Cashback
My sporadic updates to this bloggette notwithstanding, I enjoy writing. This is largely because I'm good at it, my occasionally insufferably self-regarding style also notwithstanding: generally we don't enjoy things we aren't good at, and if we do we tend to do them in private, my non-existent readership still again notwithstanding.
I've been thinking lately about why this is. I have a reputation among friends, built largely on my wholesale ignorance of myriad Eighties children's TV programmes, for a childhood spent reading Proust. I have never, as it happens, read so much of a page of Proust, but I enjoy the reputation nonetheless, because like all the best caricatures it is essentially, if not strictly factually, accurate: my childhood was a literary as opposed to televisual one. I certainly wasn't banned from the TV but I was pushed as a reader by my parents from an early age, such that by the age of, I think, six I was introduced to the first of two people who taught me more about writing than any others: Richmal Crompton (there is a particularly fatuous essay linked at the bottom of that page which I urge you to ignore). Her William series is well summed-up by Miles Kington on the back of every book: "Probably the funniest, toughest children's books ever written." Crompton wrote as though for adults, intruding on the action with adult-perspective asides: in other words, she never talked down to her juvenile readers, preferring to challenge them, not caring if she sent them to a dictionary twice a page, and certainly not caring if they couldn't be bothered with the dictionary. Equally inspiring was her technical gift: even today my approach to control and structure owes much to her example, for technically her writing was flawless.
It was through her that I came to meet my second great influence. At the age of seven I insisted that I follow my sister, two years my senior, to the prep department of a nearby independent school only a year after she had gone. I duly passed the exam, and so it transpired that a month shy of ten, in February 1988, I sat the entrance exam for Newcastle-under-Lyme School, for admission that September. Part of the exam was, of course, a creative writing piece, and mine borrowed heavily from Miss Crompton. It also included the phrase "he cursed his lack of vigilance and swore silently", lifted wholesale from Robin May's Robin of Sherwood tie-in book, Robin of Sherwood and the Hounds of Lucifer. The man marking my essay was clearly not a habitual reader of Robin of Sherwood, for later he singled out this phrase, when discussing my entrance exam performance with my parents, as an example of the unusually mature manner of my writing. My mother gleefully reported that he had written across the top of my essay, "I want this boy in my class." For all I know he wrote that of ten or more boys a year, but I remain grateful to this day that he wrote it of me.
Like Miss Crompton, he refused to talk down to his first-year English class, and he insisted on teaching technique as well as appreciation. I learned to parse sentences and was acquainted with such arcane concepts as synecdoche and hypallage. I have never heard of a first-year English class learning such things anywhere else. He transmitted his love for language and its possibilities to even the most lumpen of boys, a feat which in my opinion was founded not only on his contagious enthusiasm but also his respect for his pupils, which manifested itself not only in what he chose to teach but also in how he interacted with us - generally with the gentle, affectionate ribbing that is the hallmark of all relationships of equals.
I was only fortunate enough to be taught by him in my first year. (I had another two English teachers at Newcastle before I changed schools, neither of whom was really any good; at my new school, Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, I had a further two, the latter of whom, a master of condescension by the name of Neil Gibbs, managed in two years to drive all love of studying literature out of me, and drove me towards the sciences at A-Level.) Nonetheless, his teaching has stayed with me, to the extent that, 18 years later, I am furious to learn of his sacking from Newcastle. He is Peter Cash, apparently sacked "partly" for poor exam results, though as this letter to the Board of Governers makes clear, the standard of results is comparable with those of any other department in the school, and even if it was a relatively poor year by Mr. Cash's standards, the school is unlikely to have any better luck with his replacement, particularly as this fiasco spirals and damages yet further the reputation of what I remember as a fine school. Other factors may be at work, as the commenter GWS points out here (comment 4). (I suspect this is my former Mathematics teacher, Graham Swift.)
The aspirant literature students of Newcastle and Stoke on Trent, and particularly those who do not yet know they are aspirant literature students, will only be the poorer for this vindictive act.
I've been thinking lately about why this is. I have a reputation among friends, built largely on my wholesale ignorance of myriad Eighties children's TV programmes, for a childhood spent reading Proust. I have never, as it happens, read so much of a page of Proust, but I enjoy the reputation nonetheless, because like all the best caricatures it is essentially, if not strictly factually, accurate: my childhood was a literary as opposed to televisual one. I certainly wasn't banned from the TV but I was pushed as a reader by my parents from an early age, such that by the age of, I think, six I was introduced to the first of two people who taught me more about writing than any others: Richmal Crompton (there is a particularly fatuous essay linked at the bottom of that page which I urge you to ignore). Her William series is well summed-up by Miles Kington on the back of every book: "Probably the funniest, toughest children's books ever written." Crompton wrote as though for adults, intruding on the action with adult-perspective asides: in other words, she never talked down to her juvenile readers, preferring to challenge them, not caring if she sent them to a dictionary twice a page, and certainly not caring if they couldn't be bothered with the dictionary. Equally inspiring was her technical gift: even today my approach to control and structure owes much to her example, for technically her writing was flawless.
It was through her that I came to meet my second great influence. At the age of seven I insisted that I follow my sister, two years my senior, to the prep department of a nearby independent school only a year after she had gone. I duly passed the exam, and so it transpired that a month shy of ten, in February 1988, I sat the entrance exam for Newcastle-under-Lyme School, for admission that September. Part of the exam was, of course, a creative writing piece, and mine borrowed heavily from Miss Crompton. It also included the phrase "he cursed his lack of vigilance and swore silently", lifted wholesale from Robin May's Robin of Sherwood tie-in book, Robin of Sherwood and the Hounds of Lucifer. The man marking my essay was clearly not a habitual reader of Robin of Sherwood, for later he singled out this phrase, when discussing my entrance exam performance with my parents, as an example of the unusually mature manner of my writing. My mother gleefully reported that he had written across the top of my essay, "I want this boy in my class." For all I know he wrote that of ten or more boys a year, but I remain grateful to this day that he wrote it of me.
Like Miss Crompton, he refused to talk down to his first-year English class, and he insisted on teaching technique as well as appreciation. I learned to parse sentences and was acquainted with such arcane concepts as synecdoche and hypallage. I have never heard of a first-year English class learning such things anywhere else. He transmitted his love for language and its possibilities to even the most lumpen of boys, a feat which in my opinion was founded not only on his contagious enthusiasm but also his respect for his pupils, which manifested itself not only in what he chose to teach but also in how he interacted with us - generally with the gentle, affectionate ribbing that is the hallmark of all relationships of equals.
I was only fortunate enough to be taught by him in my first year. (I had another two English teachers at Newcastle before I changed schools, neither of whom was really any good; at my new school, Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, I had a further two, the latter of whom, a master of condescension by the name of Neil Gibbs, managed in two years to drive all love of studying literature out of me, and drove me towards the sciences at A-Level.) Nonetheless, his teaching has stayed with me, to the extent that, 18 years later, I am furious to learn of his sacking from Newcastle. He is Peter Cash, apparently sacked "partly" for poor exam results, though as this letter to the Board of Governers makes clear, the standard of results is comparable with those of any other department in the school, and even if it was a relatively poor year by Mr. Cash's standards, the school is unlikely to have any better luck with his replacement, particularly as this fiasco spirals and damages yet further the reputation of what I remember as a fine school. Other factors may be at work, as the commenter GWS points out here (comment 4). (I suspect this is my former Mathematics teacher, Graham Swift.)
The aspirant literature students of Newcastle and Stoke on Trent, and particularly those who do not yet know they are aspirant literature students, will only be the poorer for this vindictive act.
posted by Novus at 09:50
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