of his favourite songs and artists. So it’s an autobiography with a ‘twist’, which Dermot himself explains in the book. And it’s an understandable twist given his experiences within the world of music, from being a regular gig-goer in his teens and onwards to presenting shows such as T4 and The X-Factor and then his long standing time as host of various radio shows from XFM to BBC Radio 2.

If you’re a music fan, ‘The Soundtrack to My Life’ will most likely prove to be an interesting read. Dermot knows his stuff and certainly has a wide range of tastes and influences. He links infleuential artists, bands and songs alongside key moments and anecdotes from his life to pretty good effect. And if you’re insisting on attaching that X-Factor stigma to him and expecting that his list will simply be chock-full of One Direction and Little Mix, then you may well get a number of pleasant surprises. Sadly though, there’s no mention of Same Difference or Jedward…

Amongst the choices you’ll find some of music’s big hitters – from Springsteen and The Rolling Stones to Amy Winehouse and Beyonce as you’d reasonably expect from a man who’s spent quite a while mixing with some of music’s big hitters. But it’s not at all predictable. In among the star names are other less well know acts like Brendan Shine (a nod to O’Leary’s Irish heritage), Terry Wogan and Beth Orton. Add in tracks by Guns n’ Roses, Wham, Ian Brown and The Killers and we’re being served up a varied musical banquet here.

The soundtrack got all the more special for me when reading about tracks from the bands Elbow and Athlete. For starters O’Leary picks a very early Elbow track – ‘Newborn’ – which just so happens to be one of my favourite ever songs. It’s the band at their most melancholy and vulnerable and in a funny way, it was a nice surprise to find it nestling alongside The Macarena in a book by the bloke who presents one of the most popular shows on British television. It was nice to read mention of Athlete as not only are they a band that I like but one of their tracks – not the one chosen in the book – is a song that I’ll forever associate with the birth of my daughter and the frequent trips to hospital that I would take in those early days of her life.

Overall, the book works. O’Leary’s life story is, to a point, a familiar one. The suburban upbringing, the ordinary school days and the hard work that follows in order to make something of yourself. It just so happens that this ordinary boy went on to become probably one of the most recognisable faces on British television. The inclusion of the songs not only gives us a break from the usual ‘star’ autobiography format of a very dry, unremarkable account of someone’s life, with maybe a few quoteworthy opinions thrown in to grab the odd headline and sell a few more books, but it serves to give us a little more insight into the life of someone who many of us can say we’ve kind of grown up with. Others might find it interesting in terms of how it might change their their X-Factor based opinions.

It’d be easy to criticise people like O’Leary just because of The X-Factor, but as he points out himself, if you’re offered a huge gig in the field that you work in, you’d be silly to turn it down. O’Leary dreamed of working in TV from leaving school, so when the biggest show on the box comes calling, you’d be a mug to turn it down. And while this might reject things like principles, I daresay that showbusiness doesn’t always have time for such things. So while we may frown at The X-Factor, it’d be strange to not accept the fact that a presenter might want to present it.

One small criticism of the book comes with the style of O’Leary’s writing, which did get a little irritating at times. He almost abuses parentheses and at times it was a little troublesome just to follow the narrative. And as a lover of parentheses and the odd tangent myself, I can see the irony in not enjoying reading through so much of it! But sometimes the tales take a few too many turns and it did become a little grating.

Overall though, ‘The Soundtrack of My Life’ is an enjoyable read. It’s an idea that’s been played with before, most notably in Nick Hornby’s ’31 Songs’, but O’Leary’s light hearted tone makes sure that it’s not particularly derivative. This isn’t a taxing read. You’re not going to experience any emotional trauma or find yourself fighting back the tears at the author’s pain. But if what you’re looking for is an autobiography with a bit of ‘quirk’ then this might well be for you. As a fan of music and radio, I enjoyed it and I think you would too.

I give Dermot O’Leary’s ‘Soundtrack To My Life’…

Live Lessons – My Top Ten Most Uttered Phrases.

Since we were struck by the pandemic early last year, everyone and everything has found itself having to adapt. We’ve adapted from the way we do our shopping or go for a walk all the way through to the way that we do our job.

In teaching – my field of work – we’ve had to make huge changes. Different schools have made different changes, but in the school that I work at we have the pupils in bubbles and we go to them to teach, we are obviously socially distant, we have had to change our marking policy, everyone wears masks on corridors and we have a one way system. And they are only a small fraction of the changes that have been made.

We been using Microsoft Teams for remote learning all year. At first it wasn’t used that often; certainly not for live lessons. We’d put assignments in there daily, in case students were missing and then, when bubbles collapsed and we had greater numbers of students away, we’d use it for the odd live lesson and some blended learning, where some people were isolating and on the live lesson while the rest of us were in the room. But for a while, the majority of lessons remained the same – classroom based, whiteboards, exercise books and all that jazz.

With the school closures of 2021, we’re now exclusively doing live lessons and remote learning is in full flow. I wrote about the differences in a previous blog Lockdown 3 – Some thoughts on my first week at work. but after a couple of weeks of working this way, although I’m quite enjoying parts of it, something struck me; the amount of times I utter the same phrases to a class on Teams is really quite something. Big up to my friends (in no particular order) Emma, Chloe, Laura, Gemma, Megan, Ellie, Charlotte, Bryonny, Lindsey, Em, Louise and Saba, who over the course of the last few months of doing live lessons, have provided much material and inspiration for this particular blog – oh the tales we could tell! So here, in no particular order is my Top Ten of most used live lesson phrases.

“Can you mute your mic please?” As a rule, I have my students muted. In class during regular lessons. Just kidding. But on Teams, while I don’t actually mute them, let’s just say I encourage them not to unmute and talk to me. Hey, this is my show, after all! To be fair though, the reason that I have to say this phrase is the things that you get to hear. In various classes, a kid has unmuted and the whole lesson can hear their television as someone’s sat there (please let it not be my pupil) watching loud daytime TV. In other cases we’ve been met by a positively imperfect symphony of screeching relatives. I can mute them pretty quickly, but what I hear leaves me massively worried about the environment that they’re working in. And I guess that’s part of the problem. How can some of these kids get anywhere near the same quality of education at the moment? At other times, some students just seem to want to quickly unmute and make a silly noise and others do the same in order to just say ‘Hi’ and despite repeated warnings, it’s surprising how often it still occurs. So because my pupils seem unable to click a button that has a picture of a microphone on it, that phrase is definitely one of my most used.
“Just bear with me a second…” There always seems to be something that crops up that I have to deal with. There’s always a snag, a technical hitch or just yet another of my own deficiencies. One such hitch is when my movement sensitive lights go off on one side of the room. Now initially this might not seem like a problem that needs me to have a class “bear with me”, but let me tell you why they need to wait. I always have my camera on – I think being able to see their teacher might add some much needed normality to proceedings for my students and of course, I have a friendly face *coughs* – and so when the light goes off, it leaves one side of my face in shadow. As an English teacher I imagine it makes me look like Mr. Hyde, the monstrous side to Dr. Jekyll and that is not a good look or a friendly face for my students! So, just bear with me…
“We’re just waiting for a few people to join…” We’re not, we’re waiting for half the class! They all knew when the lesson started but they just couldn’t make it on time. I’m going to have to call them aren’t I? I’m hopefully sounding cool, calm, friendly, but I’m not. I’m quite irked, to be fair. The lesson times don’t change. It should be easier just to roll out of bed and pop a computer on than the usual whole ‘getting to school on time’ routine, but it would seem not.
“Can we pop an answer in the comments? This is me saying, ‘I DON’T WANT YOU TO SPEAK!’ It’s also me saying ‘IS ANYONE STILL THERE?’ Live lessons rob us of the face to face interactions that we usually have and so asking kids to put answers in the comments is the next best thing as well as being that thing that comforts you when you’re just imagining your entire class has logged on then left the room to watch telly or play X-Box. And before you even think the thought, no, I’m not opening up everyone’s mic so that they can all call out the same right/wrong answers at the same time. So ‘Can you pop an answer in the comments?’ is all I’ve got.
“Can you let me know if you can hear me?” or “Is this thing working?” There’s always someone who can’t hear you or can’t see the PowerPoint that’s being shared. I have no idea why. It’s there, on screen! And there’s always that bit of self doubt that nags at you as a teacher and whispers ‘You can’t use the technology properly’. Or is that just me? Oh, just me. The good thing – and I don’t mean actual good – is when you ask the first question and only about 8 kids respond in the chat and you’re left assuming they can hear, but that typing the three letters of the word ‘Yes’ is just a bit much to ask.
“Can you just use the chat for questions and not emojis and winding each other up or bickering, please?” Safe to say that some of our younger classes haven’t quite sussed out the chat etiquette yet! Sometimes it feels like they’re not really tuning in for the lesson, just the chat. And then when you’ve stopped the nonsense you’ll inevitably get at least one of them typing, ‘Sir, what we doing?’ in the very same chat. Or failing that just, ‘Eh?’
“Ok, I’ll just give you another 2 minutes on that.” Often, while a class are working I’ll mute my mic and turn off my camera, just to enable me to do something else, like read some emails or a bit of planning. I’m never, ever ready when the timer goes off and we need to move on, so I’m always adding time. Without the students in front of you it’s not only strange and a bit lonely, but also easy to get distracted, and so I’m forever pondering images to put on PowerPoints or thinking I can fit in one more email which always, always leads to me pretending to be kind by adding time on!
“Are you still there? Am I talking to myself?” It’s definitely easier for your students to avoid the questions when they’re on the end of an internet connection and that silence can get quite ghostly. It’s lonely and isolated enough staring out into a room full of chairs that are still up on tables, without the kids in the computer ignoring you as well!
“Can you make sure you’ve got the text open please? It’s in the assignments. And I’ve pasted it into the chat. I can post them out ahead of the lesson if you need. Send them on a pigeon?” Ok, so the latter part of that isn’t true but we could easily have just had the comment as “IT’S IN THE ASSIGNMENTS MAN!!” Suffice to say, it can be very, very…very frustrating getting students to open up the texts they’ll need for the lesson. It doesn’t matter that you posted the assignment days earlier with the instruction that they’d need to have the texts open. It doesn’t matter that you’ve sent it to some of them on email. It doesn’t matter that out of the first 5 things you said when welcoming them to the lesson 4 of them were “Can you make sure you’ve got the text open please?” And it doesn’t matter that you reminded them, in the chat, 12 seconds ago what the text was called, where it was and what they should do with it. 30% (at least) of your class won’t have a clue what you’re talking about! But it’s Ok. You’re the consumate professional who can stay calm and remind them AGAIN, YES A-BLOODY-GAIN in your best Disney teacher voice, what it is they need to do. But thank the lord there’s a mute button! Which brings me on to…
“I’m just going to put myself on mute/turn my camera off/both” The ultimate censor, enabling you to karate kick every chair off every desk, walk outside and scream at the sky, open the window and throw marker pens at passing seagulls (they deserve it…the nearest sea is miles away), curl up into a ball, flick ‘V’ signs at the screen, shout things like ‘Which poem are we going to annotate? Which f*****g poem? The one we did last week! Definitely, definitely, not the one we’ve been doing for the last hour!” or volley the same kids’ books around the room. I just tell them it’s in case a colleague walks in and I have to have a chat when in fact it’s because I’m having the kind of spectacular meltdown that you thought only hungry toddlers were capable of.

It’s been a tough old academic year so far! If you’re a teacher, I’m sure you’ll have uttered all of these phrases and experienced all of these scenarios many, many times since September. If you have any I’ve missed out, then please let me know in the comments – I’d genuinely love to read them!

Regardless of what you do for a living or how you’re getting through these ridiculous times, keep on keeping on. I’m so full of admiration for so many people and their stories since March or so last year. Stay safe everybody – I hope you enjoyed the blog and that it managed to put a smile on some faces.