Musical Spew

Woke up at seven today. SEVEN. Why must He be so cruel, I could be sleeping in till whatever time I like at the moment, safe in the knowledge that you lot are out there working hard to ensure my salary is paid while I lie in bed doing nothing but dreaming the dreams of the undeserving. So cruel. Anyway, since I was awake I decided to make a cup of tea and spent the next three hours finishing off Harry Potter. Not like, finishing him off with my hand, but you know, reading the book till it was finished. It was a good ‘un, I’ll give J.K.Rowling that…he died, although that one didn’t, she didn’t die and to be honest that was a surprise, although fuck me I really wasn’t expecting HIM to die, not like that anyway and thank fuck I didn’t put a tenner on her dying because she didn’t in the end, she killed her instead which was a turn up for the book I can tell you. Right, next on my reading list is a memoir by a Frenchman who served with the Waffen SS in Russia. Wicked.

Anyway, after my book was finished and my arse was bleeding from pressure sores from sitting up in bed balancing a book on my knees I went through to the kitchen, put on the radio and made toast. I listen to XFM of a morning, which is just about right for me, not exactly work for the brain but not the rabid and fuckwitted ravings of some Radio One twat either. Anyway, a song came on by that utter coma-with-a-voice Kate Nash. I’d not heard this one before. When her ‘hit’ song ‘Foundations’ (I think it’s called that, she says the word alot in the song) comes on now I leap over and turn the radio off. It makes me so fucking angry. I don’t usually get enraged by bands or singers, I’ve got more of a live-and-let-live attitude to music and rarely suffer from the bouts of murderous rage you will be familiar with if you are an avid reader of Piqued (see link to the right). But Kate Nash…Kate fucking Nash. Her ‘hit’ song is essentially a self-justifying word-vomit by some mockney speaking trull, saying why she’s going to dump her fucking boyfriend. Listen to the words, just listen to them. Tell you what love, you’re doing the poor bastard a favour. You sound awful. Not content with speaking down to him in front of their friends she then  taunts the poor sap by saying “I’d much rather be with your friends, mate, ’cause they are much fitter”…actually she doesn’t fucking say that, she says “I’d much ravvur be wiv your friends maaate, cos vey are much fittah!”. For the love of Christ’s saggy bollocks! She’s middle class and has a Recieved English accent by all acounts, now she just sounds like a tosser. Anyway, to save you the pain of hearing her new ’song’, she bangs on about how she’s got some freckles and spots on her skin. That’s about all I could ingest because I got very very bored and had to kill the radio half way through.

I’m acutally going somewhere with this…hang on in there…

Right, bland music; that’s what I’m talking about to today, children. Kate Nash is just another bland, inoffensive (well, not that inoffensive because I want to maim my radio for playing her), not-horribly-ugly girl pretending to be a singer-songwriter. “But, Mr Chipz, what has this got to do with the undervalued and financially unrewarding though sterling work you do what with educating children and that?” I hear you ask. My answer is:

“Everything”.

This insidious blandness has crept like an orphanage rapist into the lives of our young. Young children, often female and about 10 years old think it’s ‘cool’. It’s not cool! It’s boring! I include on this register of beige music Lilly Allen (another mockney spoilt twat), Sandy Thom and a host of other ones whose names escape me, but you know the ones I mean. Talking of Sandy ‘god please kill me’ Thom I had to sit through two tearful 11 year old girlies doing what they honestly thought was an acapella version of “I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair” at the year 6 leavers assembly. It was so utterly awful that I have a serious grievance with this Sandy Thom person. It’s a song about regretting not being involved in a few youth ’scenes’ which isn’t surprising as she wasn’t even fucking born at the time. It’s a bit like me writing a heart felt lament about how unfair it is that I never got to be a Ted. For fuck’s sake! And now, because of this bitch I had to suffer some of the worst singing I’ve ever heard in my life while trying to keep a straight face. What’s next? If I have to sit through anything by Kate Nash next July I will kill with no remorse.

I’ve got myself angry now. It just seems so unfair…if the children make an effort and try and put on a song for the the school I really do applaud them. It’s a brave thing to do and the other children like it. But why do we only get two choices? Either we’ve got to watch a bunch of pre-pubescent girls (if very unlucky, pubescent) gyrating to the Pussycat Dolls in a way where I don’t know where to look, or they take what they think is the ‘alternative’ route and butcher an already shite song by some silly little tart with a guitar.

Personally I blame the teachers. The most popular ‘band’ in the staffroom at the moment (and I’m not lying) is Girls Aloud. I want you to think about that. A group of adults, who educate children and are around the age of 30 actually really really like Girls Aloud. So it comes as no surprise that no-one fucking stops the little girlies at my school putting on these god awful dances.

While I wouldn’t dream of inflicting my music on the kids I do take some pride in the fact I use Motorhead and Aphex Twin in my maths lessons. I mean, at least it’s something different for them. Poor little mites.

Rant over.

Oh, by the way, the highlight of a recent ‘performance’ at my school was a princess from the top of the school (no really, her mum bought her a tracksuit with ‘princess’ stencilled on the back, Jesus preserve me…) who got on stage in her tap shoes and then ‘tap danced’ over a track by some girl-band. I think it actually was the aformentioned Pussycat Dolls. It sounded like a club-foot with Downs had just put on miners’ boots and started stamping up and down the bar in your local having put some shit music on the jukebox. I think I would have rather listened to her inept tap dance teacher having her head nailed to a box of shit.

Oh, one more thing, the spell-check on this bastard thing isn’t working, if you find some real howlers feel free to mock and laugh. Then go and put pressure on the government to pay teachers more…pay penuts, get monkeys like me.

Gay job

Is there such a thing as a ‘gay job’? Men who are hairdressers are often thought of as gay (not barbers mind, hairdressers). So are male dancers, male fashion designers…and it seems, male primary school teachers. Not male secondary school teachers, just us primary ones.

Apparently only about 15% of staff in our primary schools are male (I’m not going to look up the precise figure, but take my word for it), which I can well believe. I have two male colleagues in the school I teach, which is an unusually high proportion, a few years ago I was the only one. Out of the three of us, one is gay, which in itself isn’t an issue but does it support the stereotype of us primary men being a little bit…you know…like that? And why would gay men be more attracted to primary than secondary? I’ve met quite a lot of gay men who teach primary so I have to say it really does seem that gay men are highly represented in my profession. Or is it a case of few straight men choosing to teach in the primary sector because of the gay image? Do most men feel it’s not a very butch thing to do?

Well I suppose sitting on a chair surrounded by small children reading them a story about dancing dinosaurs is hardly the most macho thing I’ve ever done…I used to do something well tough. Neither is choreographing a group of small children to do a snowflake dance, but hey, I don’t think it compromises my standing as a heterosexual beast.

And anyway, why should I even be thinking about whether my job is ‘gay’ or not, my girlfriend (to be called Ruth from now on…until she finds out and tells me to change it) has a hairdresser with a VERY gay name (like Ray or something) and he’s straight as you like.

So that’s me, the only straight in the village.

Now I’m off to watch The Wizard of Oz.

Puppitz.

I think I’ve had an idea, I think I shall buy a puppet. I’m teaching much smaller children next September, really little ‘uns. Just for a laugh really. Every KS1 teacher I know seems to have puppets, in fact I distinctly remember being told on my teacher training course that puppets are VITAL for some reason I can’t quite remember. I think you’re supposed to use them to persuade the more ‘challenging’ children to do your bidding. I think some of the more ‘delayed’ children are used to be asked to do work by nice fluffy hedgehog puppets and the like, called Mr Snuffle (or some such crap), so I think I’ll try and find the string puppet I bought in Prague 12 years ago of Satan. He’s fucking horrible. That’ll do the trick.

That’s nice, I see you’ve dressed your daughter as a slut…

I know, I know…typical teacher, starts a blog and the first thing he does is slag off the parenting skills of others while not having actually sired a whelp of his own. It’s true, we’re fucking awful like that but sometimes, just sometimes we have a point.

I know, with the range of children’s wear available today and children being the consumers they are with individual tastes of how they like to dress just where do you draw the line of ‘appropriate dress’? Well, here’s a benchmark: if you look at the clothes your pre-teen daughter’s wearing and think “if that was on an adult I’d expect men to want to fuck her” then she’s probably dressed inappropriately. Just a thought.

Example:

A six year old girl really should not be wearing boots with two inch heels, a crop top, hipsters and a silver chain hung from her belt loops with the word ‘BABE’ hanging over her fanny. It’s not nice. Well unless you’re on the sex-offender’s register in which case it’s like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one.

I’ve seen that.

 Also, it’s not ‘cute’ when ten year old girls know all the dance moves to all the Pussycat Dolls’ videos and perform them in an assembly. Somehow this doesn’t seem to offend a lot of my female colleagues, maybe they just can’t see it and I don’t think it means I’ve got a dirty mind if I can. It’s the sort of thing that would have Chris Langham weeping tears of remorse as he furiously pumps all spunk into his lap.

Personally I’m more angry at the clothing companies who make whore-clothes for children than at the parents who dress them like that. The parents are usually just victims of consumerism and don’t have the required amount of chromosomes to see that it’s just plain wrong. But a clothing company is run by a board of (presumably) intelligent people, well they must be fairly intelligent to market their wares and make a profit. How does the discussion in the boardroom go?

“Right, item one, our new ‘Pretty Princess’ range of clothing for 6-10 year olds, how’s it coming on?”

“Not bad, we’re just tweaking the final designs a little…we’re just not sure if they’re whorish enough yet.”

“Really? How so?”

“Well, we think there’s a market for thigh-high latex boots and we’re not sure about the slogans that are to be written across the arse of our baby-pink velour tracksuit bottoms.”

“Why, what’s wrong with the slogans?”

“Well, we’re quite happy with ‘Cute’ and ‘Princess’, but they’re just not making adult males uncomfortable enough, we’re thinking of maybe extending the range to include ‘Nasty Slut’ and ‘You Want Me’. What do you think?”

“Hmm, not bad, I think you’ve got something there, I imagine the mums on the estate would go for that for their little girls.”

“Anyway, we’ve finished the spring collection, would you like to see it modelled by Jazmine and Chardonnay? They’re so cute, modelling the 6-7 range, you’ll love it sir.”

“Very well, bring them in.”

“So, what do you think? Adorable aren’t they, the glittery hotpants and halter-neck boob-tube modelled by Chardonnay will be a hit and the pleated mini combined with crop-hoody emblazoned with ‘Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me’ modelled by Jazmine is a sure fire winner.”

“Christ yes. Girls, you look lovely don’t you, every sex-case from Lands End to John-O-Groats will want to hurt you. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

  

Fucking arseholes.

He’s not just chubby, he’s a fat bastard…

Do you remember the fat kid in your class who other children taunted (no doubt you didn’t actually tease them, you’re too nice, but you fucking hated him for being a fat-arse who was given a whole king sized mars bar and can of coke every break time by his fat-arsed mum) when you were at school? His nick-name was probably ‘Roland’, after the fat piggy four-eyes off of Grange Hill. Well let me tell you something, he wasn’t really that fat. I’m serious. He was just chubby. “No no”, I hear you think, “he really was a fat bastard, he had an asthma pump and everything!”

He was an amature, let me assure you of that. If you schooled in the 70s and 80s, and perhaps early 90s you really should feel bad for teasing the fat kid who as it turns out, wasn’t actually that fat after all. The generation of kids going through Primary school right now are pushing out new frontiers, usually with their guts. The fat kid from your class is just normal now.

True: last term I was teaching a class of 8 and 9 year olds about the human body. We’d measured legs, arms, heads and were generally finding out all the amazing things there are to know about skeletons and muscles. (”Yes T’shaun, your neck really is fucking easy to break, now sit down…”)

My heart sank as one of the kids found the school scales and the cry went up from the class to be weighed. Honestly, so easy to please. However, these days it’s a bit of a delecate issue, I mean let’s face it, some of the children are a little on the offensively obese side. They might even get hurt when other children laugh and point at them and call for harpoons. Anyway, they all lined up to get on the scales. I was curious though: what would happen when Dylan got on? The kid’s eight years old and comes from a family of manatees. I started to play ‘guess the weight’ in my head as he lumbered purposefully towards the scales, which were visibly shitting themselves. Go on then, guess the weight. Just how much can an eight year old weigh? As a reference point he comes up to the bottom of my ribcage, that’s about 1.2 meters.

Ten stone. Ten fucking stone of child. I’m six foot tall and I weigh twelve and a half.

As he lumbered off the scales a small, whippet like child who likes to play outside pointed out that he was “quite heavy” (in some ways these children are nicer than we were), to which Dylan said, without a hint of shame and with total belief, “most of it’s muscle”. Most of it’s muscle. The boy has bigger tits than my girlfriend and she’s 40. He honestly beleives that because thats what his mother and father, who look like spacehoppers, tell him. What in God’s name is going on?! Fail to feed your child three times a day and beleive me, I really will report you to the Social Services if I even suspect it’s a regular occurance. Feed it until it’s destined to die in its mid 30s and nobody can do a thing. Neglect, it comes in many many forms.

I’ve also noticed that these massive parents are the most vocal in critising fellow mums in the playground. God help you if your child is a bit unwashed, thin, smells of fags or you’re battling a drink problem. The fat cunts will stand and pick your parenting skills apart while simultaniously feeding another pork pie into their offsprings slavering craw. Arrest them now and send the kids to a Cambodian boot-camp for a month, it might just save their fucking lives.

It begins.

Let’s get this started. Some things you will need to know:

• I am a primary school teacher in my 30s.
• Despite what I might say from time to time, I do love children.
• Not like that.
• In a clean way.
• I’ve got six weeks off.
• Yes, that IS the best thing about being a teacher.
• All names on this site have been made up.

I’ve got a long ‘summer’ holiday stretching before me so I thought I might write a blog, I’ve never done so before so if it’s a bit ropey at first I do apologise. Anyway, as I tell the kidz we all make mistakes and learning something new takes time. Unless I’m in a bad mood then I just chase them round the room with a staple gun and meter ruler. Life’s tough, they have to learn. The regularity of my posts may be erratic, maybe more than one a day, especially if I spiral into a twilight world of boredom and alcohol, which is likely. None a day if I’ve overdone it and feel like a tramp after a night on the Special.  I teach Primary for the following reasons:

• Small children are very funny. At least on a par with dancing bears.
• I don’t really like teenagers in groups of more than one.
• I don’t want to teach only one subject.
• Let’s face it, the maths is easier to get my head around, I fucking hate maths.
• Secondary schools seem to be full of strange men with beards and bad ties. I fear them.
• Fights are a lot easier to break up.

I might not always write about teaching. Let’s face it, it’s not that exciting. However it is interesting coming to teaching from a mundane office job, everyone seems to have an opinion on what teachers should be teaching, how they should behave in their private lives and what they should or shouldn’t be paid. It’s like being a politician but without the backhanders and our sexual perversions are a bit lame by comparison. Having said that some of the old boys who taught me in the private sector were probably no strangers to buggery and skat-play.

Another thing about being a teacher is that Joe-public love pointing out any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes we make. Don’t bother. I’m a primary school teacher, not the head of English at Arsehole Comp. The worst for this are the kind of parents who can spot the slightest error in a note home but felt it necessary to put an apostrophe in their child’s name when they scrawled it in crayon on the birth register.

Anyway, that’s my introduction over, I will write more. Soon.