On Being Misunderstood

When I was younger - so much younger than today - I hated being misunderstood. Teaching has cured me of that. One of my life's happy discoveries has been how deeply rooted into the fabric of things is the likelihood of people not simply not quite understanding my words or actions but taking them to mean the complete opposite of what I intended.

My favourite example comes from around ten years ago when I told a class, several classes in fact, that the only really good question is one that can't be answered. I'm not quite sure what I meant, but it sounded good. Quite by accident I discovered that one very bright student incorporated this apercu into a speech, telling the world that Mr Connor had told everyone that the only really good question is one that has an answer. I wasn't really all that miffed as I quite liked the sound of that - and began to offer it occasionally in lessons, immediately following a lesson in which my original comment had been let loose for contemplation.

Marking essays, of course, provides a wonderful window onto the capacity of the mind to distort any in-coming data in weird and woeful ways. Except once you come to accept this the woe sort of evaporates to be replaced by a wary respect for the wrongheadedness central to our species. If nothing else it's highly entertaining once you get beyond the anguish of failing to connect. And there's something endearing about people only hearing what they want to hear.

Old Faces

Whenever channel-hopping I pop in on the Granada channel available on cable, not so much because it broadcasts engaging programmes - though there are a few goodies now and again - but because the frequent filler items can cast up some real gems. Last night, for example, I suddenly found myself watching Roy Harper playing and singing Highway Blues with more than a little passion to an audience who looked well passed their sell-by date. Rather like myself, of course. Mr Harper looked like the kind of grandfather you don't want your grandchildren to get too close to. Long, though carefully groomed, white hair and beard: a ringer for Bad Santa. The voice a shade lower in register, but essentially still there. Great acoustic guitar. A bit of unexpected banshee wailing. Wonderful.

The corner of the screen informed us the clip was from Musical Legends - and, for once, that's no lie. In fact I caught a full version of the programme, again without meaning to, back in November (I think) featuring the latest three-man version of Van Der Graff Generator. Peter Hammill looked even more disreputable than the mighty Roy, if that's possible, and also was in excellent incisive voice - teaching all those goths a thing or two. And I've also seen a bit of Caravan on a clip from the same source. (In truth, the one time I saw them live in Manchester I was bored to tears - but I was only fifteen then, a bit too young for the Canterbury sound methinks.)

I'm not really sure that what I'm talking about here is actually nostalgia, you know. As far as I can tell the music is more alive and invigorating than a fair amount of what younger and more 'current' musos are doing. Life in the old dog yet, indeed.

Hot Stuff

We had Fuad and family round this afternoon as Fuad needed to heat his cycling shoes in our oven.

That's the kind of sentence I never thought I'd get to type. The wonders of modern technology, eh?

Staying Alive, Still

Didn't get all that many opportunities to view my Life DVDs in Kuala Lumpur back in December as the girls pretty much took possession of the telly. However, I have managed to reach the eighth episode, Creatures of the Deep, which I have watched twice in the course of the weekend so far, and which may well get another airing tomorrow. (Noi hasn't seen any of it so that in itself is an excuse for a re-run.)

I'm inclined to say it's the most visually ravishing nature documentary I've ever seen, but since I tend to think that way about almost every Attenborough programme I see it's a bit of an exaggeration. But not much of one.

Human Kindness

In the past week I've come home everyday carrying some sort of present or other - a bar of chocolate, a box of teabags, a carton of dates, that sort of thing - from colleagues and students, the occasion being simply that it's the start of our year.

Yesterday I was carrying a little load of booklets across a couple of corridors, which were weighing me down a little, and was offered help by no fewer than five kids, in the space of three minutes, one of whom I'd never seen before.

Today I found myself avoiding crowds to escape the embarrassment of being thanked rather too fulsomely just for doing what I'm paid to do.

It's sometimes difficult to be cynical as one might like to be.

Changing Places

Ever since we've been able to get Sky News on Cable - about a year now - I've felt a lot more connected with what's going on in the UK. I generally watch it for ten or fifteen minutes of a morning on weekdays, whilst imbibing a cuppa, and quite often give it a glance in an evening.

So that's why I'm more aware than I normally would have been of a confluence of stories in the news there circling, one way or another, around issues connected with race: the Suarez mess, ditto for Terry, the Stephen Lawrence case, M.P. Diane Abbott getting into trouble with her comments on Twitter, and the like. The connecting feature of all these (without passing particular judgements on the various actors therein) is the extremely wonderful fact that it's now absolutely, entirely, unequivocally impossible to get away with any kind of public racism without a deluge of opprobrium descending upon your head. And this from even the most reactionary elements of the media.

Sadly this was not the case even twenty-five years ago. I know, because I was there. I remember vowing not to attend football matches in certain parts of the country because of the appalling open racism of crowds towards black players particularly. (Unless you've seen middle-aged fathers, their young sons at their sides, making monkey noises and doing 'funny' things with bananas because a black player has touched the ball, you won't really know what I mean.) Now, as far as I can tell, that's gone. Impossible to imagine - as it rightly should be.

Proof that with determination the moral climate of a society can change for the better. If there is such a thing as progress in human affairs - and I'm something of a nay-sayer on this one - this is it.

A Real Weepie

Was inveigled, by the Missus and four nieces, into watching the Malay blockbuster Ombak Rindu (means something like waves of longing, I think) at the cinema when we were in Kuala Lumpur last month. Spent the last forty minutes shedding tears - of frustration, provoked by the horrible feeling that the darn thing was never going to end. Hah!

And why am I thinking of this now? Dealing with the kind of ludicrous 'documentation' that has, somehow, become central to my work I realise there are far worse frustrations that should elicit even more bitter tears. Fortunately I'm manfully holding mine back.

Transcendence

Came home to listen to Brahms's 2nd Symphony. This proved a remarkably sensible thing to do. A reminder of a world elsewhere. Something outside myself. Bigger and better.

And I didn't even listen particularly well. Imagine if I were able to. Complete escape. Blimey.

Blow By Blow

Spent a fair amount of yesterday evening having various muscles subjected to a pummelling by Noi's massage lady & general guru Kak Sabariah. Spent a fair amount of today enjoying the ache in the pummelled muscles and feeling that, somehow or other, the mauling had done me good. Not too sure of the psychology involved, but the whole experience has been oddly, deeply relaxing.

Finally Resolved

It's with a decent measure of chagrin and a shot of despair that I find I was resolved, back in January 2008, to improve my Malay to the point where I am reasonably functional and not just an embarrassing Englishman. I failed. My proficiency in my wife's mother tongue has, in all essentials, stood still since that time.

Aware as I was of the commitment, and its failure, I didn't seek for remedy in 2009, 2010 or 2011, though not completely neglecting some study of the language, as I reached the conclusion that there was an element of futility behind the resolution. Put simply: I was too busy at work to allow the time necessary for improvement in the language. And writing this I recognise a truth in the excuse. But it is an excuse, rather like the one I hear from colleagues who can't find the time to read as they are too busy. The answer is, of course, to make the time, even when it's almost impossible to do so, through something akin to habit.

Which means, in some sense, re-thinking one's life. Difficult in the extreme, but not quite impossible, something I discovered a long time ago - and which I am resolved to rediscover in a small (though trust me, this won't feel small) but important manner.