I don’t remember much of the past couple of weeks. It tends to get this way towards the end of a half term; all eyes are fixed on the start of the break, and little else is allowed to impinge on this vision. It seems to have been ‘worse’ this past half term too what with the debacle of the Arts Status funds, and the concern over whether or not I can actually buy the things I need to reach the targets set, despite all the costings being rigorously laid out in the bid, and oh… gargle gargle gargle. Plus the delays in actually getting the PowerBooks we ordered way back in July. They finally turned up Friday afternoon, so I promptly started unpacking, installing memory and airport extreme cards and commissioning. I got through three in an hour. I know I can speed that up when I get back next week, but when will I have the time? And when will I have a technician to help? It’s all a bit crap really. Oh, and I also set up an Airport Extreme base station in my classroom. It took ten minutes! How cool is that? And I was sitting in the staffroom with my machine on the other day and I had forgotten to turn off airport to save power when I noticed that there was actually a network available! It was called ‘Tiverton’, so I asked to join. There was no password, but when I tried to connect to the school proxy I got nothing at all. That’s when I remembered that the new wireless network is only for the admin network… they didn’t hook it up to the curriculum one, and hence despite the fact that the whole school is going to be wirelessly networked, we wont be able to do anything with it except do electronic registration. How totally stupid and a waste of a terrific opportunity is that? Bah.

But enough school. I ain’t here to think about school. I’m here to pass an hour before I can pick up my photos. Real photos. On paper. From a film. It’s from my Lomo Action Camera, and the film has been in there since the summer term, since when C came back from Melbourne in fact. I couldn’t remember if it was a 24 or a 36 film, so went out this morning not knowing if I had seven or nineteen pictures left to take. Turns out it was nineteen. So I was snapping away at god knows what, just idly letting the shutter fly. I am eager to see what transpires. I know I will have my finger in some of the shots, such is the way I tend to hold the camera. Plus I have big hands, so it’s kind of inevitable. I took other photos this morning too, on my digital camera. Took lots of the Debenhams building, which always looks amazing in the mornings, with the sun low in the sky. I really don’t understand the people who say it’s ugly. I think it’s maybe the most beautiful building in the city. So I’m strange…

People looked at me strangely this morning. They always do when I’m taking pictures of red painted circles on walls, or looking closely at garbage bags or whatever. I wish someone would invent a camera that you implant in your eye, so that you could just kind of send an impulse to your brain and then zap, it takes a photo. And then you can plug yourself into your mac and download it, or better still, have a wireless implant too so you can just log into the network, kind of neurally. Am I sounding like a sci-fi geek? I’m really not you know. It’s just these little things that seem appealing.

I’m now using one of the new 1Ghz 12” PowerBooks. I wonder if the battery will last significantly less time? It certainly seems to be noisier, which is a shame. I really noticed it, humming away with its little fan on the desktop last night. Certainly noisier than the old one. And for a small step in processor speed, it does seem to be noticeably snappier, which I wasn’t expecting, but which is great of course. Ho hum. C now has the old one, and is, I suspect, already appreciating the difference from her PC.

And on the subject of Macs, a big shout out to Paul for all the marvellous gifts. You are my saviour.

We watched ‘Gregory’s Girl’ on Friday night. It is still a terrific film. The penguin in the corridor is surely one of the sublime movie moments of all time. As is the dancing on the grass, laying down. It made me want to go watch ‘That Sinking Feeling’ again, and in fact speaking of that movie, I was also reminded of that when watching the ‘fans Only’ B&S DVD. The start of the video for, ah, I dunno what song it is off hand, it might be ‘legal man’, or ‘jonathan david’ maybe, but anyway it’s the one with Stevie and Stuart being in love with the same chick, and Stuart wins her hand… But anyway, the start is them pushing a bed past the statue of the bloke on the horse that stands atop Kelvingrove Park, the one where ‘That Sinking Feeling’ starts. So, you know, it all fits. Or something.

But ‘Gregory’s Girl’. Yes, that was terrific. Everyone looked scaggy too, which was funny. The early ‘80s really were not an attractive time, on the whole. Even Miss Grogan didn’t look as petite as I remember her being, although maybe our widescreen telly was making things look out of proportion. I think that happens, doesn’t it, with things not filmed in that format? Probably. So it was like watching an altered image, wasn’t it? Ha ha. That was an awful joke.

Not as awful a joke as ‘Gregory’s Two Girls’, however, which we watched later. Maybe it was just us being teachers and all, but aren’t the first 15 minutes or so of that film just in appallingly bad taste? Thankfully the whole nature of student/teacher relationships was given a slightly more sympathetic treatment in the remainder of the movie, but it still only hinted at the reality. There was one line or so about the complexity of those relationships which rang true, but it was brief and fleeting and lost within the brooding on sexuality. And sex, sadly, sells. The rest of the movie is shit too, in case you were wondering: interesting themes – the aforementioned student/teacher relationship thing; the impotent middle class outrage over human rights issues and so on (reading the right papers and magazines doesn’t mean/change a thing – well duh…), both of which should have been engaging, but which were just so badly dealt with I found I couldn’t give a shit about any of it. The two movies come in a two-for one DVD pack, although no-one in their right minds is going to buy it for anything but the classic opener.

Right, the hour is up, so I’m off to pick up my photos. I type (and think) slowly.

posted by duke harringay at 11:49 AM