Category Archives: Autobiographical

Scruckshelishelcquerlup

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It is morning, and whilst lying in bed, awake waiting for my tablets to kick in, I hear my youngest son in the bathroom (next door) going through his daily gargling routine, This lasts for about 4 minutes:

“scruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushas hushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwas chushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquer

lupwaschushas hushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishe

lcquerlupwaschushashush  …..aaaahhhhgglllleee aaaahhhhgglllleee

aaaahhhhgglllleee  (this is the back of the throat bit)

Wuwwulllmmnllleeeaaaahhhhggwuwwulllmmnlllleeeaaaahhhhgglwuwwulllmmnlll

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!…………..pwryyyrrtt! (this is the spit)

……………….Heeeeeeeuuuugh! …. pwryyyrrtt!” (another spit)

I am thinking, I’ve got a drum and bass line that would go perfectly with that.

He’s got a routine for everything: a brushing teeth routine, the mouthwash routine (as you now know) the anti-perspirant spray routine (not one to be caught in the middle of )  The ‘don’t care hair’ routine. You know, I never knew it took so long to perfect that ‘Just dragged through a hedge’ look. Still, …. He is worth it.

Meanwhile, back in bed, I practise my rigorous exercise routine. I open and close my right eye five times, then repeat with the left. As they say: No pain, no gain. That done, I cast one of the aforesaid eyes (the left – as it happens) to the other side of the room and it alights on my walking frame. Okay, it’s a zimmer frame, but it has got ‘Go Faster’ stripes, metallic paint and polished chrome.  I try not to use it much; as you can see by all the washing hanging off it.

I can just imagine it:  The Harrow and Hillingdon Area Health Authority enquiry:

“Mr Daly, would you care to explain to us once again, exactly how you came to break your hip. On the day in question you didn’t use the walking frame that The Health Authority provide you with, because it was (He refers to his notes) ‘Full of washing’”

“Yes Sir, that is correct, Sir, I …………”

The truth is of course that I wouldn’t be without it. A Swiss Army Knife of mobility aids, the frame is a masterpiece of design, which as well as an aid to walking, and an excellent dryer is also my mobile multi-gym. For with a bit of creative manipulation and some imagination, and I can use it to perform a whole variety of exercises. Almost all of them safe!

A real photographic challenge: making a walking frame look cool

© Andy Daly  2011

Double Diamonds Are Forever. Two Royal Weddings

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Well, by my calculations, as I write this the Royal Party at Clarence House should be just starting the last chorus of ‘Hi-ho Silver Lining’. For some unfathomable reason, this dreary, non-descript, infernal embodiment of crap as vinyl, courtesy of Jeff Beck, has come to signal ‘time’ for the revellers in discos, clubs and bars all over the Western world.

‘Hi-ho Silver Lining’ means, there’s one more song – the ‘slowie’ before lights up. So if you’re not already draped over some one of the opposite sex, or for that matter someone of the same sex, and vaguely interested – and you don’t want to leave alone, then you had better get a move on.

Through the spinning laser lights and the palls of dry ice which still hang in the air from The ViIlage People’s ‘YMCA’ I can just make out Prince Harry lining up for a final approach on Kate Middleton’s sister, Pippa,  presumably building on the not inconspicuous ‘groundwork’ he had started on the balcony at Buckingham Palace –or possibly even before. He is a brave man if this is so, for his girlfriend Chelsy Davy  is well known for her fierce temper. Never mind, if it goes belly-up he’s still got his bacon-butties at dawn extravaganza to look forward to. I have it on good authority that he has arranged for a ‘first-light fried breakfast pick-me–up’ for all those of the Royal Party still on their feet. He sounds like good company over a few beers.

As far as the run-up to this ‘spectacle of Pomp, Pageantry and pissed off looking footmen’ was concerned, I am afraid to say The Royal Wedding barely registered a reading on my ‘Interest-ometer’. Throughout the preceeding two weeks it fluctuated between indifference and mild irritation. However, little by little as the morning has progressed, I have found myself getting ineluctably drawn into the watching of  the television coverage of the event; and it isn’t long before I get to reminicing … reminicsing … reminiscing (which is a lot easier to do than it is to spell) about

‘Psssst! Fancy a drink later?’    another Royal Wedding many, years ago; and where I watched it from. In fact, it was Harry’s mum’s wedding. Lady Diana Spencer.

I had been indifferent to that too, The hullabaloo and media conjecture over this, that and the other largely going right over my head. Although, it did register with me – a little uncomfortably it has to be said – that we were soon to have a Royal that people actually fancied: a strange new concept.

We, (that is me and My Best Mate Aky) had resolutely decided to have nothing to do with it. We would gratefully accept the Bank Holiday thankyouverymuch (not so much of a treat in those days, because everything shut and there was bugger-all to do) but there would be no queuing at dawn on our part, no unseemly rush to grab a vantage point on the Mall, no straining of necks to get a better view of ‘The Dress’. No Sir!

I was too hungover on the morning of July 29 1981, for the irony of the situation to fully hit home as we (that is me and My Best Mate Aky) arose at 3:20am and soon after were out of  our hovel in Stoke Newington to walk the one and a half miles to Finsbury Park tube station to catch a tube to Green Park in order to hopefully beat the  queues at dawn and grab a vantage point on the Mall.

The plan was hatched in the Weatsheaf the previous evening. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. We were travelling light, if you ignore  the 12 rusty cans of Double Diamond beer we each carried. In the Weatsheaf, the possession of such lethal weapons was hailed as the ‘masterstroke’ of the whole expedition. Perhaps I should explain. Aky and I both worked in Off-Licences. As a gesture of goodwill to mark the auspicious occasion of the Royal nuptials, we had been allowed to clear the fridges of all the ‘out of date’ and/or rusty cans and use them to complete our celebrations. Of course, this was back in the day when tin cans were tin and goodness me, they did rust. Not, however a cause for concern for two intrepid thrill-seekers such as me and My Best Mate Aky. Indeed it wasn’t long (in the Weatsheaf) before we realised we actually had an ingenious ‘dual-purpose’ gadget in our possession which could have been tailor-made for the very conditions we were soon to experience: contents served to quench thirst/provide hair of dog. Then the can, when empty, something to stand on, which if stacked double height, afforded valuable extra inches as one strained one’s neck to get a better view of ‘The Dress’.

And so it came to pass that instead of being tucked up, fast asleep in bed, like most normal people; 5:00 am on the morning of the Royal Wedding  found me and My Best Mate Aky, emerging bleary-eyed from Green Park tube station to make our way down to the Mall. Our objective was Clarence House. Why? Because it was there that Diana would spend the night before her wedding, and from there the following day that she would depart for the journey by horse and carriage to St. Pauls. These were the only definite arrangements, aside from the ceremony of course we knew about with any certainty on this special day. So, we reasoned, if we were to see Diana, and take the last opportunity to shout to her that she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life and that ‘Here I was’ (Or ‘here he was’ in Aky’s case) then Clarence House had to be the venue. It has just occurred to  me writing this years later that although both of us firm in our belief that  we could each give Diana a better life than  she could ever hope for with old ‘Big Ears’, we had no contingency plan, nor had we discussed what we would do in the event that she called a halt to her carriage, and holding onto her veil, jumped down onto the kerbside and ran into one  or other of our outstretched and open arms. That is, assuming she didn’t want to shack up with both of us. No, I think  in hindsight it is just as well she stayed in her carriage. I can feel my toes, even now, curling up with ‘virtual’ retrospective embarrassment, as I imagine myself face to face with Diana, standing on the Mall, somewhere in the region of a million people in the centre of London and a television audience of billions all listen and look on in hushed silence as I mumble to her something about not really being fully prepared, not having thought it through properly and that she might actually be better off with Prince Charles, in the long run after all.

See the guy in black? Standing on tins of Double Diamond

Now I don’t know whether you know this but in the City of London, if  you are caught short, and find there are no public conveniencies, ‘bathrooms’ or pub toilets handy; if you shout ‘In pain’ three times, you are, under ancient by-law able to relieve yourself where you stand and the Old Bill – or to use their quaint nickname, The Metropolitan Police can do nothing about it. However, on the Mall, I did feel a little self conscious about doing so, given the numbers of people around. I was in pain, alright. After drinking twelve cans of Double Diamond and standing around doing nothing for five hours, I was in pain x 3. There were rumours of some temporary toilets in Green Park. Aware that to give up one’s hard-fought vantage point – if only for a short while – so close to the start of proceedings could spell disaster. (Worst case scenario being that after everything you have endured you hear the cheers of the crowds as the Royal family and its guests make their way down the Mall, but you are stuck in a queue for the toilets, too far away to see anything.) I had to make a move. So I did.

1981The Charles and Di periscope: No match for cans of Double Diamond

 On my return, as I neared our ‘spot’ (on the north side of the Mall/Admiralty Arch side of Stable Yard Road if memory serves correct) I noticed signs of Police activity. This was bad news. They were cutting off Stable Yard Road in preparation for the exit of Diana’s carriage. Bollocks! I was right in the meleé here. I’d lost my good viewing point. And my cans! Bugger it! All that Double Diamond. And for what? Actually, the truth was that the cans weren’t such an innovation after all. As more and more of them were guzzled, standing on the empties, they became increasingly unstable. As did I. In fact I was begining to get quite unpopular with my fellow man, as on at least three occasions, my ‘tower of cans’ collapsed, to go tumbling all over the feet of those nearby. Closely followed by myself. With that dogged determination characteristic of those who have consumed too much alcohol, each time, I picked myself up and opened one of the remaining full ones, took a good slug before collecting the rest and re-building my tower. Finally a gentleman, possibly an ex-PE teacher or Police Officer who, getting more and more irritated by my shenanigans picked me up – a little more firmly than the situation warranted I felt – after yet another failure to grasp the fundamentals of construction, materials and their properties and simply said ‘I think that’s enough now’.

  

 And just how did they get up there? Tins of Double Diamond

It is at this point that my memory starts to get a little hazy and my account of the next couple of hours begins to differ more than somewhat from Aky’s. In my version, I get stuck on the Palace side of the Mall. In Aky’s, he manages to get the Police to let me cross again before the coach leaves. In mine, all I get to see of Diana are a few white flashes from her dress,  the rest of her, as she is seated on the far side of the carriage is obliterated by the sizeable frame and head (looking for all the world like it was made from plasticine by a child) of her father, Earl Spencer, Viscount Althorpe. In fact what I saw, very spookily is almost exactly this:

What did he have in the inside pockets of his suit? Tins of Double Diamond

Aky, on the other hand recalls that he too didn’t see much of Diana, because in his case, the Queen Mother was hogging window space.

Well, that’s Double Diamond for you.

What is for sure, is the three of them couldn’t have squeezed into the carriage – even if they had put the Queen Mum into one of the overhead luggage racks. Anyway, who cares? The point was we had gone to all that trouble and still not seen  the star of the show. I have to admit, I felt slightly cheated. We’d had enough. We weren’t prepared to wait for the return of the procession from St. Paul’s. From that point, apart from bumping into my mate Keith, with who I shared a house with in Newcastle (see ‘Coat Tails #2’) and who, throughout the whole of the morning had been standing unbeknown, a matter of feet away; the day began to take on a fairly dismal typical ‘Bank Holiday’ air about it.

In an attempt to prolong the excitement, we decided to make full use the cheap London Underground travel cards that were available on the day.

‘Where shall we go?’

‘How about somewhere that has an interesting name – somewhere we’ve never been before?’

‘Gospel Oak?’ ‘Parsons Green?’ ‘Dollis Hill?’ ‘Kilburn High Road?’

Then as if from nowhere, an image from long, long ago appeared in my mind’s eye. A family: the parents and their three boys sit round a tiny blue formica-topped table, eating tea and listening to a spoof radio quiz show.

‘I know!’ I said ‘ …. Mornington Crescent!’

And so it was.

And the moral of this little tale? Well nothing really, except things aren’t always what you expect them to be. Charles and Diana’s wedding and my small walk-on part in it has always seemed an anti-climax.  As for Mornington Crescent, fittingly the ‘I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue’ team had the last laugh because there’s absolutely nothing to get excited about there at all.

Except Mornington Crescent.

© Andy Daly 2011

The Twits

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… which just goes to show that you should never put all your eggs in one basket until the chickens have come home to roost in the same bush twice.

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Parents’ Evenings. I have written elsewhere about my experiences as a teacher; and a little bit as a parent at these cosy annual soirés. However, I don’t believe I’ve told you the story of ‘The Twits’.

The Twits

A truly magical, special time.  

‘The Twits’ entered my life at what was, a truly magical, special time.

It was pre-Parkinson’s. Thankfully I had the wit to realise then that were I not to make the most of every single moment, I would regret it forever. I am talking of course about when our two children were little. I taught full-time, my better half, part-time and that was the plan until our youngest, James was ready to start school as a ‘rising five’. At which point, we hoped part-time would become full-time. Which it did. In the fullness of time.

A big decision

I meanwhile, had reached the dizzy heights of Head of Department; for two years at a school in Berkshire and, by the time of the birth of our first son, a further two years at a school in West London, nearer to where we lived. Both were secondary comprehensives. It was not long after that I decided as far as a new job or promotion was concerned, it was on the backburner from now on. Unless a ‘peach’ (of a job) were to more or less fall into my lap, I wasn’t going to involve myself in chasing a ‘career’.

Okay, I know that in the British State Education system a ‘career’ is an almost laughable concept, but the point is that I wasn’t prepared to do all the ‘extras’ and saddle myself  with the  impossible amounts of work that this would require. As it was already I was finding too much of my time being greedily gulped  by a ‘holier than thou’ Whitehall-based administration, heads up their own backsides; from where they were quick to shout about what great deeds some teachers can do, but even quicker to foist unworkable structures and strategies onto them and their beleaguered profession, one which was steadily sinking in the mire of a fundamentally flawed data – hungry beaurocracy and as a result choking the very innovation and inspiration it sought. No sir. When work was done, (and sometimes even when it wasn’t) it was family time. And I went home.

The wood for the trees

And I am so glad I did. Had I not done so, and attended all the meetings, all the working parties, all the committees, gone on all the courses, done the networking and the gladhanding, fired in all the application forms, prepared for all the interviews …. I would be kicking myself to purgatory and back again by now. I know it is a cliché, but they do grow up so fast. Time plays such maddening games that it is very easy to miss how fleeting it all is. One day you are carrying them on your shoulders on a walk through the woods.

Then the next thing you know you’re being told ‘I’m off tomorrow I’ve got tickets to see the Prodigy and Gorrillaz at the Benicassim Festival (in Spain.) I’m going to fly out and hook up with some of the lads who are already out there’ Self- financed too, fruit of his labours as Front of House plus a bit of Bouncing and Roadying  for a local Comedy promoter. You see, when it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no getting it back again.

Didn’t want to miss anything

As I look back on these precious nuggets of time I am reminded of the underlying sense of exhaustion we both felt. So much, in fact that it began to seem almost normal. In the first instance, this was courtesy of Ian. Born prematurely and insomniac, he did his level best to avoid sleep for the first two years of his life which came about, he explains, along with his early arrival, because he

‘Didn’t want to miss anything’

Of course nowadays we can’t get him out of bed until well after the sun has passed its shadow over the yardarm, and besides, as he says, our experience with him was just what we needed to cope with his brother, James.  For just as his elder sibling, aged two, had  begun to become a bit more reasonable in his approach to the concept of  4 or 5 hour’s shut-eye every night, along came James. He, poor soul  after merely two weeks on this mortal coil, then broke out with the insidious ezcema that is the plague of this family, and for him the principal causal factor decisive in his refusal to sleep for a further four years. Give or take a day or so.

So, yes, If you were one of those people (and there were many) who told us during those seemingly never-ending eons of sleeplessness:

‘Oh but Michael/Christopher/Joshua/Jessica/Ashley/Emily… has slept through since we got him/her/it back from the hospital …’

Little did you know our carefully composed plastic smiles, glazed eyes and well–rehearsed expressions of joy and wonder at your good fortune hid a real, tangible urge to put a premature end to your threescore and ten with anything remotely resembling a sharp or blunt instrument … or indeed anything.

You think I’m joking don’t you?

That said, it was a kind of ‘satisfying’ exhaustion. You felt like you had got it for a good reason, that there was a purpose to it: admittedly a difficult concept to wrestle with at 2:30 in the morning for the third time. When all you can think about is what the f**k you are going to do with your Year Nine period one tomorrow, I mean today.

‘Satisfying’ I think that’s quite a good description. It’s certainly not the brain-sapping, leaden, formless, shapeless exhaustion that dogs me these days.

I’d do it all again, all of it,

But it was damned hard.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’d do it all again, all of it, like a shot. But it was so hard. We had no family in the area. My parents, aunts and uncle lived in the North, as did my brothers when they settled to start their own families, while my wife’s family live in Spain. So we never had anyone to ‘take the baby a minute’, never had anyone who could ‘look after the kids for the weekend’ while we nip to Paris, Barcelona, Warrington … wherever. Of course people did what they could but basically we were ‘On duty’ 24/7.  We had a nice little house. But it was little. (I didn’t realise quite how little until one of the removal men – and not a particularly tall example of the species either – cracked his head on the top of the door frame when he entered the toilet.  The door, in order to save space (somewhere!) was about 2 inches shorter than all the others.

The ‘nice’ was on closer inspection, merely a veneer which hid a multitude of unpleasant and expensive-looking surprises. But money was too tight to mention and there certainly was no extra cash for upgrade of veneer, or things like new cars or expensive holidays for example.

The time that everything took! Sterilising all those bottles: every night! I’ve no idea how we managed it and were able to do a day’s work on such little sleep or rest.  Another example: one which tells you a lot about my better half; a tenacious, resourceful, fiercely intelligent woman. In terms of the boys’ nutrition, complicated in James’ case by his acute allergy to egg (and by extension all products – not just food, containing egg) they were given the best of starts in life one could imagine. They had home-cooked food, every day: Ian until he started school, and in James’ case until he was given the ‘All Clear’ aged seven after his ‘Egg Challenge’ at hospital showed he had at last outgrown his allergy.  There was only one exception to this that I can recall, and that was for some reason, I forget which, we had to give them processed food on a flight back from Spain. Closing my eyes, as I write, I can see the freezer stacked with carefully labelled tupperwares.

Love and books

And there was Love. There was so much Love. You could count it and cut it. And fun. One of the things the boys enjoyed, especially James – although sadly, he says he remembers little of it now was the ‘Story before bedtime’. It was difficult, at the end of a long day, but there was always time for a story… or five.

Many is the time, shattered in mind and body, exhausted, we fell asleep.  Far away in the distance we would be able to hear, as we blissfully lost consciousness, one, other or both of them calling ‘Again, again!’ or ‘Another One!’  On one famous occasion, it was our wedding anniversary. Everything was set. Kids in bed early, nice meal and some quality time together. Lovely! Over an hour later, I am mouth wide open, deep in a dribbly sleep on James’ bed; both boys asleep too. Meanwhile my wife was downstairs, sitting looking at two plates of food which were getting less and less appetising by the minute, too afraid to come upstairs and check on us, lest her footfall, waken James up and send us right back to square one again.

It was on one of these occasions that James, his bother asleep and his Dad almost there as well, asked his celebrated and enigmatic ‘Fivehead’ question.

‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ ‘Winnie the Witch’ ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ ‘Don’t put Mustard in the Custard’ The ‘Percy the Park-Keeper’ stories….. were among the favourites. In fact, thanks to the Reverend W. Awdry, so obssessed were the boys with trains and Thomas the Tank engine in particular, that I came perilously close to getting sucked into the murky twighlight world that is trainspotting. Sadly, I had begun to distinguish my ‘Pacifics’ from my ‘Deltics’ … a scary place to be, let me tell you.

So many stories; so many books! Courtesy of grandparents, aunts, uncles and in particular, the lads’ Great Aunt – my Mum’s sister, Eileen, who wouldn’t just buy them a book, she would buy the collected works! For them, Birthdays and Christmas will always be associated with piles of books. Which is pretty cool, I reckon.

Roald Dahl

Then of course as they got older, it was ‘Harry Potter’ and briefly Tolkein. However, what sticks in my mind more than any other is the fun we had, over what I guess was a two or three month period, when we read almost everything by Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl

I had read ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ as a kid, but, I don’t know, although I enjoyed them, I found that I quickly tired. Which, as it happens turns out to have been just perfect, because it meant that we were able to discover the delights of ‘Danny Champion of the World’, ‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox’, ‘Matilda’, ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’, ‘The Witches’, ‘Esio Trot’ and my favourite, ‘The Twits’ together with the boys: which I reckon is just as it should be. The icing on the cake was poring over the exquisite illustrations to these tales by the great Quentin Blake.

Quentin Blake

The Twits pay a call

Now as coincidence would have it, it was around this time, that ‘The Twits’ came to call. At a Parents’ Evening no less.

I was in the School hall. In those days we sat at old ‘exam- style’ desks with two chairs placed opposite for the parents. (This was before the days when students were required to attend Parents’ Evenings too)

So there I was, idly reading the jokes and filthy comments scrawled and in some cases carved onto the desk as I waited for my next appointment to appear. There ought to be a GCSE exam for this I thought to myself : Paper One: Analysis of Desktop, use of language, imagery, ability to succesfully combine the two, style, use of narrative. Hmmm, let’s see …

The largest piece of descriptive writing on this particular desk was lacking more than somewhat in its narrative content. It was altogether more urgent. Indeed it was more of a statement of fact. It simply read:  ‘Harris is a TWAT’. (Mr. Harris being the third deputy.) Not generally well-liked it would be fair to say. A little too fond of ‘The Laydees’ (young, impressionable female members of staff, Trainee Teachers, Sixth Form girls with looks beyond their years. You know the type – him I mean) In fact it was he who, at the climax of a long and dirty war of attrition with one particular Year 11 student, found himself caught out by a board rubber, a tube of Super Glue plus the deft hand and co-ordination of his sixteen year old nemesis. My goodness, there was a weeping, wailing and a gnashing of teeth that day.

I looked up from my desk and my mark book – a mine of intricate assessment data on each of my students only decipherable and sometimes not even then, by me.  I used to use it as a ‘prop’. Something to fiddle with and attempt to calm my nerves. I rarely talked from it.

Suddenly there they were.

The level of noise was incredible.There was a general hub-bub coming in at about 85 decibels, above which I could hear some increasingly strident snatches of conversation from tables nearby:  ‘If he doesn’t start to knuckle down this year, he is going to underachive …’ ‘She didn’t tell me this. When was it set? Ooooh Wait till I get home: the little Madam …’ ‘Well, what can you do? They’re so independent at this age. Sometimes she’ll listen to her Dad…’ ‘Ya know the problem? Ya too sof’ whiddem. Ya kyan hexpec them to listen an’ respec’  if ya too sof’. Lard I’m going to axe some questions when I get home’

And suddenly there they were. Sitting opposite me. The Twits!

 Mr and Mrs Twit

Mr and Mrs, just as described in Dahl’s words and Blake’s images. Mr Twit with the whole of his face except for his forehead, eyes and nose covered with thick hair, which indeed grew in spikes that pointed straight like the bristles of a nailbrush. I had to resist the urge to lean in a little closer to see if that speck at the corner of his mouth really was a cornflake. Meanwhile, Mrs Twit had a face which looked like nothing good had shone out of it for a very long time. She didn’t appear to have a glass eye, but one of them did seem to be always looking away.

Of course they weren’t called Twit.

‘Good evening, and it’s Mr and Mrs ….?’ I welcomed them.

‘O’Reilly’

‘Oh really?’ I said absent-mindedly, as I looked down my list of appointments for their name and time.

‘No! O’Reilly’

They were late, by half an hour. No apology, no explanantion and on top of which they had (judging by the commotion going on behind them) nicked someone else’s slot.

Mr and Mrs O’Reilly!  Parents of Harry and Dean, both of whom I taught, and both of whom were Twits too.

64 channels of cable TV

I won’t go into detail about the discussion we had over the progress of younger son, Dean except to say that they genuinely looked surprised when I suggested that there might be a link between Dean’s inability to attempt any sort of task set for homework and the fact that his bedroom (as I found out during the course of our conversation) boasted a wide screen Television and 64 channels of cable TV or that his performance and behaviour in class, which was poor, might also have something to do with this and the fact that he rarely went to bed till after 2:am.

Why the Twits are twits

‘It’s terrible’ said Mrs Twit/O’ Reilly ‘He keeps us awake! He’s so noisy’

‘Well why don’t you do something about it?’

‘Like what?’

‘Take the cable out for a start.’

‘Oh no, we couldn’t do that. We promised he could have it for his birthday … and a promise is a promise.’

‘He’s 12 years old!’ I said in desperation, but the meeting was suddenly starting to get very fractious and I could see I was getting nowhere, so despite an irresistable urge to ask them whether they had seen Muggle-Wump lately and if so, how he was, I avoided the temptation and brought the conversation to a conclusion as quickly as possible. For my part I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids I’d actually met the Twits!

The writing on the wall

Time flew by, as it does and my uninvited guest pushed their way into my life. The writing was on the wall from day one:

‘Well, all I can say Andy is I’m glad it’s you and not me’

was the Headteacher’s response to the disclosure of my diagnosis of ‘The Shaking Palsy’. I was lucky to belong to an establishment with such a caring and supportive ethos.

In fact, I found the period immediately after diagnosis strangely liberating. I felt I could see things, and their importance and value much more clearly. Given the circumstances I found myself in, I reasoned that before symptoms started to show themselves outwardly,  a move to a better school, one perhaps in which I didn’t have to fight so hard day after day might mean I could sustain full time work for longer than was looking the case at my current school.

So, some twelve years or so after my Big Decision, I went back out on the job-hunting trail. Cut a long story short: irony of ironies. I had done such a good job of pushing the notion of ‘career’ to the backburner, that that is where it stayed – permanently. But I know I’ll never regret my Big Decision. And if I ever start to miss being in school and pine longingly for my overcrowded classroom, my insufficient resources, the half-baked curriculum, an equivocal and intransigent management, I just think of the Twits and my world suddenly seems a much richer place.

As far as I know

And as far as I know Dean O’Reilly still has a widecreen TV and access to 64 cable channels in his bedroom.

Excerpts from ‘The  Twits’

Text © 1980 Felicity Dahl and the other Executives of the Estate of Roald Dahl

Illustrations © 1980 Quentin Blake

Dedicated to Emma Louise Hickey and Cheryl Fitzgerald.

© Andy Daly 2011

The Twits. A postscript

If you happen to be wondering what are these forces so powerful that they will make a man go against his basic intinct not only to work, to provide for his depenants, but to constantly strive to better himself, to show his mettle in that bear pit we call the Jobs section of The Times Educational Supplement. Indeed to confound him so completely that he chooses to leave work as early as is decent, to make his way home as fast as his legs, bike, car will allow him. Let me show you:

 

 

My Best Steak and Kidney Pie Recipie

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You may/may not be aware, but I’ve been searching for the ultimate pie recipie. I think I’ve found it. It only works, however if you do it in the style of Jamie Oliver.

1½lb braising steak,½lb Ox Kidney, Flour, 1 onion, roughly chopped, 4 sticks of celery roughly chopped, fresh mixed herbs (Rosemary, Thyme, Bay), 1lb2oz pack of Puff Pastry, Olive Oil, lots of salt & pepper, Red, wine or Brandy – preferably both, one egg.

Firstly chuck a couple of generous slugs of Olive Oil into a pan. Roll the meat in flour, whack it in, season well, add your herbs and let it golden. Bung in the onion, and about 5 mins later frow in the celery. (oh, by the way some heat under the pan would be a good idea. If you haven’t yet: Start Again).

Pull the cork out of a bottle of red wine with your teeth cos you’ve got your hands full, manage to release one of them, and use it to hold the bottle. Take 2 good guzzles of the vino then bang one in the pan (NB always use this ratio: 2 for self, one for pan)
Allow to simmer for about 2 hours. You could go and open a school, or show everyone on a Northern council estate how to cook, while you’re waiting. Top up with wine or Brandy (or both) as required.
Pre-heat oven to 190. Slosh the meat and gravy out the pan and into your pie dish. Loverly! Beat your egg and with a brush egg wash the rim of the dish. Roll out your pastry, using the backing sheet to allow you to get it flat and in position covering the whole of the dish. With a knife, slice round the rim to remove excess pastry, which you can then use to fashion an appropriate design – like you used to see in kids’ story books when you were … well, a kid. Pinch the pastry with your thumb and forefinger all the way round the rim – to make it look even more authentic. Egg Wash the pastry on top, and chuck it in the oven, darlin’ for about 45 min or until golden. Serve with red wine.
Pukka!
PS it’s easy to get carried away with this one and forget about the vegetables, mashed potato or whatever you’re having with it. Try and avoid this as it doesn’t tend to go down very well in my experience.

© Andy Daly 2011

My Mate Bill

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Bill gladdens me, as he has almost every week for the last 18 months. Each Wednesday lunchtime, we shoot a few games of Pool and chew the fat a nearby pub. I cycle and meet him there. He is always early. I am always late. Sometimes he comes to collect me from home in the car. Even then, I am still late. (Another unexpected Bonus Parkinson’s Free Giveaway: The complete inability to organise oneself and work to anything resembling a ‘time frame’.) Formerly punctilious to the point of obsession. I am now late for everything. A trait I abhor.

In the pub, one which after my first visit I swore I would never set foot in again, we chat about this ‘n’  that. His beloved QPR, my beloved Valencia CF, and always about music, while we share some ‘Pub Grub’ which I swear is pieces of Saloon bar carpet served on a bed of the most anaemic, jaundiced-looking lettuce, accompanied by a portion of ‘fries’ which taste like they have been cooked in linseed oil. Bill usually has a pint of Guinness. Either that, or a bottle of bright blue pear cider! If it’s a Guinness day, I usually spend a sizeable chunk of the afternoon wistfully gazing at it. Maddeningly, the blackstuff, one of my favourite thirst-quenchers back in the day, now, like most other alcohols, after two or three swallows tastes like cheap diesel. Again thanks to Parkinson’s. I’ll have a soft drink or occasionally, if I feel like pushing the boat out, a pint of lager shandy.

‘Which lager do you want?’ The bar staff kindly ask. I think, though I never say it ‘It’s a fucking  shandy, it doesn’t matter what lager you put in it, it’s still going to taste shite’ I invariably find myself asking for ‘Cooking Lager then please’ but no-one gets the joke anymore.

Then it is to battle. At the pool table. What follows is a Pool Masterclass. Usually one in which I play like a complete novice, moreover one who is suffering from vertigo and has no thumbs. I  usually finish three, often all four games down.  Bill has the killer instinct, the eye for a ‘snooker’ and an ability to read the game, which sees me cornered, teased and then dispatched. Game over. Nevertheless, I continue to train hard and work at my game. I think it is paying off: I haven’t potted the white from  the Break  for weeks, now (‘The Break’ is the shot which disperses the pool balls from their triangular configuration and which marks the commencement of the game – I’m not sure how familiar you are with Snooker, Billiards, Pool and suchlike)

I on the other hand can read the game, but just can’t be bothered, and go for all the ludicrously ridiculous trick shots, which when they come off (flukes) have Old Bill staggering around in amazement. When I miss, which is more likely,  he moves in like a Hit Man and I am severely punished for my sloppy play.

Bill cheers me up no end, especially when he either:

  • Tells me the tales of his ‘Home Improvement’ capers. I am indebted to him for making me realise that there is someone worse, much, much worse than me at practising the Dark Art of DIY . Whenever I find myself struggling with a reluctant screw, troublesome nail or somesuch. I just think of Bill. For example, there was the time when he tried to plane the bottom of a door which had stopped closing smoothly, because a new carpet had been fitted. He took the door off, and gingerly at first, began to plane wood from the base. Put the door back on: check. No, still catching on the carpet. Off with the door again … and so on, for about twenty minutes, at which point he stopped, panting and sweating in order to inspect the door once more only to find he had been planing the wrong end. In other words the top. So now he had a door which still rubbed on the carpet, but which boasted a handsome four-inch gap, up above, between door and frame!
  • Has a ‘Grumpy Old Man’ rant. Usually about some spectacularly bad customer service he has received, or rather, not. A man of principle, unequivocal about what he believes is right and what is wrong, but also possibly verging on the Tourette’s spectrum, from where, he is a fine sight (and sound) as he effs and blinds about Call Centres, Helplines and some of the hapless halfwits who work therein.

And that’s my mate, Bill. God bless him.

And that’s my Wednesday afternoon.

See also Chuck Berry and CSE, TVEI, NVQ, GCSE: I talk to B and E over a BLT

 

© Andy Daly 2011

   

 

 

The Way Of The Hand, Foot And Walking Stick: Taekwondo And Parkinson’s Disease

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Tae Kwon Do (The way of the hand and foot)

‘Daly rewarded with Taekwondo Bronze medal’ ‘Third spot for battling Ruislip favourite’ ‘Against all odds, Daly steals TKD bronze’ clamoured the back pages of the morning papers.

Next week, iron your uniform

You don’t recall it? Tsk! Well I’ll just have to refresh your memories then. But first, a bit of etiquette:

“Kyungnet!” At this command, you bow purposefully but deferentially, not too low; from about the height of your solar plexus. Once you have raised your head again, relaxed, but with the limbs firmly under control, you, without shifting your position, step your left foot out 90 degrees to the left: a distance broadly equivalent to one shoulder width, at the same time bending your arms at the elbows (always a good place to do this in my experience) raise your fists to a point just below your chin, outer edges touching, palms facing in. By now your left foot should have completed its shift – if it hasn’t, may I politely suggest that you may be better off with the flower arrangers in the room next door. Thrust your fists (once again, firmly, with strength – but under control, not wildly) out in front of you so that they are just in front of your belt knot. Hold the position, fists about a fist apart, Eyes dead ahead; standing firm yet relaxed.

Good! This is ‘Joon Bi’ or the ‘Ready Stance’

“Charyut!” You are called to attention. Snap to it! Straight and tall, hands and arms following the seams of your trousers. “Kyungnet!” You bow again out of respect for your instructor: who will be your better – if not your elder.

‘Okay, sit down’ The instructor addresses his class, which consists of about 30 WTF (World Taekwondo Federation) students, ages roughly 7 to 13, of which nearly half are girls. The class members are each kitted out in uniforms which go  through a whole spectrum of dirtiness and dishevellment from grubby grey to the crisp, smartest, whitest of whites. I notice that the majority wear a white, white and yellow or yellow belt, while alongside the instructor, standing to attention at the front of the class are a young man wearing a black belt and four older teenagers all of whom wear striped belts: two girls in green and blue and two boys in black and red.

The instructor fixes his gaze on a couple of fidgety lads as the class sit in lines before him:

‘Now, for next week, iron your uniform, so it doesn’t look like you and your mates have slept in it all week. Just don’t answer the phone if it rings while you’re doing it: and…’ he signals another pair: ‘I want to see you two tie your belts yourselves. No! Not together. Each of you, ’round your own waist. Legs crossed if you please … Oi! Legs crossed … Why? Dunno? Anybody want to tell ’em? Well just imagine what one of these big fellers here … C’mon Rob, let’s have you over here a minute’

With the young black belt, he ad libs a short, but impressive fight sequence which finishes with Rob feigning the effects of receiving a powerful kick to the head and fighting to retain his balance .

‘Now just imagine what one of these Black Belts would do to your skinny little legs, sticking out in front of you as he goes trampling all over them, when  he’s sparring. He’d snap ’em like they were bits of sphagetti’

It is a scene repeated, I am sure, in Do Jangs (Training Halls) up and down the country, every Saturday morning; where classes in this increasingly popular Korean martial art are held, and has been so since the sport began to get a foothold in Great Britain in the 1970s, thanks to a small, but dedicated group of enthusiasts. Some of whom, as it happens, had the night before been training in this very room.

But I am totally unaware of any of this.

The Martial Arts

It was a lovely, sunny Saturday morning as I drew into the car park of the community centre which was home to The Brotherhood Taekwondo Foundation all those years ago. In fact, it was so long ago that  David Cameron was no more than an irritating itch on the backside of the Conservative Party, while  Anthony Charles Lynton Blair had yet to be wooed by wannabe-cowboy, George W Bush Jnr, and in so doing cuckold the British electorate over Iraq and Afghanistan. Little did I know it, but I was about to enter a building which for some five years or so was to prove  almost as important to me as my home or place of work, and in so doing, make one of the best decisions of my life.

But, one thing at a time. I am here, instead of  Sainsbury’s because I’ve come with my eldest to take a look at a martial arts class. We felt that at the ripe old age of 12, it was about time he learned how to look after himself. To this end we’d asked around and this club: ‘The Brotherhood’ and one of its instructors in particular, Neil Patterson had come highly recommended

I knew nothing about the Martial Arts, or ‘Marital Arts’ as a student I once taught referred to it on his University application Personal Statement.

No. All I knew was what I’d gleaned from watching ‘Kung Fu’ with David Carradine on TV. Now, that made no sense at all. Even in the most innocuous school playground fight, I reasoned, Carradine would get nothing less than a sound arse – kicking if he were to spend as much time gazing, glassy-eyed into the middle distance, and then fight so painfully slowly.

No. The closest I had come to experiencing the Martial Arts was watching the late, 10th Dan Dai Hanshi Phil Milner and team training  for, and executing  a world record ‘Breaking’ attempt. Demolishing a piano by hand. Literally smashing it to pieces, all of which had to pass through a 9 inch diameter hole. Against the clock. Foolishly, I didn’t regard the spectacle to be of any real significance at the time, and although I always had a secret fascination with the Martial Arts, dismissed them as something which were not for me.

A Black Belt is only a White Belt who never gave up

‘Wassup?’

I am brought back into the training hall with a bump.

‘You’re knackered?  Whaddaya mean you’re knackered?’  The instructor good-naturedly teases his charges.

You ain’t done anything yet …! Who wants a drink?’

‘Me!’ they sing out in unison.

‘Tough! You can have one in 5 minutes. Patterns first – in the groups you were in earlier. Remember you’ve got a grading coming up in 2 week’s time. I want them perfect by then. Practise and practise till you can do them in your sleep. Practise makes …?

‘Perfect’ Almost all of them chime back

‘No, it doesn’t. Practice makes permanent. So make sure you are getting your stances right. Ask if there’s anything you’re not sure about.  Charyut!  Kyungnet! Sijak!’

And off they go, into their groups to work  with the senior belts.  A few minutes later, a couple of them are put through their paces on the floor demonstrating their particular patterns in front of the class. They are reminded, as some despair at ever being good enough to move up the belts:

‘Listen. A Black Belt is only a White Belt who never gave up’

Finally, they get their drink

The instructor takes the opportunity to come over and introduce himself.

Taekwondo in two minutes

The Patterns or Taegeuk, I discovered later are based on a fight scenario and consist of planned sequences of attack and defence against multiple opponents, designed to perfect stances and the techniques of kicking, blocking, punching, turning and so on. Each Taegeuk, has its own attributes. Number One (or ‘Il – Jang’) for example, represents ‘Heaven and Light’ and symbolises creation or the beginning. The floor pattern of steps and stances belonging to each conform to the shapes of the four trigrams on the Korean flag, the Taegeuk, representing the origin of all things is in red and blue, holding the two principles of yin and yang. The whole denotes a universal unity. Amongst other things, advancement to the next belt colour demands mastery of the pattern  for that level; and to reach Black Belt there are eight.

The philosophy of Taekwondo is taught as well.  It has to be if students are to progress, but it is done so in an unobtrusive way such that it is presented as a series of maxims and principles by which students might abide and thus lead  honest and decent lives. The most immediate manifestation of this is in its five tenets: Etiquette, Modesty, Perseverance, Self-Control, Indomitable Spirit. It is mandatory that all students know what these are and what they mean.

Training

My son and I stay to watch the remainder of the class and he is keen to give it a go, so I bring him down and he starts to train the following week. I accompany him to each lesson for the first few weeks; I guess to make sure that he is training safely and happily. I soon realise that this is not an issue at all as the instructors: Master Con and Fatima Halpin, Robin Bell,  Alec Bryan as well as Neil give a high standard of tuition, which allows individual students to learn and progress in what can, sometimes be a busy class. However, I continue to accompany him long after I am satisfied he is settled, because I begin to be fascinated by the whole concept.

One thing that struck me immediately was that the progress students made (If they were prepared to put in the time, and most were) was impressive. In fact, the whole concern was imbued with a ‘culture of success and achievement’. Higher grade students were making the transitions from the coloured belts to the coveted black, and from there, instructing  the lower grades. Meanwhile the junior students were encouraged to accomplish at the regular gradings and prove themselves worthy of the next belt up. In addition, the club was constantly pushing for honours. Competition, in the form of Kireugi (fighting)  Poomsae ( collective term for the Patterns) and challenges against other clubs was a strong element of the club’s work. Students were encouraged to compete and as a result the Brotherhood had a justifiably highly regarded reputation in British WTF Taekwondo circles. Success was expected and celebrated when it came, with award ceremonies built into lessons so that everyone participated.

With this in mind, I recall that at the end of each saturday morning class, Neil presented a trophy every week to the student he thought had worked the hardest and had made most progress. Anyone good enough to be presented with it three times, he said would win it for keeps. On getting changed one morning my lad said:

‘Dad, I’m going to win that’ And he did.

An overwhelming air of inevitability

For my part, as with so many parents (and there were many in whose footsteps I followed and yet more who subsequently followed in mine) with an overwhelming air of inevitability, I soon found myself being inexorably sucked into joining my offspring in the Do Jang. I began to think: Hmmmmm I reckon I could do this, and what a good way of keeping fit!  Suddenly, I had a Do Bok (uniform) ‘Oh there’s no going back now!’ remarked a fellow, but more experienced late starter at seeing this; and with the addition of a Te (My painfully white belt)  I was, before I knew it, training three nights a week.

Bloody hard work, with the result that …

And I loved it! It was bloody hard work, don’t get me wrong.  Due to advancing age (I was in my 40s when I took the plunge) and the associated failure of vital body parts (and of course in my case, the onset of Parkinson’s although at the start of my ‘Martial Career’ it remained undiagnosed) I had to work  twice as hard as the young ones. And he was right, my equally creaky colleague:  There was no going back. The drill work and Poomsae, the repetition of moves again and again in the Do Jang till you were doing them in your sleep (basically, the development of  ‘Muscle Memory’) could be tedious at times but is something for which I am eternally grateful, because as a result I now have a stock of warm-ups, exercises, stretches and movements I can call on to help me deal with the ways in which the Parkinson’s affects my body. In the same way that Conductive Education, developed at The Peto Institute in Hungary can sometimes enable people with disablilties to initiate movement by ‘cues’ and ‘prompts’, I employ the principle of  the ‘action/reaction’ force to make reluctant limbs groan into life. Of course none of this works without the drugs too, unfortunately. I am still able  to remember most of the patterns and from time to time, when I’m feeling brave enough, I try a couple.

I really enjoyed the sparring. This was when you used the skills and techniques for what they were intended: fighting. Full contact was always very safely managed. That is not to say that anything less than 100% commitment was expected, but adequate protection and an awareness of the well-being of others were insisted upon whilst any sign of recklessness not tolerated and stamped on straight away. Breaking was great fun, and almost always left me with a sense of achievement and surprisingly, rarely any lasting harm. I was possessed of only modest skills, as I was always aware: especially compared to the awesome physical and mental prowess of some of my instructors and fellow clubmembers. For example, the skill, accuracy and control in the performance of flawless patterns as demonstrated to a hushed hall by Master Con Halpin, Robin Bell’s fluidity of movement, Andrew Yick’s phenomenal breaking power, Wayne Gates’ absolute concentration and economy of style.

Bloody Parkinson’s, with the result that …

For me, it is the general feeling of fitness, strength, well-being and confidence in one’s own physical ability, the friendship and the cameraderie that existed within the club that are the highlights of my time training with The Brotherhood. All things I miss terribly.

My pride and joy, and Yes! They are genuine.

I got my diagnosis three days before taking my Blue Belt grading. The consultant recommended starting drug treatment immediately. However, after realising that starting on Anti-Parkinson medication (though microscopic amounts compared to the industrial quantities I have to take now) would involve sickness and nausea, I held off (although physically I was nowhere near my best) till after the test.

I passed. I’m not sure how.  As far as moving up the belts was concerned, my son and I went neck and neck (although of course no martial art should be just about belts) Most of our training was done together. It’s a great comfort to know that at least for a couple of years he, and to a certain extent his brother, younger by two years and who trained with us for about the last 6 months or so, will have some memories of me as fit and able, going through my paces, equally happy to face up to an experienced Black Belt or a white belt novice.

The First Southern Area Poomsae Championships, Gatwick

And so, masterfully succinct – as you’ve come to expect  from me, that’s the quickly-sketched background, as to why I am here, in my Do bock and (2ndKup) red belt, freezing my nuts off, far too early for it to be respectable; on a Saturday morning  in a sports hall near Gatwick.

I am here as a competitor in the First Southern Area Poomsae Championships, hosted by The Livingwell Club, near Gatwick. And it is busy, with entrants from all areas of the country.

Although I have spectated at both pattern and fighting events, this is my first competition. My day is made virtually complete when, with dismay I realise that my competition category is that of  ‘Veteran’.

And I’m still freezing cold.  Together with Big John, my long-suffering, even-tempered sometime sparring partner, who is also competing in the same category, I mooch around  bit to find out at what time we are expected on the floor, so to speak. Apparently our ‘slot’ is about midday. I do some warming up and begin to run through my patterns. My eldest has a busy day. As a first Kup (Red/Black belt – one away from black) his is one of the most competitive  groups. Unusually I begin to feel quietly confident. This rare state of affairs is thrown into turmoil more than somewhat by the news that they are bringing our category foward. So far forward in fact, that we’re on now!

frantically trying to remember 

While I am frantically trying to remember the drill for entering the competition area, the first competitor, a red belt from Liverpool takes the floor. He knows his stuff. He’s obviously competed a few times before and already looks like a potential winner. My confidence in a podium finish, however is undiminished. Today feels like the day. Then it’s Big John’s turn. John has been training a little longer and more regularly than me. And it shows. Then it’s my turn. Thankfully, I am still in an ‘on’ state (In other words my L – Dopa medication is still working)

Normally, there are three rounds. The first requires performance  of one Poomsae from the first compulsory section. I think I did Koryo, the  first Black Belt pattern. You are marked on Accuracy (Correctness of Poomsae: techniques and basic movements) and Presentation (Skill, speed, strength and power)  The highest 50% in the category go through to round two. Here, contestants choose from the second, more advanced compulsory section. I must have done Keumgang, the second Black Belt pattern, which would have left me, for the third and final round, pattern 8 and one other. Which? I don’t recall. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it didn’t go to a third round. I remember nothing about performing, except at the end, trying to make sure I finished on the right spot, which in most patterns is the same as your starting point. I also remember the feeling of relief that it was over. It is quite a tall order to perform physical tasks/movements of such complexity and under such intense scrutiny.

It’s true, Dear Reader

A short wait for the scores and Lo and behold! I get into the medals! That’s right! Third place. Joy unbounded! … or Joy  unfounded, I’ not sure which. My son on the other hand has had  a tough and unproductive afternoon. His category went the whole three rounds and started with about 20 competitors. He has cooled down after his last pattern, and is feeling shivery, achy, hungry and generally pissed off. It’s now 5:00pm and we still have to battle the traffic home; so my, some might say, rather unwarranted celebrations are cut short and we head off. On the drive back, my eldest is not in the mood for ‘move by move’ breakdowns of my killer patterns … and promptly falls asleep, only waking up as we pass the White Bear pub in Ruislip. He doesn’t realise it as his ‘cartoon’ sleepy face: two crosses for eyes and an upside down mouth with its tongue hanging out, slowly dissolves and he returns to normal, but all journey long I’ve nevertheless been regaling him with the tale of my day’s  success.

‘One thing’s a bit wierd though Dad, Howcome you only had to do two rounds?’

Perhaps he has been listening after all …

The eagle-eyed among you, I suspect, may have spotted same:

‘Why no third round? Ah. I didn’t explain that did I?’ Of course the reason we weren’t called to do a third round is the same reason I was so confident of a ‘podium place’: ‘There weren’t enough entrants to warrant a third round.’

‘How many, Dad?’

‘Oh, enough to make it a close and exciting competiton’ I offered, unconvincingly.

‘How many?’

‘Three’

‘What!? So all you had to do was turn up, living and breathing to get into the medals? He was livid. ‘And even if you weren’t I suppose you still would have got it posthumously! …’

It’s true, Dear Reader. Three contestants: me, Big John and the Scouser who, as we suspected he would, won it.

The trophy – Life size!

And so ended my competitive Taekwondo career.

And that was it.

I continued training for about a year, but eventually circumstances prevailed. I remember my last training session. I was with my two lads.  Mindful of pacing myself for the whole lesson, I had taken it easy. It was no good. The ‘Offs’ had started to come more regularly and powerfully by then. So much so, that I had to sit out the bulk of the lesson, frozen, unable to move. We left at the end, some degree of movement having returned: sufficient I thought for me to get us home in the car, but it wasn’t to be. About half a mile from the club I had to pull in as I felt that the rigidity which persisted made it unsafe for me to drive. We had to sit ignominiously in the car till a taxi arrived and got us home. I cycled back the following day to collect the car.

And that was it.

I have to say, in all honesty and without wishing to descend at all into sloppy sentimentalism that it was a significant loss. A loss of, as I have indicated so many things: the fitness side of it, the skills, techniques and the learning all the time, the piecing together of one bit of knowledge with another, the way in which certain elements of the training, and in particular events such as gradings hauled you out of your comfort zone, and the shared nature of the experience of all that. The banter, the fun and the friendship. And I think here is where we get to the nitty gritty, for ultimately, the strength I draw from my memories of my time spent training with the Brotherhood as, let’s face it, a decidedly average – if that – Martial Artist, is a result of the warmth and kindness extended to yours truly and my family, by almost everyone involved in the club at whatever level. Now is that the friendship of a particular group of people, bound together by a common interest, or is that the friendship of Taekwondo? I’m still working on that, but I think I know the answer.

At about the same time I stopped training, though thankfully I don’t think the two events are related, the club went through some changes in personnel and training facilities. Neil Patterson, in my humble view, a gifted and resourceful teacher meanwhile had moved to the South Coast, where, knees permitting or – more often than not –  knees not permitting, he continues to instruct. I only mention this in order to point out, without being presumptious that I consider all Brotherhood club members, be they current or former with whom I had contact over the years, friends.

Thank you and goodnight

I would like to end this long-winded epic by, as well wishing the Brotherhood a Happy 30th birthday, saying a big ‘Thank You’ to those people (far too many to mention individually, and if I did I’d be bound to forget someone,) who had the misfortune to have to spar with me, do one step, self defence or watch as I stumbled my way through pattern after pattern or who were generally responsible for giving me a ‘prod’ along the way. Special Thanks go to the following, who I will name  for their willingness to give of their time and expertise, their patience, help, encouragement and inspiration: Neil Patterson, Master Con Halpin, Fatima Halpin, Robin Bell, Brian Robinson, Alec Bryan, Donette Gates-Day, Tracey and Rob Sleight, Rosie Biddlecombe, Kyle Patterson, The Long-Suffering Big John Moran and family and last but by no means least, Master Usman Dildar (I finally wrote it! I may have gone off track from time to time, but I did finally do it!)

To all of you,

당신을 감사하십시오

Links

The Brotherhood Taekwondo Foundation

Titan Taekwondo

Premier Ki Taekwondo

Ickenham Taekwondo

London Taekwondo Academy 

The British Taekwondo Control Board 

World Taekwondo Federation

Postscript

Of course, it has occurred to me since publication of the above, that certain points may have been left open to potential misinterpretation. What you have read, skimmed, through or totally ignored to come straight here is My Own Story. I am not advocating the practice of Taekwondo as a ‘cure’ for Parkinson’s Disease. There is no cure. Nor am I suggesting it allieviates symptoms, or likwise encouraging people with Parkinson’s to take up the sport. In my case, I was lucky enough to ‘get in’ my all-important two formative years before the arrival of my uninvited guest. The point is that I was, and still am able to use some of the skills and techniques I have learned and put them to use or adapt them in such a way as they enable me to keep fairly supple and fit: which is half the battle with Parkinson’s. They may play their part in my ‘Bag of Tricks’, which might for instance, mean steps or moves which allow me to navigate a particularly tricky bit of the house when my walking is not too good.

Parkinson’s has been dubbed ‘The Designer Disease’ for a reason. No two people’s symptoms are alike. What ‘works’ for one person may not for another, as I have painfully found out over the years, while Taekwondo is a Martial Art; It is not meant to be easy.

Should anyone with Parkinson’s, despite all that has been said, wish to take up the sport, I would urge you strongly to discuss it with your GP or Neurologist in the first instance and then with the club you intend to train with. As for choosing a club (and this goes for anyone: able-bodied, young or old) shop around. Visit a few. Sit and watch lessons (If the club is reluctant to, or doesn’t allow this – Strike it from your list.

End of sermon.

© Andy Daly 2011

If It’s Thursday It Must Be Tintin!

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At school one day, out of the blue, the lad who was sitting next to me, and with whom I’d had a fairly tempestuous relationship, involving at least one fight said:
“Why do they always put Tintin on telly on a Thursday?”
“They don’t” I said. “I saw it on Monday last week”
“No, no …” the urchin replied “It’s definately Thursday. They always announce it at the start”
“What are you gabbing on about?”
“They announce it!” he said, emphatically, and taking a deep breath he attempted an impersonation of the stentorian voice of the M. C. who did indeed initiate the programme: “Thursday’s adventures of Tintin!” He boomed.
I quickly weigh up the relative benefits and the likely timescale involved in explaining that the announcer was in fact saying “Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin”, then of course,who Hergé was and so on; compared to simply letting sleeping dogs lie.

It didn’t take long.
“Hmmm! Yeah so they do. Well I never … Tintin only on Thursdays eh?”

Love And Other Drugs

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As you may know, I try to avoid focusing on my Parkinson’s as a subject for posts, but this has been gnawing away for a little while, so here we go.

Know It All

Now if anybody tells you that these days, Parkinson’s is not so terrible and that it can be easily managed with drugs, you can say nothing.

 

But just punch them as hard as you like on the Philtrum (It is the vertical groove or ‘channel’ we all have which runs from the nose to the top lip) There are lots of nerve endings here which make it extremely painful when bopped.

With any luck, fragments of bone will be shattered away and lodge themselves in the Know It All’s brain too.

Joy of Movement

In order to experience  the joy of movement every morning I enter into a kind of ‘Faustian’ deal.  However in my case it is not out of choice, nor some idle desire for worldly pleasures, knowledge or power.  Neither is it made with the Devil (although sometimes I do wonder.) No, my pact is with pharmaceuticals and my Mephistopheles, the drug companies, Merck and Boehringer Ingelheim. For the joy of movement I have to take regular doses of two drugs in particular: Levodopa which basically turns into Dopamine in the brain in an attempt to replace the missing ‘chemical messenger’ whose depletion is essentially the cause of my Parkinsonian symptoms. However, Dopamine is very quickly broken down by the body, so it requires plenty of help to ensure it reaches its target. (Think of ‘The Dambusters’ or the aerial bombing sequence at the end of ‘Star Wars’ that Lucas lifted from the same 1955 classic.) My Neurologist once said it was a bit like  putting rocket fuel in a car. The second, Pramipexole, is a Dopamine Agonist, designed to stimulate receptor sites such that they make the most efficient use of the available Dopamine. Both are in my case, very effective when taken at the appropriate times, sometimes in conjunction with other drugs. They permit me a range of  movement from one end of the scale: stumbling and creaking about, to the other equally debilitating hyper-active and dyskenetic (uncontrollable) movement and everything in between. These phases manifest themselves as I go through the day and the efficacy of the drugs is tempered by stress, tiredness, the ‘blocking’ action of proteins, the wearing ‘on’ or ‘off’ of doses, dose failure and so on)

Payback

And what is the price I have to pay? Well, well, this is where it gets interesting. As drugs of true dependence, over time your body requires more to do the same job; and of course Parkinson’s is degenerative as we know. So over even more time it means even, even more. Even more drugs which are known to cause secondary effects (did you know this?) such as hallucinations, paranoia, compulsive behaviour, psychosis and all sorts of other unpleasant things you really don’t want to know about. Out and about, people assume that you are drunk – or just a nutcase, and laugh at your increasingly eccentric behavioural mannerisms: which of course become worse once you realise you are being observed. Friends and family watch as your personality becomes hideously distorted and, just like drug addicts out on the street, you turn inwards and obsess about your next dose, and the next and eventually it starts to run your life. And the worst thing is you know it happening, but feel powerless to do anything about it.

Love

And what of Love?

You love. You love as deeply as you ever did, perhaps even more so, but as deep as you feel it you also want hide it.  You want to hide yourself away too. I guess it becomes part of your defence mechanism. You feel the need to protect those around you and immunise them to your suffering. You get so objective about it that you start to become hard-hearted. You can’t bear to think about it sometimes as you feel it reveals chinks in your armour which would very easily be exploited by the unprincipled, steely spectres that haunt you. You can’t bear to think about the enormity of what is happening. If you did, you reason, the tears would almost certainly fall. And if they started, they would never never stop. Ever. But you still feel the love, often expressed in the simplest of ways, as in the feats of endurance performed on my behalf by those nearest to me every day.

And what if?

And what if I just don’t take them? The drugs I mean. Well, within a matter of a few hours I am reduced to a kind of jelly, Unable to walk, talk clearly, chew, manipulate with my fingers or hands. I wouldn’t last long in the wild … or in the front room for that matter. But my cognition and awareness remain intact.

Nasty bastard isn’t it?

“Parkinson’s causes slowness of movement, tremor, rigidity and is commonly diagnosed in people over 60.” How many times have I read that and wondered as now, age 50 with 10 years of the ‘Shaking Palsy’ under my belt ‘Yes? and the rest?

Good News?

However, there is a glimmer of hope. I have had preliminary tests at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery here in London to assess my suitability for surgery. Specifically, Deep Brain Stimulation. I won’t go into detail, but if accepted it would mean an operation to implant electrodes deep into the brain, which would be set to send out electronic impulses stimulating various brain target areas. These  in turn, are controlled by a unit (similar to a pacemaker) implanted into the top of  the chest cavity. The results of this particular operation have for some time been the source for encouragement. It is not a cure. However  patients for whom it has been a success have been able to substantially reduce the medication they take, while quality of movement, balance, gait and tremor among other things have improved. In some cases dramatically.

My mate Reg who has had it done says he feels like a ‘New Man’ and since the op he’s re-applied for and been granted his Driving Licence – A target for me if ever there was one.

The film? I haven’t seen it. Review? Oh dear. You mean you’ve sat through all of the above waiting for a review of the film? Oh well, never mind. At least you may have learned something.

LINKS

Parkinson’s UK  (Formerly The Parkinson’s Disease Society)

The Parkinson’s Appeal for Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

Patients’ Stories

© Andy Daly  2011 (‘Know It All’ first published in  Feb 22nd  2010)

Houston, You Have A Problem?

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We were at the dinner table one evening, talking school with our boys. Thankfully, this has always (up to now at least) been a thoroughly pleasurable experience: They do like to talk about school and especially since they have both been at secondary – they tend to ‘bounce’ stories off each other. Occasionally, you get some utter gems, such as this one.

Mission Control. Houston Texas

Our eldest told us this about his Year 9 (That’s ‘Third Year’ in £ S d) Science teacher ‘Miss Houston’. Miss seems a bit dizzy from what he’s already told us. You get the feeling that she’s not really fully in control. She is Greek, apparently, talks in a high-pitched singy-songy voice, and asks the kids “Houston gotta problem?” (As in Houston, Texas NASA. Mission Control: “Houston we gotta problem”) when she thinks they are stuck. She likes a challenge.

Year 9 Science classroom

Well, it’s a hot, tedious afternoon, almost time for home, but that bell is just far enough away to make it feel like an eternity. They are studying Human Reproduction and are labelling diagrams in their books as she points out for them the various key features. They are scribbling away with the parts of  the male reproductive system. They get to ‘Scrotum’ which she points out on the diagram and as they continue to write, heads down, suddenly, and to no-one in particular, she announces:

“Ahhh! ‘Scrotum’ I love the way it rolls off your tongue!”

(I swear this is true)

The kids carry on writing … then it slowly began to dawn first on one or two…then a few more. Lazily, the import of what she had actually said, coupled with her directness began to make  itself apparent to the class – and then, it was the end of the lesson. Bell went, students departed. So it wasn’t until outside that the real fuss began, with pupils scurrying down the corridors hurridly cramming books into bags (the Boys’ voluminous enough to carry a full set of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ the Girls’ about the size  of a postage stamp) “Did she really say what I think she said?” “I think so …” “Hey Shellie, guess what our Science teacher’s just said?…”

Well, after I’d recovered my composure (it was one of those cases where eventually you get to laughing at other people laughing. and our eldest’s laugh is the most infectious ever..Oh God , I was in bulk…) Well, I was horrified and impressed in equal measure. He had, in fact already told his Mum in the car after she’d picked him and his brother up for the Home Run. She nearly went off the road in hysterics; they thought she was having a fit, she eventually pulled up.

As we got to hear more and more stories about Miss Houston, it became clear that this was completely in character. Our eldest chose to study Chemistry, her subject at GCSE level (however not necessarily because of her, though I will strongly encourage his brother to do so too.)

Another example  from a GCSE class, again, courtesy of our eldest. She taught them about the ‘Bonding’ of atoms, by getting people from the class to act out scenes from a nightclub where each participant was an atom, the majority of who were out for a few drinks and a laugh, but basically to bond with another. Then there were one or two ‘kinky’ ones who wanted to bond in twos and threes! I began to wonder. Is she a dizzy, daft old moo who doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going, or is she (and this is where my money’s going) actually a very canny teacher who was using language, key words, vingettes, play-acting, kinaesthetic learning to make it fun, interesting and easy to remember.

I finally met her at our eldest’s year 11 parents’ evening and we had such a laugh (much of which was at his expense I’ m ashamed to say) she didn’t know I was a teacher and I didn’t let on. We were however, on the same wavelength immediately. He will never have any trouble remembering, or explaining what ‘bonding’ is or how it works. As for scrotum…

One very cool (if still slightly dotty) lady.

 © Andy Daly  2010

Ahoy Square! Feat. N-Dubz

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I know you hate it. I did too.

It’s that moment in the exam hall, when you’re desperately trying to concentrate You are dredging your memory, putting all your faith in the tricks you have been taught to release these vital golden nuggets: Associate, Visualize, Review, Read, Recite, Rewrite, Repeat, Mnemonics – Rhyme, Acronym etc.

What were the second and third singles off of the N-Dubz album ‘Against All Odds’?

One of the teachers invigilating decides at this critical point of the History exam to come and stand right behind you. They click their heels on the floor/very deliberately avoid clicking their heels on the floor (just as irritating)/jangle loose change in their pocket/have a conversation with another member of staff or just stand there; which is all the more infuriating, because you can’t see what they are doing; what they are looking over your shoulder at.

Oh come on, I’ve got to get this right, you think to yourself. What were they? Fire … Fire something … ‘Playing with Fire’  That’s it!  Single three? Over? … It ain’t over? No!  ‘Say it’s all Over’  – Bingo!

Thankfully, Teacher/Invigilator has moved off to wind up someone else now.

So you sum up: that’s  ‘Playing with Fire’ released in July 2009. It reached its highest UK chart position of 17 on downloads alone falling back to 36 the following week. So … it’s 36/17 and July. ‘Say it’s all Over’ was put out on 4th January 2010 and charted at number 39 … That  gives me 4/01 or 01/4 and 39.

17th July 1936 to 1st April 1939: Spanish Civil War dates! Hah! Sir would be proud of me! No thanks to the roaming invigilator.

Where are they now? A quick look up confirms that the restless teacher is over the other side of the hall.

Right what’s the next question? ‘What did Germany contribute to the Spanish Civil War?’ Oerr … Now what was the name of that third track off the last B-Tight album ….?

To be fair, the regulations for examination invigilation require that teachers/invigilators should actively patrol the exam hall at all times. But what do they think about? It must be so boring.

Well, sometimes they play games. When I was a teacher, back in the days of chalk and talk, we used to play Battleships! That’s right, the old ‘guessing game’ invented by Clifford Von Wickler (not a made – up name I promise)

We’d ‘divvy’ up the hall using the columns and rows of exam tables to make our battle grids on squared paper; one on which we would arrange our ‘battle group’ of 5 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, 3 destroyers,  3 submarines and 2  patrol boats and on the other we recorded our hits and misses. It worked equally well as a group game, or in single – player mode.

All you simply did as the game (exam) commenced, was amble over your opponent’s territory and stand by the desk you wished to attack. A signal from your opposite number would tell you whether it was a ‘hit’ and if so, what class of vessel or ‘miss’.

So if you ever heard a teacher in the middle of an exam, momentarily forgetting where they were, stifle what appeared to be a triumphant yelp, or punch the air with glee; you now know what it was. They had just sunk someone’s last remaining aircraft carrier.

As for those folders crammed full of sheets with lists of names and huge numbers of letter/number combinations such as A1, B 1, C2,  B2, C3 etc. that you see some teachers glued to, such that they take them everywhere (even home) or that fill every available space in Heads of Departments, Faculties, or Assistant Deputies’ offices. Don’t be fooled! They are not  Target Minimum, Attainment or Report grades, merely old ‘Battleship’ game cards. Though I can’t say in all certainty that no teachers have ever got the two mixed up.

© Andy Daly 2010

PS. Yes, yes I know: Proof read before you publish it. I will get the hang of it – Promise!