31 October 2005

on 31 October 2005 at 05:30

Mysterious movements of head teachers

The mysterious movements of head teachers have long been an interest of mine, so I was delighted to receive a message from a teacher in a secondary school who has made a study of the subject.

He prefers to remain anonymous to prevent publishers – or indeed head teachers – from beating a path to his door. But he teaches in one of the more testing parts of Norfolk.

One of his more pithy observations is that in the secondary sector at least, the term “head teacher” is a bit of a misnomer, since they don’t. Maybe the all-purpose “team leader” should be substituted.

But what he is really interested in is the meetings they attend – and what happens as a result of them. He has quantified the outcomes quite carefully, using computer models and statistical analysis, and has come up with a figure as close to zero as makes no difference. To be fair, he is looking at this from the point of view of teachers and children, and not filling in forms, which is the main activity of heads now that the Government has decided to make Ofsted inspectors’ lives easier by unloading tonnes of paper on to schools so that they can inspect themselves. (This is a bit of a secret; so don’t tell anyone.)

But what goes on at these meetings? Is it just a question of learning how to fill in forms? Surprisingly, my research indicates that this is by no means a small factor, but surely there is more to it.

My informant is concerned because his head “has only been in school once this term on a Friday afternoon, and in the whole of last year managed just three Fridays”. Maybe heads should wear tags, or homing devices, as featured in the reality TV programme Spooks.

More research is clearly called for, and one method would be to run a competition. My correspondent suggests asking for the most impressive responses to the following: 1. Which school can boast its head out at a meeting on the most consecutive days? 2. The best excuse for a head being at a meeting. 3. The best name of a group meeting they attend. 4. The most consecutive days a head is in school.

I would give his own answers to all four, but I fear it would give him away. So I will restrict myself to his answer to Question Two, which is, almost inevitably, “A meeting to see if further meetings are necessary”.

For personal reasons I have to restrict this competition to the secondary sector. I have it on the best possible authority that primary heads are beyond reproach, and always there when you need them.

Hyenas to make comeback on Kelling Heath

Revelations that the climate of Norfolk was once much warmer and supported animals such as hippos, hyenas and elephants were welcomed yesterday by newt war veteran Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who refused to give his age.

Mr Houseago, whose company Houseago Hicks is based at the home of a Taverham woman, is planning to reintroduce these exciting animals into Norfolk “as soon as it gets hot enough”.

He said: “Global warming means we are nearly there, so I have ordered a job lot of used hyenas, which I hope to release on to Kelling Heath next Thursday. I am already in talks with certain African government representatives about elephants, though no-one seems to have the West Runton brand that I’m looking for. And trying to find any mammoth, let alone a Mundesley one, is a thankless task.

“My top agent, Len 'Kissme' Hardy, has been scouring the world.”

Asked where he would place hippos, he suggested that Pingoland, near Watton, would be ideal. “The waterholes are already there,” he said. “The Broads Authority wanted me to put them in the Broads, but they hadn’t thought it through. It would make tacking very difficult. This is much more sensible.”

Mr Houseago was also keen to reintroduce sharks into rivers like the Yare, Wensum and Tud, although he was not convinced that they had entirely disappeared from Norfolk. “What other explanation is there for speed cameras?” he asked.

Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing, is researching the implications with help from Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, who is concentrating on the possibility of space-time distortion.

QMD risk keeps Ministers out of East Anglia

Fears that the Government might invade parts of East Anglia were discounted last night after the leak of an intelligence document suggesting the presence of Questions of Mass Destruction in coastline areas of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Spokesman Eric “Smally” Small said that ministers had no intention of entering parts of the country where they might encounter QMDs, since these were believed to be particularly virulent and could blow a hole in certain policies, with unforeseeable fall-out.

He felt that the best plan was to wait and see if the QMDs, which were thought to be located in areas where the coastline was being eroded, would collapse into the sea or be overtaken by waves of apathy.

“We do not want to go anywhere near them,” said Mr Small. “They are far too dangerous to handle, and we have no answer to them.”

Asked if it might be possible to dismantle and dispose of the QMDs, he said the risks involved to people whose only mistake was to live and work in certain areas – like Central London – were just too great. He urged everyone to stay clear of anything that looked like a cliff.

God in prison shock

Nothing a bishop does surprises me any more, but I must admit to being taken aback by a headline in the Church of England Newspaper the other day.

It read: “Serving six years for armed robbery, God spoke to me in my cell.”

It was not so much that God would commit an armed robbery – though finding a motive must be tricky – but that someone somehow managed to catch and convict Him. Clearly a frame-up, but it makes some of the plots in Waking the Dead seem almost convincing.

17 October 2005

on 17 October 2005 at 08:40

Worshipping the shopping and soccer way

My suggestion that the spire-and-gravestones Chapelfield mall in Norwich provided fresh evidence that shopping was the new religion provoked an indignant response from a Thetford reader. He claimed that the national religion was in fact football, with “Jesus lagging far behind, even at Christmas”.

There has it is true been some confusion between football and Christianity: many will recall the old slogan “Jesus saves, but Dalglish nets the rebound”. But is soccer really a religion? And if so, is it more of a religion than shopping?

Maybe you could see shopping as the Church of England, with a set way of processing down the aisles, assistants (priests) to act as intermediaries between you and the creators and a choice of liturgy published as catalogues. It is obviously necessary to know the correct responses, which is why men find it harder to deal with than women. Significantly, the proportion of women to men in shopping malls and churches is roughly the same.

Smart clothing is important, together with incense. And then there’s the music: all the old favourites, played on what might very well be an organ if you could hear it clearly enough, and sung by someone else – a kind of choir.

Football, on the other hand, is unashamedly non-conformist. Like all non-conformists, its devotees do the same thing every week and prefer brash choruses that they can sing along to. True, they use traditional chants – but in a new and charismatic sort of way.

They are unafraid to move their arms in worship and always enjoy the sermon – or match report, as it is sometimes called. Praying is often extrovert and passionate, sometimes desperate. Stewards (sidesmen) have a key role in keeping order.

Meanwhile Christianity has become confused, with some Anglicans behaving like nonconformists, or shoppers at a sale, when anything could happen.

Since this is more like the original Church, you could call it Back to Basics. One city church calls it Developing Consciousness: not a bad idea, and no chance at all of confusing that with shopping and football.

Christmas without any problems

Apologies for mentioning the C-word so early in the year, but I have been receiving shopping brochures with it on for some weeks now.

This always upsets me, but one in particular gave me pause for thought. It was titled boldly “Christmas Made Easy”. I didn’t read any further, but I suspect it goes something like this.

Mary and Jesus are relieved to find that the census has been cancelled and they can stay in familiar surroundings while Mary has her baby. She decides on a home birth, and a midwife and doctor are in attendance in case of complications. There aren’t any.

Some jolly shepherds who knock at the door are turned away for health and safety reasons, and reported music and singing in the nearby hills are attributed by the local council to boisterous but well-meaning teenagers. The family wins expensive gifts in the Jerusalem lottery, some asylum seekers are turned away at the border, and later King Herod decides not to kill any children at all. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus decide to take advantage of a special offer short break in Egypt for a few years.

“Easter Made Easy” is even better.

Martians take climate change seriously

Environmentally minded Martians are concerned about climate change, following the discovery that for three summers in a row deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet’s south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size.

Fears that this could lead to canals overflowing, new impact craters, strong winds and a reddish hue to the sky have prompted Martians to make dramatic reductions in the number of cars being driven, planes being flown, power stations being brought on line, binge drinking and passive smoking.

So much so, in fact, that the Mars Global Surveyor, now in its ninth year orbiting the planet, has shown that almost none of this is now happening at all.

Up and down driving could improve concentration

Anyone with any experience of driving in Norfolk might think that the last thing you would want to tell most local drivers is to slow down – unless of course you wanted them to stop altogether.

Last week I followed a queue of cars from Saxlingham Nethergate to Stoke Holy Cross headed by someone doing between 20 and 30mph on a road where 50mph is quite reasonable – and below the legal limit. I would call this selfish, inconsiderate and dangerous driving, but perhaps the offender had simply been viewing the speed camera partnerships’ recent “See More – Slow Down” advertisements.

The idea that if you slow down you will react more quickly to danger is a bizarre one. I prefer the much less weird idea of vibrating the bottoms, hands and feet of motorists.

This could help cut what is by far the most common type of accident – caused by lack of concentration, not speed – by up to 15 per cent, according to a study by Dr Charles Spence of Oxford University.

Studies on vibrating drivers are also being done by the Transport Research Laboratory. I can’t wait for the advertisements.

Shock twist in murder mystery

Previews of television programmes are not often innovative or even surprising, but I was taken aback by the lack of ambition displayed by whoever wrote the summary in a national newspaper for the second episode (of two) last week of Waking the Dead – a programme that features murder investigations by the police. “The identity of the killer is uncovered,” it read. What will they think of next?

Joker or Master Card

I rarely comment on people’s names, in case I’m leant on. But the Company of Makers of Playing Cards have left me little option, for their Master at present is none other than Mr J Card. The only question remaining is whether he pays by Mastercard or plays his joker.

3 October 2005

on 3 October 2005 at 05:30

Making a comeback after the Crucifixion

Some think that public consultation is a wonderful thing. Of course one of the earliest examples resulted in the Crucifixion, but it was such a good idea that this minor setback was overcome, and it was resurrected.

It is an unusually flexible tool. You can use it when you don’t want to make a decision, as with the Norwich northern distributor road. This might have come in handy slightly earlier, when Jesus asked the powers-that-be what authority they thought John the Baptist had. “We’ll put it out to public consultation” would have sounded so much better than “We don’t know”. (Matthew 21, since you ask.)

You can also use the public consultation tool when you have no intention of taking any notice of the results. This method was pioneered long ago in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham and is now being used to good effect in Norwich, where it has been decided to amalgamate two schools on the Northfields site despite only three out of 50 responses from parents favouring it – and a 200-strong petition from local residents against it because of traffic congestion and road safety issues.

You can simply talk a lot about public consultation and then not use it at all. This happened when traffic planners in Norwich decided to ban right turns from Thorpe Road into Riverside Road without mentioning it to local residents who had to go round in circles as a result.

And then of course, there’s the A140.

After I mentioned some objections to a 50mph limit on the former trunk road between Norwich and Ipswich, I received a message from a woman with an engaging e-mail address that started “OBEYTHELAW” (capitals hers). So clearly a warm human being, but she has the advantage of coming from Suffolk, which, as she pointed out, I don’t.

What has this to do with public consultation? In response to my comments last time Ms OBEYTHELAW (she has another name, but I don’t want to embarrass her) has “got about 40 people to e-mail the council pleading with them to keep the 50mph limit”.

So democracy and independent thought are alive and well in Suffolk.

I’m not sure which category of public consultation that falls under. You’ll have to make your own minds up.

Always use a graceful arc when stoning martyrs

The transition from Christianity to shopping as the national religion went a step further with the opening of the Chapelfield complex in Norwich.

Observant readers will have noticed that it not only attracts people on a Sunday, but it also has a spire. Is this intended as an open challenge to Norwich Cathedral, or is it something more subtle or symbolic – like the gravestones bordering the entrance walkway?

Chapelfield, being a modern sort of place, also has artwork – specifically artwork commemorating the stoning of St Stephen. The stones appear in what we are told is a “graceful arc” – the sort of thing Stephen would certainly have appreciated as the missiles whistled towards him.

“Wow, that’s a really graceful arc,” I can almost hear him say.

One can only imagine how delighted he would have felt if he had known that his sacrifice would have been worth a passing glance from aesthetically-minded martyrs to shopping in the 21st century.

Key to erosion control in gardens near Wymondham

An alert reader has spotted what might be the answer to the ever-growing problem of erosion on the North Norfolk coast.

He points out that there are many chunky concrete blocks – originally designed to hold up German tanks if we were invaded during the last war – simply lying about in people’s gardens.

“When I drive from Hethersett to Wymondham on the B1172 there is one of them in nearly every front garden. There must be thousands of them in East Anglia,” he tells me.

Used judiciously, they would clearly perform a useful function in holding up coastal erosion.

I am a little nervous about mentioning this, as if they are not used for such a purpose, Norwich City Council will quickly buy them up and use them for traffic calming.

My informant tells me that most of the blocks are carefully preserved. Some are even painted, with house numbers on them.

McCorquodales confused by redundant fans

The confused McCorquodale family, who gave up on Norfolk after finding sand all over the place and extensive flooding round the edges, have returned to parts of London, where they came from.

Before leaving, however, they took a trip to the east coast, where they were amazed to find giant fans in the centre of the still-widespread flooding.

“We couldn’t get very close because of the drainage problems,” said John (Corky) McCorquodale last night. “But what on earth do they want huge fans out there for? It’s windy enough already.”

He also felt that it “must be risky plugging them in”.

If you need just the right material, ask an artist

I had always thought of artists as people who sat around painting, in an other-worldly sort of way. Some small involvement for the second year running in the Fringe at the Factory exhibition at the Bally Shoe Factory in Hall Road, Norwich, has reminded me again how far this is from the truth.

Artists are people who spend hours cleaning and scraping walls and floors. They are people who construct vast pieces of work using esoteric materials and then face the problem of actually transporting them from place to place – in some cases actually putting the whole huge thing together on site. They drive large vehicles, or hire vans. Never mind DIY enthusiasts: if I ever need to know how to fix things together, precisely what materials are suitable for what conditions and where obscure but precisely the right items are obtainable, I shall ask an artist. Fortunately, I know quite a few of them now. Incidentally, the exhibition – on till October 9 – is well worth a visit: a massive array of amazingly varied art of all shapes and sizes. Oh, and some other-worldly pictures, too.