Goodbye, Dad

My father died a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday. It was four days before his 59th birthday

He had been too ill to work for several years, and towards the end of his life, he looked like a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, literally skin and bone.

I had started at University College, London in September and came home for the Christmas break.  He was weaker than ever, and it seemed clear that he would not live for many more weeks. Right after the New Year, I was taking the bus back to London on a Sunday and went into his bedroom to say goodbye.

He asked when they would see me again, and I said I would come home for Easter. He smiled, but sadly. I am pretty sure we both thought the same thing: he would not live until Easter. I could have postponed my return to London, but for how long? And if I did postpone it, Dad would understand why. So I took the bus as planned.

The following Saturday, less than a week later, there was a knock on my bedroom door at around 7 a.m. It was one of the kitchen staff who told me that there was an urgent phone call for me. I knew of course what it was and went down to the office to take it. Dad had died peacefully in his sleep.

I decided to take the train home as it was much quicker than the bus, but also rather more expensive. Since it was a Saturday, the banks were closed, and there was no such thing as cash machines in those days.  Fortunately, a friend of mine had some cash in his wallet and lent me the fare.  It was a sunny day as I walked to Euston station, and there were plenty of people out and about. It struck me that life was going on normally for everyone else, just not for me.

When I arrived home a few hours later, my father was still in his bed, but I was advised not to go in and see him. He had donated his body to the hospital, and as soon as they heard he was dead, they sent a doctor to take his eyes. Later that day, they took his body, so I never really had the chance to say goodbye properly.

Birds of a feather

There are a couple of birds outside, chirping back and forth. I imagine one is the male, sitting high in a tree, enjoying the sunshine and guarding the nest. The female is in the nest, sitting on the eggs. I bet this is what they are saying:

Male: How are things, babe? No sign of any predators, cats, squirrels, hedgehogs.

Female: hedgehogs?? The nest is high up in a bush. Have you forgotten?

Male: No, I know where the nest is. Just covering all bases. So how's it going?

Female: I'm bored and my bum is killing me. Cramp.

Male: Well at least you're in the shade. This sunshine is killing me. Think I'll have a drink.

Female: Typical! Off to the pub and leave me at home with the kids. That cuckoo has way more charm than you.

School visits

One of the most important (and enjoyable) parts of my job at Høyskolen på Vestlandet is visiting my students during their teaching practice.

I have noticed a huge difference between visiting primary school classes (eg Year Five) and lower secondary (eg Year Ten).

The younger kids bombard me with questions such as:

How old are you?

Why are you here?

What's your name?

Are you their teacher?

(and best of all) Are you going to be a teacher?

The older pupils, on the other hand, generally ignore me completely.

The most surprising example of this was when I got off the bus at the wrong stop and was afraid of being late. I saw the school, but no road or footpath that would take me there. I decided to go between some houses, but that was not possible without crossing a private garden. I was desperate, so I did. At the end of the garden I was stopped momentarily by a rusty barbed wire fence, which I climbed over, and then had to make my way through a few metres of thorny bushes.. I ran to the classroom and entered, breathless, with twigs in my hair and bleeding from both my hands from close contact with the fence and bushes.

How did the Year Ten pupils react?

They didn’t bat an eyelid.

Still on the subject of school visits:

I have very recently been visiting some schools in the Tromsø area, digitally, not physically, unfortunately. I was impressed by how well the students and teachers all seemed to have adjusted to the various constraints imposed by the Covid pandemic. I was also gratified and grateful for the warm reception the students all gave me, when I suddenly appeared instead of their regular teacher, who is on paternity leave.

One man went to mow

not a meadow, but a lawn.

When it comes to lawns, we may have above the average number, but below the average size. We have three lawns, one of which is the size of a gent’s hanky, the other the size of a large bath towel, and the biggest is just about big enough to play football with a five-year-old on.

Anyway, I was reliably informed by Astrid that unless I could come up with a convincing excuse there and then, I really ought to mow the lawns. I started, but the cutting length was so short that I was ploughing rather than mowing. So I had to find the user manual on the internet, having mislaid the paper copy that came with the mower.

I quickly found out how to adjust the length, but the manual also contained lots of advice, some of which was particularly useful for people who feel attached to their fingers and toes, and wish to remain so. For example, the manual advised against getting one’s feet under the mower, or touching the blades while they were rotating.

On reading this, I felt quite proud, as I am fairly sure I would have avoided these potentially life-changing activities without being told.

Words, words, words

(as Hamlet said, when Polonius asked what he was reading).

It was one of my last school visits before Corona closed our schools.

I was visiting three of my students who were teaching a Year Six group. They ran out of things to do about ten minutes before the end of the lesson, and one of them suggested that I might like to take over. I remembered an activity that I sometimes used when I was teaching in lower secondary school, and hoped it might work with these younger kids.

I put the letters PTSO on the board and asked the pupils how many words they could make, using all of the letters. They needed an example, so I gave them STOP. They caught on, and pretty soon we had POTS, POST, TOPS, SPOT and even OPTS on the board.

I was amazed when they almost unanimously demanded a new set of letters, so I wrote ATEM on the board. They were now in full swing and before you could say Jack Robinson (as the saying goes) we had team, tame, mate, meat and meta on the board.

We had a minute or two left, so I put NEMLO on the board and asked for two types of fruit.

There was an incredibly bright girl sitting at the back of the class next to the window, and quick as a flash (I really must stop using these cliches), she said: “melon and lemon”.

And that was the end of the lesson.

Mr H

I think it’s reasonable to say that as a pupil I had my fair share of hopeless teachers. Among this select group of people, there is, however, one man who stands out because of his mind-numbingly boring lessons: Mr H.

I had him in German when I was sixteen. If we had a page or two in a short story to prepare as homework, Mr H would ask us to read a sentence in German, and translate it into English. He always started at the front end of a row and went systematically through the class row by row, so if you were able to count, you could easily find out which sentence you were going to get.

My friend Kevin rarely did any homework, and certainly not for Mr H. On this particular day, Kevin had identified his sentence and was looking up a word in his dictionary, which was strategically placed on his lap under his desk.

Mr H noticed this, and declared: “Kevin Coffey, I know what you are doing under that desk!”

Quick as a flash, Kevin replied: “My sex life is my own business.”

We were sixteen-year-olds, so this gave rise to certain degree of hilarity. Mr H, on the other hand, was rendered speechless.

On a Brighton Bus

Peculiar Lady: Excuse me, are you on TV?
Me: Not as often as I think I ought to be, no.
Peculiar Lady: But you are on TV, then?...
Me Not as such, no, unfortunately.
Peculiar Lady: So you are not that TV detective?
Me: No, regrettably, I am not.
Peculiar Lady: Are you sure?
Me: Pretty sure. Ask my wife if you don’t believe  me. (pointing at Astrid)
Peculiar Lady: Is that your husband?
Astrid: Yes, unfortunately
Peculiar Lady: Is he a TV detective?
Astrid: No, he’s a teacher.
Peculiar Lady: OK then. Here’s my stop. Nice talking to you.

That could – and indeed should – have been the end of the story, but we were staying with friends, and back at their flat, the conversation went thus:
Astrid: A funny lady on the bus thought Desmond was a TV detective!
Me: I thought it might be Inspector Morse…
Enid (former) friend: No, he’s much too good-looking.
Astrid: Who could it be, then?
Me: That Jersey guy?
Astrid: No, he’s too slim and has nice hair.
Me: How about Shoelace?
Enid: You mean Shoestring. No! He is a real hunk.
Astrid: So who could it be?
Enid: I was thinking it might be Inspector Frost. He’s not very handsome, is he?
Me: I’m still here and can hear every word.
Astrid: Yeah, I think it must be Frost. Or that fat bald guy in NYPD Blue?
Me: I’m going to bed.

RIP Rufus

It is now almost a month since the vet advised me that the time had come to put Rufus (age almost 18) to sleep. We miss him, but it is good to know that he is no longer in any pain. It was sad to see how difficult it was for him to walk, and to hear him wailing during the night.

Rufus was a wonderful cat. He was incredibly patient when children wanted to play with him. It was not in his nature to bite or scratch. Occasionally, if Sepia (our other cat) got into a fight outside the house, Rufus would walk over and indicate that the intruder ought to leave. He seemed to be respected by the other moggies in the neighbourhood.

I was holding Rufus as the vet was about to give him an injection. "Will he bite you?" she asked. "I doubt it," I replied. "That would be the first time in 17 years."

If everyone were as peaceful and loving as Rufus was, the world would be a better place.

Getting caned in school

When I was eleven years old, I was once late for school. If I had had a note from home saying I would be late, there would have been no problem. However, I arrived letterless and was sent to the headmaster’s office for a caning.

The building was very old, and the office had a bare, wooden floor. Fortunately for me, there were some older boys who had also been late for school, and one of them hit on the idea of putting the headmaster’s collection of canes, of which he had at least half a dozen, through a gap between the floorboards so that they fell down into the cellar.

When the headmaster arrived to give us our well-deserved punishment, he was surprised - to put it mildly - that his precious canes had gone AWOL and were no longer in the umbrella stand which was their usual abode. Consequently, we were despatched to our classrooms, with the promise (or threat) that the headmaster would come and get us later that day. I was nervous for the rest of the day, but he never turned up.

“Getting caned” can also mean getting high on drugs, apparently, and the comedian Ali G (real name Sacha Baron Cohen) made use of this when interviewing the former education Secretary Sir Rhodes Boyson, who was clearly blissfully unaware of the second meaning of the expression.

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A Broken School Record

At grammar school we used to get Christmas and Easter test results as percentages, not A, B, C etc.

I regularly got really high percentages in subjects that I liked, such as Latin or German, but frequently did abysmally in certain other subjects.

When I was in the Sixth Form, we had the privilege (but not pleasure) of having the headmaster, Father G in Religious Knowledge. RK was not on my list of favourite subjects, and this Christmas I broke the school record for unsatisfactory results by several percentage points.

In those days, the teachers often read out the results in public, or posted them on the classroom wall. When he came to me, Father G read the number and declared: “McGarrighan, you are a typical product of the twentieth century.” It is theoretically possible that he understood and accepted that I as a modern individual took no particular interest in two-thousand-year-old myths and legends, but given the context, I was inclined to doubt that that was what he meant.

I was feeling a bit miffed, but my friend Kevin turned and whispered: “Not bad, he’s a product of the fourteenth century.”

Security Level Orange

I had been at a meeting in Oslo for the day. I took an early flight from Bergen, where they served us breakfast. I had not drunk my carton of orange juice when they came to collect the trays, so I put it in my pocket for later.

After the meeting, I was back at Gardermoen Airport, standing in the security queue. Right behind me there was a young man in snow-white jeans. They seemed to be new, and occasionally he rubbed off a speck of dirt or dust. He was clearly quite proud of them.

Then I remembered the orange juice. I was loath to throw it away, so I decided to drink it there and then. Unfortunately, I must have squeezed the carton too hard when I pushed in the little drinking straw. A fine jet of orange juice sped away behind me and landed on the white jeans.

The point of impact could hardly have been more unfortunate. The colour and location of the stain made it reasonable to assume that urine was the cause.

If one had planned to do this on purpose in a sketch, it would probably have taken many attempts.

The Perils of Accepting a Lift

I had been giving a course in the Voss area, and one of the participants offered me a lift back to Bergen, where her parents live. I quickly accepted the offer, believing that it would be a good deal quicker than the bus I had planned to take.

To begin with, things went fine, as we chatted happily about this and that. It occurred to me, however, that we seemed to be driving more uphill than the bus does, and against the flow of the river. For a second or two I wondered if I was being kidnapped, but put those dark thoughts aside, assuming that she knew a short cut.

Then we were stopped by the police and my chauffeur was given a hefty fine for speeding (NOK 5350 if I remember correctly).

It is no exaggeration to say that this dampened our spirits a little (hers more than mine, if truth be told). Having said that, the fine did not have a long-term effect on her driving speed, and a couple of times I felt obliged to point out that there was a potentially expensive discrepancy between our speed and the maximum which was to be found on road signs we passed.

We continued on our uphill journey, and as I was busy looking out for signs indicating the permitted speed, I noticed a large sign bidding us welcome to Sogn og Fjordane County. We had been driving north for an hour or so, whereas Bergen lay to the south.

I didn’t know how to mention this in a way that wouldn’t sound negative or critical of her geographical knowledge. In the end I plucked up courage and she turned the car around and headed for Bergen.

Our little outing took almost five hours, compared to the three-hour busride.

The moral of the story is: do not accept lifts from virtual strangers :)

A Day at the Bakery

While I was a student in Bergen, I got a summer job in a bakery. One of my tasks was to put the unbaked loaves onto planks and place them in the oven to bake.

The planks were ancient and worn with use, and one day I managed to get a splinter under my fingernail. I was trying to remove it when one of the bakers noticed me chewing at my finger and asked me what was the matter. I thought I knew the word for splinter in Norwegian, but unfortunately - unknown to me - there was a letter missing in my version, and the conversation (in Norwegian of course) went something like this:

Baker: What is the matter?

Me: I have got a fart under my nail.

Baker: Stop scratching your bum, then.

I understood what he had said, but could not for the life in me fathom why he said it. Fortunately, I had a date with Astrid (now my wife) that evening, and she explained the mistake that I had made.

If anyone out there is learning Norwegian from scratch, here are two more or less useful words:

• flis = splinter (or tile)

• fis = fart

My First Day in Norway

I remember well my very first day in Norway, even though it was in 1969 - over fifty years ago. We had come to Bergen by boat and were making our way towards the city centre. We, that was Colin and me. We had started learning Norwegian at London University in September 1968, and had been sent to Norway for a few months in order to learn more of the language.

Our suitcases were rather heavy, so we decided to put them in left luggage while we tried to find somewhere to spend the night. Neither of us knew what “left luggage” is in Norwegian, so I found my dictionary in my suitcase and looked up the word. It was a very long word for me to get my untrained tongue round, but I asked a passing man, and he answered “Skur sju”. I had no idea what these two words meant, so Colin started searching in the dictionary.

“I think I’ve found the first word,” he said proudly.”He said skur, that means shower.” “Don’t look at me, “ I said, “I had a shower on the boat.” “Or it could be scrub, or shed, “ he added.

In the end we knew that we were looking for Shed Seven, which is one of several small buildings that are dotted along the seafront in Bergen harbour.

Having got rid of our suitcases we went to meet a teacher at the university who had promised to find us lodgings for the night. It was in a bed and breakfast place near the Cathedral, and I remember being amazed by the sumptuous continental breakfast that we had the next morning.