Happiness is a warm bun

My buns are thoroughly warmed by the news that Nigella is back on the tele' this Monday. I really shouldn't go all gooey over a posh daughter of a Tory, but somehow Nigella strikes home. She even makes me cook, in the same way that Rachel De Thame makes me garden and Kate Bush makes me listen to her music. (Ok, that last one doesn't quite fit the pattern.)

I do notice that when it comes to having any sort of a crush on anyone, it is usually dark haired ladies of around my age. I liked schoolgirls when I was at school, 30 year olds when I was 30 and now a bevy of 40 year olds now I am 40 (and a wee bit). I can't wait until I'm 80 and start lusting over those hunched up grannies with their zimmers.

 

Anyway I am glad to see Nigella back in the kitchen. That daytime chat show she tried a couple of years ago made me laugh at how bad it was. It was close to being a spoof.

Feeling a bit pink in Downham Market

Shopkeepers in the North are nice
They ask after your kids and wife
And when you've had a good chinwag
they pop your provisions in your bag.

"Shopkeepers in the North are Nice" by John Shuttleworth.

I guess John Shuttleworth has never been to Downham Market, as he might then change his song to "Shopkeepers in the North (and East) are Nice". Downham Market seems to have been in a timewarp for 30 years as it is still full of useful shops, a novelty in such a small town. They either become useless-shops-for-tourists or the-same-shops-as-everywhere-else shops. When I was a wee lad, my local town of Bromsgrove used to have useful shops, but by the time I was a teenager it was getting close to The Shoe Event Horizon with every other shop being a shoe shop. Now it is full of generic high street stores.

Downham Market on the other hand still has a butcher, a baker and, although there is no manufacturer of wax-based illumination holders, I'm sure you could buy a really nice candlestick somewhere. The car parks are free, the old people are never grumpy, the gangs of teenagers politely move out of your way, the pizzas are really juicy, the vets know your pet's name on sight, you can buy just the right size of washer for that leaking tap, and you can be amused by a lawnmower store called "Lawn-boy". Well, it amuses me anyway.

I needed a new refill for an unmarked (but rather splendid) pen and rather than face the ignorance of a Saturday girl in King's Lynn, I went to the teeny-tiny stationery shop in Downham Market, showed them the mysterious refill and they instantly went straight for the correct replacement with a smile and a brief chat about the weather. I left the shop with a small brown paper bag containing my purchase and a warm glow of customer satisfaction. I like the cakes from the bakers as well. You buy a innocent looking small chocolate delight and a little banana cake from the jolly lady, get them home, unwrap them and then gasp in amazement at their sheer size. They must grow between shop and home, or else I become the size of a Borrower upon leaving the bakers.

The last time I was in Downham Market I went to the Post Office to send a package. Again Downham Market has a different sort of Post Office. There was no queue and three open hatches each with a happily smiling lady eager to serve. I dumped my keys down while manhandling the parcel onto the scales, paying the lady and talking about the weather. Upon leaving I heard another customer, a man say "Excuse me, are these your keys?", turned and saw my keys dangling from his hand. Once more Mr. Brain had failed to remind me to pick up my keys.

"Yes they are mine, thanks" said I, retrieving my keys, only to hear him say "Oh, I did wonder, because of the pink key".

I was somewhat nonplussed, and left swiftly.

So, is a man not allowed to have a pink key? Was this guy trying to imply something? Should I mention that he had a moustache and a medallion or would I then be accused of implying something? Answers please on a postcard to:

Boolbar
Downham Market's Big Gay Post Office
Norfolk

First Rule Of Plumbing

Spot the mistake :

The upstairs toilet has a blocked sink.
Remove and clean the gunk filled U-bend.
Replace U-bend and test sink. It is still blocked.
Remove pipe from U-bend to wall, find it is full of gunk.
Clean out pipe outside and return to upstairs toilet.
Hands are dirty, wash hands thoroughly in sink.
Mop up large quantities of water from floor.
Replace pipe.

The Big Sky

One advantage of living in Norfolk is the huge expanse of sky, ideal for a bit of star gazing, not so ideal if all your neighbours insist on having those mega-spotlights on all night because it is so dark. Why they need to illuminate a patch of grass is beyond me, especially as it makes it so much easier for burgulars to hide in the nice sharp shadows. Any passer-by looking at the house would be blinded before they spotted any wrong-doers.

Anyway I can now do a bit of desk astronomy with the latest Google Earth release, which includes the night sky from anywhere on the planet, plus zoom in on anything interesting.

My god, it's full of stars!

And I can now see what those Antipodean folks can see as well. Neat!

New Found Fish Legs

I notice that people are coming to this blog (yey!), hardly in huge numbers (boo!), but a steady trickle. According to my recent "keyword" stats, 26% are looking for Marcus Brigstocke's religious rant, 11% for Kate Bush related stuff, 11% for Genesis related stuff, 8% for Portsmouth Sinfonia and a mere 3% for me. I guess to increase my popularity I must blaspheme while wearing a leotard and playing "I Know What I Like" somewhat out of tune.

Meanwhile to help some of those who searched, but were probably disappointed at what they found . . . . .

Kate Bush Lycra

Kate Bush is not made of lycra, she is made of rubber bands.

New Found Fish Legs

Birds Eye are branching out. Bigger than fish fingers, more tasty than fish heads!

how is cambridge o level exams graded

With grammar like that, you'll only get an A grade.

Genesis secret mangosteen

If you play "Supper's Ready" by Genesis backwards, then about 10 minutes into the track you can hear the distinctive sound of Peter Gabriel rubbing a mangosteen into Tony Bank's left thigh.

Kate Bush Pi Secret Code

If I told you that then it wouldn't be a secret anymore.

Kate Bush Pi Code

Oh, the non-secret code. I can tell you that. If you take all the missing digits from the track Pi, convert them to letters via hexadecimal, solve the resulting anagram and translate from Greek to English, you will get the statement "We paint the penguins pink".

How many hamsters does it take to power a car?

It depends on the weight of the car and the size of the hamsters. Assuming that you are using Syrian hamsters and they are pulling a Vauxhall Astra using tiny ropes then it would take around a million hamsters, and even fewer if you took the handbrake off.

(Actually you might want to take a peep at this.)

A Level Playing Field

Once more exam results are out and they are better than ever before. Once more we get the same reasons why they are better (teaching methods have improved, children are harder working) and once more we hear the complaints that exams are getting easier and the exam system is devalued.

Personally I wouldn't say exams are getting easier to take, but I would say that exams are getting easier to pass. A subtle difference, but an important one. (I'm certainly not going to deny the poor sods who work their butts off and end up getting a pile of "A" grades.)

Back in my exam days (some 25 years ago) passing the exam meant doing two lots of exam papers on two separate days (with the odd exception, like the oral test in French or the "identify these bits of animals" test in Biology). If you cocked up on one of those days, that could easily be one or two grades lost, so any headaches, hay-fever, feeling ill, or being sat in blinding sunlight behind the smelly kid could really make a big difference. It annoyed me that the way you felt in a single 2 or 3 hour period on one particular day could affect the result of 2 or 3 years work, and the primary requirement for passing an exam was to have a good memory, not necessarily an understanding of the subject.

We were told by more than one of our teachers how most exams were graded (unpopular subjects like Astronomy or Russian would have predefined pass levels). Once all the papers were marked, a bit of analysis on the resulting bell-curve graph was used to assign the grades to the marks scored. This was done in such a way that more or less the same number of people got an "A" grade, a "B" grade etc. each year, so that if the paper was a bit easier or harder in one year, the overall results would be much the same (making the sensible assumption that any year of school kids would have the same level of intelligence overall).
At O-level, about 5-10% of kids would get the "A" grade, most would get the "C" grade, and I think it was about 30-40% failed ("D" grade or less). This struck me as a fair way of doing things. One result of this system was that if someone did get a straight set of "A" grades at O-level, they often made the news for being so clever.

A few years after I left school they changed the system so that various work done over those 2 or three years would also count towards the overall result. This was a great move, I often achieved A grade in my course work, only to end up with a B or C in the resulting exam. OK, so it was too late for me, but it was an improvement. The other thing that changed was that the percentage mark needed to get particular grades was apparently fixed before the exam, which struck me as a bit dodgy, especially as there are several different examining boards offering exam courses and schools started to be valued on their pass results. Surely a school would pick the exam course that had a higher number of pupils passing, and wouldn't then the setters of an exam course set the pass grade lower to make their course more tempting to schools? Note that I am not even thinking of the difficulty of the exam questions and the course work, these are almost irrelevant and from what I've read are meant to be strictly controlled.

The one thing that irks me to this day is that they are still called O- and A-levels, which meant that people from my era have grades that now seemed rather poor in comparison to the new results coming out. In the late 1990s I had a job interview along with some young bragging upstart who implied only getting 3 or 4 grade "A"s at O-level (I got 4) was rather poor (he got 8). I would much rather admit that I am so old that they didn't have "N- and P-levels" in my day.

It strikes me that an exam system that lets more and more pupils pass at higher and higher grades, to the extent that they have to bring in a new "A*" grade, is not actually grading pupils in a useful or meaningful way. They should bring in the old system of checking the figures then assigning the grades, allowing approximately the same percentage of pupils to get the same grades every year, then getting an "A" grade would still mean something special. Then universities can still select candidates on merit, employers can still compare people from different years.

"Higher pass rates mean more young people are achieving advanced qualifications that will help them fulfill their ambitions, and this is something we should all celebrate."
Jim Knight (Schools Minister)

Now this is about the only argument that supports a system of artificial higher grades. If children are more motivated by getting great grades at O-levels, they are more likely to go on to do A-levels and then on to higher education.

Now if only they would come out and say "yes, it is getting easier to get higher grades in exams, but look at the happy smiling children signing up for higher education". Then the next time someone tries to compare young Johnnie's eight "A"s at O-level with my ancient results I might not feel the urge to give them an "F" and a "U" in English Language.

Tempus Fugit

Time flies . . . bloody things buzzing around my head and by the time I've swatted them, it is the middle of August.

I was only thinking last night while lying on the decking outside for a while watching for the Perseids meteor shower (saw two and lots of clouds before going in, and why do the media get so excited about it - you see about one a minute not a "spectacular firework display" - silly sods) that I've not even been on the 'pooter for more than 5 minutes at a time for weeks.
And what has happened in that time? Well I haven't got time to tell you now.

See you in another month?