In defence of… Music

This essay, defending the importance and primacy of music, had been ready to go until the referendum.

Once the results were announced on June 24^th, this piece completely lost its momentum, point and place.

On beautiful books, heroic literary teachers, and how to fall in love (through a very simple, but lovely little, flick of narrative structure)

Finding a beautiful book is a rare and wonderful discovery, and last summer, I was lucky enough to unearth one. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald is a sumptuous read, luxuriously descriptive and beautifully crafted, extraordinarily balanced at the intersection of multiple genres. Her story is catalysed by the unexpected death of her father. In her grief, she escapes into her life-long passion of falconry, and loses herself in training Mabel, her new goshawk; she sets this experience alongside that of the 20^th century novelist and fellow-austringer, TH White. In diarising her capricious relationship with her goshawk and weaving in the desperate biography of White, she is able to navigate her way back to the memories of her father, and renew herself through the completion of his memoir. I had never read anything like it before in my life, and it was marvellous.

Two Pieces of Wood

The last time I went to my father’s flat, I discovered two pieces of high-quality, beautifully-crafted wood. One is my grandfather’s walking stick: it is a squared, hard-edged cane, inlaid with a cloud-dimmed ivory. The second is a small cricket bat: the tape on the lower half of the bat, towards the toe, is stained the same deep brown as the wood itself; it is inscribed with my father’s name and date – “TB 1953”. He would have been 13 years old.

The cane slumps in “cane corner”, an unused relic amongst equally-unused modern walking sticks and frames; this unwanted heirloom joins my father’s depository of disdain. The cricket bat cranes from behind the flat-screen TV, a symbol of how my father’s love of sport has lapsed into a passive gaze. Both the cane and the bat are beautiful, clearly crafted with love, products of time and skill and art; both are redundant, embarrassed and out of place in a glossy flat awash with the sleek camouflage of black-veneered MDF.

Yearbook Entry

Hi Sir, hope everything’s well,

Basically, I’m the one that’s been given the incredibly fun job of organising the yearbook pretty much single handedly but the basic point is that there was a big demand to include yourself as one of the teachers that writes a little something in it. So, your challenge if you choose to accept, is a sort of summary of your memories of our year group, any general thing that you’d like to include I’m sue you’d have an idea. There’s no word limit so as much or as little as you like and if I could have that but Friday, if you’re willing to do it, would be really good.

Thanks,

Will

Will

I have been up, due to my crying baby, since half three. At half 4 this morning, unable to sleep and suddenly realising that I totally missed your Friday deadline, I got up and set myself a 30 minute target of writing down an entry.

It has now been three hours and I have only just stopped writing.

This is absurdly long. It also not quite what you asked for. I tried to write down memories of school and of students and of stuff like that, but it didn’t work. I tried lots of different approaches and ideas but this was the only one that allowed me to write honestly and without sounding contrived. You will doubtless have to edit it to fit, but I’ll leave that up to you.

Sorry to have blathered on so long.

Bouch

 

On seeing “Richard II Landing at Milford Haven”

“Richard  Landing at Milford Haven (After Shakespeare)” is a painting by Richard Hamilton, displayed at the John Soanes Museum in London. In 1399, Richard II landed at Milford Haven from Ireland, shortly before his surrender to Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV.

 

Your faith’s misplaced. I here disown

those expectations you have grown

that tried to make me more than man.

I cannot be but what I am.

I bear your crown. I am alone.

 

Family Life: Snapshot

The final section of the “Family Life” articles in The Guardian is “Snapshot”, in which people write in and share with the readers the story behind a photo that means something to them. There was only ever one contender for consideration for the photo that means the most to me.

Family Life: Playlist

My history is littered with music.

You can map your development by the songs that surround you, the songs that come to define certain points of your life. Trying to work how you yourself emerge from the mess of stories and songs that shape your growing up is an enjoyably embarrassing pastime. Mine is amusingly eclectic. I recall the Blakean moment when my innocence was destroyed: my beloved Leo Sayer – all 1970’s pop-lite, geeky chic, nerdy happiness; all high register, shuffly disco dancing and bouffant masquerading as afro – was sacrificed at the altar of conformity. Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain were all that was socially acceptable for an 11 year old boy to listen to in the early 1990s.

Family Life: We Love To Eat

Pre-fatherhood, I used to enjoy lying in on weekends. These days, I harbour a bitter sense of jealousy at those blithe and bonny members of my form who gleefully announce that sleeping in until 2 in the afternoon represents the most notable achievement of their holidays. My lie-ins were never as obscenely indulgent as that, but I do miss the occasional one. I particularly miss staggering to the newsagents late on a Saturday morning, picking up the papers, The Times or The Guardian, and then returning to bed and lying in a mess of duvet and coffee and newsprint until the afternoon, intermittently reading and napping my way through the news, the sports, the magazines.

The best thing about The Guardian on a Saturday is its Family section; and in it, a series called “Family Life”, a most wonderful column that has since become part of my teaching: my GCSE sets will recognise my explanation of it from their Writing to Describe coursework options. In “Family Life”, people write in to The Guardian to describe experiences from their past. They do so in three different formats: through photograph, music or food.

Potential 3 (and Valentine’s Day)

To contextualise this essay, you need to listen to the following (20 minute) radio documentary.

In So Many Words, by Teresa Goff

This documentary is about Teresa’s father, Steve. Steve lives with aphasia after suffering a stroke, and aphasia – as you will have deduced – is a neurological disorder that hinders the brain’s capacity to use and form language.

This essay starts with this documentary to help you consider what it means to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

It may not surprise you to hear that I don’t particularly like Valentine’s Day.

Potential 2

Shakespeare’s King Lear is, in many ways, neither a good man, nor a good father, nor a good king.

His first act is an outrageous rejection of responsibility that obliterates his kingdom. Lear opens the play by resigning his Kingship. He aims to give political power to his daughters so that he can see out his days palace-hopping from one child to another, enjoying the advantages of wealth and power with none of the responsibility. It is the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth abdicating, splitting up the union between Charles, Wills and Harry so that she can swan off into an early retirement to drink champagne cocktails in London nightclubs.