cgi resurrections

one of the more bizarre things i saw while i was at home in june was the latest campaign ad for the prevention of prostate cancer

the ad uses bob monkhouse who died in 2003 from the disease - his face has been blended onto a body double using cgi along with recordings of his voice which have been edited together seamlessly - and there he is, talking to us from beyond the grave

although the ad is for an extremely good cause, it was quite strange watching it - bob monkhouse was and still is a household name in the uk, one of the best known faces on british tv for over four decades - for me he represented the cosy domesticity of saturday and sunday teatime quizzes and game shows and was far more viewer-friendly than the smarmy self-satisfied smugness of bruce forsyth - he was part of the furniture and i think this is why the ad makes such an impact

it also made me wonder how this technology could be used to manipulate and 're-educate' the generations which will follow us - as the technology becomes more advanced, how much of our recorded history on film and videotape will be distorted and altered by unscrupulous politicians and spin doctors in the centuries to come

hitting the nail firmly on the head

i don't often post email forwards, but this one which was shown to me by a work colleague is a very accurate description of the way many teachers up and down the uk feel about the often uneasy relationship between schools and parents - i've often felt like this myself

SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE

This is the message that apparently a Secondary School staff in the Midlands voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.

This is the actual answering machine message for the school. It came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework. The school and teachers are now being threatened with legal action by some parents who want their children's failing marks changed to passing marks - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the term and did not complete enough schoolwork to pass their various key stages.

THE MESSAGE:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right member of staff, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

* To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1

* To make excuses for why your child did not do their work - Press 2

* To complain about what we do - Press 3

* To swear at staff members - Press 4

* To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your Newsletter and several letters posted to you - Press 5

* If you want us to bring up your child - Press 6

* If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7

* To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8

* To complain about bus transport - Press 9

* To complain about school lunches - Press 0

LASTLY:

* If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behaviour, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a really wonderful day!

* If you want this in other languages, you must be in the wrong country. This is England.

the drugs don't work (properly)

singapore doctors seem to be even more fond of pushing out pills than the ones in england and, from what i've experienced recently, without due thought or warnings to the patient (in this case, me) about any unfortunate side effects

i left the hospital in june with three shopping bags bulging with three months worth of medication for my 'condition' as i've come to refer to it, if ever i have to - pills and powders galore which fortunately are doing the trick vis a vis my rather annoying intestinal disruptions

however the horrible little green ones i was prescribed for the symptoms of 'flux,' that's when a faulty valve in your stomach sends burning acid up into your higher regions resulting in severe indigestion and long bouts of coughing, caused me more discomfort than the actual complaint, which i only suffer from if i unwisely eat a large meal too late in the evening - and then it's only if there's pastry involved - having told the consultant who treated me that it's something i only get occasionally, he proceeded to prescribe three of these pills a day

the first few days were fine- but of course the effects of medication can often take a while to build up inside your system before they kick in, and after a few days i was beginning to get sleepy at odd hours - as k. is frequently away during the weekdays at the moment, i'm spending a lot of nights in front of the tv and on a nightly basis at about nine o'clock i began to nod off, only to wake up at midnight looking at a dvd menu and feeling wide awake and unable to get back to sleep once i moved from the sofa to the bed - this was accompanied by a feeling of dopiness and not being quite in tune with things going on around me during the day - people at work were saying things to me and by the time they'd finished i'd either tuned out or not taken in anything they'd said - then i was dropping things and forgetting things and beginning to get quite grumpy

then three weeks into taking the pills i woke up one tuesday morning feeling decidedly down - this feeling grew throughout the day until by the afternoon as i was in a taxi on my way up the ecp to work i felt extremely depressed - it was a strange sensation as it was totally illogical - i could reason it through in my head - a part of me was saying you've got absolutely nothing to be depressed. stressed or worried about, but at the same time i was feeling negative, sad and annoyed by nothing in particular

so i stopped that particular treatment, having googled the pills and found out that some of their common side effects are drowsiness, dizziness, loss of motor control and depression - more fool me really for carrying on with them as long as i did - i suppose it comes down to previous experience - i trust doctors implicitly, as most people probably do, never having had too much cause for doubting any of the ones who have treated me in the past - the fact that the doctor in this case is also a specialist in his field upped the 'he-knows-what-he's talking-about' factor for me - another in a continuing lifetime's occasional series of misjudgements i shall take into account should i ever find myself in a similar situation

a fragment of autobiography part two

for the first ten years of my life i was brought up by a family of horses near newmarket race course in suffolk

it wasn't an ideal situation for a growing boy, but it did provide me with a stable environment

mastermind

what many people forget about 'the two ronnies' is that their sketches were written by some of the best and most successful comedy writers on british tv - john cleese, graham chapman, eric idle, michael palin, terry jones, david renwick, spike milligan, david nobbs, barry cryer, tim brooke-taylor, john sullivan... to name but a few

unfortunately, like most comedy shows that go on for too long, the series became repetitive, tired and worn out by the mid-eighties - but recently watching the stuff they did during the seventies, i still found it very funny

"if dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts"

one of my favourite lyrics from one of my favourite bands....and we were in the same hotel during the time they were staying there back in march 2004 - the siebel pier in sydney - i was quite gobsmacked getting into the same lift as adam duritz and all his dreadlocks



Mrs Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows:
This Desert Life (1999)

stolen moments or... busy doing nothing

one of those rare occasions that we've learned to make the best of over the years - k. had a day off sick a couple of weeks ago which coincided with my day off - the last one like this was in kansas city in october when i wasn't employed - the day he sprawled across the settee entranced by the sight of steroid-fed bodybuilders in tight lycra shorts doing exciting things with heavy objects in 'the world's strongest man'

we spent our unexpected day off in the flat just slobbing around, curled up on the sofa, watching tv, eating unhealthy food from the orchard towers food court, drinking lots of tea and blackberry cordial, and talking - these days have a special atmosphere which is difficult to explain - it's like the train has stopped on a busy journey and we've got off to gaze a while at the scenery - a chance to wallow in our own company and (sorry but this sounds cliched) just 'be'

our schedules are crazy at the moment - i work through the weekend and he's been spending a lot of time in koala lumpy during weekdays (a place which both of us dislike) so we haven't been spending as much time together as we had been doing before we moved back to singapore - it's a complete reversal of the last two years - during our time in london and then our subsequent travels we spent more time in each other's company than we ever had before in the previous eight years in singapore - the fact that we managed not to inflict violent death on each other during this period is a glowing testament to both of our patience and tolerance levels

now we've resumed our singapore lifestyle, we have fallen back with a fair amount of ease into our old routines - this is good and i'm not complaining - but, like that day the other week, it is great to spend time together just doing nothing, talking nonsense and chilling out - the fact that these days are infrequent and totally unexpected sets them apart from and makes them stand out more than an ordinary day off together, like, for example, a weekend or a bank holiday, when you have expectations of how the day will be and follow set routines you've established together - in contrast, these spontaneous days are free of expectations and make you feel completely relaxed - i always feel like a student again who, with a group of friends, has cut a lecture to just hang out - stolen moments, in fact