Le Flâneur

I was just idly looking at stuff on Amazon when I remembered a book that my tutor on the ill-fated pgce recommended to us.  It’s called ‘Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotaged Art’, written by one Roger Kimball.  Take a look at this man, he’s wearing a bow tie for fucks sake.  Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic, essayist, and social commentator whose book purports to ‘expose the charlatanry that fuels much academic art history today and leaks into the art world generally’.  Amazing.  I didn’t think you could really be a conservative art historian; you certainly can’t be a conservative art theorist!  Still more amazing, when you look further down the authors list of publications, you see one entitled ‘Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution’ for which he was the editor.  The tutor in question was much enamoured with his purchase of this book, and I am reminded again of what a confused and reactionary tosser he was.  I mean, the man in charge of The University of  ******’s art teacher training program is enthralled by the work of a right wing neo-creationist art ‘commentator’, and nobody, apart from me, seems particularly bothered with this.  Not that I’m bitter mind, he’ll make a great character for my novel.  The dogmatic and reactionary art teacher, who thought of drawing as a quasi-religious system of enlightenment.  He had the most strange way of clearing his throat after every few turgid and monotonous utterances, more in the top of his mouth than in his throat, so it came out sounding like small mammal in distress.  And, I think he may have been impotent.  Ooh, is that going a bit too far maybe?  It would explain a lot.  Both Rudyard Kipling and Kingsley Amis took revenge on old University Professors they had taken a disliking to by making thinly veiled characters of them in their work.  I can dream can’t I?

I had to stop watching Celebrity Big Brother last night.  It’s awfulness just became too much.  The introduction of Jade’s family was more than I could bear.  In my last post I wrote ‘Johnny Tourette’ when in fact it’s ‘Donny’. I feel such a fool.  Apparently he’s hopped it at the prospect of being a Servant to Jade’s mob.  Interesting chap; do you think he is self-aware enough to realise how much of a cliché he is?  Is that the whole point?  This clip from his band’s television show is priceless though.  If Ken goes, and he almost certainly will, there will be absolutely no point watching at all.  Just washed up actors and pampered d-list pop stars left, they’ll probably all get along fine, even though they’re all practically dead anyway.

I’ve not had a drink since New Years Eve and though it may be premature to say so, I think I’m over the hump.  Whist out walking today I had a distinct self-congratulatory glow about me, perhaps an aura even bordering on smugness, though someone else has to be present for smugness to be experienced of course.  I don’t really know who I’m trying to impress with this, except myself that is.  Amazingly I think I’ve lost wait! (yeah I’m vain enough to notice).  It’s brilliant being a man, all you have to do to go on a diet is stop drinking beer for a couple of weeks.

My newest friends on MySpace are Will & Dan Cook who have the collective pseudonym of ‘Odbro’.  They have some of their music on their profile.  I just love their picture (above).  It cracks me up every time I see it.  Just thought I’d share it with you.

I feel tempted to write the confessions of a failed art teacher here for that unfortunately is more or less what I’ve become.  There are a myriad of complex reasons for my quitting this course and I’ve become sick of reiterating them over the course of multiple friend and family reunions over the Christmas period.  The more I here my own explanations the more absurd sounding they become to my ears – they are over rehearsed and remind me of how painfully deluded I’ve been about things at times.  All I will say is that it’s a very demanding course and one I entered into somewhat naively.  I feel that without total commitment I was always doomed to fail so I dropped out instead of wasting any more time on the enterprise.  What can I say?  I always felt like the odd one out on that course for a number of reasons not least of which was the fact that everyone else seemed much more settled than me.  I feel I still have wild oats to sow and other clichés of that nature.  The trouble with the PGCE is that it completely takes over your life for a year.  Then you have your NQT year that by all accounts is hellish, and then it’s a couple more years until you feel you’re any good at it.  Basically you’ve really got to want to do it to succeed.  I knew I needed to adopt an attitude of “well this is what I do now”, but unfortunately this always eluded me.  The thought of a teacher centred social life was not a prospect I relished (sorry to any teachers reading – that’s not meant to be a dis).    Anyway I could go on and on this but the debacle is over now.  I’ll never get those four months back but what the hell, I got a pretty sweet new laptop with all the money the government gave me.

So what to do now?  I need to be gainfully employed in some capacity.  I know I’ll do TEFL course and live somewhere hot!  That’s what people do when they want to defer getting a proper career isn’t it?  So I’m applying to do a course in Barcelona in March.  Eh up, things are looking up:  the days are getting longer, I’m going be out of here soon, and Celebrity Big Brother has started.  It’s not looking like being as unmissable as last year but, well, I have quite a lot of free time on my hands now so I’ll be watching.  The Johnny Tourette vs. ‘H’ showdown is a potential mouth waterer, and Ken Russell is clearly unhinged, perhaps about to have heart attack at any moment.

Right, where’s the gin?

So I’ve been back a while now living in total solitude.  It’s amazing how little this village has changed in the twenty five years I’ve been living here.  Take the post office.  Everything is arranged in exactly the same way as I remember it as a child.  It looks like they’ve been buying exactly the same stock for decades.  The last time I was down I had my haircut in the hairdressers.  Again this hasn’t changed its interior since as long as I can remember: people like shabby it seems.  Everything is so static: change is actively resisted.  I feel alien here now.  Maybe I’m paranoid or maybe it’s just the fact that there is nobody my age in the village.  Where are all the young professionals?  Where are the twenty-something wasters even?  They must be around somewhere.  I can’t even go into the pub anymore, though that has changed but alas only for the worse.  My main daily contact with other human beings is going to the shop to buy the paper.  Unfortunately the old woman who works in there seems barely sentient, just a human shell that mechanically acts out its tasks.  Not much of an update but not much to tell I’m afraid.  Got to get some inspiration…

Okay so no postings for the whole of July.  I know it’s been a while but it’s my blog and I can do what I like.  I had to move house at the end of June which was a nightmare.  Originally I was to be house-sitting for someone in Manchester for July and August but this deal fell through.  As a result I’ve had ‘no fixed abode’ since the beginning of June and consequently no internet access.  In the end I ended up sharing a single room with Matt in Saint Anselm hall near Rusholme.  The place seemed to be stuck in a fifties time warp.  It was quite surreal.  I’m not proud of this period in my life.  Maybe I’ll look back and laugh one day but then again maybe not.

Gosh.  So much has happened since I last wrote any thing here I don’t know where to start: war in the Middle East, terror apocalypse at home (maybe).  I was in London on the day the plot was revealed and the arrests were made.  The BBC news coverage seemed to revel in the telling of the fact that the Home Office’s official alert status was ‘critical’ meaning an attack was imminent, AN ATTACK WAS DEFFINATELY GOING TO HAPPEN AT ANY MOMENT.  Thankfully it’s been downgraded to severe now without anything actually happening.  What a crazy world we live in.  With new revelations everyday, the shock wave from this newest terror threat is yet to be properly disseminated.  I may write about my own thoughts on this here in the next few weeks.  I’m going to try and write weekly now (honest).

Anyway it was funny to get back to Devon and see the local press.  According to the local rag, I forget its name, the people of Exeter remained defiant in the face of this latest terror threat, “You don’t scare us” it said proudly in large lettering on the front page.  Well you wouldn’t be if you lived in Exeter would you?  Ah it sure feels good to be back in officially ‘Britain’s Whitest County’.

I’ve also been on holiday to Spain since I last wrote.  You can see the pictures if you want on http://www.thebadrash.com

So here it is.   What the world has been waiting for.   My blog.   Finally.     Calm yourself now.

It’s going to be about nothing in particular.   If something interesting happens I may write it down here.   Everyone is welcome to read.   But if you don’t know who I am how on earth did you end up here?

Big thanks to Rachel for the space, and to Rick who I am blaming for the name.