Pondlife

Where once sat a shallow, murky and slimy pond, which on the occasion of our housewarming party famously - and briefly - contained one of our more inebriated visitors, there is now nothing but soil. All trace of the outlandish seating area has been erased. Except from memory.

It took three separate attempts over three days to dig up the bamboo, which had no doubt started life as a single clump but which over the years infiltrated every inch of the pond's periphery and from there spread its spiny tendrils over almost a quarter of the garden. Deep and tenacious it often felt as though I was pulling my guts out rather than bamboo roots, and at one point I layed my palm open on a particularly spiky bit, which turned the air blue with a long and heartfelt string of creative expletives before I remembered that our neighbours' children were playing only a few yards away.

Finally, we have a permanent resting place for the Pieris which followed us in its pot from New Barns. Being an Ali-Baba-shaped pot, I had eventually to abandon any attempt to extract the Pieris and its root ball with the pot intact. Six years proved plenty long enough for it to wedge itself under the rim, requiring a firm application of a rubber mallet to smash the pot, revealing a predictably pot-shaped root structure, most of which had to be broken apart before planting.

It now sits very prettily beside the (previously pond-bordering) acer and has a few months' grace before it will be ruthlessly cut back in the manner I learned from my mother at the age of about six. We're now ready to hedge up the top half of the garden before planting any more colour in the border, but that will have to wait until we've scoured the entire Internet for a good deal.

ABBA results, and the positive spin

I collected the post from the front porch at lunchtime today it included a letter from the BBC.

My play made the top 67 (what they call the "long list"). That's the good news. The letter goes on... "There were over 400 entries to the Award. Unfortunately due to incredibly stiff competition this year, your play did not make the final shortlist." And that, as they say, is the bad news.

On the bright side I've been invited to the drinks reception where they announce the winners, so I think I'll go. It can't hurt to mix with the great and the good, and I might even meet someone who says "Oh yes, I read yours and thought it was really good," or something.

Making the long list also meant that my efforts were read by one of the judging panel, so a reader's report was included with the letter:

"Breakages Must Be Paid For:
With a deceptive lightness of touch this is a dark cautionary tale centred around the unlikely relationship which develops between a home owner and his burglar. The script is well plotted with unexpected reversals, the first of which is the revelation that the burglar Satish, is actually a teenage girl. And so the script continues with a series of unexpected twists and reversals which demonstrate the constant shifting of power between the two central characters. The relationship the characters develop lulls us into a false sense of security in order to reveal an unexpected ending. But, the impact of the ending is somewhat undermined by the fact that the relationship is somewhat lacking in believability. Satish quickly establishes a connection with Nick, she makes herself indispensable by decorating his home and confides the hideous story of abuse which resulted in her leaving home and ending up in a care home. However the speed and ease at which Nick takes her into his confidence raises questions. Doubts need to be seeded but her survival and desire to avoid a return to the streets, a plausible motive for keeping Nick onside, is underplayed. Consequently, the twist in the tale when all is revealed to have been a scam on her part is too easily anticipated.

The initial idea of the victim turning vigilante was potentially interesting, but instead the twist is that the burglar becomes the magpie (sic) in the nest, unleashing a plan which results in her taking his home and it ultimately could have been tackled in a way that feels more fresh and original.

Whilst this is a thriller the script has a slightly unpleasant tone which creates distance from the characters as well as the fact that at times the dialogue is uncomfortably on the nose."

So there we have it. While initially it's hard to get past the disappointment of not winning, there are a number of positives to accentuate. The terms and conditions of the competition state: "The readers will select a longlist of up to 23 outstanding scripts submitted for the Award. These will then be read by judges from Radio Drama North, who will select from the scripts a final shortlist of up to 13 scripts." The size of the long list this year - at 67 entries almost three times longer than previous years - shows how tough the competition was. Also, assuming they stuck to a shortlist of 13, that means out of over 400 entries mine came somewhere between #14 and #67. Not a bad result for a first attempt.

The good things about the script stand out from the reader's notes, and the negatives could easily be addressed with a little work (and provide useful feedback as to what to avoid next time). The main messages for me are (a) that it was a story too large to tell properly in a 45-minute drama and (b) the Afternoon Play slot is even blander than I at first thought. That reference to dialogue being "uncomfortably on the nose" refers to the main character Nick's initial racist reaction to discovering his burglar is Pakistani. My intention was for Nick to move from knee-jerk unthinking racism to enlightened soul, but to do this in 45 minutes is a big ask and clearly renders some of the dialogue too harsh for tender Afternoon Play listeners' ears.

Next time? Something less contentious perhaps. Oh yes, and I must try to make it "more fresh and original." :-\

Perfect Sunday

Today played out along similar lines to yesterday. If anything it was a little warmer, and the work a little harder, but even more satisfying.

Having talked about sowing grass seed under the conservatory where the old plant bench used to sit, and then about cutting back the lawn to the same width pre-pond as it is post-pond, we ingeniously put the two together and decided to transplant the cut turf under the window instead.

After five hours of digging, treading, ripping out yards of bamboo, raspberry and ivy roots, and the transplanting of a clump of peonies and a broom, the result was a radical improvement on where we'd started yesterday morning.

Energy levels started to flag dangerously when there was still a couple of feet to go, but we'd set ourselves a target of reaching the old tree stump and with a bit of grit and determination we made it, although I expect to suffer for it tomorrow. The weather's expected to hold up for another few days, so we're planning another attack for tomorrow evening after work, and I'll probably cut both lawns (our neighbour is in hospital and his grass needs a trim even more than ours), but for now we're settling back in smug satisfaction and ready for a dollop of corned beef hash, homemade rice pudding and Alien Resurrection.

Perfect Saturday

Three hours in the garden. What a fabulous day. But one of those days where the job you intended to do can't really be started until you do another job, and that second job has a third job that needs clearing up first too.

So we cleared away a broken old bench that had collapsed over winter under the weight of a pile of raggedy old pots (and because it was made of chipboard - not the most weatherproof of materials); edged the grass (and as a consequence made a new path to the compost heap), moved the water barrel 4 inches to the left to accommodate the bench we were moving from under the conservatory, threw out all the dead potted plants, moved two other benches so we can start on the border tomorrow and prepared one of the under-bench areas to be sown with grass seed tomorrow.

Feel right satisfied with that. While we were gardening we noticed our neighbour-but-one was busy building a tree house for his new ready-made daughters who arrived a few months ago. What an impressive construction it is. Already, that is, and it's not much more than half finished. As we were chatting he pointed out a square "window" in the gable end which he'd asked his wife to make a stained glass window for. But she told him it's too much detailed work for a play house. Nikki and I had one of those gestalt moments: two minds with a single thought. Carolyn has already made a piece of stained glass that would be perfect for the job. It lived in our downstairs toilet window until the scallies chiselled it out last March. Since then it's been living in the conservatory waiting for us to decide what's best to do with it. And here was our answer.

Sadly I don't have a photo of it in situ that does it justice, so here it is shortly after the break-in, with SOCO's dab dust all over it. Well, would you believe it, the window is already an almost perfect fit for the tree house. With a small rebate and a bit of beading, it will sit beautifully in the gable and cast its glorious blue and orange light over the girls' play for years to come. And it was made by Mummy, so what better resting place for it?

Now we're both showered and rested, we're off to watch a movie. So far, perfect Saturday. It's mac and cheese for tea too, and Nikki's baking a cake. I tell ya, it don't get much better than this.

The 3-variable funny test

Here's one of those tests. You know. Found via a writing colleague's blog. While I might have an issue with the title for my sense of humour, the description is pretty accurate.

The Prankster

(33% dark, 31% spontaneous, 21% vulgar)
your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | LIGHT

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You're not pretentious, but you're not into what some would call 'low humor' either. You'll laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist.

You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor because it's smart without being mean-spirited.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O'Brian - Ashton Kutcher

You can take the test for yourself if you're interested.

Team work and The Wire

BBC Two recently (beginning of last week) began showing HBO's The Wire in its entirety, starting at season one, in a graveyard slot on weekday nights. 11.20pm to be precise.

Having heard a lot about this show in one way or another (from colleagues on TV Scoop, various Internet forums and reviews, and fanboy family members *vbg*) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but 11.20?? Old farts like me have usually been in bed an hour by then. So we did the only thing possible: set a weekday schedule on the PVR and sat back while the episodes were sucked in.

I tried to approach the show with no preconceptions, despite my natural inclination to dislike anything that "everyone else" likes. This is not to disrespect anyone's opinion, it's just that in my experience entertainment surrounded by steaming piles of hype usually resembles steaming piles of something else when you eventually get to see it. I should have detected a subtle difference in the hype associated with The Wire: it's generated by the people who actually watched the show, rather than the people who made it and WANT you to watch it so they can make more money.

Anyway, we caught the first five episodes back-to-back last weekend, and the first two of this week's last night. Seven hours in and we're enjoying it immensely. So far I wouldn't be as fulsome as many have been with my praise - I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' or that it's 'the best TV show ever, bar none' etc - but hey, it's still only the first season, and still only the first seven eps. It's certainly different, credible, realistic, interesting, involving and dramatic.

But this isn't strictly a post about The Wire (although so far it's doing a good impersonation of one, lol). It's about something that occurred to me while I was watching the show last night. There's a character in the cops' team called Prez. Roland Pryzbylewski, actually, which explains why they call him Prez. He's well known in the police department for being totally incompetent and inept. Despite being bounced around several units he never fits in anywhere, and he only ends up on the "wire" team because the Deputy Commissioner tells all his people to dump their useless jerks there.

But slowly, working in the team's basement office, something happens. Prez finds his niche and turns into the team's code-breaker, first with the gang's pager codes and later with other complex number and letter combinations. He makes a major contribution to the case.

This is classic team work. A team - a good team that is - comprises a group of people whose skills are complementary. A leader. An ideas man. Someone who pays attention to the details and doesn't miss the finer points. Someone who energises the whole team with enthusiasm. A problem solver. And so on. Occasionally, people perform more than one role, but all roles are essential and the team flies best when they're all done well.

But here's the thing. Each one, on their own, can't cut it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's why Prez is such a good example. Outside of the team he's a jerk. A square wheel. But he's like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle left out of the box. Once you slot him into place, the whole thing looks right.

And it came to me, finally, that this is why I used to love my job, and why I hate it now. I used to be part of - and ENJOY being part of - a team. We could fly. We could do anything. And we did. But now there are no teams; there are only individuals. Everyone is expected to do their own thing. To be able to pick up any piece of work and do it just as effectively as any other piece of work. I mean, it's all technical stuff, right? That's how the managers look at it. We're technical people, doing technical work, so we're all just as good at any of it as anyone else. Which, as I hope you can appreciate, is a crock of shit.

There is no teamwork any more, and it sucks.

Not to mention the fell ratio

While I'm on a linguistic roll, I caught the tail end of summat on Radio 4 yesterday (Word of Mouth, to be precise) on the subject of arcane English spellings and what a barrier they are to learning the language. I found it interesting as spelling has always been a strength of mine (to the extent that some of my colleagues refer to me as "the human spellchecker"), something I feel is important, and as such what I thought was the "modern" trend against teaching spelling in schools, or at least not correcting it when wrong, sat very uncomfortably with me when my children started school.

Well it seems the tide is turning, and received wisdom is coming full circle. After years of schools not concentrating on spelling, universities are rebelling against a tide of students whose use of language is so poor they can barely make themselves understood, and industry is suffering from a generation of semi-literate youngsters incapable of generating a professional-looking document or presentation. Despite 30-40 years of laissez-faire in the classroom on the subject of spelling, good English is still seen as a marker of educational attainment.

This is causing something of a backlash from those teachers concerned for their students in the lower ability ranges, for whom the unruly spelling of many English words is a hurdle they find hard to leap. It was this aspect (among others) that Word of Mouth spent some time discussing, and which I found so interesting - mainly because the difficulties that it poses had never affected me, so it was something I'd never really thought about.

To spice up what is essentially a dry subject, the programme had invited someone who campaigns for spelling reform - a woman deeply passionate about the scars of humiliation inflicted on the hapless learner - to explain the problem. Some of the facts and statistics she presented were quite illuminating, leaving aside the hyperbole with which she described the "injustice" of forcing children to learn English spelling - comparing it to the Victorians sending them down mines and up chimneys and implying that it is something which in these more enlightened times should be dispensed with.

The problem is, English uses far more discrete spellings of language sounds - graphemes - than other languages. Graphemes are the written representation of phonemes - standard vowel and consonant sounds plus combinations like ea; ou; sh; ch; etc.

Most European languages have around 50 graphemes. English has 114.

It's quite common for phonemes to have more than one grapheme - i.e. there's more than one way to represent the same sound - but what makes English so much more complicated is that the reverse also happens frequently. In 49 cases the same grapheme is used to represent more than one sound - for example 'ea' in treat, threat and great.

These are referred to by language teachers as "tricky" words - words which can't be learnt by following simple rules. Bright children start learning these tricky words right from the beginning but for those on the slower side, they're too hard and pose real problems. The speaker reckoned there are 3,695 common English words that cannot be spelled by rule. Things like

very - merry
arrive - arise
ballad - salad

1,000 of the tricky words involve doubling or not doubling a consonant, and their correct spelling has no connection with the "rule" about a double consonant keeping a vowel short (as in dinner/diner). The presenter argued that this is a relatively simple problem to overcome, whereupon the teacher suggested that while it may not be so bad for words pairs such as latter/later, what happens when you encounter lateral?

It was clear the presenter, Clive Rosen, wasn't convinced. Italian is well recognised as a "regular" language, he argued, but the same literacy problems exist in Italy, where a sizeable percentage of the population still struggle with reading.

Sadly while the programme expressed the problem eloquently enough, little time was devoted to any potential solution. The lady's campaign to reform English spelling would, for instance, see all the different ways of spelling the 'ee' sound in the language (leave; sleeve; receive; evil; magazine; siege; aesthete; ...) replaced with just one. But this is just one change. Does anyone really beleeve that this is a change that could actually bee introduced among the 600+ million English speekers in the world with any degree of success? We're talking peeple of all age ranges, not to mention ree-writing all the spell checkers, signposts, reeprinting all the books, and editing the overwhelming majority of the billions of Internet pages.

And that's even before considering the opposing view - that existing spellings reflect the origins of the language and make English what it is. It can't be *that* hard, surely, if it still enjoys such widespread usage?

A more realistic solution to my mind would involve the development of more effective teaching techniques targeted at lower ability levels. Avoid the kind of embarrassment the guest speaker was alluding to; devote more time, and earlier, to tricky words (as the more able students do naturally already); introduce more fun elements to the traditionally tedious subject. At least such changes would be restricted to the 4-11 age range, rather than forcing the entire population to relearn something we each already have such a heavy personal investment in.

(and of course, we're all familiar with these, aren't we? ;o))

I'd rather be a cunning linguist

Taro 9 (made by BBC Wales to be broadcast tonight on S4C) asks the question: Is bilingualism the way forward?

"For decades the status of the Welsh language has sharply divided opinion in Wales but in Belgium it looks like a row over language is set to tear a nation in two," says the press release, going on to describe the controversy caused by Milford Haven politician Eric Harries who dared to suggest that limited resources are being wasted by the legal requirement to publish all council documents in Welsh as well as English (you can read the rest of it here).

In Belgium, differences between the Dutch speakers in Flanders to the north of the country, and the French speakers, primarily from Wallonia in the south, are threatening to literally split the country in two, wiping Belgium clean off the map.

I'm reminded of the conversations I've had in the past with Canadian friends regarding the resentment they feel as a result of their own legal requirement, historically imposed on the entire country by the relatively small province of Quebec, to have both English and French descriptions on all packaged goods and many public signs, and to be forced to learn French in "immersion" classes. And also of recent debates in the UK about the relative merits of publishing, for instance, medical leaflets in a variety of ethnic languages (Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, etc) as opposed to insisting that settlers in this country learn to speak and read English.

We often joke about America and England being divided by a common language, but there is more uniting us (especially in our use of English) than separates us, and certainly within a single country, it seems that one of the attributes that defines a country as a country is its common tongue.

If a country like Belgium, which to once again quote from the BBC press release is referred to as being "...regarded the world over as a symbol of co-operation and European unity", can be divided by language then surely the message is clear. One country: one language.

Office euphemisms

I don't know how many of you work in an office, but those that do must be familiar with that ubiquitous character common the world over: the Holder of Loud Telephone Conversations.

They come in two varieties. Those that sit at their desk and hold forth safe in the knowledge that they're not disturbing anyone, because their conversations are so interesting that the whole of the rest of the office will want to stop what they're doing and listen in. This is a good job, because those other workers don't get a lot of choice in the matter. They're gonna hear what the guy (or gal) is saying whether they want to or not.

The other variety has a neurological condition that physically prevents them from sitting still when a phone approaches their ear. They are impelled to pace up and down the office, and in really bad cases even through the entire building, while conducting their telephone business. In the same way as a pigeon can't walk without bobbing its head, the Ambulatory Holder of Loud Telephone Conversations can't talk without walking.

Inasmuch as any of this has an advantage, it is this: it allows students of human nature access to a wide variety of office euphemisms, which I thought might make an interesting subject for an occasional series, starting today. I have no idea how long this will run (or even if it will), or how many different phrases I can extract, but for today, here's #1.

"I'll leave you in peace."

This is an attempt to stop the conversation that actually means "I've got what I wanted from you and I'm not interested in hearing about your problems, so shut the fuck up and let me get off the phone."

Its effect is limited, as witnessed by the fact that our resident HoLTeC had to say it three times before his callee got the message.

Chimney Pot Park

Four years ago, for reasons I won't bore you with, we were lucky enough to be taken on a tour of various sites in Manchester used as "locations" for Coronation Street filming. Today we thought we'd drive around a couple of these, partly to see how they'd changed in four years but mainly because they provide some interesting photo opportunities for those, like our esteemed visitor, who appreciate such things. Especially chimney pots.

Our first stop, therefore, was the appropriately named Chimney Pot Park. It's the place used to represent the mysterious "Red Rec" - often referred to but only ever filmed on those rare occasions when something significant is happening there, such as Emily's tree-top protest of a few years ago. Back in 2005, it looked like this. Rather sad really, to see all those traditional back-to-back terraced houses, which had provided homes for countless hundreds of Salford residents over the years, all borded up with aluminium sheeting and ready for demolition.

But the story has a happy ending, because the whole area, rather than being slated for demolition, was actually awaiting the start of an urban redevelopment project which took its name from the traditional local name of the area: Chimney Pot Park. It's the brainchild of Urban Splash, who are responsible for a number of innovative housing projects in the city. They're occasionally the subject of some bad press, but hey, if they can provide affordable, modern housing in previously run-down areas AND make money at the same time, what's wrong with that?

The project was still in progress when we were there, with work going on at front and back:

The fronts have been developed to retain their original terraced look, with the indented parking spaces retained on the roads, but the backs - with their familiar (to Coronation Street viewers at least) back yards and ginnels - have been replaced with a first-floor deck that provides a communal living space for all the houses in a row, along with "underground" gated parking, which is actually at street level but underneath the deck. The houses have effectively been turned upside down, so the living spaces - living room, dining and kitchen - are on the first floor, with the bedrooms on the ground floor.

The completed houses further down the block look like this:

...which, if I was buying my first house and looking to establish a community, would be a very attractive proposition. Good luck to the developers, and all the people in their new homes.

Then it was off to Portland Basin - scene of the famous "driving into the canal" business with crazy Richard Hillman (and later when David Platt repeated the stunt). This hasn't changed as much over the years, except that the small (but perfectly formed) museum there is undergoing some refurbishment to its Industrial Gallery, so a substantial part of it was roped off for our visit.

The sun graced us with its presence while we walked around the canal basin, over the bridge and around the boatyard. On our way back across the bridge a long boat chugged through the basin making its leisurely way to the next lock. It looked idyllic and it's easy to be fooled into thinking a barge holiday would be the perfect way to spend a week, but I remember the second time I took a boating holiday, when it pissed with rain for the entire fortnight and none of us could get dry, ever. Yes, it's lovely when the sun's out. When it's not, being on a boat is the most miserable experience imaginable.