apocrypha

the world today

Despise not a man in his old age; for we also shall become old.

Ecclesiasticus/Sirach, Chapter 8, Verse 7

Two years have now gone past. How am I coping with being retired? If you asked me in the street, as people do, I’d tell you that I was enjoying it. And to the inevitable follow-up, did I miss work?, I’d answer, I miss the people. While, I suppose, these answers are accurate, they fall far from a strict truth. Without work to structure my life around I spend most of my time doing nothing very much. Other pensioners are constantly wittering on about retirement unleashing a, new phase of my life and saying how busy they are. What are they doing that I’m missing? Why amn’t I busy? Why do I remain leashed?

I often see them, these other pensioners, the unleashed, what we’ll call the younger of our old-adults, battering around. They’re gregarious, they flock, they chatter. I see them along the canal, walking, running, in great chains of bikes. They go to the gym, they join night classes, I see them taking art lessons in the wee shop down the road from me, heads bald, gray, or both, bowed to their work; restaurants and cafés are stuffed full of them, watching the world smugly, having a chat. What is it with them? This fitness and self-improvement? Isn’t the time well passed for that? Perhaps they think that they’ll escape dementia? Live longer lives? A glance at the older of our old adults, you see these as well, should give them pause, you want to live longer like that? I do none of these things. Even if I was interested the thought of mixing with other young old-adults would put me right off.

I don’t watch TV anymore, but my wife does, so sometimes I hear the adverts. I don’t know what she’s watching but it’s clearly younger old-adult stuff, the adverts are all directed at people of our age, who have some money and can still move about a bit. Paying for your own funeral (it costs nearly £4000 and they want the money right away an old woman whines, well that’s your problem, I’ll be dead) and holidays feature heavily. The trip of your life, accompanied by others of your seniority. Cruises seem to be popular, I can think of nothing worse. You might have trouble fleshing out the full details of your own personal hell, I have no trouble with mine, it involves being on a cruise ship. Banged up in a pathogen filled metal box, on a wobbly ocean, unable to escape from people, with tour guided day-trips around tourist-trap ghettos thrown in as an extra. Ballard should have written about a cruise ship, instead of a High Rise, it would have been more realistic, almost not fiction at all. No, no holidays for me thank you.

What do I do? Well I paint a bit, I’ve taken up oil painting, and I write this. I read a lot. I had intended to spend more time playing with my toy soldiers but having the money for a decent collection rather spoiled that. When I had no money I had hours of fun planning my next purchase, dreaming about my perfect army, doing my best job with what I could get. Now that I can buy more-or-less what I want I’ve lost interest. It might even have always been a work thing; I did most of my painting at school when I was on overtime; and all the games I played I played after school with the young adults. I do still think about getting back into it, especially after I’ve read a history book about some long-ago war. But for now it’s got lost.

Mostly I spend my time on the computer. I programme a bit, I might find an itch to scratch soon and get more into that. But the bulk of my time is spent surfing news sites and despairing about the state of the world. I don’t do social media, not for me the cesspits of x, and the other echo-chambers of bile, or the body parts of snaptwat, so I might miss some of the worst things. Still what I read seems bad enough. The poor old four horsemen are well overworked. They should complain to their maker (is that god or the other guy?) about their unsustainable workload; we need at least two more anyway — one for AI and one for environmental disaster. Everywhere you look there’s suffering, all the old favourites and spanking brand-new man-made cruelties and ills. It’s hard not to believe that some end is near, that finally, we’re going to kill ourselves off. And perhaps we deserve it? Surely the world is in a worse place than it’s ever been before?

In general I don’t think that we live in an especially difficult age. There’s a tendency to see today’s problems as of a different order from the past; that current times are changing particularly fast and are peculiarly tough. That we face new, more complex, existential problems unknown to the past. People in the past had it easier — those were simpler times, where things moved slowly and any dangers were minor and mostly far off. I doubt it.

I remember my grampa telling me that when he was born mankind couldn’t fly and well before the end of his life we’d been to the Moon. Rapid technological change has been with us since the start of the industrial revolution. But rapid change has always had a part in our lives anyway, I’ll bet Hezekiah thought that the world was moving quite fast enough when Sennacherib’s army pitched their tents in the Valley of the Cheesemakers. So, sure, just now we don’t want for problems, it’s how we rise to the challenge that matters. We’re clever Monkeys, surely we can come up with some decent plans?

When you think of Victorians you probably think fussy prudes. They’re much maligned I think. They faced huge problems too — cities full of slums and disease, poisoned water, poisoned air, a working class, poor, without education, overworked, who died young without hope. An owner class who felt that a load of dead proles was just a normal cost of doing business. They had the courage to face up these problems, they didn’t always succeed but they did at least try. And they had a lot of success — they passed laws, they built houses, infrastructure, they created parks and gardens. If you look around today’s towns you’ll still see their buildings everywhere. Our shit still flows away in the sewers that they built. My own working life was mostly spent working in Victorian schools, over a hundred years old, still in use. Even when they stop being schools the buildings get used, they’re still good buildings. The Victorians did things, they didn’t throw their hands up and say, nothing can be done! They tried to make their world a better place for everyone.

The people driving these changes didn’t have to do this, they often had a lot to lose, they were doing very nicely out of the way things were. So why did they do it? Fear of revolution will have played its part, but I suspect that religion was the main driver. They committed unspeakable crimes in their god’s name but they did do a fair lot of good. We can’t expect religion to help us out too much these days. The loud, white, righteous men who make all the noise and have influence seem to favour some more unspeakable crimes.

So what can we expect from the leaders of today? What are our billionaires doing with their cash? They’re building spaceships! Now if the plan is something like the Golgafrinchan B Ark, but an A Ark, for the important people — the billionaires, the bankers, the hedge fund managers, the internet influencers, the CEOs of large companies. The people who get stuff done. If they’re all going to relocate to Mars, leaving us useless mouths behind, I can get on board with that. They seem to be stupid enough to fall for it, a lot of them went to Epstein island without noticing all those teenage girls. What did they think was going on? Did they think he was running some kind of finishing school? Alas, apart from Musk I doubt if they’re that stupid. No, we can expect no help from them. In fact what they want is to make things much, much worse. What are we to do then?

When I was at university we spent many long nights coming up with plans to make the world a better place. Many of these involved a working class uprising (we were mostly lower middle class). A general strike would bring down the government and usher in… we weren’t very sure. But it was going to be much better! This was at the beginning of the Thatcher years — inflation and unemployment were rampant, factories were closing down, it seemed like everybody was heading for the dole. Even astrologers could predict the coming miners’ strike. When I got thrown out of university, got a job in the Post Office and met a section of the working class I began to see some issues with these plans. Unions were for getting better wages, they weren’t there to change the world.

I remember going on strike once. It was in support of a Nurses’ strike, in those days secondary action was still quasi-legal, other unions had been asked to come out for a couple of hours and join the picket line (that would be against the law now). Only Iain and I were willing to do it, management tried to stop us, but the real pressure came from the union. We went anyway, and because we worked on the counter, and nobody would scab by taking our places, our strike was noticed. The queues were out the door apparently, when people found out the reason threats were made against our lives. For a while Iain and I were marked out as Trots. This wasn’t too much of a problem — the Post Office was a family place in those days. That the youngsters might kick against the system was expected, they’d grow up soon. I remember a postman coming over to us in the canteen to say that he was, proud of you young lads. Still, it made me realize that working class solidarity was a fiction, I could dump any syndicalist plans.

For a while there was hope in Labour. Michael Foot was leader, the party said all the right things, and did all the wrong ones. Then came the Falklands and a miners’ strike, unions looked out-of-control again; the economy got a wee bit better, Charles and Di tied the knot, the country could be proud again, we’d won a war and Di looked like an angel in her dress. The Tories romped the next election. We’d need some other plan if we wanted to change the world.

After I started working as a janny, which could be loosely described as working in education, I decided that education was the answer. (This is an example of me finding a good reason for doing something after I’d done it.) After all it makes sense — bring up the next generation to avoid our mistakes, be better people, build a better future. I was being a wee bit optimistic, education must be part the plan, but it’s going to take more than that to solve our problems. Still, working as a janny, I could pretend to myself that, in a small way, I was doing something to build a better world. Now that I’ve retired what am I doing to improve the world?

That, I think, is the root of my dissatisfaction with myself — I feel that I’m not doing anything worthwhile. Not that I ever really did. But I must be able to pretend to myself that I’m still working for the revolution. But what am I to do?

bbb

Herodotus tells a story about the burial customs of two groups of people, one who bury their parents, the other who eat them once they’re dead. Each are horrified about how the other one disrespects their parents in such a disgusting way. Some god or gods will be involved somewhere I suspect, but they can’t both be right. A prophet wasn’t listening properly or some auger misread the sacrificial tripes. I’ve always felt that this, probably made-up, tale has a lot to say about the human condition.

ghosts

When we were in the old building people would often ask me if I thought that the place was haunted, here in the new place nobody has yet been curious about the bogey population. I guess that it’s assumed that phantoms don’t do new builds.

There are only a few of you left who were at the old school — you arrived in August and we moved here in February. So, before being a pupil in the old building passes from the living memory of this building, I will share my memories. (Although Mr Munro and Mr Beard were pupils there once too.)

I think that the things that you would notice about the old place were how cramped it felt, that there were areas where daylight never fell, the tiles that were everywhere, and the patina of time. Generations of pupils and staff had added their mark by smoothing everything to a soft-glow. The building, once spanking-new, was showing its age.

The classrooms, in their final form, you would recognize as classrooms; somewhat smaller and taller with windows too high to see out of, but recognizable classrooms. Their original wooden steps had been removed from everywhere except for Ms MacIntosh’s very long, very cold room. The classrooms on the top floor were huge and tall, you could look up and see the riveted metal beams that held up the roof. Mr Dempster’s classroom was here, painted, at my suggestion, a garish turquoise and yellow. I don’t think that he’s ever forgiven me for that, he had to become headteacher to escape the horror of that room.

The atrium was, I suppose, a bit like our atrium in that it was large, open to the sky and people ate their pack lunches there. It was used for assemblies, drama, parents’ evenings, and anything we needed a large space for. The banners we have in our stairwells were originally hung there. The only furniture was two hundred odd chairs and a grand piano. The chairs were blue, the floor was blue, it all seemed very blue.

The dining hall was low-roofed, pink and silver-gray, glum; it let out onto an overgrown courtyard. In summer we opened the doors to the courtyard and Squirrels and Blackbirds came in when lunch was over to forage amongst the leavings of lunch.

Then the were the parts which few people ever got to see: the cellar, crazy-piled with the lumber of years; the service tunnels, a maze of pipes, cobwebbed, where far-off noises sounded near; the bell towers, giant water tanks topped by a square of sky.

The War Memorial came with us and I have one keepsake — an old wooden school desk that I made the staff scratch their names on graffiti style. I keep that under our new stairs so that someone from the future will find it and wonder.

Did I think that it was haunted? The old place? No. This place? Now that’s a rather stranger tale…

I wrote this for the school magazine. They also used some of my other stuff.

remembrance service

In the old school preparations for the remembrance service started at the back of ten. People bustled and scurried, music stands and microphones would appear, cables would be laid out and taped down, the IT technician would do some last-minute pfaffing to the flat-screen presentation (poppy fields, grave stones and pictures of our dead). Us jannies would wheel the ancient wonky-wheeled upright piano from the music department into place and bring the lectern from wherever it had been. Meanwhile the guests would start to arrive, to be ushered into the head’s office, for a small sherry perhaps?

Once break was over and the last few stragglers had been chivvied on their way the front doors would be closed. The sixth years would arrive, in drabs and dribs, arranging themselves on the stairs and stairwell, talking softly; the musicians took their places, the poor sod who was to play the last post trying not to look as nervous as they felt. Finally the quality appeared out of the head’s office, single filed, heads bowed, black and slow as treacle. Silence fell. We could begin. We jannies went to stand guard in the nearby corridors to ensure that there were no interruptions.

There was music, speeches, the wreaths were laid, there was the minute’ silence, the last post was played and we made our act of resolve. The quality trooped off for another sherry, the doors were opened, the wreaths were hung on the nails that had been put there for that purpose some time before living memory, all was put away. Soon everything seemed as it had been; few people left there unchanged.

There are several school events solely for the sixth years — the prom, the leaving breakfast… But the remembrance service is the most important. Aside from the essential solemnity of the occasion itself, it gives them a sense of the continuity of the school — that our pupils and staff have gone off to war and died, that other sixth years have made the resolve that they have just made, that they are part of a tradition that will outlast their time on this earth.

The memorial has hidden ties to the past. One summer we sent the bronzes off to be cleaned, I suspected that they had been cleaned before, and half expected… I was right. Behind one plaque the jannies of the time had written — Taken to be cleaned… with a date and, in beautiful copperplate, signed their names. Daz, Danny and I, in a far less attractive hand, did the same. I suspect that when the memorial was moved down to the new school the joiners added something too. And in the future, when the bronzes are cleaned again, or when the memorial is moved to our next building others will do likewise.

Our school is like The Ship of Theseus — a living entity, smeared in time; its parts ever changing, its soul abiding. Its past flows into our now and shapes our futures. We should remember this, our past, the children we sent off to wars, and try to live up to their sacrifices. It is good and fit that, for at least one day a year, together we pause, and stand, and think.

I wrote this for the former pupils association newsletter.

pranks

A leaving sixth year are expected to play pranks. It's traditional. And we wouldn’t want to mess with tradition, would we? The problem is that one person’s jolly jape is another’s act of moral degeneracy. One year St. Thomas’s sixth released a swarm of locusts into the building. (Apparently you can not only buy live Locusts online but also have them delivered alive through the post.) Mention of this event will cause the average headteacher to shake the napper and chew the wasp. Such things are not forgotten.

When I was a janny I made it my business to offer the sixth years access for them to do their dark business. I think that they thought that this was me being very sporting; of course my real reason was to ensure that I knew what the little rascals were up to. All in all this worked out fairly well for both parties.

There was one occasion where I missed a trick. I gave them access to Ms. Boag’s room and left them to it. There I made my floater, as Bertie Wooster might say. They’d bought a load of plastic cups from the web and covered every surface with these, filled to the brim with water. And I mean every surface — they’d even managed to attach them to the windows using the vacuum principle. It was impressive I suppose but can’t say I felt happy as I cleared it away. Ms Boag claimed to me that she’d never mentioned anything about hydration. I have my suspicions, it seemed a very targeted act and Ms. Boag is the sporty type, one prone to wittering about the dubious benefits of water.

Internet shopping introduced a new wrinkle, the ability to purchase crap en masse (Locusts for instance). The young adults must have been believers in Stalin’s dictum, “quantity has a quality all of it’s own”. Many things were purchased to strew around the building — rubber ducks, little plastic figures (which I was still finding in crannies five years later), and alarm clocks. The alarm clocks were a pain I must admit. Balloons were, of course, perennially popular, many a room was filled to the brim with these; or if Helium was involved, filled to the floor.

I think my favourite ever prank was when they wrapped up everything in Mr. D’s room in, well, wrapping paper. Desk, chair, computer, stapler, pictures … anything that could be wrapped was wrapped. I did wonder a wee bit if I should allow it; what finally swung it for me was that, for once, I wouldn’t be the one who had to restore the status quo. It was just after we’d moved into the new building and we had a few extra janitors kicking about who I could dedicate that task to. Mr D. took it in very good part, I’ll bet he still has the photographs.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the Prank, the legendary prank, the acmé of practical jokes. This took place at a time when bubble cars were a thing and a teacher owned one, which he parked outside the school. In an example to modern youth of collective action, the sixth years, acting as a team, hauled this car up the main stair of the old building and deposited it on the top landing. Now, when I first heard this tale I suspected that it wasn’t true; but my head janny had it from his head janny, who had it from his head janny… And, as in the Scottish regiments — what the head janny (Sergeant major) deems to be true, is true. Who were these enterprising sixth years? The first fifteen was mentioned but I expect that the entire year was involved somewhere. I expect that we will never know. Well at least we wouldn’t look amongst the committee members of the organization responsible for this newsletter. Maybe you wouldn’t, I might.

I wrote this for the former pupils association newsletter.

christmas at boroughmuir

When I worked at Boroughmuir it was well known that I wasn’t fond of Christmas. I was called, ‘The Grinch’, a term of affection I presume. So in October, when the email arranging the staff Christmas party came round, I would type-off a stern all-staff all-caps polemic against the creeping nature of the festive season. Yes, I know that these things have to be arranged early, but I wasn’t going to pass up that chance.

Things would then be quiet until the end of November when something called a ‘secret santa’ was organized. A ghastly concept I felt — an anonymous gift from some randomly chosen colleague? What could possibly go wrong with that? Lots I should think. Employment tribunals must waste a lot of time dealing with the fallout from these ill thought through ventures.

In early December the Christmas trees would arrive. Two. A big one and a small one. It was the jannies job to place these in situ. The small ones were easy — in the old building it went on top of the trophy cabinet, in the new building it was plonked in front of reception. The large ones were more tricky. Big Christmas trees are heavy, long, everywhere spiky and don’t fit in lifts. (To say nothing of their propensity to drop their needles by the ton at the merest touch.) We’d have to carry these upstairs; to the atrium in the old school, to the dining hall in the new one. There we would fit it into a base, stand back to admire our work, and watch as it toppled slowly onto the floor. Trees really are a complete pest. Eventually the school bought a big plastic tree that came in bits and could be plugged in to provide a menu of various lighting effects. I pretended to hate this, ‘monstrous excretion’, but secretly loved it. It was easy to set-up, easy to store and looked quite elegant without any other decoration.

The sixth years were responsible for decorating the trees. They did their best, bless them, but a lack of talent combined with the handicap of having some very poor materials to work with rarely produced a splendid result. The collection of lights, baubles and ornaments available to them was decidedly sub-par, Leonardo Da Vinci himself would have struggled. Every year a few more cheap boxes of ugliness were bought, adding to the mismatched hodgepodge of horror that ended up on the trees. Someone, me, once described the finished product as looking like, “an elf had thrown up on it”. I was being kind.

As the evil day approached excitement would mount. Nothing like the rising hysteria you get in a primary school of course, where you have the annual bloodletting over who-gets-what-part in the nativity play. The politicking, hostility, back-stabbing and rancor involved there would have caused your average Borgia to back away sharpish. There was nothing like that at Boroughmuir.

There were events of course, sing-songs, parties etc. and something called, “Christmas Jumper Day” which, strangely, was much, much worse than it sounds. Finally it would be the last day. Year groups would celebrate together in own special ways. Mr. Cifelli’s comedy karaoke being especially popular with the young adults, who lack even the most basic discernment.

Come noon the happy throngs would be released, clutching the cards and presents that they’d swapped with one another, to the sound of carols over the tannoy. The staff would don their glad rags and meet up for a quick drink in the staffroom before heading off to their party, carrying their presents in multiple plastic bags. Once upon a time this was the cue for the jannies and cleaners to have a few sandwiches and drinks in this same, now empty, staffroom. Under our enlightened new management such wanton excesses are now strictly verboten. But even in the old days the jannies had an urgent task to attend to first — we had to arrange for the Christmas trees to be stolen.

The Council have now got their act together a wee bit when it comes to getting rid of old Christmas trees. Back in the day if you weren’t careful, or didn’t chop the things up yourself, you might find your tree still outside your house in June. If we didn’t get our trees stolen we’d have had to chop them up to fit into the bins. A horrid and potentially painful task. So the decorations were quickly packed away and the trees were put outside and dragged as close as possible to the street. There was no carrying this time, once we dumped the big one straight out of a classroom window. It still wasn’t Christmas Day, might someone fancy a free tree?

When we were in the old building we had a surprising amount of success, we rarely had to chop up a tree. I put this down to Viewforth being a major thoroughfare for late-night festive drunks on their way home. I can almost follow the thought process in these mens’ heads. (I’m not being sexist here, I’m just certain that these tree-nappers were all of the male ilk. No woman would be so stupid.) —

——I’m a wee bit drunk, she’ll no be happy, wait a mo’ here’s a tree, we’ve no got one, ah’ll bring that home. She’ll be over the moon…

I can clearly imagine the scene when the tree did arrive home. I’m not ashamed to say that I feel utterly no guilt about this. I often wondered if, by some yuletide miracle, an over-muscled edjit actually did manage to get one of the big ones home — these were over twelve feet tall and a better fit for the Sistine Chapel than your average Scottish living room.

And so the school would be locked up and I’d head home for my Christmas. Which, when I was asked about in the New Year I would describe as, “quiet, very quiet”.

A very merry Christmas to you all!