The Unexpected Purchase

I received a couple of Amazon vouchers for my birthday this month. This is nice as it allows me to make the odd spur of the moment purchase without worrying about the credit card bill but it is also a bit of a liability as it means I end up operating computers when I probably shouldn’t. A point in question was last weekend when I thought it would be a good idea to listen to Cream’s Disraeli Gears album after having a few beers. There is nothing particularly wrong with this except I managed to sit on the LP whilst sorting the turntable out and cracked the vinyl.

I immediately remembered the spare vouchers and went to order a replacement – except I noticed that I could get The Very Best of Cream for less than Disraeli Gears which also has the best bits of Fresh Cream, Wheels of Fire and Goodbye as well as most of Disraeli Gears. Bargain! Of course in my German Pilsner induced state of happiness I forgot to check what else had been mysteriously saved away in the basket. It therefore came as something of a surprise when The Essential Michael Jackson appeared through the post.

Now I have never been a Michael Jackson fan as such. I never bought any of his records and at most may have idly watched a TV concert on Hogmanay whilst waiting for festivities to start. That’s not to say I disliked his work, it’s just that when he was bringing out Thriller I was probably more into The Number of the Beast. So I’ve never actually bought a Michael Jackson record before even if I am familiar with some of his songs. In fact it turns out that I am familiar with a lot more than I imagined.  Compilation albums often use weasel words such as “The Collection” or “Anthology” to get around the fact that half the artists better known work is missing as it was released on another label but this compilation comes from the Sony “Collections” range and to say it is comprehensive is somewhat of an understatement.

This collection consists of 38 songs split over two disks. The first CD begins right back in 1969 with the Jackson 5’s first hit, I Want You Back, and features other Jacksons and early solo records on through to the monumental hit that was (and still is) the Thriller album. The second disks charts his mega-stardom from the Bad album through to the 2001’s Invincible. I’d say that at least 80% of it was instantly recognisable to me. I’d also say I rather enjoyed most of it right from the cheery, upbeat pop of the early Motown hits through to the complex pop songs of his later career. There is also a good deal of variety from gentle ballads, dance favourites, pop, funk, R&B and even the searing Hard Rock of Beat It (also featuring Eddie Van Halen’s finest 15 seconds). I can even forgive him for the Earth Song (although not his performance of that one at the Brit awards!)

So for an unintended purchase I’m rather pleased with this album. Any complete music collection should feature all of its most iconic artists and whilst it is easy to think of Michael Jackson either as an eccentric celebrity or ultimately a rather tragic figure it shouldn’t be forgotten that he produced some of the most memorable pop songs of the late 20th Century. This collection is ample proof of that.

Whitelee Wind Farm

This week has been the children’s mid-term school break (or as they term it “Staff Development Day” as the teachers are still working). I took the time off work as I had a few days that needed using up before the end of February. I wanted to do something constructive with them so I decided to take them on what I describe as a “Nerdy Day Trip” (in fact there is a whole website dedicated to such excursions). As I was interested in the wind turbines which have recently been installed near our house I took them along to see one of the largest windfarms in the country: Whitelee Wind Farm.

I drove to the visitor centre relying on our trusty sat nav system. As ever Emily, the sat nav lady, decided to take us via the shortest but most convoluted route which seemed to encompass pretty much every roundabout in East Kilbride. Once past there it is a reasonable climb up the hill to the visitor centre car park where we could, if we wanted, charge up the car battery for free. As we don’t have an electric car, we didn’t. The wind farm is some 300m up so I expect the weather can get a bit tasty at times. Given that it is still the beginning of February it was perfectly pleasant for our trip. The visitor centre consists of a reasonably educational exhibition hall with lots of hand-on exhibits which seemed to amuse the kids and a café which we came back to later.

Whitelee has been operating for some 5 years now although judging from some of the works, new turbines are still being added. It currently has in excess of 200 individual turbines and the sight of these across the panorama is quite breath taking. It is spread over a huge area (they quote around 130 km of pathways) so we only walked around a small number of the turbines. Up close they are astonishingly big and the blades, which from a distance look to be meandering around like a child’s toy, move incredibly quickly (one factoid quoted that the blade tips can move at a maximum speed of 240 km/h.) Standing close to them is initially a rather apprehensive experience – not least because for the most part they are eerily quiet. There is the occasional mechanical clank and if standing at just the right angle there is an audible swooshing sound from the blades but for the most part there is just a spooky silence which is strangely at odds with the scale of the beasts.

Aside from the visitor centre one of the great things they have done at Whitelee is to make the grounds accessible for outdoor activities. We just walked around a few km of track but they are actively encouraging cycling including a dedicated mountain bike track and facilities are available for dog walkers and horse riders (although I think I would want to make sure that a horse was not spooked by the turbines before heading out). In many respects they have done what the Forestry Commission has done by freeing up what is in essence an industrial installation for general leisure activities. They even have a ranger on site to look after the wildlife side of things.

I think my three children enjoyed themselves enormously, which I wasn’t quite sure whether they would. In total we spent an hour and a half walking around the turbines which is well beyond the whinge point for a walk in the country. We finished up at the café for lunch and drove back via the M77 through Glasgow which avoided any more roundabouts. I’m quite pleased at how this went – next Nerdy trip will have to be a hydro-electric dam.

Homework

Over the last few months I have been getting increasingly hacked off  with the amount of homework that our kids have been bringing home. I have expected our elder boy to be receiving more homework as he is now in high school and is getting to the stage where his work is being assessed but I would expect the younger two to be getting some basic “practice at home” type stuff. However, whenever I get in from work, the first thing that happens is that a piece of A4 is shoved in front of my face because they have been told to “Ask Dad”. With the high school work this is fair enough and I can point him in the right direction for information on trigonometry, the periodic table, the slave trade or whatever it is he needs help with. The problem I really have is actually with the two younger children.

When I was at primary school we didn’t get homework as far as I can remember: at least not formal written homework. We may have had lists of words to learn for spelling tests or times tables to memorise but nothing that would require written proof of the work being completed and nothing that would require my parents to have a diploma in education to assist us with. The problem I have with primary school homework is that it more often than not relies on some piece of educational jargon that I have never heard of.

The latest example of this was a request to perform division using the “Bus Stop” method. I have never heard of this and as far as I am concerned the “Bus Stop” method is the technique for boarding and alighting from public transport. As far as I can recall, there were two types of division when I was at school: short division, which was effectively using the times tables in reverse, and long division, which was some convoluted method of iterative arithmetic that requires half a page of notation. Long division is a pain in the neck as it really doesn’t scale very well and in reality there are two methods of long division that most people use in real life: guestimating to get a working, order of magnitude, ball-park figure and the pocket calculator method whereby one actually wants an accurate figure without the dodgy misaligned columns. That’s all well and good but it doesn’t really help with teaching division so what is the “Bus Stop” method?

It turns out that the “Bus Stop” method is actually what I used to call “long division”. I haven’t been able to find out why this is now called the “Bus Stop” method but at least I now know what it is. I even managed to find a decent website that explained the technique. The problem is that I still have trouble trying to explain this to the children. The simplest introductory problems are so simple I can do them in my head but if the child can’t see why this is I have no scope for explaining it. The main reason for this is that I am not a trained teacher and even though the problems are very easy it is a very specific skill to be able to explain this to a child who doesn’t understand. In fact it is this kind of skill that marks out why primary school teachers are qualified professionals and not merely glorified child minders.

What gets me down about this stream of homework is that it cuts into the amount of time that it is possible to do activities with the children that are unrelated to schoolwork but still, hopefully, of educational value. Each evening, we have to decipher the educational jargon for all three children to determine what it is they are meant to be doing, only to discover that they actually have no recollection of being taught this or simply didn’t understand it in the first place. Unfortunately, if they didn’t  understand it when explained from a professional teacher, in the morning, when they are fresh and alert, then what hope do we have trying to explain things in the evening when they are tired, bored and would probably prefer to be playing outside or watching the telly instead? After all three children’s homework is sorted it’s time for tea and after that it’s a case of getting everyone sorted for the next day and off to bed.

I’m not entirely opposed to homework but I really can’t see the point of giving work to children that they can’t complete unaided. It also seems to fall into the modern mind-set that if it isn’t on the curriculum then it isn’t worth knowing. At the moment I’m doing quite well at getting the younger children to go to the library and take books out on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, I am now experiencing them turning down what should be interesting books because they are “boring” and “we do that at school”. I’m also worrying that they will start to turn up their noses at day trips to museums and castles and the like. Having too much schoolwork is going to start being detrimental to a child’s education if they end up not wanting to learn.

Not So Super

I’ve always been a fan of the science fiction and fantasy genres. Although there are common themes between these I have always veered closer to the sci-fi element than fantasy but I find much to enjoy in both. When I was growing up there wasn’t that much of it on TV or at the cinema so when something new came along I would always lap it up, regardless of how ropy the story, acting, direction or special effects were. These days it seems to be the driving force behind the cinema but I can’t help but feel that I am more often than not disappointed by the films that come out. I often put this down to being “bored with explosions” – essentially having to wade through hours of aimless action sequences to try and decipher the wafer thin plot and clunky characterisation but I’m actually starting to wonder if the real problem is something else: I really can’t be bothered with superheroes.

I’m not even sure if that is the case as there are many superhero films that I could watch time and again. However, these increasingly seem to be in the minority and I end up approaching any film adapted from DC or Marvel comics with great trepidation. It’s difficult to exactly place what alienates me about the genre but it feels like very lazy plotting that any threat or conflict that is thrown up is merely blitzed out of existence by whatever supernatural or technological power that our protagonist has been blessed with. Just for once, couldn’t they keep the atomic death-ray vision to one side and actually do something a bit intelligent instead?

There are superhero adaptations that I have really enjoyed and a common feature of these films is that the possession or acquisition of superpowers is secondary to the voyage of personal discovery that the lead character has to make. Batman Begins was a great example of this as the central character’s misadventures as a techno-vigilante are merely a backdrop to the exploration of Bruce Wayne’s loss of his parents, longing for a surrogate father figure, confronting his inner fears and searching for some meaning into his life. Maybe it’s foundation films that are worth watching because I can recall I enjoyed the first Spiderman and X-Men films as well but by the time it came the third in the Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises, I ‘d rather lost interest in the franchise despite the rave reviews and the next film, Batman v Superman to be released later this year, strikes me as a truly idiotic concept purely devised to extract money from fans of the earlier films.

It is just possible that I’m not the right demographic for these films. I like to have some sort of intellectual concept behind my films and many of my favourites are either light on action sequences or push the effects to the background in favour of asking the big philosophical questions or exposing the raw emotions of the human condition. That’s not to say that I can’t enjoy a big action fantasy film. I took Raymond to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it that much as I hadn’t been very impressed with the first two Hobbit adaptations but I actually rather liked it - mainly by taking it at face value as a straight forward war film rather than as the fantasy adventure that it purported to be. Maybe that would be a better angle for the superhero films: ignore the high concept stuff altogether and stick to what they do best – fist fights and things that go bang.