A cluster of rants

My not updating my blog frequently doesn't equate to a rantless Jane. Rest assured, I have plenty of complaints stacked up over the past few weeks - here, have a few of 'em:

- I'm fed up with parents who expect me to mother their child. It is not my job to cajole and convince someone that GCSE English is a worthwhile qualification. To be honest, despite being a teacher, I frankly think it is one of the least worthwhile pieces of paper you can gain these days. I had a mother on the phone recently for 45 minutes, asking me for advice on how she can motivate her 16 year old son. I am an English tutor, not a relationship counsellor. I am operating on the theory that if they want to learn from me, they have the option to. If they choose to fritter away their youth that is not my business. I resent being required to teach in a manner that inevitably ends up with children loathing poetry and literature; I barely attended English lessons in school, and those I was present for I was essentially absent for with my mind wandering far, far away. How is it I managed to get A* at GCSE, A at A-level, 1st Class (Hons) for my BA, without ever using the following terms: assonance, consonance, enjambment, sibilance, and even, I suspect, personification? Oh I know, it is because I can read a poem and with barely a second thought understand what a writer is trying to say, and I imagine that innate ability comes across in my essay writing. I am preaching what I do not believe, and it is getting to me.

- People who say 'BudaPESHT'. Seriously, yes, we all know that is how the BudaPESHTians say it - but in my eyes, it makes you look like an idiot emulating them. We do not forgo the 's' in Paris, nor do we gently roll the R and end softly on an A when we pronounce the city name Rome. Stop being so damn pretentious.

- Speaking of words, I keep coming across Americans over here with the tendency to litter their conversations with two particular pet hates of mine: 'errands' and 'hike'. Fair enough, you're American, you can't help having what I regard as a ludicrous vocabulary. When English people start using the term 'errands' however, it makes me shudder inside. 'Hey, yeah, I'll see you later, I just have to run some errands.' No, you don't, you just have some Stuff To Do - stop trying to make it sound more interesting and important than it is. Grr.

- The fact that an airline company executive can wake up one morning and decide enough is enough, a billion dollars or so of debt is clearly an imposslbe situation to resolve and proceed to inform all the poor buggers who've booked with them that hey, their flight doesn't exist any more. Oh, and that they'll probably keep your money for some time into the future - if not forever.

- There are a few basic principles that I live my life around, one that is relevant to this posting being that money can't buy you happiness. Everyone reading this will probably nod wisely and say oh yes, wise words, they understand and agree. No, you don't. As I tried explaining to a student yesterday, there is a cut-off point where more money doesn't equate to more happiness. As long as you have food in your mouth and you aren't freezing to death at night and you have the basic necessities of life, money has done its job in terms of having any positive influence over your state of mind.

- I live in a small village on top of a hill, everyone pretty much knows everyone - by sight, if not necessarily to share a bottle of wine with of a warm evening. Given the proximity of one building to the next, and the fact that the majority of people who live on this island do so because they want some degree of peace and quiet, why can't everyone make an effort to not disturb their neighbours unless absolutely necessary? Alarm clocks left unchecked; stilletoed feet banging and echoing their way up the stairwell; kids being allowed to play that games that seem to involve an inordinate amount of screaming; dogs being left to bark at plants for hours at a time; drunken conversations being cackled away on a roof terrace well into the early hours of the morning. I need to live alone somewhere, far indeed from the ever more madding crowd, and until that time appreciate that I need to have some degree of tolerance and understanding for my neighbours. I just wish they'd be more generous with their understanding of others.

- One final rant: I am seriously 'off' the majority of Men. Men who idle away their lives with the deluded belief that as long as they are not getting in anybody's way they are not being offensive to others; men who make harsh and indeed wrong judgements on their indescribably beautiful girlfriend in order to dent her self confidence and ensure she stays around him; men who think muscles maketh a man; men who think I want to hear jokes even remotely related to two year old toilet humour; the endless line of deluded men who are labouring under the misguided belief that because I played Facebook Scramble in a virtual room that I will want to receive messages and 'pokes' from them. Men who slam doors in my face, men who fail to give up their seat on trains for me, men who tell me what I need is a 'good man', men who become offended when I ignore their wolf-whistles. There are more, of course. But these particular brands of man have been overly annoying in recent days, thus they are worthy of a mention on my blog - if nothing else.

Making this an epic post, I am going to post a formidable and relevant (to that final ranted point) poem by D H Lawrence. Read, don't even think about looking for assonance and enjambment and alliteration and all that absolute rot that people are required to find in poetry: feel the words roll or jar from your tongue and listen to them, understand them, learn from them.

How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.

And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.