The American Londoner is moving!

Off to my own domain. 

Worry not. I will still be in London and still imparting my golden nuggets of pith about my experiences here and the world in general, but after an extremely pleasurable but somewhat brief stay in the blogspot neighbourhood, I'm off to a pricier area in the Wordpress side of town. You get a decent amount for your money and the amenities can't be topped. I'll have my own place now, www.theamericanlondoner.com. All the archived posts have transferred and I've added a new one that is my own reflection on the current very troubling state of relations between the Muslim world and the USA, which I hope you'll enjoy in what I think is a cleaner and more visually attractive layout. I'm still getting things settled and changing my address with all the usual people (you know, twitter, facebook, Internations), but I would love for you all to continue to drop on by and enjoy my blog. Please do. All the best. 

Guilty Pleasure Tourism: The Viking Splash Tour

It wasn't the Literary Pub Crawl. It wasn't The Martello Tower in SandyCove. It wasn't even a stroll through Trinity College Dublin to commune with the spirit of Swift and feel the rhythm of The Celtic Twilight beating in my breast. But The Viking Splash Tour in Dublin was shamelessly side-splitting fun and uncommonly good value in an wallet-stranglingly expensive city. 

As you can guess, I approached the Viking Splash with some scepticism. Wearing big plastic hats with horns? Raising your arms in mindless glee and roaring obnoxiously in unison with the person next to you like a European football hooligan at the nearest passerby? Willingly, joyfully strapping yourself into a former military vehicle (some of the Viking Splash people carriers were used in the D-Day landings) to splash down in the murky waters of the Liffey? Surely this wasn't for me? Surely this was for other Americans? Tourists. Those still inclined to call themselves 85% Irish Americans. Not for a radio-4-listening (Americans read NPR), Guardian reading (for Guardian, read New York Times, I think) culture vulture like me. I'll take a stroll through Merrion Square and The National Gallery thank you very much. 

There are probably two important things important to bear in mind. The first is that having a young child gives you licence to do whatever childish touristy stuff your sense of self-respect and dignity might not normally permit. Second, it turns out that the Viking Splash Tour is not the tourist-pandering game of dress-up that it appears to be (actually that would be the disappointingly cheap and unhorrifying Edinburgh Dungeon), but a floating comedy hour, guided by a born-and-bred Dubliner with a healthy dose of razor sharp wit and sarcasm that kept me convulsing until my sides hurt and my eyes streamed tears of laughter.

Our guide and driver, Anto, with a thick 'Dooblin' accent that I'm quite sure was his own, began with the premise that we were all Vikings -- thus the tacky hats -- surrounded by Celts, a foreign people so inimical to our being that we had to vocally rage against them, proceeding to catalogue the most loathsome types of Celts, among them Cappucino Celts (those dressed head-to-toe in highstreet gear sipping lattes on the sidewalks), Competitor Celts (those that had chosen other bus tours around the city), and Lost Celts (the ones standing on street corners looking at open maps in consternation). We dutifully roared like fierce Northern warriors. So ingeniously tongue-in-cheek was the whole idea sold to us that you couldn't help but get into the spirit. That's my excuse: I did it for irony's sake. 

Anto proceeded to narrate us through historic Dublin with the same subtle irony and  humour that is the very best part of the native character, from waving at another bus driver letting him into a lane and claiming he was a former parole officer who had done his job too well and had to make his living working for Dublin Transport, to requesting one of the passengers lean over to grab some copper piping off of the roof rack of a nearby van, "Cause that would fetch near enoof eighty Euro like, ya know?", to explaining Ireland's dire financial position through the local government's choice to commission the new abstract 'forest sculpture' in the Docklands, "When a headcase lends a headcase eight million euro to pay a spacer, there's something wrong like, ya know?... I mean it loits up at noit and it's pretty but it's not eight million euro pretty, ya know what I me-an, like?"

Which is not to say The Viking Splash Tour is not an educational experience as well. We were given the context to Swift's 'Modest Proposal' whilst passing St. Patrick's Cathedral, I now know why Dubliners have traditionally been called 'Jackeens' and I can rattle off with confidence the various nicknames by which the statue of Molly Malone at the bottom of Grafton Street has been known to locals. The Tart with The Cart, The Trollop with the Scallops, The Dish with The Fish, The Flirt with The Skirt, the poetic imagination of the Celt is clearly limitless. 

The Dolly with The Trolley (image taken from www.awaycity.com)

And of course, towards the very end of your hour and a quarter in whichever Norse-deity-named amphibious vehicle (ours was called 'Balder' evidently 'Day' personified in Norse mythology) in which you travel around Fair City, you do get the thrill of donning a life-jacket, riding down a concrete ramp and doing a picturesque little twirl around Grand Canal Dock Basin, which, Anto informed us, would be a lovely place to live were it not for the Viking Splash tour, passing by twenty times a day. 

Grand Canal Dock Basin, fisheye view 

Surprisingly good craic, The Viking Splash tour. At 20 euro a ticket, I wouldn't call it cheap, but nothing in Dublin is, even in these austere times. It is two euro pricier than the leading open top bus tour, but the pleasure of the experience, both in terms of sheer hilarity and with the thrill of an aquatic exploration, make this tour better value by far. You can't beat the discounts either. When the charming man that we booked with on Stephen's Green found out that my son was named after the Norse god of peace, prosperity and fertility (go ahead and search that one out), he gave my mother-in-law a student price. I believe she was pleased. 

You are advised to book ahead, which may sound a bit insane, but they sell out quick. We showed up at noon hoping to stroll onto a Viking voyage and were informed that all excursions were sold out until 5:30. You can do so by going to Viking Splash's website here or by calling 00 353 1 707 6000, or you could do what we did and show up on the day. Dublin is not a city short of things to do or places to spend money.

One last note on Irish wit. I am always pleasantly surprised by how cleverly the Celtic imagination can incorporate what seem to be trite and hackneyed into something ironic and refreshing like these two examples, which can be seen now regularly around the Republic. I cannot vouch for the North. 

Image taken from www.coffeyfilter.com

Seen in a shop on Grafton Street

Slan Abhaile!

Moving Right Along

Team USA (taken from People Magazine's website)

The time has finally come, gentle folk, to move from the glory of the games, to the grit of fear and loathing on the campaign trail 2012. 

Obama Vs. Romney (Taken from Caglecartoons.com)

If you haven't already, the tune we're all singing now is 'let's get political' and fast. For some, this period in the election cycle can never come too soon. I miss political seasons in America. You don't seem to get that intensity over here, waking up and poring over figures and gallup polls whilst you pour your morning coffee. Voters are concerned here, but oddly enough, the result feels a bit like a foregone conclusion. In America, for every election since Bush's first, the excitement, the intensity, the levels of vitriol flung with venomous rage between people from particular camps has been just thrilling. I feel like it started with Bush, our most divisive president, a superlative that I have often wonder if he takes pride in wearing around the world. 

The presidential race and American political attitudes in general puts me in mind of a much more local anecdote from two summers ago when, on a visit back to the homestead, sitting outside on the back deck, enjoying a beer or coffee with my father, he asks me, with wonderfully sincere innocence, but also more than a hint of paranoia, 'Do you ever see any of those Muslims in London?' 

I nearly spat out my Bud Lime (Why oh why try for the Corona drinkers' market) before I checked myself and remembered I'd been living in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world in London, shoulder to shoulder every day with people of all creed and colo(u)r, even those whose beliefs are easily vilified by the American media. 

I patiently explained to both my parents that one of my best students was a Muslim named Hamza, to which my mother's gloriously provincial, and blusteringly racist response was, 'Well, I'll be darned. I guess if he's studying hard he must not be making bombs at night.' No no. She was serious. 

American political attitudes are like that though, either wonderfully open or wonderfully ignorant and sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

On this and many other events in the political season will I have much to say, but for now, The American Londoner is off to Ireland, where my wife is from, to thatch cottages and drink Guinness and sing shanties until I embarrass myself atop the spire at the top of O'Connell Street. ( I don't want to disabuse you of any romantic notions of Ireland). I will be rejoining the nonline community though for the two weeks, not because Ireland is still in the dark days of pre-internet developing civilization, but because my mother-in-law refuses to get a computer and data package fees when abroad are tyrannical. But I like being unplugged. It's shocking how much conversation gets had.

Bon Voyage (taken from the Salem Press Website)

Before I go, I wanted to point out, I am now on a brilliant website called Internations.org, connecting different expat communities through blogging and a variety of social media. Check me out here.

See you in September.

Americans in London 2012 - The USA Wuz Here

Simple plan: Head to Westfield Shopping Centre, wait at entrance to Olympic Village, take pictures of patriotically dressed Americans for blog. Complications: five year old son, could work to advantage as strangers always warm to a child with a winning smile. 

On the penultimate day of the London Olympiad. 

Given that I wrote ambiguously to disparagingly about how we wear our colours abroad a couple weeks ago in this blog, I thought I'd do a little photographical essay on us supporting Team USA, resplendent in all our 'Old Glory' red, white and blue. 

And here we are, our true colours proudly, unashamedly displayed for all and sundry. 

Above is my first victim, Ashton from California, whose cape turned out to be quite a fashion among Americans abroad in E20 (as I suppose we must call it from now on. Isn't E20 where Eastenders is set?). Ashton was a great sport seeing as how I disturbed his lunch in the food court in order to take his picture. Excuse the 'Shaky Auteur' style if it's not to your liking. I was still a tad nervous about approaching people to take pictures of them, about which I learned a lot and became more comfortable with as the afternoon wore on. 

Bonnie, from the Washington DC area

Funny thing is that people can get awfully paranoid about strangers stopping them in the middle of the mall. Probably happened enough times before. Initially, they probably all thought I was after money, or trying to sell them The Big Issue, or worse, about to rob them blind of their Olympic tickets like the famed historical highwaymen of Angle-land. But once I told them what I was all about and that I wanted to take a picture of them for my blog, there was such a softening. Almost a thrill to feel the sensation of fame running at the fingertips. Bonnie here was keen, though her husband, not dressed nearly as patriotically, didn't seem to want to be snapped at all. I suspect he thought I was stalking his wife, a suspicion that I shared with my son afterwards, perhaps wrongly, because it put me in the position of explaining rather too loudly what 'stalking' meant to a five year old within earshot of many equally suspicious looking Olympic fans who looked like they might have social services on speed dial.

Mind you, some were especially hostile to being approached. We'll put those people in a category that I'll call 'the British who I mistook for Americans'. One of them was wearing an American flag t-shirt and carrying a plastic bag labeled 'NBA'. Isn't that like wearing a neon sign emblazoned with 'American as Apple Pie' on it? I think our English cousins are just a bit more closed and jaded than we are and I think the few who fall into this category were decidedly not Londoners. 

Steve, from California 

Steve was great. He really embodied one of the things that makes me proud to be American. I told him about my limited and sheltered northeastern existence, having never been west of the Mississippi in my life (True. All true. I know. Hard to tell with my worldliness). 'Really?' He said, 'That's a such a shame because as you go west the weather just gets better and better,' and from Steve with that wonderfully honest American smile, I believed it. Because it's true and also because there is a sincerity that goes beyond simplicity or literal-mindedness, which is what the Brits generally call us. There is an untranslatably beautiful honesty in a smile and pure delight in the sun shining every day. Steve's never had Seasonal Affective Disorder and clearly no Scandinavian homicide drama could possibly have anything to say that would relate to his experience. And because of that American sincerity, that delight in the simple pleasures, I just felt like taking a trip out west, just to visit Steve and see the weather. Alas, were there time to exchange numbers in a heaving mall, but here in London, we live by a faster pace. 

Virginians Abroad (Read that carefully, will ya?)

This family taught me another one of those lessons about approaching the public, a heartwarming one this time. The teenage son in the foreground had been exchanging words in a tone of mild irritation more than matched by his mother. They seemed to be arguing about how to get where they were going, but I was desperate to get a couple more snaps of Americans so I decided to disturb them. At first the young lad had no interest in being in the shot, but I cajoled him and he looks somewhat reluctant, but a poised reluctant, as though he's turned it into a modelling pose. The mother was only too happy, as you can see, to smile for the camera, as was the cute little girl. As I walked away I could hear, just within earshot, milder tones of concordance between mother and son and a general harmony between the three. Being approached by someone asking you to pretend you're happy can have that effect. Pretend for long enough and some of it spills over into reality. You forget the bagatelle that you were annoyed with and move on. Quite a lovely, uncomplicated moment.

Fellow Expatriate Americans

I end with this adorably sweet couple because I know neither their names or where they are from. So astounded was I when they told me that they live not anywhere in America, but in Bury St. Edmunds and in such a rush were they to get to see Athletics that we didn't have time for niceties, but I was elated to find two kindred intrepid spirits, fellow expatriates abroad, supporting the home team in all their glory, as we can't help but do when we support our compatriots and separate ourselves for just a moment from the darker side of this Olympiad. Objectors will say that this act of forgetting is just what perpetuates a world run by megaconglomo-corporate entities and believe me, I'm on your side, which is why enjoyment is all the richer if you can celebrate the good in things while, with a fine sense of balance, understanding the underlying cost of all of our joy. Here's to Rio in 2016. Well done, America in London 2012. 

Celebrating The Olympics: Hackney Style

This was supposed to be a rather different blog post, an in-depth and personal probing exploration into whether it is possible to separate corporate sponsorship from the purity of enjoyment of sport in the middle of 3 fenced off big screens in Victoria Park, East London. That post may come, but my material changed very suddenly today when I innocently sought to take a picture of what looked like some garishly dressed, golden-bedecked hairdressers, styling a young girl's hair to the backdrop of thickly pumping hardcore/trance, and was very quickly with coy and at the same time grandiose gestures, invited up to experience the 'styling' of Osadia, a street theatre group based in Barcelona since 1996 striving to push the boundaries of interactive, street entertainment and the extent of participation and ownership in that art through their performances.

Especially in the last few years, I've been trying to be more confident and let my inner-American out. We are to a great extent defined by how other people react to us and how we provoke those reactions and I enjoy sometimes exceeding the expectations of the kind of American people think I am. So instead of shrinking into a corner with my plastic bottle of what will remain an unnamed Dutch beer, I decided I was game. What I was game for I didn't realise until about 20 minutes of styling, a round of applause and a crying child who wanted to know why I had changed so much later. I will admit, along with that brazen American stepping up to the plate or stage as it were, there was wild anxiety, which got slightly wilder with each step this fascinatingly fetishistically dressed performer took, because if you want hair this good, believe me, it is a long and involved process. I thoroughly enjoyed the result though as I became a part of the continuing artwork with various Park-goers striding up to take my picture or have a picture taken with me. 

Ah, the price of celebrity. Pictures don't lie. I felt like someone or something different. Wicker Man crossed with Puck the mischievous fairy via Ziggy Stardust. Alas, I would have loved to have kept the look for longer, but the wonderful and lamentable thing about the carnivalesque is that you can only transcend your identity and the boundaries of it for the duration of the carnival. Leave it and you become a spectacle on a Hackney street, with some awed, some cat-calling, some scoffing, and some speechless. 

That was my Olympic experience today. I saw Katie Taylor, from Bray in Ireland, the same town my wife is from, win gold in women's boxing. And I left Victoria Park, East London, blazing loud green and pink.   

                              

My 13 Minutes Of Fame - Lessons I learned from being on the radio

Journeyed far into the unknown west on Saturday. 

West London. W6. Hammersmith to be exact, to be interviewed by David Michaels from OnFm in the lovely Riverside Studios overlooking the Thames next to Hammersmith Bridge. 

Fascinating experience. My first radio interview. We chatted for a little less than a quarter of an hour about how I came to move from the states to Dublin and then to London, my blog and my writing and what I hope to do with it, and my views on The Olympics. I really enjoyed myself and I felt it went really well, but I also learned a lot, the key points of which can be summarised into the following kernels: 

1. Assume nothing about your audience -  I went with certain expectations, but felt I talked as though everyone listening already knew me and what I was about. Make as much known about what you do as possible, starting from the beginning. If that's the wrong place, a good interviewer will guide you to the right one. 
2. Make a plan - It might seem like a casual chat with someone who works professionally for radio every day, but it's orchestrated to appear that way. Have a plan as to how to present yourself, pick the two or three coolest things you want your audience to know about what you do, and angle every one of your responses to somehow tie in with that. 
3. Keep talking - I cut myself short a few times thinking I was going on too long, but it seems in radio, there is seldom such a thing. If you're going on too long, the presenter will tell you, but just keep talking about what you do and don't be afraid of repeating yourself. Like in a classroom, the people listening will only remember about 2 minutes of what you say. Reword the same cool stuff about what you do every two minutes. Can't go wrong. 

Also, having got the recording already from OnFm, just listening to myself was enormously instructive. I think everyone should listen to themselves more often - teachers, parents, Mitt Romney - but so many don't take the time. 

Have a listen and feel free to offer your honest critique. 

My Interview 

Don't Tread On Me - America The Branded

Taken from The Daily Mail's website

I am on the District Line, traveling west, sitting across from a stocky young man who's just boarded at Whitechapel. This corn-fed meal with tanned skin, mirror sunglasses, loose fitting jeans and chunky sneakers wears a t-shirt with the words 'America, The Beautiful' in red, white, and blue on top of a vertical star spangled banner, behind which seems to float the diaphanous image of a woman's face that I can only assume is a feminine representation of 'America, The Beautiful.' I resist the urge to lean over to him and say, 'You know, people would have known without you announcing it on your t-shirt like that. And another thing: It's neither of the things you think it is - vaguely, subtly artistic or stylish.'

One is put in mind of the Irish poet Louis MacNiece: 'Why,/ Must a country, like a ship or a car, be always female,/ Mother or sweetheart?'

Why is it that as a nation we feel a desperate compulsion to label ourselves?

It's as though no one listened to Springsteen carefully enough to read irony into him.

Or as though we are still worried that someone might mistake us for being from somewhere else or belonging to some other cultural group.

No one will.

The minute we begin to speak, they know. Everybody knows. And it's no bad thing. What is a bad thing is trying desperately to label it and somehow make it chic or cool and pretend it's some artistic statement.

Here's what I like: on the same tube journey, an individual boards the train in jeans and plain, off-white t-shirt, sits down and starts tapping his feet to the rhythm of whatever tuneful track is playing away in on his MP3 player. It's then that I notice, his Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, faded, worn, ragged, but clearly patterned with Old Glory, stripes on each side, stars down the tongue. A cheeky treading with the flag, not on it, naturally, not flashing, not waving, but toe-tapping with a wonderfully tacit acknowledgement of nationality as a simple, softly spoken part of who you are.

On the tube back, a heaving, humid, flesh-wall-cramped train car. A short stocky man of some sort of East Asian heritage squeezes on (melting pot significance, not passively racist. Swear). He is wearing red Bermuda shorts, a plain blue top, red, white and blue star-shaped sunglasses, a soft, fuzzy looking Uncle Sam style top hat and a red and white striped draw-string bag slung over both shoulders with a little American flag poking chirpily out the back. This too strikes me as utterly and completely appropriate. It's too loud to be obnoxious. This man is America personified, wearing the country, proclaiming the preamble like a big flamboyant flamingo shouting to all and sundry, 'I am the U. S. A!' without saying a word.

Taken from the Scavenge Costumes website

I'm not given to wearing my national colo(u)rs very often, the 4th of July being an exception some years, but I think what bothered me about the first man's shirt, aside from the inherent and age-old sexism and the mixture of telltale labels, was the pretension that there was some conscious art in declaring your national heritage, as opposed to treating it as some part of you that is as natural as your shoe size, as innate as a sexual orientation. We are Americans and intensely proud of who we are, but I'd rather we all avoid standing in odious uncritical hand-on-heart reverence to the flag, not in front of the foreigners, most of whom have a bit of a sense of humo(u)r about their homelands.

So, bundle of contradictions that I am, that's what I think we all need: more pride, less reverence. 

Something More For The Weekend

Good Friday, gentle folk. More street art to beautify your next couple days, straight from Clapton Passage, E5, Hackney. An Olympic borough. I like the carnivalesque feeling these pieces convey. Wonderful, wild, masked and just on the far edge of transgressive. Puts me in mind of this wonderful piece from The Daily Mail of all places about East End political street art hero Banksy's most iconic pieces recreated with real people. Check it out. 

Speaking of, The Olympics have turned out to be quite an exciting spectacle, especially the opening ceremony with Danny Boyle's sneaky plea to remember the great triumph of nationalized medical care that is the NHS. When the Democrats were campaigning hard to get 'Obamacare' through congress, the Republicans worked very hard to bring willing Tories over on all-expenses paid flights I'm sure (or at least claimed expenses) to whinge about the NHS that they probably never make use of anyway, but I've definitely had better experiences with the NHS and heard less horrific tales than the chilling stories I've heard from friends and family about medicine in America. 

And the complaints from my compatriots on twitter about 'leave it to the British to politicise the Olympics'. Politicisation of the Games began from at least 1988 when heavy corporate sponsorship was dragged in to resurrect a lurching moribund tradition. 

What do your weekends have in store for you all? I'm pretty busy and pretty excited. We've got lunches packed and we're off to brave this mildly, partially sunny weather to picnic in Haggerston Park and see the Games on the big screen. Yesterday, my son told me he was watching France vs. New Zealand in the Velodrome Cycling. 'I hope France wins,' he said. 'Why is that?' I asked. 'Because they have blue on their sleeve,' he replied, quite matter-of-factly. That's the kind of basis for an allegiance we need more of. Because they've got nice colours in their uniforms. 

I'm also immersing myself in nostalgia. I always get nostalgic around American accents and tonight, I'm seeing Savage in Limbo, by John Patrick Shanley, performed by The Planktonic Players in The Camden Eye. The play encompasses the stories of five disillusioned New Yorkers. Jaded New Yorkers. Stories about home. I can't wait. 

Taken from The Planktonic Players blog. 

And tomorrow, I sojourn west, to West London that is, to be interviewed by OnFm about my opinions on Team USA, The Olympics, and my ongoing struggle to become a successful writer in this vast sea of opportunities. If you happen to be travelling through West London between two and three, tune in to 101.4 on your FM dial and see what you make of my first appearance on the radio. 

Have a magnificent weekend, one and all. 

Violent Trauma, The Aurora Shootings and The Way of Lunacy

There are a number of ways to deal with the experience of violent trauma.There's therapy, which of course takes many forms: talking through the experience, associated memories, feelings and thoughts with a paid professional; art therapy, premised on giving vent and voice to your negative feelings and emotions through the creative impulse in a medium such as painting, sculpture or music; there's hypnotism, drawing the suppressed negativity to the surface whilst in a mesmerised state; there's repression, which we all do a bit of every day, i.e. we suppress the impulse to throttle our bosses because we submit to certain types of behaviour in order to live in civilized society; and we repress a certain amount of stress in order to function in every day life. Men are actively encouraged to repress their sentiments and affections for fear of appearing too soft, the long term effects of which are often cited as, among other things the reason why shaking baby syndrome occurs more often in boys and the reason Irish males between the ages of 18-25 account for one of the highest suicide rates in Europe.

And of course there's fantasy, not in itself a terrible or deleterious element of a constructive course of psychotherapy, but when prescribed by an amateur or a petition of social media users as a way of helping 58 shaken victims by confronting them with an image directly associated with the violent trauma they have experienced, as the above appeal that I came across posted on facebook three days after the shooting, started by Emily Sanchez, requests of Welsh-born star of The Dark Knight Rises Christian Bale, then it starts to sound a little bit less healthy and a bit more deranged.

The request tacitly acknowledges that the film will be indelibly associated with the horrifying experience inflicted on theatregoers by James Holmes. Else what would be the efficacy in having Bale dress up as Batman except as some kind of reparation of the image in the victims' minds for the upset that it may still be continuing to cause as a psychological symbol. But let's stop for a second. If you are dealing with the mental trauma associated with gunshot wounds or even being witness to an attack like this, in which your memory is clouded with smoke, gunfire, bodies falling, running all around and screams of terror and anguish and hovering above it all in your grey matter is the image of the DC Comics hero, larger than life looming towards you on a cinema screen, what is going go be the effect of seeing the actor himself, striding purposefully towards you in a hospital bed, wearing the exact same costume, replicating and amplifying the imaginational icon of fear for you? I can think of nothing more fear-inducing.

Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed and I do think it's good and noble of the actor to have gone to visit the victims of the shooting as himself, but isn't there a strong chance we'd be seeing a second set of headlines about further upset caused if this insane appeal had been acted on? The philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in an analysis of The Joker, Batman's nemesis and the character that James Holmes allegedly identified himself with before opening fire, says that the clown prince of crime is 'not a man without a mask, but, on the contrary, a man who is his mask -- there is nothing, no "ordinary guy" beneath it.' What kind of message are we sending if there is no ordinary guy beneath the mask of The Dark Knight, that there is no piecing together the brokenness of violence, no dissembling the experience of trauma?

Not only is this attempt to deal with the tragedy dangerous, but it is also insultingly trivialising for the victims. You would not see an appeal like this with any other situation in which a group from the public have been deliberately terrorised: not a Holocaust survivor, not a refugee from Iraq, not a family member who has lost a loved one in an IRA bombing. You may as well send Adam West, belly sagging over his utility belt, Robin at his side smashing fist against palm crying, 'Holy travesty Batman! We've just made light of an unspeakable horror!' And if that sounds flippant, it is only to illustrate the undeniable flippancy in Sanchez's probably well-intentioned and unfortunately popular effort.

The worst part about this campaign is that it seems to actively deny the real problem. It attempts to engage with nightmares through the use of escapism, instead of engaging with the issue in real, complicated terms. That poor, unfortunate community in Colorado, has sustained terrible loss and yet, as is the worrying trend in the wake of gun violence in America, firearm sales have spiked for fear that those pesky legislators in Washington DC may try through their dictatorial power of democratic process pass a law in some cockamamy attempt to protect the scaredy cat, commie citizens of this beloved nation. Fascists masquerading as elected representatives seem oblivious to the fact that we have to bear arms to protect ourselves from the fearsome colonial overlords trying any minute to quarter themselves in our homes. We must continue to perpetuate a perfectly healthy paranoia in the national psyche about ourselves and continue to desensitise our children to violence while guillotining any serious, difficult discussion about the real reasons individuals end up blurring the line between the value of human life and the enacting of a twisted psychological vision.

Until we, as a nation, recognise our collective culpability and initiate difficult national discourses about these issues, without leaders who only seem to grudgingly acknowledge days after the event that something must be done by the government of America to protect the citizens of America, I fear these unspeakable acts of violence will continue. Much will come out in the next few weeks about James Holmes and the unregenerable evil within his dark pit of a soul. It is almost certain that somewhere, he confused symbols of fantasy with his version of reality. Let us try to fight the good fight and refuse to give in to the same temptation. What do we become otherwise?

And I do know how it is. You see something in the sidebar or in front of you as you're scrolling down and it's a nanosecond of your time and an iota of effort to 'like' or 'share'. I've liked everything from Matt Smith to Debbie Harry and I'm pretty sure I've shared a map of Panem because I thought, 'Yeah, that makes sense with what the book says,' but there must be a line at which you stop and think about spreading an arguably callous, wrong-headed campaign. I also think that Facebook and other social media can be a force to effect great social change and information sharing, as jives with Tim Berners-Lee's great vision, but we also have to act conscientiously in what is by nature a superficial environment that often feels like it is all surface and no substance.

I have a feeling there are those who might think that I am spoiling a well-intentioned act, but there are many well-intentioned efforts that have ended in a jeremiad of despair, attempts to create a stronger German state for instance in 1938; more recently the attempt to prevent bloodshed through the location and elimination of weapons of mass destruction annihilating thousands of innocent Iraqis in the process; the effort to monitor the usage of libraries and the internet by free citizens in the name of preventing terrorist atrocities, swapping freedom for an anxious sense of security. We all mean well, but the extent to which we carry out our 'good intentions' can pave the way to a better world or a very bad place, as the adage goes.

I would end by saying that if I have caused offence, 'that you have but slumber'd here' but that would be to attempt an escape again, to elide the real and dark chapter in our nation's history that we must scrutinise unflinchingly if we are to avoid repeating it.

Do remember, I may disagree with you, but I'll do as Voltaire would have done to defend your right to say it.


This post was informed by the following article:

http://www.globalnews.ca/should+bale+visit+shooting+victims/6442684935/story.html

And Jason Farago speaks to our tendency as a nation to avoid complex national discussions in this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/27/james-holmes-dehumanisation-causes-violence

This BBC Radio show features a fascinating discussion. Only about 28 minutes does someone finally call in and add a sensible voice to the discussion:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00vlk83/World_Have_Your_Say_WHYS_60Can_shootings_like_Aurora_be_prevented/

Something on Being Starstruck for Olympic Opening Weekend

We are steeped in Olympic fever in London. Soon, the games will be nigh impossible to escape unless you are under a rock somewhere. The first thing I've noticed, being American myself, is the increase in the number of compatriots flooding this great metropolis. Even spotted Al Roker of The Today Show filming on the grounds of The Tower of London the other day when we were busy being tourists in our own city. I felt ambivalent about crowding in to get a few snaps and say hello to the man. He always seemed like such a big presence on the TV when I was growing up and yet, I never really spent a lot of time watching him, so was it  the American propensity towards being star-struck within spitting distance of celebrity that kept me circling like a distant satellite hoping to get a glimpse?

It certainly seemed to be this tendency for the crowds gathered outside the green in front of William The Conqueror's original White Tower, many of whom spoke with pronounced North Atlantic twangs. I've never had many brushes with personages of high public profile. I met Michael Stipe when I was 15; stalked him half a block down South Street in Philly just to interrupt him while he was ordering coffee to tell him that I was going to see him in Veteran's Stadium and that he really inspired me. Swoon.

Al Roker doesn't have the same sort of appeal, but then neither does approaching celebrities any more. English and Irish people tend to be a bit superior to the phenomena, but then I do too and I wonder if it's just because I can see the silliness in it. I suspect most Americans do, but that there's something about a TV crew that brings out delirium in people. I tend to think it's programmes like The Today Show that cement our great picket-fenced village and make us feel like we're all having coffee together with Al and the gang, which you can see the magic in. It's almost Rockwellian.

Here's the link to the interview they filmed with a Yeoman Warder that day. It did manage to make me slightly homesick, in a scoffing superior, I kind-of-wish I was in America sort of way.

We are going to try to get to see the Opening Ceremony on the big screen tonight in Victoria Park, which is a ticketed event, a fact which raises great ire in my soul. I get more and more apprehensive about big events that, with increasing frequency, fence off public spaces. I'd like to think it doesn't just stem from the fact that I don't have a ticket, but tickets, really? To go to Victoria Park and watch something on a big screen? I'm sure there will be plenty of Heineken and McDonald's tents, and as of this morning, with no more tickets being issued, it is possible to get in, but not guaranteed, another reason to check out the apparently much more open looking Haggerston Park events, or find something else spectacular to do with your weekend.

Should you be in East London -- and if you are over for the big you know whats then you will be -- There is a fantastic little place that you could check out at 51 Chatsworth Road, just up from Homerton High Street, called Creperie du Monde. I've reviewed here for the Hackney Hive. Well worth checking out.

However it is that you choose to spend your time, do make it magnificent.

The London Olympics: A Survival Guide For Visiting Americans

Photo taken by Paula Hughes

1) Avoid talking out loud. There's not enough space in the whole of England.

2) Sew a Canadian flag into your backpack.

Only kidding. We never pretend to be Canadian anymore.

And in point of fact, since 2008, our likeability capital has increased significantly enough so that we don't really have anything to fear in public anymore.  I've been overseas long enough to remember the dark days when Dubya's simian visage was the face of America to the world and we were seen internationally as a rampaging, war-mongering cowboy. Gone are the days when sympathizers and descendants of Churchill would secret us away under floorboards so that we could say the pledge of allegiance in dark corners. No longer do we find ourselves hiding in abandoned junkyards patriotically playing baseball and furtively eating Crackerjacks. Thankfully, since a cool, worldly dude became president, the foreign exchange rate in popularity and positive reactions is quite favourable.

Having said all that, we may be fans of Downton and Doctor Who, but we are not yet a nation of world travellers and try as McDonald's, Coke and Westfield Shopping Centre might to make the Olympic village into USA lite, there are probably still some Olympians, their families and other visitors who still might want to travel out into Londontown. It is in this intrepid exploratory spirit that I offer a few tips and pointers to help you get through the next couple weeks.


Beware of Sarcasm

You make friends with some Brits. You get along rather well with them. Splendidly. Famously, in fact. So much so that they invite you out for a night on 'the razz' and you're not quite sure what that means but it could  involve neon and fetishes or it could just be a few drinks and a few laughs. You meet your new mates and as you are about to step on the tube to head to the West End for your first stop on what promises to be a night of frolics and fun, you check with Gemma/Nigel to make sure your dress or shirt looks fab or sexy or 'all right' (in the case of Nigel) and your new Anglo-Saxon friend turns to you and says, 'yeah' and walks onto the waiting tube train. It could be a short, clipped yeah, or it could be a nano-syllable too long, but it's a noncommital yeah, a clearly ambiguous affirmation, the kind of 'yeah' delivered with a half-smile enough to convince you that you've got lipstick on your teeth or a major cliffhanger, but I couldn't be bothered to tell you. Just strike out all night and then wonder why at the end of it all; this noncommital 'yeah' is not delivered with exaggerated Chandler Bing emphasis. No one's said to you, I'm sooo  not liking that top or you should sooo  go back to the hotel and change right now. It's much more subtle and something so tiny that it leaves doubts in your head so niggling that they grow and grow until Oxford Circus when you are either ready to claw your friend's face or give the guy a good bite of a knuckle sandwich and set him straight.

Before you do, slow down. Cool your jets, tiger. Remember that you are in the United Kingdom. Sarcasm and Irony are the official languages of state. You don't get off the plane at Charles DeGaulle without so much as a 'Parlez-vouz Anglais?' and you shouldn't walk around merry old England of Madame George and roses without expecting the most deadpan sarcasm you've never heard. Chances are, your friend just wants to get on the tube quickly because he or she fears that if it begins moving it will not stop and will mercilessly rip part of his or her body as it passes into the next tunnel and chances are you look fabulous, but you will find yourself in a plethora of situations in which you have to be a bit more acutely aware of context than you might otherwise be on the other side of the pond.

Hearts, Minds and The Danger of Assumptions


Try to avoid remarking to locals about how much good the Olympics is doing for the area, for London and for Britain in general. It's a bit of a sore point. The Brits do love to complain, bless 'em, but this time you might forgive them for it. The official drink of the Olympics is produced by an American corporation; the official caterers to the Olympics are an American fast food chain and corporation; the official chocolate of the Olympics is British owned by American multinational, Kraft; the official beer of the Olympics is Dutch. It appears to the British public as though either the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), have gone out of their way to intentionally and perversely ignore British business interests. British businesses are finding their deliveries of stock are getting later and later, their customers are drained by Westfield and one local bookshop owner has stated that she has made more from the Anti-Olympics publishing boom than the games themselves. These events are not benefiting the British or local economy and British business owners will not thank you for it.

However, if you do want to win over the hearts and minds of the indigenous peoples of this island, there is something you can do. Hop the train to Hackney Wick, Homerton or Hackney Central (there isn't anything in Stratford unless you are from New Jersey and you like that gritty, industrial, Mad Max sort of thing, which I can say being from New Jersey and must clarify as 'humour'). Get off and walk down the street. Having trawled through the archives of my blog first, you will already know as you are walking that there is an array of fine eateries and coffee shops that will serve you a nicer soft drink than Coke (Victorian Lemonade or Elderflower Cordial?) a superior coffee and finer lunch than you will find in McDonald's (Apricot chilli jam and cream cheese on toast or crepe filled with goat's cheese and walnuts?) and a finer pint of British beer at a local pub than Heineken will serve any day (East London Brewery is particularly nice, found on tap at The Clapton Hart). You don't have to go to Hackney just because I live here and I like it, but be careful to avoid assumptions about the coziness of familiar brands.


Londoners Stand on The Right

When I first moved here, I was amazed by the fact that Londoners use escalators for the purpose for which they are built: to increase the speed of your ambulatory movement downwards or upwards, which is brilliant. I get the impression in recent years that people think the same does not apply to escalators in shopping centres, but it does. And I would have thought that with a nation of health-obsessed gym members like us, we'd take full advantage of a free public stairmaster, but I tried to start the trend in America of continuing to walk on an escalator without stopping or letting yourself laze like a human mannequin on display, but for whatever reason it never took. I kept getting the dirtiest stares when trying to pass others up mid-conversation. Like good drivers though, Londoners walk on the left and allow a slow lane for tourists, but use the slow lane and stand on the right and do not be surprised if you are trampled for not doing so.

Remember, London is Still Keeping Calm and Carrying On

School's out. It's true. There are no teachers attending work or students attending school. But bankers still carry briefcases dutifully into the City of London. Nurses still don their scrubs when they get into London Bridge or The Royal Free. And estate agents (someone has to do it) still do up their Eton Knots and don their pinstripes in the hopes that the economy will pick up. But Londoners like to get to work efficiently and they like for you not to obstruct the progress of their city as it forges on in daily toil.

So if you have not mastered the ticket machines at tube stations, step aside and ask an attendant. Don't try and be a hero. Do not try and figure it out at rush hour with the trader behind you seething because he is already 33 seconds late and on his second machiatto. If you do play at these heroics, do not be surprised when you turn round, triumphantly pleased with yourself at having figured out how to purchase a zone 1 single only to find a hulking green monster who's just ripped genuine Armani and is now ready, with the rest of the commuters, to rip into you.

I would say this applied during peak times, but in the next few weeks, peak times are twenty four hours a day. So, be mindful of others around you.

Get Off The Beaten Path For Once

There are some obvious things you are looking forward to doing on your London bucket list: seeing men in large funny hats swap shift, paying too much for a black cab, gawking at strangers from atop a double decker bus, that sort of thing. Think for a second though. This city wasn't planned out like most American cities, grid-like and structured, it evolved and sprawled and reached out and stayed where it was or kept moving or got bombed out of existence only to rise like the phoenix all new and mansion-block like.

London is a savage beauty. I love it for its raw, gruff, bracing multicultural sense of 'live and let live'. One thinks of the line from Yeats: 'A terrible beauty... Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.' That unapologetic, Londonness is also its charm. Bit like New York that way. Don't expect saccharine. Expect frowning and friendly.

There are so many hidden nooks and corners that if you allow a day or two just to get lost, the dividends are amazing. When they ask you if you saw poet's corner, you can say, 'No, but I walked around the Catholic Church in central London used by the KGB as a dead-letter box during the Cold War and wrote the opening chapter to my first spy thriller.' When they ask if you stood in front of Big Ben and took a picture of yourself smiling, which is something no one in London ever seems to do, you can say, 'Yeah, but I found walking around a recreated 17th Century Huguenot house, with a narrative that ascends with you through five floors, way more enthralling.' Again, it doesn't have to be The Brompton Oratory or The Denis Severs House, but find some corner of this city that few others have bothered with and find some memory to cherish and take back with you. You're traveling over a thousand miles, some of you for the first time, perhaps some for the last. Make sure you do something that will stay with you, not something you could have done if you stayed at home.

A couple good places to look for the unusual and out of the way in London are:

@UnusualLondon

Insider London

and

Secret London

Enjoy your stay.

Five Things About The Olympics That Will Sodden Your Sporting Spirit

I have to admit, I like the concept of the Olympics. I like the idea of the whole world being united in a sporting contest that goes back to antiquity and encourages a striving for excellence in physical abilities as well as sportsmanship. I like the idea of sport, unmotivated by lots of corporate sponsorship and greed as it seems football is here in England (and Baseball was in the 1990s, when I stopped following my team, The Mets, because I lost faith in players during the strike). And in some weird, perverse, London way, I feel a sense of pride that we got the games. But being an adoptive Londoner, I think I've also acquired a kind of second-nature scepticism about waves of positivity sweeping over a place like a juggernaut leaving nothing but vitamin C and sunshine in its wake. It smacks of the worst of blind American optimism and as Springsteen said, blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed.

There's no smoke without fire and no scepticism without a seedy little fact lurking behind those shiny Olympic rings.Whilst I think The Games should be an enjoyable experience, here are a few uncomfortable truths to bear in mind as we are jubilantly celebrating sport.

Mowing down the Marshes

The Borough of Waltham Forest, on 7th February, 2011, greenlighted The Olympic Development Authority to build a large basketball training facility right on top of a massive amount of green space in the Porter's Field section of Leyton Marshes. You can read all about the campaign to prevent the courts from being built here. The ODA say they are obliging themselves to restore the Marshes to their former state by 15th October 2012, but as with rainforests, no matter how many trees you plant and fields you build over, there is no going back to the 'original state' of an historic green space. And I have to ask, why does London, a city with a surprisingly large amount of green spaces, need to sacrifice some of them? We host millions of commuters from the home counties every day. It's not as though we don't do big events.

Roll up, roll up, Olympic festival fans, it's Walthamstock

Exploiting green spaces for quick cash during the Olympics seems to be a real trend with Waltham Forest. A council licensing panel granted the Big Events Company (BEC) permission to sell alcohol and have dancing and recorded music between 1 and 10 pm, despite protests from local residents. According to The Waltham Forest Guardian's website: 

 'Last year the council secretly signed a contract to lease the land to the firm, hoping that a share of the profits from the deal would help pay the estimated £1.5million bill for its 'Big 6' series of events to celebrate the Olympics.'

A cynical person might think Waltham Forest was milking the games for all it was worth.

Branded like Cattle 

We have new stadiums, we have a new shopping centre, we even have a new postcode (E20, as if we can really call Stratford a city) but could we please leave our E15 greasy spoons alone? Kamel Kichane, the owner of The Olympic Cafe in Stratford was forced to change the name of his caf or have to pay the council £3,000. The following is Mr. Kichane's low cost solution to the problem.

What it reveals though is a wrong-headedness, a blinkered vision about the Olympic Brand. What was I saying up there about a competition untainted by commercialism? Correction. The sponsors and organisers project an image that the Olympics is not motivated by commercial greed and work very hard to project that image, but the fact is, according to Adweek magazine, the Olympics has been about greed and private sponsorship since LA in 1984 when Peter Ueberroth, the president of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee of the games that year, actively gunned for private, corporate sponsoship to resurrect a moribund tradition lurching towards oblivion.

Growing up in America, the notion of purity in the Olympics was cultivated. There was a general sense that these weren't like quarterbacks and big hitters getting paid several hundred thousand dollars per game; you expected double dealings and deviousness in sports like American football and baseball, what with their stink of greasy piles of dollar bills wafting through ballparks and stadiums acorss the country.  We were taught that Olympians were different; these were hard working athletes training for seven or eight hours every day to represent their country in some noble tradition.

We grew up with names like Flo Jo, Greg Luganis, Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson ringing with heroic clarity in our heads. And even in this short but famous list, only the reputations of of Joyner and Luganis remain intact. Lewis is still dogged today with the cloud of controversy caused by his testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and still being allowed to compete. Canadian Johnson famously tested positive and was stripped of his gold medal the same year. Such was the pressure of the freshly minted money-fed sponsorship-driven games that a slew of Athletes are alleged to have taken steroids and got away with it. Is it pure coincidence that this unethical practice became popular in the wake of the games going corporate? This was an atmosphere that was capable of corrupting even Canadian athletes. Canadians, I say. Canadians! When you've got to the point where can wreck the moral compass of the good founders of The Peaceable Kingdom up north, all hope is very nearly lost.

As a result of all this branding, aside from it not being a fair representation of unenhanced human athletic ability, to paraphrase Steve Punt in last week's episode of The Now Show, the official food of the Olympics is McDonald's, drink is Coca-cola, official chocolate is Cadbury's and official disease is type 2 diabetes. Perfect Pint UK reports that there is no British beer to be represented either at the London Olympics, just Heineken. God help you if you are drinking any water except Evian anywhere within the walls of the fortified Olympic Village. The Olympic village will have a 'pop-up McDonald's' that will officially be the largest in the world. With the Olympics in London for the first time since 1948, what do we want to showcase? The sophisticated array of top-notch intelligent chefs and creative organisations and restaurants that the British food industry has grown up into, or the ode to efficiency that is the brainchild of American Ray Kroc? Actually, the former might take some effort. It's not as though there are any Olympic boroughs serving any good British food nowadays and what chefs can we really claim of any reknown, let's go with cheap and cheerful, eh?

In efforts to protect trademark rights, you are not allowed to consume anything made by anyone outside of those producers who are official Olympic sponsors. Bog standard confidence trick: advertise freemarket and freechoice, get the punters inside, eliminate the choice and jack up the price, thus annihilating any image the games ever projected of being a competition of pure, uncorrupted athletic prowess for the sake of athletic prowess.

The World's Biggest Competition to Demonstrate What Exactly?

 

For an event that's been advertised as a massive benefit to London in the long-run, it doesn't seem to be doing much for us in the short term. A path I have only just started enjoying along the canal between Hackney and Stratford or rather Stratford and everywhere has been closed and placed under armed guard. Yes, because of the potential threat, you are no longer able to use your own athletic abilities to get near the site at which athletes from the world over are competing  to demonstrate their athletic abilities. Surely this is sending the wrong message, especially since the Games organizers had originally put money and efforts into improving the path and making sure the public knew that it was going to be an enjoyable way to get to Olympia, East London.

G4S -- The Mos Eisley of Olympic Security?

Indeed, as the list of revelations slithers out from under the carefully closed and locked doors of the Olympic media machine, I wonder if it would be possible to find a 'more wretched hive of scum and villainy' than in the offices of the firm G4S. I posted about a protest I saw at St. Paul's about the Anglo-Danish firm, not knowing much about them at the time. I've since researched and correct me if I'm wrong here, but we seem to have contracted a lawless band of unaccountable mercenaries to guard London in the summer of 2012. Were G4S a Catholic, the list of sins it might start with in the confessional booth run as follows:

• The death of Angolan refugee Jimmy Mubenga whilst in the custody of G4S guards on a flight from Heathrow to Angola
• Hiring confessed murderers as security guards
• Carrying out the government's deportation policy while sustaining 773 complaints of those that were within their custody
• Failing to fulfill the contract to keep The Olympics safe in 2012
• Hiring a director with really bad hair. I'm no one to talk, but if you had as much money as a CEO with a company like this, wouldn't you try to look like you were older than 14?  

Probably best we just leave G4S and the local priest in the confessional. No telling how long either of them might be there.

When you wade through cliches, slogans and soundbites like 'take the stage', 'London prepares' and 'Take the respect', what do you have left at the centre of all the smoke and mirrors? We seem to have a London that has taken performance-enhancing security firms, regulations and cash injectiosn in order to improve its performance as a city this summer. It would probably be wise for us as Londoners to bear in mind that the Olympics committee chose London, in all its brash and savage beauty, not some sanitized, tarted up, Americanised caricature of itself.

Will we, for these and other less than savoury things about the 2012 Olympics, be like the people of Ursula LeGuin's people of Omelas, and our joy be all the richer for knowing its real costs? I'd like to think so, but I've got a feeling that we shall just close our ears, open our mouths and eyes wide and smile, asking only for bread and circuses, lights and neon.

For more on G4S, take a look at http://notog4s.blogspot.co.uk/

For more on the creepy crawly things scuttling around underneath the sheen of the Olympic brand, look at
http://www.olympicsredflag.blogspot.co.uk/

To find out more about the efforts being made to fight the deleterious effects of the Olympics on Hackney and the East End check out http://saveleytonmarsh.wordpress.com/

To read about a very clever  and creative response to all this Olympian palaver, have a look at 'The Austerity Games'.

This post has also been informed by the following two articles:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/reclaiming-the-olympics/

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/real-battle-olympic-gold-141711

There Are Still Some Good Guys: Rosen Championing Reading For Meaning in the Great Phonics Debate

The piloting of the government's current obsession with phonics suggests some interesting, but deeply worrying results. 

 vs 

I grew up reading. My parents made sure to take me on regular trips to the local library during summer vacations when I was a child. My mother read to us every evening before bedtime. I was reading a mixture of Shakespeare and Stephen King (because I found a tattered old copy of Skeleton Crew in my older brother's closet, a hoarded away and hidden treasure to be devoured) for pleasure by the time I was coming to the end of elementary school and reading when I was younger seemed as natural to me as riding a bike. 

But I was lucky. 

I came to school with a certain cultural currency and my parents enabled me to learn that cultural currency with fluency and speed. Many that I teach and have taught over the last ten years or so are not nearly as lucky. Many do not understand how to read simple sentences out loud. Many have never been read to out loud. Many have never become familiar with the joy of fairy tales. Alarmingly, many are developing deep anxieties and even antipathies to reading for pleasure. 

I can think of no better way to expedite such a massive distaste for reading than the government's current efforts to stalwartly fly the flag for phonics, phonics and little else but phonics in reading education. All children in England from this year are required to take a 'Phonics Screening Check' test at the end of the academic year 1, (aged 6) in which they have to decode 30 real words and 10 fake words. The government is even offering an incentive of £3,000 which it claims 'will be hard to ignore for many cash-strapped schools' in order to promote the teaching of 'synthetic phonics'. 

The first examination took place in schools in June and the results were intriguing and unsettling. First of all, results were generally low, which the government may, no doubt say is down to teachers not having taught the 'synthetic phonics method' effectively. Could it be something deeper? Results also found that otherwise good readers had moved beyond just using phonics as a reading strategy, that they looked for meanings in the ten 'psuedo words', that their brains were making real words out of fake (eg storm out of 'strom') and some of the fake words were arduous to get one's mouth around, deterring children from pronouncing them as they were spelt. 

So, children score lower in the test for trying to make meaning out of what is unfamiliar to them. Trying to construct order out of the unknown, otherwise known as creativity and initiative, is marked down in this new compulsory test, whilst sticking to what you know and rejecting all familiarity will be marked higher. The government is, through mandatory testing and irresistible cash bonuses to schools, disincentivising initiative and independent thinking in young minds. 

One is put in mind of Gradgrind from Dickens' Hard Times: 'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them.'

Say what you will about the American Education System.

Go ahead. Say what you will about it.

No, do. 

What worries me is that my son and many of his friends have already been raised up with a similar affinity for books and reading; what worries me is that when my son faces this test next year with his classmates, we will be sent a short letter home afterwards saying that he has scored low because he tried to make sense out of nonsense words, make meaning out of familiar looking verbal chaos. 

And what worries me greatly is that poorer schools in places like Hackney, where I live, will be unable to resist cash incentives for 'synthetic phonics' in the classroom. If the government wanted a docile, unquestioning mass of dunderheaded deltas and epsilons, unable to decipher complex treaties, pacts and agreements; antipathetic to compelling narratives anywhere except presented through moving images; unable to resist being oppressed through paternalistic power structures and figures; desiring nothing but bread, circuses and X Factor; and awed by the use of stutterings statistics and figures, a cynic might conlcude that there are fewer quicker routes that this one.

I owe most of the information in this post to Michael Rosen's intelligent and well-thought out recent blog posts and his continuing effort to fight the good fight. Please do read up on this crucial issue.

This post is also informed by the following articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/08/teachers-union-criticises-phonics-tests

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/mps-goves-obsession-with-phonics-will-turn-children-off-reading-2308191.html