Homework

30 mins to lights on

The boy huffed, puffed and dragged his way from the living room to the kitchen. He adopted the gait of a man walking to his execution, slow, painful, with any opportunity for delay or distraction taken.
Skirting boards were immensely interesting, the woodchip covered wall a source of wonder and the BBC news, Economics Correspondent a man worthy of a 10 year old’s interest.

Time lapse cameras would have picked up on his progress but to the naked eye he was motionless.

‘Get on with it’ snapped his father.

The kitchen was filled with the echo of tea recently consumed. Dishes were being washed, leftovers being saved, the yellow Formica covered table shone dishcloth damp. His wallpaper covered school jotter stuck to the wet surface and he desperately looked around for a reprieve – anything would do.

‘The longer you delay, the harder it will be and remember you’re in at lights on’ his mother said calmly without turning around from the stainless steel sink.

Pots, pans, dishes and cutlery were being mixed briskly in a gravy coloured soup.  

The boy didn’t respond, he opened his jotter and studied the contents. Pages of numbers and symbols littered its pages, an alien script created somewhere far away from home. Kitchens and fractions, totally out of context like Cowboys and Igloos. Instantly his mind drifted to a shootout on a high plane, rocks and boulders littering a mountainous landscape and the echo of mulitple Winchester rifles filling the crisp cool air. He was looking down on them, the baddies, broken teeth and dark horses – his aim was true, their shots were not and simply ricocheted off boulders surrounding him. He would win this standoff – an ultimate confidence bourn out of witnessing this scene hundreds of times before.

He always won.

20 mins to lights on

Outside the muffled sound of a ball hitting the gable end of the house brought him back to the kitchen and only served to increase the pain. He should be out there in the late summer evening dribbling through wave after wave of defenders before smashing it, top corner, against the wall. The lack of chalk on the ball proving the point that it didn’t hit the post and come out. ‘ it was a goal, see?’ He would say pointing to the clean plastic ball. They would study the ball for any scrap of chalk dust post and then concede the goal. 10-7.

His mother leans over and taps the blank page in front of him before leaving the kitchen to join Dad in front of the TV.

The folded page of fractions was carefully spread on the table, his jotter open on the next blank page. Homework for Wednesday was carefully written at the top, underlined three times. 

10 questions remained, from a total of 10 questions.

Question 1.  ½ x ¼ =

The heading is underlined a fourth time. TV sounds, music and chat, worked its way through the gaps in the door along with the smell of cigarette smoke. He hears a shout and another thump, goal scored or missed. 10-8.

15 mins to lights on

Question 1. ½ x ¼ =

What was the rule, multiply them side by side? Or opposites then add? Either 2/6 or 1/8. He guessed at 1/8 and moved to question 2.

The list of questions fell away on the page, reaching as far as his eyes could see, all the way to the paper horizon, no way he will finish them, no way at all. He heard his father’s voice from the room next door, deep and friendly.

No way to finish them properly.

Question 2. ¼ x 200 =

He scribbled 100 down on the sheet and moved on, Question 3 = 75, Question 4 = 2/3, Question 5 = 30…….

Question 10 ½ + ½ + ¼ =

He scribbled down 36 and closed the jotter.

Filled with instant energy he jumped up shouting towards the door ‘that’s me finished mum, can I go out now?’

‘Let me see’ came the response.

He grabbed the jotter and burst into the living room, opened it up and showed the list to his mother. Smoke filled the room. His mother was sat on the brown couch, father on the seat. The daily magazine show fuzzed through the TV in the corner - an uninteresting noise.

He stood skinny and agitated, awaiting her judgement.

Q1 = 1/8, Q2 = 30…….Q10 = 36

 She studied the page - answers but no questions.

‘Good lad. Now remember lights on?’

‘yesss muuum’ he shouted running out of the house, doors slammed and his slender presence left a cartoon void in the room between the two adults.

10 mins to lights on

10-8. 80 minutes gone. 

2 goals would salvage a point, 3 would win it. It would be the upset of the season. Time to bring on the super sub and under a cacophony of cheers and music he calmly walked onto the pitch to join his 14 team mates. The commentators were beside themselves with excitement.

Angus whispered ‘watch out for the wee girl in the red t-shirt, Sarah’s English cousin – she can play’.

He nodded solemnly and ran after the ball as the street lights came on, early.

There’s something Vichy about the French

The problem with France is........ Blank.

Everyone has their own ending, my favourite, often quoted one, which is supposed to have come from George W Bush is ‘they have no word for entrepreneur’.

The veracity of this quote is questionable but I like it anyhow.

In a Mike Shanks fantasy game of Blankety Blank the winning answer would be ‘the French’. Another quote of course but one I subscribe to. France is a wonderful country. From North to South it is full of beautiful and mesmerising scenery, history and has such a varied topography & climate, from High Alps to Mediterranean beaches. Who wouldn’t fall in love with such a country? The food is fantastic and the wine is superb.

So why is it every time I go there I find myself getting annoyed and wound up?

Why can’t I enjoy a coffee and pastry on the Champs Elysees without feeling like I am being ripped off and that I should drink and eat very quickly because the waiter has something better to do. 

Why does he throw the change at me from a distance and why does it take a day to navigate my way through the bureaucratic process nightmare that is Charles de Gaulle airport? 

Why do they mutter ‘English pig’ under their breath when I am purchasing something? Why do they love small pathetic, yappy dogs and have 26 different ways of saying ‘I give up’?

I have been treated badly and ripped off in a lot of places around the world. I have had my wallet violently taken from me in Prague and under threat in Istanbul, been sold products which didn’t actually exist in Jamaica, paid 6x the going rate for something in a lot of countries spanning both Africa and Asia but in France its somehow different.

In France if a waiter is rude to me or if a woman elbows me out of the way in a queue I detest that more than any of the other, more serious and sinister, things which have happened to me. I think this is because it happens all the time, everywhere in the country, it’s not a random isolated incident. It seems that the national sport is treat Mike Shanks, the English Pig, badly.

Some time ago, I was sat in a Chinese teahouse in central China. My fiancée and I had just returned from exploring the wonder that is the Terracotta Warriors near to the city of Xi’an. We were tired, jet-lagged and needed a rest. We ordered 2 teas from the incomprehensible menu and rested. I had always been under the misconception that tea in China was good. For all the tea in China, right? 

Wrong - tea in China is simply hot water with a couple of flavourless twigs thrown in – Tetley would make a killing over there.

Anyhow we consumed the twig soup and waited for our young, appropriately dressed, waitress to return with the bill. She held out her hand and rattled something off in Chinese to my fiancée. My future wife’s Mandarin is good but she had clearly misunderstood and asked the young lady to write it down, just to be sure.

We had made the simple, non-worldly wise traveller mistake of not asking the price before we consumed and this young lady was going to make us pay. The number she wrote down was the equivalent of £10, for two cups of nothing!

We looked at each other as the realisation set in – we had been ripped off, again. Shaking our heads and throwing daggers at the waitress we took the notes from our bum-bag and passed them over.

All the time the girl smiled a knowing smile, a ‘I have won and there is nothing you can do about it’ smile. A ‘you are a million miles from anywhere near your comfort zone so don’t even try to argue with the bill’ smile.

Looking at the notes in her hand she addressed us both and spoke in a broken, heavily accented English.

‘Each’ was her reply.

I look back on this incident fondly and with humour. Yes we ended up paying £20- for two cups of hot water but we learned a valuable lesson that day and the young girl most likely needed the £20 more than we did.

If that had happened in Paris I shudder to think what my reaction would have been, I would probably still be languishing in a Parisian jail today telling everyone I am not English.

I am generalising of course, not all French people are rude, arrogant and have a superiority complex the size of the Louvre. It’s just that a significant proportion of the population do.

Could it be that my good old-fashioned British sense of fairplay is the root cause of my distaste?

The last time the French won against the British was 1066 but they managed to totally alter the culture and language of the UK, we have beaten them on every occasion since but I am at a loss to come up with anything in the French culture which is British.. The French refusal to buy British beef after the mental-cow outbreak, we won the court battle, they refused to pay the fine and quietly some time later the debt was written off. Retirement age, French Unions, the ghettos (Banlieues) all support my theory that the French don’t play fairly and I haven't even mentioned the war or the Vichy. I think it is this coupled with my own, less than positive, experiences which tip me from general dislike to writing a blog entry about them. 

Like I said I am generalising here, I work with and have met a lot of nice French people some I would consider friends, but compared to, say, the Italians there is no competition.

I will however continue in my quest to rid myself of such a negative bias. Its not healthy and I will continue travelling there, drinking their wine, quaffing the Fois Gras and Crème Brule until my distaste for them disappears or I die of an artery induced heart attack.

How many Frenchmen does it take to change a light bulb?

One - he holds the bulb and all of Europe revolves around him.

Vive la France.