Don't Stand So Close To Me

There are roughly 63 million people living in the UK, and its area is 243,610 square kilometres. That gives around 3867 square metres – or just under an acre – per person.

So why is that people choose to live in such uncomfortably close proximity to one another?

I looked out of the train window yesterday on my journey from London to Leeds – something I don’t normally bother doing very much – and saw vast tracts of farmland, derelict land, meadow land. And yet, I used to live in a flat where we could hear the people upstairs having sex (I can’t remember the bloke’s name, but his wife was called Unita – which I always remember, because it’s also the name of an Angolan paramilitary organisation).

It’s not like all that farmland is being used to grow crops for people to eat. In fact, god alone knows what farmers do with all those crops that appear to be just grass. At least in Lincolnshire you can tell what’s growing in the fields...

Pretty much everything we eat is imported from abroad. If that wasn’t the case, nobody would make a song and dance about “buying British”. I’m sure the Canadians don’t pay extra for “Canadian flour” – even if it does have selenium in it.

As you know, I live in Bradford. The specific bit we live in is constantly being targeted by the council for more and more housing developments, despite the glaring inadequacy of local facilities (see ODHSNM passim). This is in spite of the fact that, within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council’s territory, vis to the west of the city, there is BUGGER ALL as far as Halifax.

Obviously the reason is that the bit we live in is very close to Leeds, which means houses built there can be sold for a lot more than houses built on a rain-soaked crag 10 miles further west.

I don't want to alarm my neighbours (who have been very understanding to date). But equally, I do - for example - sometimes want to go out into my back garden in my underpants without self-consciousness. 

I am English! I demand privacy! Privacy in which I will do weird things I want to keep secret!

Mystery Pants

As a dog-walker, I spend a lot of time looking at the ground. On the one hand, I am trying to avoid stepping in anything unpleasant. On the other, I am trying to avoid tripping over a deranged, half-blind, half-deaf whippet who is unable (or unwilling) to walk in a straight line.

This means that I see a lot of litter. And dog shit.

Better to see it than not to see it.

But I never cease to be surprised at how many discarded items of clothing I see.

Right now, from my office, I can see a lost glove on the street. Yawn. Everybody loses gloves. That’s just carelessness or bad luck.

For someone to lose a pair of underpants (pictured) there must be a real story.

Whose pants were they?
How did they come off?
Why did they get left behind?

Here’s another pair I found on the same road.

These are not worn grey emergency pants. These are prestigious, name-brand pants (the ones at the top are Calvin Kleins, in case the waistband is unreadable). What fall from grace led to their being cast adrift?

Abandoned single shoes are commonplace in city centres. Staggering screechy lady-drunks lose them falling off kerbs. Bellowing violent man-drunks lose them misplacing a wild kick at a prone rival’s head.

But here is a woman’s leopard print top – the pattern is still just about discernible. Actually I think that's what it is. It could be another pair of pants. Possibly belonging to Tarzan. 

Whatever it is, this has been sat in the gutter at the top of a residential street I often pass along for months. 

What is the history of this lonely garment? How did it end up cast out on the street, never to be returned for? Is that the face of Jesus at the bottom right?

Oh, but that these pants could talk - the stories they would tell us. 

Post-Industrial Yorkshire

Walking my dog this weekend, I ended up in the ruins of an old mill.

It was called Buck Mill and it was on the banks of the River Aire. Seemingly, a mill of some sort had been there since the 17th century, but it fell into disuse in the late 1800s and was demolished in the 1930s.

Now, it is a half buried pile of stones, overgrown with moss and vegetation at the side of a footpath where nobody would even take a second glance.

For hundreds of years, this was where the people of the local area brought their wheat for grinding into flour. So it was the economic heart of this little corner of West Yorkshire.

By the time of the industrial revolution, it looked much like UNESCO World Heritage Site Salt's Mill a couple of miles up the waterway - but in what turned out to be a really crappy location.

The late Victorians built a bridge but it was too late for the mill. The bridge is in excellent condition for something of its age.

This is what Buck Mill looks like from the pathway to the bridge. You would not know it was there unless you took the trouble to look at the sign situated a strangely long way away from the actual site.



Buck Wood is full of huge chunks of rock (millstone grits, as it happens) and old bits of drystone wall. Apparently, there was a neolithic settlement in there thousands of years ago - although the evidence thereof today is pretty much restricted to the sort of post-holes and thoroughly mundane-looking bits of stone that archaeologists seem to get so excited about.

So it would be easy just to imagine that this ruined mill was nothing more than a natural phenomenon or yet another wall people stopped giving a toss about at some point in the past.

And yet it isn't. This is what happens to industrial heritage that stops being useful before people become nostalgic.

Working in the supremely ephemeral field of online marketing as I do, it was quite eerie walking around the practically invisible aftermath of a former phase of the UK's economy. Will we even leave this much of a trace a hundred years from now?

More to the point, what is down this mysterious hole? I didn't get any closer than this, but there is clearly a subterranean structure down there...

It was at this point that I was cursing my iPhone.

Sure, it takes good pictures, but why no zoom? Jesus, phones I had three or four years ago had zooms on their cameras!

Which is itself quite ironic, in terms of how quickly we come to take things that are quite miraculous in their own way for granted, and how unimaginable a different way of life really is.

Look at the state of the river if you want a lesson in taking things for granted.

This is a little side channel off the main Aire. When it's high, the water flows through. When it's low - as you can see - it's just a depository for all the crap that has fallen in or been thrown in upsteam.

Plastic bags look like being our generation's main legacy to future archaeologists.

And there are people living down here too. This was not actually at the mill, but a few hundred yards away.

We like to sneer at the Victorians and their class snobbery, their disregard for the poor, the squalor hidden away from respectable people. We are much more civilised, aren't we?

And yet here is a duvet in a reedbed.

Here are some burned cans of beer. This is within walking distance of my house (obviously).

I don't really know where I'm going with all this.

It was pouring with rain. It was freezing cold. That might have heightened the overall melancholy of the experience.

I just found the whole thing extremely sad. We like to think that society progresses, and yet here was evidence of it going backwards. Of traces of civilisation just being left to rot.

The only evidence that anyone is remotely concerned about what goes on down there once the joggers, dog walkers and cyclists are safely tucked up in bed was this. A fitting metaphor, I thought.

The White Caterpillar – Part 3

In which Roger of Sicily completes his daring journey home. Oh, hold on – that’s given away the ending. CONTAINS SPOILERS. Too late.

Part 4 – The Ramp

Five minutes before we got back onto the correct route for a 671 bus, I had texted Elvira saying that if the bus didn’t speed up, I was going to get off and walk.

Oh! The folly of impetuous youth, dear reader!

Turns out, we were stuck behind two cars that had collided in the middle of the road.

Why is it that by the time you get to the scene of an accident, they’ve always just managed to clear it out of the road?

Obviously, I’m not addressing that rhetorical question to any emergency rescue personnel who may be reading. It’s more directed at the casual sitter-and-waiter in traffic jams.

Into Rodley we headed, and I expected the worst. The road up to the notorious Rodley roundabout (the precise analogue of the Traverse of the Gods on the Eiger’s Nordwand) is almost always jammed up. The road from Calverley to Greengates is always jammed too, so I expected gridlock from this point onwards to the end of my bus journey.

“Hold on”, called the driver as we rounded the corner on the approach to the roundabout. I think he meant it in a jaunty, team-spirity way rather than in a literal, alarming way. But I did, just in case.

Well, the roundabout was indeed jammed – but NOT IN THE WAY WE WERE GOING!

I cannot tell you of the joy that went around the bus as we realised that traffic was coming out of Calverley, but none was going in. If the other passengers or myself had spoken to or looked at each other, I’m sure we would all have shared a very special moment of camaraderie. Still, it was implicit.

And on we sped, unimpeded by further traffic. Now that we were back on route, we started picking up passengers – loudmouthed secondary school gobshites mostly.

What is it about being in a school uniform and in a group that makes young people feel an obligation to shout?

And to shout complete bollocks at that?

We crossed the border into Bradford. Friendly territory at last. The bus pulled up and I barged past the teenage guttersnipes. “Well done”, I said to the bus driver as I disembarked.

Part 5 – The Second Ice Field

I had rested for about two hours by this time, and my clothing – while hardly dry – was at least warm.

I must here take the opportunity to pay tribute to my shoes.

The standard, black leather lace-up, brogue-style ankle boot may not be the most fashionable piece of footwear in the men’s department right now. Especially when it has a rounded toe and a rubber sole with “Clarks” embossed on it.

But by god they kept my feet warm and dry, no matter what I was walking through. And as we all know, wet feet are objectively the single worst thing in the whole universe.

Those shoes are the unsung heroes to whom I must pay tribute.

I hopped off the bus and immediately noticed a change in the road conditions since I had boarded.

The snow was now much wetter and rain-like. The road was covered in slush.

Oh brown slush! Child of snow and mud and sly dog poo - how I had missed you!

The thaw had truly begun.

Thus heartened, I began the final yomp back to Casa Sicily.

Walking on snow is really quite uncomfortable. As I had discovered while trying to haul my bike to a suitable berth, brogues afford relatively little purchase. You are therefore forced to walk with flat feet, splayed outward, rolling your shoulders to maintain balance and forward momentum – in a manner reminiscent of the young Liam Gallagher.

[Facebook friends – notice anything familiar? Yes, I am reusing status updates from last month! ODHSNM used to be so much better...]

Back to the plot.

Are we all familiar with the thoracolumbar fascia? Also known as the thoracolumbar aponeurosis?

Good.

Long-term readers will know that this is an area of my back with which I have – if not outright trouble – then nagging doubts.

It turns out that this bit of muscle – which, I must say, feels a little bit too deep to be called a “fascia” – does a hell of a lot of the work when you’re walking uphill in snowy conditions with your feet turned out. And waterlogged, falling-down overtrousers etc.

15 minutes after arriving home, I was unable to bend at the waist. Two days later, the tops of my thighs and the backs of my calves joined in.

Strange, isn’t it, how one’s muscles will often wait a day or so before complaining about over extertion? It makes me think of that terrible silence between the crash and the child starting to cry. The longer that silence is, the more serious you know the screaming is going to be.

Onward and upward, upward and onward I went. By now, the snow was pretty much just rain. I was steaming like a Grand National winner. I kept telling myself “just get to that point then you can stop for a rest”.

I soon realised that “stopping for a rest” would result in my entire body ceasing to function properly – which would necessitate what the mountaineers call a “bivouac” (ie sleeping in a ditch until someone rescued me). In the words of Gaston Rebuffat:

“The human animal in me was unhappy”.

So I didn’t stop and on and on I went. I measured the distance covered the next day. Two miles.

I know it doesn’t sound very impressive. But then the Eiger is only about 13000 feet high, which is about two and a half miles. And I walked further than that. Yes, with a bus journey in the middle, and yes, on a slightly shallower gradient. But a GREATER DISTANCE nonetheless.

Eventually I made it home. My children rejoiced at my return: Roger Jr by carrying on watching TV in the living room; and Tancred by attempting to bring me in on his side in his ongoing, screamed demand for crisps.

Always Tancred with the crisps. Oddly, after he was bought off with chocolate buttons, he proclaimed “I’m not crying any more Daddy” – as if he had only just noticed. However, he started again soon after the buttons were gone.

Part 6 – Epilogue

That evening, I took one final leaf out of the book of Heinrich Harrer – and indeed of the many other 19^th and early 20^th century explorers whose books I have been reading in recent years.

They often treat brandy as a medicine for fortifying people. In general, we no longer use strong alcohol as a means of bringing people to their senses – but I thought, why not? If it was good enough to get Andreas Heckmair down the mountain, it should be good enough for me.

However, by mistake I drank the best part of half a bottle of whisky and instead of being fortified and revived, I became even more tired – and had a hangover on top of the manifold aches and pains the next day. Clearly, my constitution differs from theirs in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, I did manage to get my bike back the next day. All the snow melted overnight, as if it had never been there. Had it all been a dream?

The Best Barber in the World

It may come as a surprise to you to discover that the best barber in the world is situated in Greengates, Bradford.

And yet here is the proof: BEST BARBER IN THE WORLD.

This, I should point out, is at least the second version of this sign that has been displayed on this shop. The first version was just a banner – as you can see, the owner has decided to go for something a little more permanent.

Clearly, this was one of those “president for life” elections, after which all future polls were abolished - after all, if he really is the best, why vote again?

Having spent that much on the sign, I don’t think he plans on putting his record before the public again any time soon.

I drive past this shop most days, but it was not until this weekend just gone that I put my head into the hands of the best barber in the world.

He was alright – he met my five criteria admirably. £7 for a cut, parking outside (none of those pictured are my car, psychopathic readers!) and plenty of Daily Stars to read while I waited.

It is not, however, the boldness of his claim that impresses me most, but rather the carefully hedged wording.

Was he voted the best barber in the world by his customers, whom he describing as loyal?

Or was it only the loyal customers who voted him best barber in the world – with the sign a coded rebuke to those disloyal customers who voted for someone else?

How to Win School Appeals - Part 3

I have to tell you, a part of me wishes I had never started writing this series of posts – as the growing gaps between instalments perhaps suggests.

Firstly, it’s really hard to condense everything I took from our experience into nuggets of wisdom without rambling on and on. This is actually the third time I have completely rewritten this piece now in an attempt to make it shorter.

I was thinking about just letting myself go to town and turning this into an eBook. For those of you not familiar with the term, that is a scam in online marketing whereby you hand over your contact details in exchange for a PDF which chucks together a load of stuff you could have found on the internet for yourself.

Secondly, there is the rather more serious point that I don’t really know how to win school appeals.

As I mentioned earlier in the series, we still don’t actually know on what grounds we won. And so any/all of the recommendations I make may be complete balls.

So, with that disclaimer still ringing in your ears, let’s finish this damn thing off so I can get back to writing about the mad shit thatcomes into my head when I’m driving to work without the pressure of real-world-responsibility to disturb me.

Is it legal?

Everything you will get from the council will seem very scary and legalistic. They will tell you that you can only possibly win if there has been some kind of maladministration or cock-up in the process.

So all your arguments about why little Timmy should go to this school rather than that school don’t count. It’s all about the correct application of the Admissions Policy.

I have no doubt that a fair proportion of people are put off from appealing just by the sight of the height of this bar.

Then there is the prospect of the appeal tribunal itself. Oooh – scary. You have to go and represent yourself in front of a panel whose decisions are legally binding, going up against someone (from the admissions authority) who presumably does this for a living.

Well, let me tell you that in our experience, you should not be put off by any of this.

The appeals panels are made up of members of the local “great and good” – not legally trained people and not education experts. As such, while the letter of the law says that they can only grant appeals on the basis of misapplication of the criteria, I am absolutely convinced that you can get them on your side by coming across as (i) intelligent, (ii) educated and (iii) genuinely concerned about your child’s welfare – all of which will put you at an advantage over the council’s rep.

Far from being experts, we found the person from the council to be poorly briefed and basically going in with the same argument for everyone.

Please note, that is NOT the case for faith schools and other places that do their own admissions – where you find yourself (excruciatingly) accusing of misadministration the very headmaster whose school you are trying to get into.

I do not doubt for a moment that the good impression Elvira and I produced in the panel (she cried! I read out long notes!) helped.

And remember, there’s the admissions authority can’t appeal against the panel’s decision – so you need to do whatever it takes, whether it’s admissible or not!

Listen to gossip

We found out – from local gossip – that someone who got a place via the waiting list lied about their address. We kicked up a huge stink about it before the hearing and in it. The council, naturally, had done nothing beforehand and this did not impress the panel.

If you had believed that this was a purely legal proceeding, it wouldn’t matter what went on in other people’s cases as to whether your own was justified or not, would it? Well, see above.

Get your ear to the ground and pester the council about everything you hear. By law, they have to have answered all your questions 48 hours before the hearing. Chances are they will be too disorganised to do that, and you have your way in.

Oddly, we only heard from the council about the complaint after the appeal decision had been published. It’s almost as if they wanted to make it go away...

Do your homework

Tedious I know, but you need to get totally familiar with the admissions policies you are dealing with. You need to get the official word on, for example, the distance of your home to your preferred school – and check it yourself. Friends of ours successfully challenged an incorrect measurement and got a place before even going to appeal.

You have a right to know where on the waiting list you are, but the council will try to pretend that you don’t. Their rationale for that is that some people can’t appreciate that their position can change in relation to developments in others’ cases. Bollocks to that. Don’t let them get away with it.

Get everything written down and give it in as late as possible. The panel will read it, chances are the council won’t and will make themselves look stupid and lazy at the hearing.

That’s it. I wish you all the best of luck if you’re appealing. It has opened my eyes to how local bureaucracy really works and how people can overcome its dead hand with a bit of reading, writing and ruthlessness. 

Why Bother to Fight School Appeals?

I feel that I should explain why I am writing about school appeals in such seemingly endless detail.

As a parent, you get very used to feeling (if not being) completely responsible for your child’s progress through life. You’re the one who puts them into bed at night. You’re the one who stops them drowning in their own dinner.

All of a sudden - with the allocation of a school place - your total responsibility is wrested away from you and “The System” decrees from upon its impersonal, dizzy heights what is going to become of this person who you have made every decision for, whose interests have been your guiding principle since before they were born.

Of course parents imagine out a life for their kids – and of course that involves going to a good school, getting a good education and being successful. I’m sure it must happen, but I almost cannot comprehend parents being indifferent about the school their child goes to, considering how much of their (the child's) subsequent life they are going to spend there, in the company of and under the influence of people other than themselves.

When The System declares, “Sorry, we can’t all get what we want – so you’ll have to just make the best of it” and you imagine the potentialities of your child being wasted or going unrealised simply because you COULD NOT BE ARSED to challenge The System, then you HAVE TO fight it.

It would be nicer and more just if this didn’t matter. Of course I’d like to see all schools as good as one another, so that nobody has to “win” and nobody has to “lose” – we’re talking about 4 and 5 year old children for god’s sake.

I don’t blame local authorities for having admissions policies that they stick to in order to distribute a scarce resource among an excessive number of valid claimants.

I would perhaps point out that it is often THE SAME local authorities that allow the development of more and more new homes - raking in the council tax from increased population - without providing for a corresponding increase in infrastructure like primary schools anywhere near the new developments they profit from.

Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and it has to be dealt with in its current, imperfect form.

If EVERYONE appealed against The System, then The System might have to take a look at making itself a little less unjust, for the sake of an easier life. It’s only the silent acquiescence of the majority who don’t bother that lets them get away with it.

I’m not going to pretend that what we did had any kind of faux revolutionary wider goal like that behind it, but I throw that out there (along with the foregoing) as a pre-emptive strike against anyone who thinks we were selfish to do it. And also fuck you.

So that covers why we appealed and why I want to write about it. It was a bloody significant event in our lives and I still feel triumphant that we got the right and JUST outcome by persistence.

Sadly, thousands of parents are going to go through the same thing next year, and the next year.

When it was happening to us, I wanted to read a “human” explanation or account of it as well as all the legal (and quasi-legal) stuff I came across that could demystify and contextualise it all – and I could not find anything.

When you see that only 16% of appeals succeed, that it’s a legally binding adversarial tribunal and you see the rates that lawyers charge – and the success rates they lay claim to – it can be really intimidating. You want to argue your case on grounds of love, but love is inadmissible in court.

If I can help anyone win their appeal – or just go in there feeling more confident to face down a system that stacks the dead weight of the bureaucracy against the isolated individual – then I will have accomplished what I set out to.

If it doesn't help anyone... well, have some kitttens to redeem the time you wasted here.

How to Win School Appeals – Part 2

So, let’s suppose that having applied to your local schools back in January, now it’s April and you’ve just opened the fatal letter saying that you didn’t qualify for the ones you wanted and instead your child has been given a place at Shithole Primary, Murder Street, Craphill.

What do you do from here?

Before I go any further, I should give a few disclaimers:

1. I am only talking about reception class size admissions appeals here – these are probably the hardest to win and the ones that you are most likely to have to fight.
2. We live in Bradford and my entire experience is based on that city’s schools and education department. Every education authority will have slightly different procedures, so not everything I say will be universally applicable.
3. When we did win our appeal, we were not actually given the reasons why in detail. I went to two appeals, and I lost one and I won one. So am I going to throw everything I learned or was told or suspect at you. Some of it may be completely irrelevant – but some of it must be true.
4. I can see that this is going to take more than two parts to finish – so more wisdom will follow in later posts.

So where do you go from here?

Armalite and ballot box strategy

Well, there is nothing to be gained from refusing to accept the place at Shithole Primary. If you don’t accept it and then you don’t get a place anywhere preferable, your child ends up without a school place at all – and the last thing you want by now is then kicking around the house for another year or getting allocated a last minute place somewhere even worse.

Plus, if you take the place, you look like a good meek little subject who is playing the game by the rules. I was asked whether we had taken up the place and/or otherwise been to and engaged with the unwanted school in both the appeals I went to, so this must be important.

Secondly, put your child’s name down on the waiting lists for all the schools you would prefer. Some people mistakenly think that going on the waiting list and appealing in some way cancel each other out – they don’t.

Chances are, a few kids will drop out or otherwise not take up places they have been offered before the appeals come around – and you might get one of these. They are awarded on the same terms as the original admissions decisions are made, so if you only just missed out on a place on distance there’s a good chance you will get one down this route.

Plus, going on the waiting list puts your case back into the admissions authority’s hands, giving them more time to make a mistake which you can exploit later.

I can’t stress the importance of going on the waiting list enough. It gives you a reason to be on the phone to them all the time collecting information.

Open up as many fronts as you can. Remember, you care a lot and the council doesn’t have to care that much. You only have to get lucky once – they have to get lucky every time.

What you are dealing with

99% of the time, the reason you will have been rejected is down to our friend the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. That is, because there were 30 kids (or a multiple thereof) who met the admissions criteria “more than” you.

This law on class sizes is a trump card in the admissions authority’s hands – however, it is not the Ace of trumps. If it was, the only hope you’d have would be to take a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights and even if you won, your kids would be 18+ by the time you got the primary school place.

No, the class size law is round about a seven of trumps. It woops most other arguments – even ones that seem world-beating from an ordinary human point of view - but it can be defeated.

What you have to prove is that:

1. The admissions authority (usually the council, but if you’re dealing with a church school for example, it could be the governors) made mistakes in applying the admissions policy.
2. If they hadn’t made those mistakes, then on correct application of the policy, your child would have got a place.

Sadly, it’s not enough to show that the council cocked up – which is usually simple enough. Just deal with them for long enough and they’ll do something wrong: hence I recommend that you contact them regularly, ask lots of questions and sooner or later you’ll get some work experience kid who has no idea what they’re talking about misinforming you about something or other. That’s why going on the waiting list actually helps with your appeal.

For that reason, you should note down every communication you have with the local authority for time and date and try to get the name of the person you are talking to. As far as I can remember, they never volunteered this information, which seems significant.

And don’t expect them to call you back when they say they will. Be prepared to chase everything yourself.

Stay tuned for the next instalment – in which I will talk about the power of paperwork and of gossip

How to Win School Appeals – part 1

It's a minefield...

Roger Jr has been at school for 7 days now at our first choice primary school. Getting him there, however, has been a battle – which only now do I feel philosophical enough to tell the tale of and make light of.

It all started back in November 2011, when we got a bundle of forms from the local authority asking us to declare our five choices of primary schools for Roger Jr to go to.

Fast-forward two months, and a couple of nights before the deadline, we took a look at them and jotted down (i) the local school which all the other kids up our road went to and (ii) a handful of others.

You may well say that not doing piles of research, bribing councillors and vicars and taking long-lens photographs of headmistresses in compromising positions was the first place we went wrong. You may be right – but what reason did we have to doubt that Roger Jr would get into the same school as all the other children who lived up the same road and therefore at more or less exactly the same distance from the school?

Before I continue, let me explain a couple of things. This may not be how it is everywhere else – and for that reason, I would recommend that you read the paperwork you get sent thoroughly and often – but in Bradford straight-line distance from door of dwelling to door of school is the main determinant of priority for admission. Kids in care and siblings of kids already at the school get first dibs (and to the latter, we will return in due course), but then the school’s favour beams outward like a light and blesses the first cohort of nippers it touches.

Cohort? Yes, we have enrolled Roger Jr in a Roman Legionary school. Discipline first, eh?

No, what I mean is that – thanks to Tony Blair – primary schools have to take in reception kids in batches of 30. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 says that in the first two years of school, the ratio of pupils to teacher must not exceed 30:1. This – as a parent appealing against an admissions authority decision – is your primary enemy.

Already, you can perhaps see that this is an area best not left to chance.

Anyway, back to our story. Time passes and soon it’s April. We get a letter through from the council and it says that Roger Jr has not been offered a place at any of the five schools we applied for. Instead, he has been given one at a school we have never heard of, in a place best characterised as “a demilitarised zone”.

You see, when you are told that as a parent you have a “choice” of schools, this is not what you are being given at all. You are being asked for preferences so that, in the unlikely event of your child being eligible for admission to more than one of those schools, the council has a tie-breaker. That is all your views count for here.

You see, it turns out that there had been a glut of births in Roger Jr’s school year. And as such, the blessed light emitted by our school of choice (or preference) was guttering like a candle in an airtight room, reducing its circumference from over 0.6 miles to a mere 0.45 miles.

That is, there were so many kids of school age apparently living closer to that school than us (and we will return to that “apparently” later on) that we didn’t qualify - for our number one choice or indeed for any of the five we had named.

And so, because we didn’t live close enough to the school 0.6 miles away, Roger Jr was to be shipped off to a school some 2.5 miles away – a triumph of bureaucratic logic.

It looked alright, but not right for us

Now, I don’t wish to slag off the school Roger Jr was given a place at too much. They’re doing the best they can given their location. And they seem to have nice facilities – schools that have been in special measures often do. They had very nice, big playing fields around the school, although I suspect that large areas were probably heavily mined to deter burglary. The staff seemed pleasant enough, and the head was very good about it when we told her that we intended to fight tooth and nail to ensure that our son didn’t go to her school.

So we appealed.

Now, friends and readers of a socialistic bent may disapprove of our having done this.

If every middle class parent whose kids get sent to a “bad” school exploits their special powers of pushiness (a little middle class secret – you get sent on a course where they teach you all that stuff as soon as you start paying 40% tax), then only poor kids will go to the bad schools and rich kids to good schools.

And that, they will tell you (in a bit of reasoning whose rather disturbing premises they are rarely keen to examine more closely) guarantees that bad schools stay bad and good schools stay good.

Well, let me take on my detractors. You are, of course, entitled to your opinions. However, unless you have children of your own, in this case they are worth precisely NOTHING SO SHUT UP.

Not only do I challenge any parent to admit that they are prepared to accept an inferior start in life because of their political views – I also accuse them of mistreating their children. I see no difference between that and, say, forcing your four-year-old to be a vegan because of your views.  

Sorry, but all abstract positions about what is right or just for everyone go out of the window when it’s your own children involved.

Ask me if my preference is for a fair society or for my kids to get on - I don’t have to research my answer to that.

Coming up in Part 2! I might actually explain “how to win school appeals”!

Troll Bait

Here, for your amusement, is a book Roger Jr selected from the library this week – “The Swirling Hijaab”.  

After seeing the Samantha Brick effect at work this week, I have figured out that publishing stuff which is going to wind people up into a frenzy of impotent rage is the way to the internet big time.

Because look – not only is this book about an Islamic thing, it also has a POLISH TRANSLATION! And it’s in a PUBLIC LIBRARY! For CHILDREN! In BRADFORD!

Start frothing, Mail readers!

Now, Roger Jr is in many ways representative of the bulk of the British public. That is to say, he can’t read and if he doesn’t get his own way immediately, he will throw a massive tantrum.

But you know what – when I read this to him last night, cultural difference wasn’t something he even noticed. It was just a nice story. Maybe there’s hope for the next generation after all, eh?

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!

Kids say the funniest things

Yesterday morning, Roger Jr burst into our bedroom declaring that he had done a "rumpy wee". On further inspection this turned out to be his own peculiar expression for "explosive diarrhoea".

I've been struggling since then to work out the thinking that led him to this description. Rest assured, I have never used the words "rump" or "rumpy" around him – with the exception of reference to the fruitily-named Humpy Rumpy the hippopotamus from "The Enormous Crocodile".

Quite why he would then associate the two, I can't imagine. He probably meant "lumpy" – which, on reflection, is rather too graphic and unpleasant an image with which to continue.

Even when he's using real words, Roger Jr can be a little hard to understand. That is because he is functionally bilingual, speaking conventional English at home and speaking the broadest of Bradford dialects when he is at nursery.

He will often tell me that something is "ray-ur-leh, ray-ur-leh big", for example. And when I ask him to repeat it, he'll say "really, really big". So he knows that there are two ways of saying the same thing (NB exposition of the size of things is one of Roger Jr's favourite conversational themes).  

Having moved around a lot when I was growing up, I don't really have an accent. Or rather, I have bits of various accents – and like Roger Jr and Tony Blair, I switch to the most appropriate one depending on the people to whom I am currently speaking.

My wife Elvira, by contrast, spent her entire childhood in Boston – but somehow managed to avoid developing an accent that makes her sound like a brain-damaged farmhand who has received in incomplete course of speech therapy.

That's a joke of course. The Boston accent is a splendid thing, a unique cross between Norfolk and East Yorkshire, between north and south. It's a gem, hidden in the depths of the Fens, overlooked by the outside world and thus allowed to carry its local heritage into the present.

And let's not forget, sometimes there are big advantages to be had in allowing people to think you are not as intelligent as you are.

I suppose it's pretty silly, imagining that some accents sound thicker than others. And by the time Roger Jr is an adult, god alone knows what "normal" English speech will sound like.

Anyway, here's a picture of Roger Jr on the potty – just to guarantee that however he sounds, he will definitely hate me when we do get there.

Fortunately, on this occasion there was no rumpiness. 

Rotten boroughs for everyone

Electoral reform may be dead, MPs' expenses may be buried, but a good old fashioned boundary change can still send our political class wee-wee-weeing all the way home.

Behold the astonishing words of "one senior Tory" who is perhaps unaware that the Guardian is something that gets published to the outside world:

"We are not happy about this...There are MPs who gave up a lot to come here and now it looks like they face real fights."

Hilarious innit? Absorb it - I'm coming back to it. 

Broadly, the plans would see the number of MPs cut from 650 to 600 – although the Sicilys' own region would see just four go. Disappointing, I'd been hoping to see more ex-MPs on the scrapheap.

With our house on the market, I am delighted that we're looking at being shifted from hopelessly down-market Bradford East to aspirational Guiseley and Yeadon. We'll be whacking up the price accordingly.

So we might be happy, but Conservatives are not – apparently because the sinecures that they "gave up a lot" for might not be quite as guaranteed a route to a fat lifetime at the public teat after all.What a thoroughly disgusting attitude. If you're happy to share your arse-witted opinion, "senior Tory", why don't you share your name with us as well?

Nor are Labour happy though. Before he considerately deigned to examine the plans in advance of responding formally, Ed Miliband said:

"We have serious concerns about the government's decision to change the boundaries, which we believe was an act of gerrymandering by the Conservative party."

Boo hoo. Life just isn't fair, is it?

While most 19th century cartoons are generally made even less funny by knowing what the words say, I'm going to help you out with the preposterously small text in the picture above. 

Fat man says: "Here they are all good votes - ready to vote for my coach horse if I order them. Give me the money and I'll secure you the seat."

Rich man: "Well here's the cash. As for the votes, I'll leave them to you."

HA HA HA. See those peasants in the background? Politicians think that's you, that is. 

Things we did on our holidays - pt 2

Why can't air travel be more like rail travel?

By that, I don't mean "please double the prices, delay more aircraft and cram them so full of standing passengers that you can hardly breathe, let alone move, and god help you all if there's an accident".   

No. What I mean is, why is it beyond the wit of man to make air travel a walk-on affair?

Obviously, there are a few good security reasons that slow things down unavoidably. Then on top of those, there are the ludicrous post 9/11 overcompensations introduced for the sake of being seen to do something, regardless of any actual effect on security.

You know what I'm talking about. On going through Leeds/Bradford airport on our holiday:

1. Three-year-old Roger Junior was frisked down and made to take his shoes off, because he was the nth passenger through the security scanner. I was not subjected to any kind of search. Now, while Roger Jr can be a handful, I'm fairly sure it's beyond his capabilities to hijack or bring down a passenger jet.
2. We had to hand over some unopened cartons of juice – presumably to be destroyed in a secure environment where there would be no danger of hazardous spillage.

All of which begs the question why it's perfectly acceptable to carry anything you like onto a train without being checked. Many a train I have been on has seen the passengers all shut in and unable to get away for longer than a lot of long haul flights...

OK, you've also got to allow some time from bags being handed over to get them onto the plane. And clearly separating all the bags that obviously belong to the same family and making sure they go into different compartments of the hold - so as to ensure the maximum gap between the first and last piece coming out on the luggage carousel - doesn't just happen by itself. It requires careful planning as well as a powerful throwing arm.

So that's two sets of quasi-legitimate reasons.

I suppose part of this is our own fault. Check in usually opens around two hours before departure for European flights – but they close 40 minutes or so beforehand. Guess which timescale I have worked on EVERY SINGLE TIME I've been on an aeroplane? Correct. We always get there for the opening of check in, guaranteeing ourselves:

1. As many queuing experiences as can be crammed into a day.
2. Maximum waiting time – relieved only by the opportunity to buy things we did not feel the need to pack when considering what to take with us or which we were not allowed to bring through security.  

As long as you've got seats reserved, it doesn't matter when you check in, does it? How I wish I could be one of those people whose names are announced over the tannoy, warning them that the plane is waiting for them.

But I can't. I am too English, too middle class and – let's just admit it – still too in awe of the fact of air travel to treat it casually.

Airlines and airports want you to still believe that air travel today is like air travel in the 1950s. It's luxurious! It's exclusive! Cabin crew are there to feed you grapes and champagne, not to hard sell you wilted sandwiches and high street perfume at astronomical prices! Fly on a plane and be part of the jet set, queue for 20 minutes every time you want a piss and then get dumped on a wind-blasted airstrip miles from your final destination! I don't know about you, but I fall for it every time. 

A riot of my own

It would undoubtedly be far too cynical to suggest that the London riots came at just the right time for the Metropolitan Police.

In the wake of the phone hacking scandal – and its subsidiary, rather more important corollary, the "exposure of massive corruption in public authorities" scandal – the Met's reputation was not so much in the toilet as round the U-bend, through the pipes and gently pullulating in a big circular tank somewhere in the countryside.

And yet, just a couple of weeks later, the country is united behind it, thanks to the capital's very own tracksuit-clad lumpenproletariat. There's nothing like a threat to property to remind you who your friends are, eh?

Still, at least the London rioters had some vague notion of a pretext (the shooting of Mark Duggan by Met officers).

Their provincial brethren haven't even bothered, unless you are still accepting "errr...the cuts?" as a remotely valid or remotely sincere excuse for any and every kind of nihilistic stupidity.

You know how I plan on showing my opposition to the closure of local libraries? By stealing luxury luggage from Louis Vuitton and burning a bus. You know why I pooed in my pants, rubbed it on my face and threw what was left at a passer-by? The cuts. Oh, and no one listens to me.

Pleasingly, not even the Guardian seems to maintain that what's been going on for the last few nights is in any sense a "protest" – although there are plenty still plugging away with "root causes" explanations out there. Oh, it's all because the poor dears get stop-and-searched a bit. Boo hoo. It's all because that nasty posh man wants to take away their table tennis club. My heart bleeds. I prefer this explanation.

Bradford has been remarkably quiet throughout the current events so far – probably for reasons implied in the photo above. After all, where's the profit in looting a pound shop?

You don't understand it because you're an idiot

Just returned from two (working) in London, where people understand that the barriers at railway stations require you to put your ticket in, take it out and then walk through the gate that opens.

Ticket barriers were installed in Leeds about two years ago, and STILL every day thousands of people stand gaping at them like a dog presented with a tin opener: they know that this strange contraption in some way holds the key to getting what they want, but making it work is simply beyond their cognitive capabilities.

As a result of this, at rush hours there are at least two rail employees stationed at the gates opening them up for people who can't work out the whole "put the ticket in the slot" puzzle – one by one, upon the presentation of their ticket.

Naturally, this leads to a colossal build-up of people because instead of using 15 or so gates, the majority of rail travellers use two.

Like the prehistoric fish that first decided to chance their arm on the whole land-dwelling lark, a few brave souls then have free rein over the rest of the vacant gates.

Unfortunately, most of them end up metaphorically gasping and drowning in the fresh air of their new environment – trying to stick the ticket into the wrong hole, or simply gazing at the machine as if instructions for use will shortly appear on it.

Typically, I end up behind one of these people. Up they go, walking brisky and confidently towards a gate. "This person knows what they're doing", I think as I fall into line with them.

And then...stop.

Dum-de-dum...Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal....Hmmmm... what is this curious device blocking my way? It has a picture that looks a bit like that bit of cardboard I was given earlier on it by that man in the blue hat. I wonder where that is now? Maybe it's in one of my pockets. Or my handbag/wallet/purse, perhaps. Or maybe it's in the sky somewhere up there. I have no idea what to do with it if I do actually find it, but hopefully it will all become clear if I just stand here...

I express my rage and frustration at this state of affairs by sighing and tutting quietly when I'm sure no one is looking. How I long to simply hurl them bodily aside yelling "YOU DO IT LIKE THIS!!!"

Thank god they don't have them at Shipley. The locals would be round with pitchforks and torches in a flash.

Talking of dogs (which, you may recall, at one point earlier in this piece, I was) - if it's true that people come to look like their dogs, then there must be a hell of a lot of overweight basset hounds living in Leeds. Badoom-TISH!

Praise the pinlock!

I bought a new crash helmet last week, and it has one significant advantage over my old one – the visor doesn't steam up AT ALL.

It's a Nolan N103 and while it is packed with groovy features – like a flip-down sun visor, space for the installation of a Bluetooth system, flip face – what I have to tell anyone who cares, and indeed those of you who don't, is that if you don't have one already, get a pinlock attachment for your helmet immediately if not sooner.

It comes fitted as standard in the N103, but you can buy them separately for other helmets. I didn't believe that it would work and I have no idea how it works, but no matter what the temperature, no matter how heavily I breathe, I can't get the visor to steam up.

My old helmet – decommissioned after one of West Yorkshire's legion of uninsured drivers knocked me over and sped away back in November – forced me to practice yogic breathing while driving.

It was of Japanese manufacture, and so perhaps the focus on remaining calm at all times was a deliberate feature. It certainly made you hold your nerve when speeding up or increasing the depth of your breathing immediately resulted in zero visibility.

Rather than risk death by concentrating exclusively on my breathing rather than the road ahead, I generally rode around with the visor up – in rain, in snow, whatever. I'd put it down when I was eventually blinded by the elements, and put it up again when I was blinded by my own breath.

I just rode in to Leeds for the first time in my new helmet and it blew me away.

OK, the sun visor steamed up when I put that down, because it's not double-glazed like the front visor.

And ok, there is an advantage in having your visor up for a good proportion of your journey time, because while the pinlock stops the visor steaming up, it does not stop the atmosphere inside quickly becoming like the depths of a tropical rainforest.

A rainforest that smells of one's own morning breath, I might add. I still have to open the visor from time to time to dry my face off.

But it's a small price to pay, particularly as I like the wind in my face. And the rain, and the snow, and the fumes, and the gravel. If you value my opinion and you ride any kind of motorbike (a vanishing small segment of the population, I appreciate), get yourself a helmet with a pinlock TODAY.

Entropy and the takeaway menu

It has been quite cold lately. You might expect that I would follow on from that observation to bemoan the UK's risible state of unpreparedness for a phenomenon (winter) that happens once a year, frequently lasting for several months.

But no. My scale is considerably smaller and pettier than that.

Living, as I do, on a cliffside, snow and ice tend to render my road inaccessible to road traffic. In previous years, this has led to uncollected rubbish piling up in the street – the only thing keeping the giant Bradford rats from it being the fact that it has frozen solid.

Fortunately this year, the bin men got here just before the snow really set in, although the recycling lorry did not, meaning my house is rapidly piling up with empty bottles of Innis and Gunn.

It also means that the postman doesn't often deliver. No doubt because he's down at the Idle Working Men's Club debating what Lenin meant when he called the state an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class.

They are put to shame by one indefatigable group whose members will endure any hardship, any personal discomfort to make sure that their precious cargo gets through.

I am talking, of course, about the takeaway menu distributors. Come rain, shine, flood, ice, tsunami or hail of frogs, I can rest assured in the knowledge that I will get upwards of 15 menus for practically identical Chinese, Indian and the peculiarly Bradford pizza/kebab/curry/chip outlet every week.

Worried that there's been a change to the menu and you might not know about it? Maybe the price of the mysterious "OK sauce" has gone fractionally down? Don't panic! As soon as there's a change, you'll be the first to know. And if there isn't, they'll put your mind at ease by posting you a new menu every week, so that you can compare it to the last one and be sure that you're 100% on top of what's going on at Wok Wok.

However, I come not to praise the takeaway menu delivery men, but to bury them.

It's cold. I have the heating on to try and warm my house. If you're going to stick these damn things through my letterbox, PUSH THEM ALL THE WAY IN SO THE LETTERBOX FLAP CLOSES.

I don't leave my windows open in this weather. I don't leave the doors open. That's because I am only trying to warm the interior of my house, not the whole street and (indeed) the yawning void of space beyond it. I don't know a lot about physics, entropy and the eventual inevitable heat-death awaiting the universe, but I do know that when you shove a menu into my letterbox and leave it in there, the house gets bloody cold and my gas bill goes up.

In these times of selfish individualism, it's hard to put oneself into the position of another to appreciate their point of view. It's something we're no longer used to. So, I propose a little demonstration. Menu people – next time you're about to jam some spam into my letterbox and leave it open, why not try shoving up your own arse instead? Not all the way, mind. See how uncomfortable it is? Then there you are.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called empathy.

Postscript:

Thanks to my mum - the only person in the world who (I think) has read everything on this blog - for the picture of the snowman she and Roger Jr built last week. Should my mum need to be referred to again in the course of future writings, she will be known as Adelaide del Vasto.