A Night in Accident and Emergency

On Sundays, I teach for 3.5 hours. The students come to me for all levels of tuition. The Sunday just gone, 18th October, I was feeling unwell. Nothing specific: just a general lethargy, bit of a headache, feeling a little nauseous.

As I have done on numerous occasions during my career, I managed to get through the work and was very relieved indeed when I could just slump in front of the TV. An early night, I was sure, would sort me out.

The following day, Monday, I felt dreadful. I hoped I would feel better as the day wore on. I didn't. I felt worse.And worse. Finally at 10.30 pm I had no choice but to go to A+E. I believed I knew what the problem was. I have Addison's Disease - the condition named after Doctor Addison who discovered it.

So, what is it? Until I was diagnosed with it ten years ago, I had no idea at all about it. That is not in any way surprising, as it is very rare. Addison's Disease is a failure of the adrenal glands, which are at the top of each kidney, to produce sufficient adrenaline and other hormones. It is a gradual thing. You feel unwell, you feel sick, you lose your appetite and have great difficulty in performing the slightest physical movement without feeling out of breath and exhausted. The doctor told me I had a virus initially and then on several more occasions. This was some virus! This 'virus' made me barely able to go upstairs  - I had to take each step very slowly, arriving at the top, puffing and panting and needing to sit down to recover. This was no virus.

After being rushed into hospital, I was finally diagnosed with Addison's Disease. A drip of pure adrenaline was attached and within hours, all was well again. I learnt I was in good company. It is believed that Jane Austen died of Addison's and that President John F Kennedy had it too, and thanks to him,  there is a cure today.

So, in the hospital I knew what was needed. Most of the time, Addison's is stable, but there are the occasional blips and this was one of them.

For a Monday night A+E was packed. There was shouting, swearing, drunkenness, people with mental health problems and many with physical problems. It was a long wait, but at two o'clock in the morning, I was dealt with. The doctors were junior doctors, but very skilled and energetic. They were pleasant and respectful - really respectful, throughout.

There were people coming into A+E at an alarming rate. One man came in after having had a crash on his motorbike. He had been placed in a neck and back brace but wasn't happy at all wearing them. He was sitting up on the trolley he'd been placed on. He had been expressly forbidden to do so. He was also attempting to remove the two braces he had been placed in for his own safety, to prevent the possibility of paralysis. With superhuman patience the nurse kept telling the patient to lie down. The nurse would then readjust the helmet and brace. A number of times this happened. The nurse spoke firmly, but did not raise his voice at all, or shout - suit yourself mate! as I probably would have done.

So much work, so many people to deal with, real skill and intelligence in evidence, none of the staff complaining.

Our NHS - and I use the word 'our' advisedly, is far too precious to allow the Tories to dismantle. I am, and have always been, so massively impressed by the NHS. It is our country's pride and joy and the people who work in it on the front line are a special breed of exceptional human beings.

Grammar Schools or Comprehensives? Some Thoughts

  

Nicky Morgan, Conservative Education Minister and possible leadership contender for when Cameron releases himself from the job of Prime Minister, has granted permission for a grammar school to go ahead in Sevenoaks Kent. The place is significant. Note that there is not a plan to introduce a new grammar school in Sunderland, Middlesborough or Barnsley.

My instinct is to say no to grammar schools and a resounding yes to comprehensive schools. It feels wrong to decide the educational future of children aged 11. On the other hand, we hear stories about the child who went to secondary school and did so well that he/she was transferred to a grammar or who stayed at the secondary and got a whole host of excellent GCSEs. That these individuals are worth a story perhaps suggests that there are so few, in reality, who make the cut.

Granted then, there may be the odd one who succeeds after failing the 11+ but they are few. Some, identified as bright, and offered a transfer simply do not want to go. They have their friends, very important to secondary age children, and most likely will be in the top set at their current school, and are perfecty happy. Why transfer to the unknown?

Those who argue in favour of the 11+ say that it doesn’t really matter so much about those who fail because if a child is bright, no matter where he/she is, that intelligence will shine through. Having been a teacher for 25+years, I am sorry to say, that that view is a complete misconception. Many children, even those with a supportive home life, good nutrition, plenty of money for revision aids, a quiet space in which to do homework and  revise for exams, with an excellent brain, do not succeed despite all that is laid on for them. Maybe when they are no longer of school age, they will realize that they have wasted their chances and will become a mature student. That might be the case for some, but not so for others. A sad fact of life is that some people do not reach their academic potential. I have learnt that the guy driving a truck or the woman doing a job in a care home, may well have a higher raw intelligence than the university professor or the writer of a column in The Times. Let’s not worry too much about them though, as they may well be happier that way.

Grammar schools are undeniably elitist institutions. If you go to a grammar school you are in the top 15%. Wouldn’t it be better then to keep all the bright students together in this way, each one encouraged and challenged by the others? Surely, that way, no one would want to add students with low intelligence, as they would be out of their depth.  The bright ones would be slowed down, then become frustrated and lose motivation. This happens too in the fashionably and politically correct mixed ability teaching. A mixed ability class is also one of the most difficult tasks a teacher can face.  The preparation is relentless and, in fact, a teacher finds him or herself wishing that they were several people and not just one.

Then again, if you stream students, are you not just imitating the grammar/secondary system, except for the fact that the students are all in one building as opposed to separate ones? Students are not fooled though. They know they are in set 5 out of 6, no matter if you call it The Robins, Daffodils or Group 6.

My difficulty with condemning grammar schools is that I actually went to an all girls grammar school and benefited from that experience. At the time, aged 11, I felt such pride that I had passed the 11+, that I hardly spared a thought for those who didn’t pass, I will blame my callousness on my age. Now, decades older, I see clearly that it was a terrible thing to do to children, to separate them at this age and to humiliate a child who failed. It WAS humiliation too.

Whatever the future holds, and I really hope it doesn’t hold grammar schools, the best kind of education a young person can have is a teacher who cares, who is concerned about their future and who can deliver inspirational teaching so that students will WANT to do well. In the end, the ones who succeed are those who want to and will put the work in to get there.

That said, I still do not think it is a good idea to segregate children so young. In some cases that humiliation, or as some say, being thrown on the scrap heap at 11 years old, may well be too hard to recover from.

Kidults

Kidults are those people who refuse to grow up. They say things like, ‘Having a baby won’t change my life, absolutely no way.’  They say that all you need is a babysitter, it won’t cost much and yes you might be knackered the next day but you just get through it, by hair of the dog.

I want to ask them one question. Are you mad? This attitude to having babies and the certainty some kidults hold up about their existence not changing is frankly stupid. Of course you can get a babysitter, all day and all night, if you like.  In fact, why stop there? Have an almost childfree life, if you so choose. But the truth is that these people do not take into account the anxiety and emotional impact of a baby on one’s life.  That said, some do claim that their lives haven’t changed at all since baby was born. I just do not believe them.

There’s a song –The Oldest Swinger in Town –which is the story of a man in the process of realising that his age separates him from younger people. I imagine this man in a nightclub, leaning at a bar, a pint and a whisky chaser, eyeing up young girls who, when they notice he is ogling them, give a grimace of disgust and mutter, ‘pervert’, to each other. He might wear a shirt, opened too far, maybe there’ll be some gold around his neck, and maybe he has little self-awareness. These girls don’t want you, or any Peter Stringfellow lookalike, they want young, fit men of roughly their own age. It doesn’t prove so attractive either, even if you are rich.

There’s another type of kidult too – those who encourage others to be ‘zany’ (awful word) to do crazy things like when they were in university. Steal traffic cones and put them on your head, pick daffodils from people’s gardens, sing loudly in the street at 3 am, even on a weekday when non-kidults have to go to work and are trying to get some sleep to deal with what will come at them the next day. As Tim in The Office says, ‘It’s other people’s zaniness I can’t stand. I speculate that what Tim means here, and what so precisely chimes with my own view, is that zany acts feel phony, false and forced. It’s not real spontaneous fun. It’s planned, it’s stereotypical and in the main, it’s not funny.

I do realize that maybe some people would accuse me of not wanting to have fun and of being too serious. They could not be further from the truth. A genuine laugh is priceless. A sharp witty comment that makes all laugh heartily is one of the world’s treasures. But there is a time for seriousness and getting stuff done. Keep yourselves to yourselves kidults, you’re not kidding me, but you may well be kidding yourselves.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - An Excellent Book

I have just finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It has a massive 864 pages and is one of the longest books I’ve read apart from Dickens’ novels. Even several of Dickens’ novels don’t have as many as 800+ pages.

Maybe Donna Tartt went on a little too long. Because she doesn’t write many novels, maybe she thinks that when she does write, she should produce many pages. No matter, she writes brilliantly. It isn’t just me saying so - Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2013 for The Goldfinch.  

The beginning of this book is heartbreaking and describes the profound loss and grief that a child feels on losing a parent. The boy in this book loses his mother in an explosion in an art gallery in New York. There is no good age to lose a parent but it seems to me that 12 is one of the worst ages. At age 12, a child is just coming up to adolescence, a difficult and confusing time. The adult world is on the cusp of opening up. To have someone who has loved you, and has known you since birth, is every child’s birthright. To have that person no longer with you must be very difficult to deal with. I very much hope that the love given before the death, can be drawn upon. Maybe that is just a fantasy.

When he was 16, my son had a girlfriend of the same age. The girl’s mum had died of epilepsy, when the girl was 9 years old. Her brother was 12 at the time. They barely spoke of their mum. I don’t think they had the words. I think about them even now, 8 years later, and not only do I feel compassion for the brother and sister, I also feel so sad for the mother who died and had to leave her children – thereby missing out on their lives, not being there to share the joys and difficulties life throws at us all.

The boy, Theo, in The Goldfinch, goes to stay with his friend’s family, but it is no substitute at all for the life he lived with his mum.   And the story continues. It is beautifully written. The characterization is superb, the descriptions evocative and the emotions so credibly conveyed.

After the explosion, the boy goes back to his apartment, certain that his mum will be there waiting for him. As he waits for her, he talks of how, when he was younger, his ‘greatest fear was that some day my mother might not come home from work.’ This is a fear that I can very well relate to. I had exactly the same fear. I can remember watching for my mum out of the window and dreading the light fading and it going dark. I believed that some disaster might befall her out there in the dark, without me to look after her. That comment might appear ridiculous, as I was 8 years old and would be pretty useless against a determined assailant. But that is how I felt and I can still feel that anxiety now, the strength of it, the choking sense of something having happened to my mum because I wasn’t by her side. Decades on from worrying about my mum, who is now 92 years old, I can still feel that sense of dread but now it is directed at those who are motherless and to the dead mothers who missed out on their children’s lives. That is a particularly cruel tragedy. So it’s no wonder then, that when my youngest child reached 21, I did a dance of joy and relief. 

Jeremy Corbyn and Company.

So much has been said about Jeremy Corbyn. Ever since he gained enough support to be placed on the Labour leadership ballot, it's not easy to think of anything new or original to add. Nevertheless, I am undeterred and will say something anyway.

My dad, born in 1918, was a staunch Labour man. It was because of him, initially, that I voted Labour. My dad was not perfect, but his loyalty to Labour and his belief in justice for all, redeemed him. So it was my dad who got me interested in politics. University deepened that interest. That said, I was friends with a girl who seemed to me to be very politically aware and very left wing. We attended the International Marxist Group meetings, the Socialist Worker Party meetings and the Militant Labour Party meetings. When I asked her who we were going to affiliate ourselves to, she said the IMG of course. I nodded sagely, as if I too thought this was the best option but did dare to ask why she thought so, exactly. 'It's obvious!' she said. Looking at her, puzzled, I asked why that was. 'Because the best looking men are in that group of course!' Just a different kind of politics then, I suppose.

There is no denying Jeremy Corbyn's resounding victory over Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall. Of the three, I preferred Liz Kendall, despite her Blairite credentials. She was at least honest and consistent. The other two, I have no time for at all. Yvette Cooper barely said anything other than vague comments about 'rebuilding' and 'coming together' - not a word about how, and very little policy revelation. She would look at Corbyn, head to one side, a look of condescension and irritation on her face like a headmistress of a primary school, listening to the excuses of one of her most trying pupils.  Her finest hour was encouraging the government to take in more refugees, and the cynic in me cries out that she did that in order to enhance her own popularity, thereby increasing votes for her.

Andy Burnham became confused and forgot what he stood for. Witnessing the hourly increase of votes going Corbyn's way, Andy panicked and spoke of renationalising the railways, 'line by line' and leaned dramatically to the left in the hope that some Corbynistas might suddenly prefer him. It was not to be. They all three bleated that Corbyn was unelectable. But, hang on. The other three have been in opposition for some time, so why pick on Jeremy Corbyn as being unelectable, when the other three do not have much to shout about?

So, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn won, with almost 60% to the vote. Young people, people who had left Labour because of Iraq and people who had never had an interest in politics previously, all turned out to vote. At Corbyn's rallies people flooded in,  venues packed full to bursting. something was happening, something was changing and so the right wing Tory press started to stick the boot in. And how. The claims flew in.  Corbyn was best friends with Jerry Adams. Corbyn was in love with Osama Bin Laden. Corbyn was friends with every conceivable enemy of Britain, including Isis. He wants the queen out of Buckingham Palace and living in a tent. then he will guillotine the rest of the royal family, even the children.

Jeremy Corbyn is a calm, measured, kindly man, who cares greatly about inequality in Britain. He cares about the vulnerable, the disabled, the ground down and those exploited at work.He wants to tax the rich to help the poor. He wants to redistribute wealth, he wants rid of nuclear bombs and he doesn't want to start wars in the Middle East. He is a conviction politician, with a desire for the those who didn't receive a full hand of life cards, to be better cared for.

It is not respectful to sneer, call him a dinosaur, persistently refer to him as left wing, when we don't refer to Cameron as right wing or any of the casual insults thrown out to land at his door. It is a shame that those who attempt the hatchet job on decent, reasonable people pay little heed to how it may well come back and bite them.

What a fuss about someone not singing theNational Anthem! Corbyn has already said he may well sing it on some occasions. He is not a royalist. He is a republican. At the ceremony this week to commemorate those in the wars who gave their lives, Jeremy Corbyn was thinking about his mother and father,who played their part. Corbyn is a patriot. He loves this country.

As the old cliche goes, a week is a long time in politics. Five years is a very long time in politics. Anything could happen. Screams of, 'He's unelectable!' may well quieten down as the new leader takes charge. Some he will surprise, some he will annoy, some he will thrill, some he will make enormously grateful, because he has helped them in a way no other politician has.

Let's give him a chance. Lets see what he does, what policies he develops and if he can change the yah boo politics of The House of Commons. The Tories may be riding high at the moment but if a week is a long time in polities then that applies to the Tories as much as it does Labour. We'll see.

East London - Then and Now

The Krays

I'm in London - East London to be more precise, the area where Reg and  Ronnie ruled the roost. Twins and cocks of the walk -psycopaths more than likely and oddly, given what they did, never shy of a photo opportunity. They seemed more of a product of fifties fashion despite most of their doings taking place in the sixties. Suits and immaculate white shirts with ties - Brylcreemed hair and shiny shoes.

They were born in 1933 and, though it is obvious, they were babies once. So nothing remarkable about that fact, but for the shock that these twin baby boys grew up to be murderous gangsters. It's odd too to think that the Kray twins were wartime evacuees, conjuring up an image of defenceless children, sent to the countryside. Mum Violet was much adored by the boys and in turn she adored them, calling them her 'princes.' The Krays vetted everyone who visited Violet and were very protective of the woman who was born in Bethnal Green East London in 1910.

Their deadly reign came to an end when in 1968 they were arrested for murder. Ronnie had shot George Cornell, a rival gang member in the face, in a pub very close to here in Bethnal Green, called The Blind Beggar. Reggie had stabbed gang member Jack 'The Hat' McVitie in the face and neck.

Many people are under the misapprehension that gang warfare in London is a new, modern problem, but it's been going on ever since there was a London. Now it is principally young black men in gangs, largely related to the area in which they live and claim as their own. There are, according to the police, 171 gangs in London today. That is a terrifying number. Of course, I have seen the results of gang warfare on the news, but other than that I have seen no evidence at all. Not surprising really, no one is interested in recruiting a middle-aged white woman into their gang.

East London is a very different place now from when the Krays dominated.  It is populated by many young people in their twenties and thirties, involved in technology or creating start-ups. There are several hipsters, as they have been named. They dress very individually, are very techie and are usually vegetarian or vegan, which is no bad thing in my view. Some eat only raw food, believing that nutritional value is lost in the cooking process. I learnt that that was the case in Domestic Science in Grammar school, so long ago. There is a shop on Brick Lane, run by hipsters, boys with beards and buns - their hair I mean not cake-like delicacies. They run Cereal Killers, a cafe for every imaginable cereal on the planet. Also there is every possible type of milk too - milks which I had no idea existed. It's doing a roaring trade.

There is a large Muslim population here too and from the flat that I'm staying in, I can see Bethnal Green Academy, from where the three girls went to ISIS. The school was judged Outstanding in its most recent Ofsted inspection and boasts very good examination results.

I cannot confirm this but it seems as if people rub along reasonably well. That said, i don't see much integration or mixing of different ethnic groups. In fact I don't see that anywhere. Will it ever come to fruition? Do people want it to? I don't have the answers. Racism is still alive and very well, but let us remember that it is not only white people who are racist. Somali and Pakistani people seem to loathe each other and yet both groups are Muslim. I cannot even begin to explain it. It would be presumptuous and arrogant to do so. However that doesn't stop the so-called experts claiming a depth of understanding.

Despite everything, I love this area. It is alive and vibrant and I very much enjoy sitting at a cafe with my dog and people watching. All those lives, all those networks, all those fashions. Fabulous!

The Holiday Bore

People who go on holiday have much in common, whether they stay here in Britain or whether they go abroad. But, unfathomably, there are still many people who believe that their holiday experience is a unique one and furthermore, some poor captive will be informed, blow by blow as to that unique experience.

Some start right from the very beginning. The booking - the visits to the travel agents, the online searching, what Trip Advisor said and the comments related to Trip Advisor, and whether those comments, which they will quote at you, are trustworthy in their reviews or have a grudge against the place they stayed.

Already, the pitiful captive has had enough. An escape route will be sought. But you have been brought up to be polite to people and so you stay there and soon the next flood of details comes pouring towards you.

'You're alright when going to Spain. You can guarantee a jumper won't be needed.' Further details of the packing continue, including the tea bags they cannot live without and the tomato sauce which is vital to life. 'Mind you, the food is ok so you won't need to pack any other foods, because there is fish and chips, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings.' Well, that's all right then. You feel a rising surge of snobbery of which you are vaguely ashamed, but honestly...an escape route is essential. But, alas, for you, the captive, on The Holiday Bore goes...

The packing details continue. You hear that things that were originally in the case have been removed and then, incredibly, been placed back in the case! Oh how we laughed!

Then the journey - along the lines of it taking a longer time or a shorter than they could ever have imagined. Brace yourself because you may well now have to listen to which motorway, which diversion, the time of day (usually very early morning) and tales of the lunatics on the road. The guy who stayed in the fast lane, not even getting out of the way when people blared their horns at him. You're told that had you been there you wouldn't have believed it. You smile and nod, now desperate for the escape. But you're a way away from that sweet freedom as yet.

Next comes the airport, the price of things, how a huge Toblerone was nearly purchased. And then the plane. The crying baby, the kid kicking the back of your seat, whose parents never told her off. The fat guy who should really have booked two seats and the food, the way you swapped your bread roll for your son's cheese and on and on and on. The turbulence, the worst turbulence known to man, the way everyone clapped as the plane landed, the brilliance of the film you saw and how you got chatting to a really interesting bloke. Then the queue for the toilet, the parlous state of the toilet, your inability to sleep,  even more predictably, the getting off the plane and the wall of heat that hits you.

Now your mind is intent on escape and nothing else. Sounds as if you had a fantastic holiday but I have to go and ....'

'Just let me tell you about the breakfasts in the hotel. They were absolutely amazing.' You know it. The list is coming.

'There was everything you could possibly want. Coffee, tea, orange juice, grapefruit juice, tomato juice, sparkling water and you could just help yourselves. There was every cereal you could think of. Alpen, RiceKrispies, cornflakes..'. Oh sweet Jesus! 'There was bacon, sausage, eggs, grilled tomatoes, fried bread, toast, butter, jam, marmalade, yogurts - all flavours. Fruit - a massive display - bananas, apples, peaches, pears, pineapple, mangoes, strawberries, raspberries. You wouldn't believe it! Oh yes and there are cheeses, hams and cakes! Can you believe it?'

By now you are desperate to leave and the politeness seared into your DNA since early childhood is causing great conflict. You are fighting it, trying to repress it,  yet you're miserable, you need to leave!  You feel imprisoned, irritated bored, annoyed.

' Wow! As I said, that sounds great but I have  few things I have to get on with so...

'Before you go, just let me give you the link to the hotel  - have you got your phone? Jut give me your email address and I'll send you the link.'

You say you don't have your phone with you, escape being your only goal. As you now know, the world is against you. This is confirmed when your phone rings! A flash of hurt and confusion plays on the face of The Holiday Bore. You, apologise, mutter about your failing memory, joke about Alzheimer's (!) and you receive the link, certain now that this is the end. You begin to shuffle off away from THB but he follows. Has he told you that he's going up to Scotland in about a month's time? The route he is considering is....

'Really got to go now - have a great time in Scotland!' Thanks he says and tells you not to worry because he promises to send you the link to the best ever B&B in existence. You realise you are almost jogging now, so determined you are not to waste another second with The Holiday Bore.  You feel on the verge of hysteria. You break into a run, wave to anyone who is watching, get into your car and drive!

My Secret Stash

First of all - hypocrite warning! As David Brent would say, in his brilliant creation The Office.

In a bid to keep my children healthy, I encouraged them to eat healthily. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, not too much meat and not too much white bread. Sweets, chocolate and crisps were to be regarded as very much a treat. Well, this plan worked reasonably well - until they went to school and started going to other people's houses and trading their lunchbox food for Twix, Mars Bars and Crunchies. Well, I content myself with the thought that at least I tried.

Now, almost three decades later, I would say that they are all fantastically healthy eaters, so much more so than me. And even when I was being a good mother and refusing to allow them too many sweets, chocolate and crisps, the shocking, chilling truth is that I had a secret stash of what I was denying them. Yes - sweets, chocolate and crisps, all kept in a shoe box stuffed in my wardrobe. The contents of that shoebox were hardcore. Sherbert lemons, fruit sherbets, Bounties, Mars Bars. thick bars of Cadbury's chocolate, milk, fruit and nut, whole nut, Thornton's toffee, Thornton's fudge and, the legendary Mint Aero. What a box of sheer decadence that was!

With my children, I would lecture them, show them pictures of decayed teeth, to put them off wanting sweets. It had no effect on them. It's like showing teenage smokers lungs which have been severely damaged by cigarettes. No connection between what they were doing and the consequences of that act.

I was discovered. I am teased about it even now. I was found out one night when they were all asleep; or at least I thought they were. I fetched my box and brought it downstairs. Coronation Street was on and I was going to have some chocolate and coke - diet of course. Suddenly, my eldest appeared at the door of the living-room and yelled, 'Caught you!' He had. Red-handed.

As a way of dealing with this gross hypocrisy, I liked to assume that I was not alone in this. That said, I must once again return to David Brent. Assume - makes an ass of u and me. What a wise man he is!

The Last Cigarette

I have been to the hospital this week, just routine stuff, but during this visit in particular, I was struck by the poor health of those I saw. One woman especially drew my attention. She was asked her date of birth and I was very surprised to hear her say 1980, making her at most 35. Quite honestly I thought she was at least in her mid to late 50s. It wasn't just her appearance but her attitude that made me think she was almost twenty years older than she really was. She appeared to have had all the worries in the world land on her head. She looked slightly afraid too, as if any minute, someone would hit her. She was wearing a jumper on a hot day. Maybe she had little else to wear - I don't believe you would choose a jumper on a blisteringly hot day. Or maybe the jumper was all that fitted her as she appeared uncomfortable in her unusually tight clothes. As she came to take a seat, the strap on her bag broke and out rolled three open cigarette packets full of tab ends. She started to mutter, 'Sorry, really sorry.' She reeked of fags.

This set me thinking about my last cigarette. It was a Saturday afternoon, in 2002,  thirteen years ago, and I was upstairs ironing and watching the old TV we kept in the spare room. Fed up with the ironing, uninterested in the TV, I lit a cigarette. To enjoy it more I stopped ironing and did nothing but smoke. Inevitably my mind wandered to the coming week and all that I had to do. I was working full time and had three children to look after, so free time didn't come around often. I drew deep on the cigarette.

Suddenly, my heart started beating rapidly. I put my hand on my chest and my heartbeat was growing even faster! I was absolutely terrified and it was that terror that made me stop smoking - for good. Thirty years from the first cigarette, my love affair with tobacco drew immediately to a close. Shamefully, it wasn't courage, will power or a wish to make the environment cleaner; it was fear. Sheer, unadulterated fear. So this coward stopped smoking.

Why are boys falling behind?

In The Sunday Times on June 28, there is a report which states that by the time boys arrive at school, aged 5, they are already falling behind. This is particularly the case with poorer boys. Researchers say that 'boys' education is already blighted before they arrive in school'. So why is that and what can be done?

Some suggest that nursery schools, where the staff is mainly women, are responsible in part. The report claims that women teachers feel more comfortable with girls. This 'fact' is outrageous. Why would you prefer one gender to another? Is that acceptable for professional people? Of course not. If you want to work with only girls or only boys, then find a job in a single sex school.

It is said that girls are easier to deal with than boys, more accommodating, keener to be liked, maybe not as physical as boys. They sit nicely, too. It is the keener to be liked, that is the crucial point. Survey after survey tells us that it matters enormously to girls to be liked by their friends and their teachers. I have witnessed this wish of girls to be popular, especially at the end of the school year. In they trail towards the teacher's desk bearing gifts and cards. Generally the girls will hang around a while until their present is  opened and suitably appreciated. On the other hand, boys are likely to plonk the present on the desk, move away, thinking no more of it.

Boys bear no animosity, in general to a telling off by their teachers. They take it on the chin and there is no lingering resentment. It is a fair cop. Girls, in my experience bear resentment towards a telling off. They give dirty looks, they mutter about your choice of clothing, they whisper to their friends and laugh with them, all the while looking at you. Sneery, pouty and spiteful. Too strong? I have taught for 30 years and I know. This criticism does not mean that there aren't some really lovely girls. There are - and I remember them fondly. But when I think back, it is the boys who have touched my heart in the main. Those boys were witty, kind and loyal to their mates. Some were struggling with the burden of masculinity that society places on their shoulders. Mostly, boys want to be sensitive, they want to speak not grunt and yet if they show emotion, some people deem them feeble and unmanly.

Schools need to help boys more. See through the bravado and instead of tutting, make every effort to engage them in their learning. So many schools write boys off, say they are unteachable, too noisy and too boisterous. That does not give anyone an excuse to ignore the boys, let them play cards at the back of the class, which I have seen for myself on several occasions. It is a waste of taxpayers' money and a waste of those young people's lives. Boys cannot be changed to fit the school, so clearly schools must make themselves more suitable for boys. Bring in more male teachers, provide opportunities for more physical exercise to burn off excess energy. Above all be respectful and see what boys have to give.

Pushy Parents - Beware

They are everywhere. Thankfully I no longer have to deal with them, but at one time I did – a lot. I was a teacher and I had three of my own children. So they were coming at me from two sides for quite some time.

As regards my own children, the parents of the cohorts of my two oldest children were the worst. Or at least I believed so, but then I hadn’t yet had any real experience of the pushy parent, only the competition some people engaged in about how long they had breast fed their babies.

My own parents, particularly my mum, just expected me to do what I had to do and to do it as well as I could. ‘’No one can do any more than their best, so just do your best.’  Recalling my mother’s advice, it seems clear to me that many contemporary parents would do well to take that stance rather than engage in the helicopter parenting that is so prevalent today.

In addition, contemporary parents are continually praising the slightest barely virtuous thing that the child does. The child says thank you and the parent is in rhapsodies. The child puts some rubbish in a bin, that it had initially dropped on the ground, and the praise is fulsome, ‘Well done Hugo, well done Cordelia,’ and so it goes.

It is no surprise then that it is the middle classes who are the pushiest of pushy parents. As a parent I wanted my children to do their best, and, naturally, to do well. My eldest child was not academically interested. He was intelligent enough but interested in other things. Because of this I worried about him and misguidedly tried to force him to be academic. I was foolish – in the extreme. To excuse myself to some slight degree, it felt as if everyone else was pushing their child to academic success and a great university, followed by a brilliant career. So I pushed too. I should not have done.

My other two children were academically inclined and also I was much more relaxed. They did not need pushing, because they pushed themselves. Their teachers must have liked me, for the simple reason that I never complained, demanded more homework or harder homework, or asked for my children to be paid more attention. There was just one moment of awkwardness at a parents’ evening for my second son, when his teacher said to me, ‘Your son has got long hair!’ My response was, ‘And you’ve got short hair. Can we talk about my son’s progress in science please.’

It is a commonplace to say that some parents are inclined to live out their own thwarted ambitions through their children. Never is this more evident than on the football field. Of this, I have experience. Dutifully, on Sunday mornings, I would turn up to watch football matches in which a child of mine was involved. The parents’ behaviour was shocking. The children were fine, aged between eight and twelve. Some of the parents watching would behave as if each match was a cup final and that each referee was a subhuman, happy to be abused. The referees were paid £5 to deal with as many as three matches some Sundays. They were doing it for the love of the game, not for the princely wages.

It is usually men who come to mind when you think of those yelling at football matches, but the women are every bit as bad. One freezing cold Sunday morning we headed off to Maltby, once a mining town in Yorkshire. The ground was hard, the wind was biting, but you stick around to support your child. There was an incident. One boy pushed another boy on the opposing team. There was a bit of a do between the boys, but soon attention was drawn away from them by their mothers, who were scrapping on the hard ground. One woman had said to the other, ‘You want to have a word with that lad of yours, he’s a bully.’ The other woman replied. ‘It’s not my fault love if your lad’s a puff and can’t stay on his own two feet.’ And down on the ground they went, much to the amusement of the spectators, but what about these women’s sons? They must have been truly embarrassed. What’s more, the boys had been made to shake hands by the pitiably paid referee, and as a result they were fine with each other.

It is often the case that pushing your child too hard or in a direction they do not want to go, will result in rebellion or burn-out. One woman I know who boasted continually about what a genius her child was and whose child was involved in  some worthy activity after school every day, rebelled aged 14 and did poorly in her GCSE’s. I often wonder what effect seeing her mother weeping because she had not got into the Maths Challenge team, aged 10, had on her. It could only have been detrimental. Life is full of knocks, so it would have been so much better to have said, ‘Oh well, you win a few you lose a few. You’ll be fine. Let’s go home and have tea.’