Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Monday, January 26, 2015

Winter pole

Colours of January

Wood End Road
The messages come up out of the ground. And back into it, of course.

Think before you click

Embedded image permalink
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/558226997030432769

The poster says "THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK. Amazon has generated turnover of £7.6 billion in Britain over the past three years without handing over a penny to HM Revenue & Customs (Sunday Times Business Section 08.08.12)  Kew Books Ltd, owner of Barnes Bookshop, Kew Bookshop and Sheen Bookshop paid enough tax last year to pay for a student nurse -- with your help maybe we could pay for a teacher too."

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Up Edgware Road with Betjeman and Diamond Geezer

In three parts, with copious notes and photos by Diamond Geezer and poetry by John Betjemen
Up the Edgware Road (i)
Up the Edgware Road (ii)
Up the Edgware Road (iii)

It renders all other blogging about the road redundant. 

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Waiting for the train

Sudbury Hill
This is a pigeon with only one foot and a stump. I think it's the same one from one of our previous photos taken when it was very young. Can't find the photo just now, will try.

Friday, January 02, 2015

Detachment



This film should be required viewing for people involved in education. (It is on Netflix.) It's about a temporary teacher in a secondary school that is in complete and utter chaos, where the students are violent, abusive or abused, the headmistress is on notice, and no parent comes to parent teacher evening. Our teacher, Adrien Brody, has family problems of his own. His kindness to an underage streetwalker results in him becoming a surrogate parent to her.

The film is generally very depressing with our teacher seemingly the only beacon of hope. However, if you can get past the horror and gloom, which at times is difficult enough, the film is rewarding in the end. You will have to decide for yourself where solutions to the problems lie. It seemed to me that there was too much focus on exam results rather than education for life, but that is only one viewpoint.

Ossian

Oaks in winter, South Vale















The wisdom of Red Woodward

"For reasons we don't understand, God needs shit and lots of it, so he populated the Earth with a lot of self-replicating shit factories." Red Woodward on "The Daily Politics"