What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
I always feel that men have been behind the 8 ball from the start when it comes to emotional reaction. If you got past the age of about 10, at least when I was growing up, any indication that you were affected by something to the point of tears would have you labelled a ‘cissy’ or worse. The message came through loud and clear from society at large, and to some extent still does, that ‘real men don’t cry’ and that ‘you need to man up’. The latter makes me shake my head especially when I look at Men’s football, with the players screaming in agony, rolling around and punching the ground when they are tackled, and compare it to Women’s football where they hardly ever resort to that play acting (well apart from Italy and Spain in the Euros) and have to be really hurt to stay down. I would say that men need to ‘woman up’!
For all the reasons that I haven’t got time to go into here, the idea of tears of joy, which unfortunately (in a number of ways) have come easily to me, have always had to be hidden where possible. As I have got older the requirement to do so has seemed less important so I find myself able to express these feelings more openly, although not publicly. (As an aside I have never understood why it is supposed to be good to express emotions through swearing and threatening behaviour, but apparently that’s the behaviour of ‘real men’!)
When my children achieve goals or act in a selfless or beautiful way it will bring a tear to my eye. For example when my daughter plays football and does something that is really special that can set me off. Next weekend she is playing in the Preliminary Round of the Women’s F A Cup and I know that even when she walks out there will be tears in my eyes. I have followed her football journey since she was 9 years old and I never expected to see her play even at an early stage of the best competition in the game.
When I watched the Lionesses win the Euros in 2022 and 2025 I definitely ‘had something in my eye’! By the way, only men will ever use that phrase, because they want to minimise their displays of emotion.
When I am at a concert that gives me pure joy I can definitely feel like I ‘have been chopping onions’, another nonsensical male excuse for expressing the full range of emotions. It’s usually when the person or people I am with show complete joy that I find that happening, although it can happen on my own account.
Great music, enjoyable books, family films and spectacular shows can all give me that rush of emotion. In each category I give you, Vltava by Smetana, A Christmas Carol, Inside Out and Willy Wonka, Evita and The Nutcracker. Also certain TV shows can ‘catch me out’ like Home and Away. Meeting Julie Dawn Cole left me with a similar feeling.
Christmas can bring me that type of reaction when we are all together as a family and we are just enjoying opening our presents or playing games or sharing a meal. That tends to be when ‘it’s a bit dusty in here’.
So there you have it. Lots of triggers but lots of excuses. That is the lot of the male through the ages. I remember when I was a child watching girls talk to each other, cry and comfort each other and express emotions far more naturally and I always wished I had been a girl because I found that so much more natural. I still do and that’s why I naturally gravitate towards women’s sport with it’s more positive and natural displays of emotion from the gender that does it better.
Why do you blog?
When I first started blogging in 2011, I did so because I wanted to tell people about my first novel which I put on Kindle. After just 6 posts I realised that I was getting no traction so I gave up.
10 years later I decided to restart it as a way of expanding upon my music reviewing. On Twitter I was limited to 280 characters a tweet and on Rockposer.com and Subba Cultcha I was reviewing for other websites with their own readership and guidelines. I loved doing that and still do, but I wanted a bit more freedom. Accordingly, I started to review my own albums, recount my musical history and go through my Singles collection from A to Z.
Within a year I realised that I wanted to branch out to books, theatre and films so I decided to make it a general review site. All of my reviews had a personal element and I felt comfortable reflecting on myself and my experiences in a safer environment. This made me realise that I needed to expand still further.
The next incarnation of my blog was where I focused much more on personal experiences by using the media or the events, often as the background, to expand on ideas, feelings and opinions. I started to take part in Blogmas, 24 days of posts from the First of December, and found the balance, I like to think, between the personal and the media or event.
So, where are we now? Well, essentially, I am looking forward to the new phase of life that I have in front of me. I am full of ideas for the direction this blog will take and answering the daily prompt is a big part of that. I now want to expand my blog, increase the number of views and improve the quality of my writing still further. This blog will form one of the cornerstones of my life from now on, and I can’t wait to see what it brings.
So there you have it. My reasons for blogging are ever changing. As a final thought, I would love to get more comments underneath the posts and I hope that my future writing will justify that extra interaction.
Thank you to everyone who has read even one of my posts. You are very much appreciated.
Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses.
Well, today is the day after the end of my Pre-Sessional teaching and I have been thinking about AI a lot! So I decided to interview ChatGPT and ask it how best to prevent my students misusing it. Here’s the highlights.
What are the best ways for students to use CHATGPT to help write an academic essay in the art and design field?
ChatGPT said:
Great question! Students in art and design can use ChatGPT as a supportive tool for academic essay writing — not to replace their own thinking, but to help research, structure, and refine their work. Here are some of the best ways to use it effectively:
Research and Idea Generation
- Brainstorming topics: Ask ChatGPT to suggest possible essay questions or angles within art and design (e.g., “How does Bauhaus influence contemporary graphic design?”).
- Contextual overviews: Use it to get quick summaries of movements, artists, theories, or design principles before diving into academic sources.
- Comparisons: Prompt it to outline differences or connections between two artists, movements, or approaches.
⚠️ Tip: Always follow up with peer-reviewed sources (journals, books, exhibition catalogs). ChatGPT gives you a starting point, not the final word.
✅ Example Workflow for Students:
- Brainstorm topic ideas with ChatGPT.
- Draft an outline with headings and subpoints.
- Collect and read academic sources.
- Write a rough draft in your own words.
- Use ChatGPT for refining thesis, polishing language, and checking flow.
- Add final critical insights, citations, and formatting.
What is the best way for students to avoid just copying your ideas?
ChatGPT said:
That’s such an important question — and it’s great you’re encouraging your students to think critically about how they use AI tools. Here are some practical strategies students can follow to avoid simply copying ChatGPT’s ideas and instead use it to develop their own voice and arguments:
🔑 1. Treat ChatGPT as a “thinking partner,” not a source
- Use it for brainstorming (e.g., “What themes are common in Bauhaus graphic design?”), but then decide which ideas matter for your essay.
- Don’t copy outputs directly — instead, rewrite them in your own words and test them against your research.
📚 2. Always go back to primary and academic sources
- Take any outline or claim from ChatGPT and verify it in books, journal articles, or exhibition catalogs.
- For example: if ChatGPT says “John Berger argued that images reinforce power structures,” the student should look it up in Ways of Seeing and use a direct quotation.
✍️ 3. Use ChatGPT to question, not to answer
Instead of asking for “an essay,” students can ask:
- “What are three different perspectives on surrealism and politics I could research?”
- “What kinds of evidence would strengthen a thesis about Bauhaus influence today?”
This shifts ChatGPT’s role to scaffolding independent research.
🛠️ 4. Rewrite + Reflect
- After getting suggestions, students should summarize them in their own words without looking at the screen.
- They can then add personal insights — linking ideas to their coursework, studio practice, or artworks they’ve studied.
🧭 5. Keep a “research log”
- Students should note how they used ChatGPT:
- “I asked ChatGPT for examples of feminist art historians; it suggested Linda Nochlin. I looked up her essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? and used a quotation.”
- This creates transparency and shows that AI was a step in the process, not the final product.
It was a really useful interview and I will definitely use the full version when putting my next set of lessons together.
Used correctly, then, AI can be the solution not the problem.
How are you feeling right now?
I am feeling really relieved right now. Yesterday I went for an appointment at the hospital regarding my prostate. My previous blood test had shown enough of a spike for my Doctor to refer me for possible early cancer. I had been for a second blood test to check my PSA at the beginning of the month and yesterday I got my result. My PSA had gone down by a whole point! Now I know, and the consultant reminded me, that the PSA is nothing more than an indication of your cancer risk, but after an examination he said that the prostate felt fine and that he would see me in six months after another blood test.
I have been carrying this in the back of my mind for quite a while so I was really pleased that I had my Pre-Sessional teaching to take my mind off things. I have really enjoyed the challenge of the last 8 weeks and I hope it’s going to be a regular summer gig for the next few years. The students have been brilliant, the lessons fascinating to prepare for, with loads of art and design concepts that I loved learning about and new ways of doing things. Everything that teaching should be and often isn’t.
Anyway, as a final thought, we men are often very bad at looking after our health. Go and get those tests, particularly PSA and blood pressure, and if something may be amiss it will be spotted and acted upon. Yes, it’s a worry, yes the examination is uncomfortable, although not especially so, but the alternative is far worse.
What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?
OK, so the title is a sardonic take on a prompt that recycles two others in the past month! However, there is something in that approach to daily life if you really think about it. It is boredom and each day being just like the one before and the one after that kills quality of life. What happens when this is the case and what can you do about it?
Well, life goes, or appears to go much more quickly. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the main reasons is that you do the same thing on each day, each week, each month and each year. When that happens days blend into each other. Childhood goes much more slowly as each day contains new experiences. This is why Christmas appears to come round faster every year. If that seems to be the case you need to get off the treadmill and start running on the open road, metaphorically speaking. How do you do that?
Well, for me, it’s the avoidance of daily habits where possible. Don’t do the same thing at the same time every day. Now, obviously there are routines such as school and work that have set routines. Having worked in education I have been in that routine for a good 50 years of my life so I can speak with expertise on both sides! However, I tried to take on different tasks, try new lessons, develop new skills and, even in the last year of year round teaching, take an interest in new ideas and new technologies such as AI. My last year has seemed to move more slowly as a result.
Take up different hobbies or learn something new. I took up German 130 days ago and it has been a struggle at times, but I have learnt something new every day. Happy Colour gives me a new picture every day. Some are straightforward, some are much more tricky, but every day contains something new to do. Those two apps tend to be ones I go to when I have time so it’s not a case of doing the same thing at the same time every day. People who have complex morning routines stretching for hours are speeding their life up and, I would suggest, not really gaining much in return.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know that routine is necessary in certain areas of your life, but it mustn’t become routine. You should always try to find a different way to follow that routine. If you do, your life will be more varied, more interesting and it will seem to go more slowly. Avoiding repetition may not be easy but we should try it.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 