Category: People

The Joy of Sex Education

There were only two times I remember there being sex education at our school. The first time was in biology class. My biology teacher looked like a cross between Magnus Pyke and Dr Snuggles. He was a decent man and a competent teacher. Normally we talked about animals or plants or we dissected frogs but this day was different.

For reasons I don’t quite understand, to this day, our biology teacher decided to forgo our usual lesson on things like photosynthesis and osmosis and decided to talk about how humans procreate, from start to finish with all the icky bits. Perhaps someone in charge of the cirriculum had decided we knew nothing about sex and needed teaching. We were eleven, so most of us knew something about sex in varying degrees. Maybe he decided to talk about this off his own bat. Was it improvised? Had he been up all night rehearsing? Was this the one lesson in the year he had been dreading for months, or looking forward to?

No. He hadn’t been looking forward to it at all. That fact showed in his whole demeanour. I’ve never seen a man get through a talk with such obvious awkwardness. During some moments, he looked like he was in physical pain.

The lesson stands out for two reasons, the strained seriousness and extreme effort of Pyke Snuggles to convey the basic biological processes of procreation and the doubled over please stop making us laugh, it really hurts now, no seriously, please stop sir, but he wouldn’t. We were not emotionally mature enough for this talk, not in a class setting. I like to think I was. For the first fifteen minutes, I sat there very composed and attentive and straight faced. After a while though, I was as bad ad the rest of them, who were practically rolling around on the floor clutching the stomachs.

It began with embarrassed sniggers but just got worse. Laughter and perhaps embarrassment is contagious. If he only knew, we were in pain too, trying to stifle our laughter but as with all these things, the more you try to stop doing something, the more you sometimes can’t stop doing it. Eventually, we gave in and let it all out. We drowned out his voice with our laughter. Perhaps that was deliberate.

I felt a combination of sympathy and distress for Pyke Snuggles. On one hand, I was sensitive to his extreme discomfort and frequent red face. On the other, I wanted him to continue, as this was the most fun I’d had in years. Even Fawlty Towers didn’t make me laugh this much. It was very conflicting. It was also painful to laugh so much.

At one point, he got cross with us and started shouting. This just made us laugh even more. It was at that point in mirth evolvement when everything he said and everything he did made us explode. We were far too over stimulated to back down now. It was like he was suddenly the best stand up comedian in the world and we’d paid good money to be entertained.

He gave up and we ended class early. As Pyke Snuggles exhausted stooped frame exited the classroom, I couldn’t help thinking he was going for a much earned lie down with a couple of Valium.

The Joy of Mr. Hanson

When I started senior school at the age of eleven, I was so excited. I loved first year. Of course now it’s all different, the school years are counted differently but in my day, the first year of ‘big school’, a rough comprehensive, in an economically depressed area of Merseyside, was senior school and we were called first years. One of the teachers I had in my form and year was a religious education teacher. He was handsome in a classical way. He had black hair and wild brown eyes with unfathomable depths in a pale waxy face. He wore white, beige, silver or brown suits, tight as anything, narrow tie, sharp crease lines down the trousers. It was 1981 after all. He was bang in fashion. He was like a showroom dummy who had come to life all of a sudden, but in a really good way.

Mr. Hanson’s lessons went by in a second. They were as light as a feather. They energised me and made me happy. He was the sun, the moon and the stars in the lessons but they weren’t lessons, they were intangible things, feelings and experiences. it wasn’t school and I wasn’t in a lesson. I was a child of the sky. He didn’t give me mind altering drugs but what he did do was allow me to be part of an experience that I will never forget.

He may have begun this particular lesson very normally, probably talking about the bible, scripture. Students always misbehaved in Religious Education. They didn’t take it seriously at all, not even half as much as any other lesson and they didn’t take those seriously either.

To them, R.E was a permit to mess around in class and especially in the comprehensive school I went to. Mr. Hanson was a lovely man but his patience had limits. He was already on the outskirts of sanity, so cracking up was an easy thing to do and that day he would crack up but in such a sweet and spectacular and entertaining way.

I think Mr. Hanson was so exasperated with the behaviour of the children in his class that he hatched a plan. Although, to be fair to him, he didn’t seem the type of person to hatch anything. The strange light behind his twinkling brown eyes always seemed to be in improvisation mode. In this lesson, I think his creative energies were on fire, or else I think he just didn’t give a toss. It was like he’d joined this thing, this teacher thing, in a working class comprehensive, teaching rebellious, out of control feral teenagers and thought, ‘Oh no, what have I got myself into? Okay, well, I’ll have move the goal posts. I’ll have to move them to survive.’

Mr. Hanson had weighed up his options, had drawn up a plan of battle tactics and came up with several modes of attack, whether he was aware of it or not:

  1. The element of surprise
  2. Distraction
  3. Unpredictability
  4. Confusion of the enemy through unprecendented behaviour, unbecoming for a teacher

He was talking about evolution versus creationism and the class were being particularly disruptive. Class harmony was compounded by the fact that his class didn’t have tables that four or five people could gather around. Instead, he had two person desks, widely spaced, all in single file in three rows. I quite liked the set up but groups of children couldn’t hang out together and fan the flames of rebellious adolescence, like naughty knights around a round table. It would impede them on many levels. It caused consternation, indignation and frustration, all the ‘tions’ that would lead to trouble for poor Mr. Hanson.

The cacophony of sound rising in the classroom drowned out the sound of the chalk squeaking along the board. Everytime his back was turned, they would all whoop and holler and throw screwed up pieces of paper at him. He would turn to us, everything would be quiet but the minute he turned to write, chaos would erupt again. Eventually, he stopped writing and turned to talk to us. This wasn’t going to work either. No-one was listening to him. There wasn’t one attentive face. Most kids were talking amongst themselves very loudly. The rest were in varying degrees of commotion and locomotion, the dreaded ‘tions’ again.

At that moment, that almost surreal moment of disorder and anarchy, Mr. hanson did somthing memorable.

He became Charles Darwin’s evolutionary ape.

He calmly threw away the chalk and his tranformation began. He hunkered down. He swung his arms down and out so that they hung lower than his knees. He started to move from side to side. He started making grunting noises, mimicking chimpanzee sounds. The class stopped talking and stared transfixed. His ape impersonation got more ape. He got louder and started screeching and whooping. We looked at him like he was crazy.

He wasn’t done yet, not by a long chalk, unlike the one he’d just thrown away. He jumped up on one of the front desks, in one deft mocement, still deep in character as King Kong. There was a collective intake of breath. Right now, he definately had the element of surprise on his side. He made his way down the desks, expertly jumping from one to the other like a practiced orangutang.

He went all the way down the desks, hooting and howling, pouncing atheletically from each one, right down to the back of the class. The girls at the back began to scream as he jumped on their desks. It didn’t help that he got off the desks for a while and ran around the entire room as an ape. As his drama tutor may have said, he really used the space. He then returned to the desks, gambolling up another row, picking up pencils with puzzlement and chewing on their tips. He nibbled an eraser, looked bewilderedly at a ruler and then hit himself with it. He took off his shoe, smelled the inside of it curiously and then tried to wear it as a hat.

As an ape, Mr. Hanson frightened the girls and rendered the boys speechless. When he jumped on my desk, I moved out of the way just in time. I suppose you could say it was scary but fun. I can’t remember how it all ended. I don’t suppose it really matters when you start so strong.

This is a slim, delicate looking guy in a sharp silver suit, with a face like a porcelain doll, doing a quality method acting performance of a primate. Uncanny valley doesn’t even begin to describe. It was the most exhilarating moment of my life. I’m sure for Mr. Hanson though, there must have been easier ways of making a living.

In the Garden of Grief

In my dream,

just after you passed on to another realm,

God summoned you to my side

You did not allow me to say goodbye

Or give me a chance to say ‘I love you’

You ended it

As you had started it

And how it had always been

I will never see you again

or hear your voice

But in the Garden of Grief

I got you all to myself

and even though God could not make you

tell me you loved me

He made sure I got to say goodbye

and we talked about the past

and times that made us laugh

and we walked together one last time.

The Joy of the Tomboy

I would follow my brother and his friends around, like a
puppy. I didn’t know how to make friends. I was like a magpie in
that way, trying to acquire something I hadn’t earned. If friends
are real and have integrity and honesty, they are a lot more
precious than what the magpie sees shining out the corner of his
eye, and thinks, can I have a share in that?
I had followed my brother when he had gone to meet one
of his friends. I must have been about seven or eight. My brother
was a year older than me.
We sat cross-legged in a circle, triangle really, on a
grass verge. The friend said, as if I wasn’t there, ‘Why is she here?
Why can’t she stop following us? Why can’t she get her own
friends?’ That kind of thing.
I was a very quiet, shy sort of follower and I just clung to
them like a limpet, yet my brothers friend must have thought, and
rightly so, that I was cramping their style. I shouldn’t be there!

It didn’t start off that way, but it got tiring for them after a while,
quite understandably, ending up in a general
dissatisfaction with the status quo. I theorise, even at that early
age, my brother allowed it, dare I say, encouraged my trailing
along because he enjoyed the idolisation. Some older brothers
may gladly forgo all the intimacies of boyhood friendship, if the
baby sister becomes a public and ardent admirer.
I completely bought into that tomboy thing, whether it was
through sheer desperation to be accepted and belong to a group or
maybe I genuinely enjoyed playing football. Perhaps I’ll never
know but I loved getting covered in mud and grass and didn’t
mind cuts and bruises.
I do remember being a dirty tackler. My methods were
questionable. I must have been aware that I was female on some
level and could get away with some things, tackling wise, that the
others couldn’t, thus making any game I was in, unfair, but it was
generally just kicking around. During one kick around, I
remember I was at some friends/neighbours house and they had a
sprawling overgrown garden, with what seemed like dense
vegetation and a wild wood at the end, probably grossly over
exaggerated by an overactive and childish imagination.
At one point during the game, the ball went into the
overgrowth. I went in immediately to retrieve it and was pulled
back by one of the boys in the game. He looked at me in horror.
‘You can’t go in there.’ he said. ‘You’re a girl.’
This was a defining moment for me. I felt a myriad of
emotions all at once. I was afraid. I couldn’t work it out. Next
moment, I was arrogantly amused. I knew something he didn’t.
He was misinformed. Next moment, I was indignant, singed by
his prepubescent sexism, shocked and confused by his youthful
chauvinism.
Next moment, I felt disappointment, then bitter dismay
and lastly an inexplicable sadness. My life flashed before my eyes
in that instant. Limitation and femaleness seemed to suddenly be
inexorably linked. I knew I could have got that ball without any
harm or injury and I can’t remember whether I rebelled and went
in, or hung back, temporarily weakened by the fact that I was
someone who couldn’t go into a few bits of weeds and bushes to
retrieve a football.
Many years later, the event crossed my mind, but now all I
saw was concern in sincere and honest eyes.
He was looking out for me…maybe, maybe not. After all, he didn’t know me enough to genuinely care about me. It was probably all about social mores, either a natural protective instinct on his part or something he’d digested culturally in his young and tender years. He was genuinely alarmed at the idea that I should go and get that ball from the dense and thorny
undergrowth. I hadn’t met him before that day and I haven’t met
him since. He was just a kid and so was I.

First Month Fears

You are the first month of the year

You represent hope

Is that too romantic?

Is it a trope?

Are you forgiven because you are near?

Are you hated because you are here?

January, you offer so much

In the stakes

Eleven more months

To make mistakes

We buy into the twelve month thing

We buy into time if we dare

Seasons are truthful

Can’t lie there

But

It’s all one big year really

Look at the big picture

Four seasons

That’s all we really need to know

‘What’s Another Year‘

As Johnny Logan used to say

Don’t take it too seriously

Take this year day by day.

The Whistler and The Inventor

The inventor had been commissioned to design and build a bridge, with some payment up front and the rest when he presented final blueprints. “Another commission to make another boring thing.” he said grumpily. As he worked away, a little girl entered his workshop. “Oh! It’s a toyshop!” she exclaimed excitedly.

He looked at her from over his glasses. “This most certainly is not a toyshop! What do you want?”

“I’m lost.”

“Where are your family?”

“If I knew that,” she said closing the door behind her and coming further into the room, “I wouldn’t be lost.”

He was about to tell her to leave him alone, when he realized it was actually quite refreshing that she wasn’t bowing and scraping, like most people, and most people knocked before they entered his workshop.

“I know where they went,” she said, “and if my assumptions are correct, they’ll be passing here to look for me.”

“Where did they go?” he asked, putting the blueprint on his desk. He knew he wasn’t going to get any work done for the moment.

“They went to market.”

“Can’t you go find them?” he snapped. He hated distractions and he didn’t like anyone coming into his workshop, unless they were learned men like himself and this was a very forward little girl.

“What I could do, is wait here until they pass by. Why expend energy chasing after them when I could sit here in this interesting room with you? Besides, my mother and father are the ones who should be frantically looking for me, not the other way round.”

The inventor peered at her again, then took off his glasses and rubbed at the space between his eyes. He decided he could add precocious to forward.

“You may stay, but please be quiet. I have work to do.”

“I’ll have to have the door open so that I can see my parents pass by.” The little girl opened the door and all the sounds of the street rushed in. He would never get any work done now. He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“What are you working on?” she asked looking at the blueprint.

“A mobile bridge.”

“Whoever heard of a mobile bridge?”

“Exactly, which is why I’m inventing one.”

“That sounds fun. Can I look at the map?”

“It’s not a map. It’s a blueprint.”

“Blueprint, map, it’s all the same to me. What’s your name?”

“Leonardo.” He puffed out his chest. “Leonardo Da Vinci. You may have heard of me.”

“Oh, yes, I recognise you now. You’re the man who owns the donkey stall!”

“No, I do not! I’m known for my inventions and my painting.”

“Do you paint people’s houses?”

“No, I do not!”

“Leo Nerdo…that’s quite a long name to remember. May I call you Leo?” He nodded, exasperation rendering him mute. “I’m Caterina.” she said, looking around the workshop. She picked up something on his desk. “What’s this?”

“That’s a water powered gyroscopic compass. Please put it down, it’s a prototype.”

“And what’s this?” she cried excitedly, spinning a wooden contraption that hung from the ceiling. “That’s an aerial screw!” He got to his feet quickly and grabbed it to stop it rotating.

“And what’s this?” She picked up a drawing from the table. “A man with no clothes on and he’s got four arms and four legs?”

“That’s Vitruvian Man.” said the inventor. “Don’t smudge it!”

Caterina pointed to a painting on an easel. “And who is this lady?”

“That’s Mona Lisa.” He puffed himself out again. “Do you see her enigmatic smile?”

“Does she have wind? This place is messy Leo. Let me help you clean up.” Immediately, she began to recover a pile of scrolls from the floor.

“No, don’t do that!” he said in a panic. “I’ll never be able to find anything!”

She ignored him and put the scrolls behind the door. She found a brush and began to sweep the floor. As she swept, she whistled a tune. The inventor relaxed a little and found that he was able to work away as she whistled. He dipped his quill in the ink on his desk and began to write and draw. Eventually, Caterina stopped whistling and put the broom away.

“Why have you stopped whistling?” he asked.

“I thought I might be annoying you.”

“Not at all. Please continue. I can’t whistle and you do it very well. That’s a beautiful tune.”

“What? You can’t whistle?” she said. “I thought everyone could whistle.”

Leo returned his quill to the ink stand and looked at her. “But I can’t.”

She laughed. “It’s easy. I can teach you if you like.”

“Please do.”

She went to him. “Well, purse up your lips like this, no, like this, that’s better and push air out of them like this, no, you’re doing it wrong.”

For half an hour, the little girl tried to teach the inventor to whistle but it was no good. Presently, the little girls parents passed by the door. “My mother and father are here!” she cried out happily. “Goodbye Leo.” It was suddenly quiet and empty in the workshop. He tried to work but he was so distracted by the fact that he couldn’t whistle, that he stopped working on the blueprints for the bridge. He decided that if he couldn’t whistle, he would invent some kind of whistling aid, something that would enable him to whistle as tunefully as Caterina. Immediately, he began working on it.

Six weeks later, a man came with a final contract for Leonardo to sign, upon completion of the final plans for the bridge, but he’d been working on plans for something that would help him whistle. He’d modelled a head with eyes, nose and mouth that looked amazingly like him. When you pulled a lever at the side of the head, the lips pursed and a tuneful whistle came out. He sat looking at it now, while the man with the contract waited for him to sign. Leonardo picked up his quill, dipped it into the ink and paused. “I can’t sign this.” he said. “I haven’t finished the plans for the bridge.”

“Why not? You were meant to have them by the end of this week.”

“I’ve been working on something else instead.” he said. “It’s taken up all my time.”

The man looked at the whistling head. “Not that thing I hope.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Leonardo asked defensively.

“Look, I need you to sign this contract, the builders are waiting for instructions to build the bridge.”

“I don’t have it. It’s not ready.”

“Well, when will it be?”

“Another two months perhaps.”

“I can wait another week, not one day more.” The man left, taking the unsigned contract with him.

Leonardo sat there for a few minutes dumbfounded. He should have been working on the plans for the bridge – not the whistle. He didn’t care about the bridge, he just wanted to be able to whistle. A little girl could whistle and he couldn’t. It got to him, why, he didn’t know.

Just to make things worse, his whistle invention had come to nothing.

Just then, as if to taunt him further, he heard a beautiful whistling pass by his workshop. He ran to the door and flung it open, and there she was, skipping by, whistling, the same little girl from over a month ago. “Hello,” she said brightly. “How are you?” Caterina was with her mother this time and when the woman saw who it was, she bowed, stuttered and blushed to meet such a celebrated figure. “Oh, Signor De Vinci…I do apologise for my daughter’s familiarity.”

“Not at all.” said Leo. He looked down at the girl. “Do you have a moment Caterina? I was wondering if you could help me with something.” She nodded, let go of her mothers hand and stepped inside. The mother froze, too surprised to follow. Leonardo showed her the mannequin head, demonstrated it proudly and told her how he’d spent all his time doing that, when he should have been working on the bridge. Caterina smiled. “This is clever but you don’t need to whistle.”

“But I am Leonardo De Vinci and I should be able to whistle or invent a contraption to make me whistle. Plus you said it was easy.”

“Not for everyone. Some people just can’t. Accept it and be happy with the things you can do.”

Leonardo sighed. “You’re right. I was being conceited and vain…and not very modest. The only trouble is, I don’t have time to work on the plans for the bridge now. I’ll have to do about six weeks work in one week. I will lose my commission.”

“If I helped you, perhaps we could get it done in time.”

“You? But you’re just a little girl!”

Caterina raised an eyebrow. “Not so little.”

Leonardo shook his head. “I’m sorry, that was a conceited thing to say.”

“I’m very good at drawing.” she said. “And I’m good with numbers, perhaps I could help you with your blueprints?”

“And you can also whistle.” he said. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“I could say the same thing to you.” she said.

Caterina helped Leonardo with his plans for the bridge, much to the delight of her mother, who brought him cakes and presents and many blushes. Caterina and Leo managed to cram six weeks into one. When the man came with the contract, Leo was able to sign it. He realized he didn’t need to whistle after all. He was Leonardo De Vinci, a genius, and he was going to start work on plans for another flying machine tomorrow. He said goodbye to Caterina, and as she walked away, he could hear her whistling a happy tune. He pursed his lips, blew and a whistle came out. She heard him and ran back into the workshop. “See! You can do it Leo? All you needed was to loosen up a bit and be little less serious.” She pointed to the painting of Mona Lisa, on the easel. “Be a bit more like her, but less windy.”