Watch me, and follow me carefully

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may have done teacher training for Further Education and taught for the whole of my career in Britain in Secondary Education, but there is a part of me that thinks that I would have been more satisfied in Primary.

     I don’t mean the Primary Education of today with restrictions on what an individual teacher can teach and with assessment testing at every whipstitch, but rather in the more ample days when teachers had the latitude to gain objectives by using their individual initiative in the classroom and creating learning opportunities with paper, scissors, glue, and other materials.

     There is something magical in standing up in front of a class with a sheet of plain A4 paper and saying, “I want you to start folding your sheet of paper like this.”  The hands-on experience of something as mundane as folding a piece of paper and, sometimes tearing bits off, always engaged pupils – and gave them a sense of satisfaction if they actually managed to follow the instructions!

     My greatest achievement in paper folding and sticking in Secondary School was, in one double period, getting the class to write a short script with a couple of scene changes and then create a miniature stage, complete with proscenium arch with flying scenery and paper puppets to act out the script.

     At the end of the double-period I was a frenetic, gibbering wreck and the kids were hysterical, but we got it all done and there was a real sense of achievement.  What the kids were like going on to their next lessons I didn’t have the energy with which to speculate, but I wouldn’t have liked to be teaching them!

     These exhausting memories came back when I was trying to complete a fairly simple task, where the thinking bits had already been done and all that was required was for the ideas to be worked out with the programs and the materials that I had to hand.

     And one of those tools was Word.  In all its glory.

 

 

 

     As someone who learned to type on a ‘real’ typewriter (and has a certificate to prove it!) the ease with which Word does what it took me hours to painstakingly work out makes many of the skills that I learned completely redundant.

     The example of the centred menu comes to mind.  Today, with a program like Word, all you have to do is type out the items in the menu, highlight, and click centre, and it’s done.  It was not like that in the Old Days.  Just take the title: M E N U

     The word ‘menu’ has four letters, in the example above I have added a space between the letters making a total of seven key strikes.  Knowing the total number of keystrokes in an A4 sheet of paper, you subtracted your 7 key strikes from the total and then divided the remainder by two to get the number of spaces that you would have to leave to get the word MENU exactly centred on the page.  The space bar of the typewriter could be depressed and held down which moved the carriage of the machine forward a half-space, so that the spaces could accommodate and half-space when the sums were done!

     I am delighted that such labour is now behind us, and Word offers so much more.  Not, of course that the normal user of the program understands or even guesses at just how much power there is in the program.

     As I keep saying, I use my highly sophisticated computer as a glorified typewriter and am constantly grateful that I do not have to use Tippex (in liquid or sheet form) to correct my mistakes.  Indeed, the program usefully corrects things it decides are typos as you go along and then there is the click on ‘Editor’ which lists errors it has found and offers you the chance to do something about them.

     Typewriter keys could not be changed, you were stuck with the typeface that the keys had.  No choice.  Now, only your imagination and the depth of your pocket limit the typefaces that you have at your fingertips.

     But, for me, the problems start when I start to use the power of the program and go beyond the glorified typewriter status that my machine usually has.

     The challenge that I had was to have things going in different directions rather than sticking to the usual top to bottom, left to right order of things.  And I was trying something new.

     Now, after years of Toni saying the same thing when I start moaning about how to do something, “Go on YouTube and ask!” I have finally found that what he has been saying has some merit and somewhere on YouTube, as long as you ask the right questions, you will find that some saddo or other has gone to the trouble of making a semi-coherent film giving you some pointers towards an answer to your problem.

     My problems are usually, not that I am using Word, after all, who doesn’t? 

     My problems come when I realise that I have been looking at an explanation that doesn’t cover the fact that I am not using a Windows machine, I am using a Mac, and there are and always have been subtle differences, but differences big enough to cause almost complete nervous collapse as you try and work out why the simple instructions do not work for you.

     Eventually, I find a way – or rather I find the set of instructions that go with my Mac and with the version of Word that I am using.  But time has passed, and I know that the next time that I try and do something similar, I will have forgotten a simple but essential step that gives success.

     But that is part of the price you pay for not having to count up spaces to centre a heading.  And, on balance it’s a price worth paying.

 

Computing really is a blood sport!

 

This morning I attempted to work out when it was that I first owned a ‘reasonable’ personal computer.  I had a sort of access to a machine when I started teaching in the 1970’s, but in those far off days, the computer was limited to one to a school – and in the school I was teaching in, it was in the jealous safekeeping of the Maths department, and ‘lesser breeds’ (i.e., non-mathematicians) access was somewhat limited.

     In Cardiff in the very early 80’s I was gifted a hand-held Sinclair machine, and by the mid 1980’s I had bought my own Sinclair QL.

 

     The QL remains the only computer that I have owned that has literally reduced me to tears as a long and graphically complex document that I was typing out to an external deadline was almost wholly lost when the keyboard froze.  In those distant computer times, when the digital world was yet young, a page of A4 could take over a minute to ‘save’, so you tended not to and usually you were lucky, and you could mark the completion of your computer typing by having a celebratory ‘save’.  Usually lucky, but not always.

     On that unforgettable occasion I had to retype everything that I had done and eventually went to bed in the late-early hours of the morning.  Slept for 30 minutes.  Got up to go to work.  Had a rough day.

     Given that I have had almost 40 years of computer experience (as user not programmer) and have lived through the trauma of the various versions of Windows, you would think that I have become digital savvy.  But no.

     I say this because I spent virtually the whole of the morning after I returned having completed my early swim, looking at a blank, or near blank, computer screen.

     The fault, I have to admit is mine.  I am sometimes sloppy in the way that I leave my computer at the end of the day.  Some things I close meticulously, but other documents and suchlike I tend to leave lurking on a variety of screens, as I tap the sleep button and depart.

     Usually, of course, this means little as my work from the previous day is there ready for me to edit or ignore with a tap of a finger and the writing of a password.  Except.

     Except when the computer tells me that it needs to update.  I suppose, like most people, I tap the ‘update later’ choice and usually plump for ‘Try tonight’ when I’m in bed for the machine to do what it needs to do. 

     And this is where my digital slovenliness comes back to byte me.

     For me, my computer is little more than a glorified typewriter.  Certainly, anyone listening to the way that I thump the electronic keys would be able to tell that I have not lost the techniques that I learned from my typewriter classes in Colchester Avenue in Cardiff on actual typewriters.   

 

So, most of my work on the computer is in Word, and I am usually working on more than one document at the time, and I like to have easy access, so I leave the documents on the active screens of the computer, and I don’t close them.

     Usually this doesn’t matter.  Except when I’ve clicked the ‘Try later tonight’ button for a system upgrade.  What happens then is that the Upload tries to upload, gets to a certain point, and then finds that there are open documents, and the process needs to know what I want to do with these documents, but I’m in bed, asleep.  So, the Upload stops, until I open the computer and am faced with questions and directions.

     I, of course, save the documents and then watch helplessly as Upload starts up, and what should have happened in the dark hours of inactivity, now happens when I have things to do in the daylight.

     This has happened more than once, and I am always being caught out.  It is because the clicking of the ‘Try later tonight’ is a case of ‘once clicked, soonest forgotten’ and by the time I come to close the system down, it has slipped my mind that the computer will reactivate itself hours and hours later.

     It seems to me that it should not be beyond the powers of the insanely powerful chips and programs that we play with today that, if you have, however quickly and thoughtlessly, programmed an Update, there should be a message when you try and turn the computer off or if you ask it to sleep, to remind you that all other programs should be closed if you don’t want to waste half a day in the daylight!

     I can remember on previous machines that I would sometimes get a “Are you sure you want to do that?” message on the screen which would, almost invariably make me pause and instinctively say, “No!  I don’t!  What am I doing?”  Computers do make it ridiculously easy to be intimidating.

 

     I remember on one of my early Apple computers, you would get an occasional “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” and a graphic of an old-fashioned spherical bomb with a fizzing fuse, which would panic me instantly!

     The only good thing about not doing digital things properly nowadays is that you waste time, whereas previously you could do severe programming damage to the future running of your machine.

     Perhaps this is the time that I learn to link my easy Update delay with tidy digital housekeeping.  Though I doubt it!  All computer users have to be masochistic to a degree, it is the price we pay for the wealth that sophisticated programs give.

     No pain, no gain.  That is the motto, and an article of belief in the digital world!

Culture and lights and rain

New Normal, 1st week, Friday 

It rained during the night and the pavements was still wet when I got ready to go to the pool for my daily      swim, but it didn’t rain while I was cycling.  While I was swimming it rained again and as had my cup of tea and a bocadillo there were distinct spots of rain that I could see falling into the standing puddles.  But when it was time for me to leave the café and do my daily cycle to Port Ginesta, the rain stopped again, and I even had some fitful sun during the ride before I got home.

     The day has become steadily colder and the skies have become less and less welcoming – but my point is that it didn’t rain on me.  There is a spaciousness in the dismal type of weather that we sometimes get here in Castelldefels that gives the reluctant cyclist enough of a gap to get the necessary exercise done in the dry – even if the bottom of one’s legs do get a little gritty from the sand-in-solution splashed on them as I make my stately way through the shallow puddles on the paseo.

     It is the lack of perceived vindictiveness in the Castelldefels weather that (even in the cold) warms my heart.  I am now so used to an orderly sequence of seasons, with a marked lack of rain whatever the season, that I am not sure that I could get used to typical Cardiff weather now.

     On one of my last visits to the city, I noticed the amount of moss growing in the shadier nooks and crannies, thriving in damp conditions.  I do not thrive in damp conditions, unless they are in temperature-controlled swimming pools!

     I am still wearing T-shirt, shorts and sandals – though I do add a windcheater when I am on the bike – I may be hardy but I am not stupid!

 

Christmas is a pressing topic of urgent consideration, by not being talked about.  I have no idea what plans are made or are being made to celebrate (a word so out of place in the disaster of 2020) the occasion.  Our typical Christmas since we have been together in Castelldefels (apart from one trip to Gran Canaria) is to go to Terrassa for a family lunch, in recent years in a local restaurant.  It looks, clearly, as if this is going to be impossible, and probably illegal this time round.  It is difficult to know how many households will be allowed to mingle and the age range of possible diners is from teenage to over 70.

     It is perfectly understandable for Toni to want to see his family during Christmas, as he has seen little of them in the flesh for months.  But the risks of going to Terrassa (even if we are allowed to do so) are great.

     I suppose it is all speculation at the moment, but in this country plans seem to be made almost on the hoof, in spite of there having been plenty of time to consider viable alternatives.  I hate being bounced into doing something!

     And then there are the presents.  In spite of one’s justified reluctance to use the well-known Luxembourgian delivery company, it does make life so much easier and sometimes it is worth it just for the savings on postage!  But we have to get the orders in quickly as god alone knows how many others will be using the same delivery point to make the Christmas season seem that bit more normal.  But again, everything will be left until the last moment and . . . 

     Well, I’ve said my bit, we will have to wait and see just how this all pans out.

 

I’ve had some ideas about how to make the Catalogue Raisonné useful for further writing.  Although I will add to it in the future, I think that there is enough there now for me to start working on the basic format.

     As is my usual way, I can also start writing the Introduction.  As I am not entirely sure where I am going with this, the writing of an Introduction might seem to be counter intuitive, but I have found in the past that such a piece of work sometimes clarifies my thoughts and, anyway, as it will be written on the computer it is simplicity itself to dump, change or edit!

     Well, I say that, but my Word is proving to be somewhat difficult.  The program itself is slow and, as I am working on an Apple machine, I see that damned multicoloured revolving circle too often at the moment, which means that everything freezes while the computer works its way through god knows what before it allows me to start writing again.

     I suspect that the catalogue is the faulty element in the equation.  Each item in the catalogue has a thumbnail illustration to accompany it.  I always choose the ‘reduce the size’ option when I save pictures, especially when I take them on my mobile phone, so that any documents that I use them in does not become too unwieldy, but I think that I might have made a few omissions in the compiling of the thing and so it is absurdly overloaded.  I am sure that there is a way of stripping out some of the quality without reducing the effectiveness of the catalogue, but that is something for the future.

     But for the moment, I am happy with what I have and I will start using the raw material to get some sort of sequence going.

 

We went out this evening to have something to eat in one of our regular haunts.  Normally this would not be an occasion of note, but this is only the second time we have eaten out in weeks; the used-to-be normal becomes extraordinary when it is denied; and is even odd when some semblance of old ways are restored.

     We had an opportunity to view the Christmas lights in the centre of the town and surely this is one extravagance that has to be justified in the hope that it lifts spirits.  Even though it was finally raining, they looked good.  They looked good, and appropriate!

 

Our timing was perfect in that we arrived back in the house with a couple of minutes to spare before the National Theatre performance-

 

Official Death of England: Delroy | Free National Theatre Full Performance

12,240 views1 hour ago

Watch Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England: Delroy, an ‘urgent, timely solo work, performed with firecracker energy’ (★★★★ Evening Standard) by actor Michael Balogun. The play explores a Black working class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with Great Britain

 

It is still available for the next 24 hours free!  It is a tour de force and you should watch it!