What do you think gets better with age? The fact that I started with a pun that probably only 70s kids will fully understand gives you an idea that I have gone a fair way through the ageing process! It’s fair to say that I am not a fan of many aspects, but I am […]
Opportunities Knock
Update on last year’s post. My daughter and I saw The Last Dinner Party at the end of last year and Lola Young last month. Last night I went with both my daughters to My Chemical Romance at Wembley Stadium and it was amazing! The experiences pile up and the feeling is more special as I get older and appreciate how lucky I am to have them.
The Story The second story of Season 8 is a 6 part story that features two strands. The first features the Doctor and Jo at Stangmoor Prison where they are observers for a completely new type of rehabilitation approach for violent prisoners. The Keller Machine, named after its creator, removes the evil impulses from the […]
Doctor Who Re View The Mind of Evil
I got the Series 8 blu ray of Classic Doctor Who and decided to do some reviewing to reflect my response as an adult to one of the most important parts of my television childhood. This was the first Doctor Who story I can ever remember watching and it was a delight to revisit it. When I start doing TV and film Re Views again I will definitely focus on the other Pertwee blu ray in my collection and then probably move back to the William Hartnell boxed set I have. For the moment, click on the link above, particularly if you are a fan of Classic Who. The rest of the series can be found in the category Doctor Who Re View.
What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
When I first saw this prompt I thought in terms of specifics, whether that was meditation, yoga or exercise. Then I realised that the most important habit I have learned, particularly in recent years, has been layered development. That’s my own phrase for embedding one new habit at a time before moving on to the next. I have called it Layermaxxing because you need that suffix these days to give it proper social media traction 🤔 🤣!
Joking aside it has worked extremely well. I have gradually transformed my approach to life by doing this. The first layer I added a few years back was meditation and that was a struggle at first because I was trying to change a number of things at the same time. Eventually I focused on the Calm App and was able to introduce it as a nightly part of my routine. This year I added morning exercise and yoga to my repertoire by focusing on the discipline of doing one or the other before breakfast, whether I was teaching or not. Since I have been teaching this time around I have managed to fit in one or both around my schedule very effectively because I have made it such an integral part of my routine. It doesn’t feel right for me not to do exercise although I do give myself one morning off a week just to make sure it’s not getting to the stage where it’s a chore. I listen to my body to decide when to take that break, another habit I have introduced recently and is now ingrained.
So, that’s Layermaxxing. Now can I make that ‘a thing’?🤣🤣
What time do you go to bed and wake up currently? I got brought up with the idea that staying in bed past a certain time was unacceptable. When I was on scout camp, my Dad, who was our Scout Leader used to wake us up with the greeting, ‘The sun’s burning your eyes out!’ […]
Catching the Worm?
This was written a year ago today and to be honest not much has changed, although I had started to sleep in regularly until nearer 7 every morning until I restarted teaching this summer. Tonight is one of my late nights as I’m going to the My Chemical Romance concert at Wembley Stadium!!
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
Anyone who says anything different from the title was either very good at sport, very lucky or one of the many bullies that make everyone else’s life a misery. I hated pretty much every minute of my seven years and looking back, I got through it because I had no choice. Music helped of course and I really started to make it my main passion in my teens. Scouting helped at the time by providing me with a place where hatred and mockery were absent from my life. It’s interesting that I looked at my fellow scouts as exceptions to the rule because they were actually decent people, whereas I internalised the fact that my tormentors at school, both students and teachers were fully representative of the male condition. I have been incredibly wary of males ever since and regard them as unpleasant unless proven otherwise. To be fair it’s a pretty sound approach to life as the bulk of males I have met outside of teaching have never encouraged me to reassess my view.
Single gender schools were extremely common in my school days and I think they were part of the reason for the bullying. There were no checks on behaviour because getting through bullying was considered to be a right of passage for all children. Bullies were considered to be the alpha males and were given free rein. If you complained you were ignored or regarded as weak. As many of the teachers at my school were also bullies, the students learnt from them. With the exception of the non white students I had pretty much the hardest time imaginable. Even right near the end I could be completely humiliated. A snide little bully called Tim Mercer was doing an assembly about our class and its seven years at school and he dedicated one section to the weird things I had done in our earlier years at school. I don’t think I have met a more unpleasant human being in my 60 years, but life being what it is, he has probably carried on bullying people and having great success in his life, because one thing I know is that bullies never change and that their behaviour is never called out.
I suppose you could say that I have risen above it all but I shouldn’t have had to. School days are definitely the worst days of your life and I don’t think many people would disagree unless they are from the three categories I mentioned at the beginning.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 