0 TESTING TIMES by Penny Dolan

Beware! This is a post written in haste and anger. Long ago, my best beloveds, there was an exam called the Eleven-Plus. This was administered in the last year of primary school and determined whether a child’s secondary education would be in a Grammar or Secondary Modern School. There were (I believe) four papers: English, Maths, Mental Maths and General Intelligence.

Back then, the oldest classes practiced past papers throughout the year, ready for the Big Exam. In many homes, past papers became additional homework. Pupils Passed or Failed the exam  but as the number of grammar school places available varied and as the Eleven Plus passes were weighted in favour of boys, the exam was a kind of game.  Despite that, the exam overshadowed a whole twelve months of a child’s life and more. That was history.

 

This is now. In the second week of May, all over England, children in Year Six will be completing their SATs papers: their Standard Attainment Targets. The schools, once again, have to play the game but this time it is so a) the school isn’t given a poor rating by Ofsted and b) is therefore not forced into the academy system.

Many Year Six classes have been doing mock Sat’s for quite a while. This is seen as far better that than leaving pupils unprepared for an exam situation, especially when your school prestige depends upon it, and Ofsted will be watching. Then, during SAT’s week itself, the whole school quietens in reverence. I know because I’ve visited schools where SAT’s have been going on and where even the year Five children were sitting mock SAT’s.  My bookings were always with Key Stage One classes and the classrooms were usually in an annexe.

My heart sinks right now, really it does. Do we need to subject young children to all this pressure? Especially as tests seem to be added so often: add a test on entering Early Years; ass a proposed test once children are in Secondary School, in case something was not quite right with the Key Stage Two results. . . So easily it all becomes teaching to the next test.

I visit schools as a writer and have been a teacher in the past but so often, now, I meet children able to quote linguistic terms but unable to tell me when they last wrote a story or what was the last writing they enjoyed doing. I think children write about three stories in the whole of their primary years, although they do write in many other forms too: diaries, accounts, recounts, letters, reports and more.

Part of the reason is that creative writing doesn’t fit easily with tick-boxes. The SPAG tests – Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar - are structured for easy marking, which will mean marking by computer soon, if not now. (Somebody must be making a profit somewhere, I suspect. Probably in America.) Interestingly, the English writing test is still assessed by the teachers. Thank heavens for that.

Yet – and my greatest gripe - is that even that mercy doesn’t stop children who  used to love English no longer caring about a once-favourite subject.  

What a triumph for those politicians who so smugly set up and encourage the current SATS regime!

All of which is a long way round to say that, before the 11th May, I’ll be sending off a Good Luck card to an eleven year-old - partly in sympathy, partly as encouragement and partly as kind of protest.

Just how did we end up here?

Penny Dolan.

Detail: TESTING TIMES by Penny Dolan

0 LETTING THE LIGHT BACK IN by Penny Dolan

Dull, dull, dull! I get days – and more - when the words seem blunted, when my endless trudge of prose feels boring, when I need to hear something other than my habitual “voice” - and no, this isn’t an April fool’s joke!

What helps to shift or ease that feeling?

One: Battle with the piles in the corner.

Though the thought might terrify you: indulge in a good round of administration work, paperwork or similar, the kind of work where you don’t have to think in any creative way. For example, I recently spent a day sorting, editing and condensing a variety of paper address books. I now have one small notebook that weighs a lot less. (My head felt so much lighter at the end, even though I was sad to see how few of those bookshops and library contacts still exist.)

I might add that activities like turning-out simple cupboards - Not those corners full of significant mementos  - can rest the mind, and ensure you come eagerly back to the page.

Two. Read something completely other.

Avoid fiction. Try non-fiction. Try other genres: essays, positive memoirs and so on. The books need not be excellent. My favourite idling books often come from the local library sales, despite that horrid visible demonstration of useful stock being depleted. The titles on offer are often ones that you’d never buy, but they can offer interesting dabbling places for a threadbare mind.

Books that have given me glimpses into other minds recently include Mark Kermode’s “The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex”,  Robert Macfarlane’s “The Old Ways”, Jackie Kaye’s excellent “Red Dust Road”, and even "Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium" by Mark Edwards, although that was research, as well as articles in more serious magazines: I've just spotted an Alan Garner essay in the current "New Statesman", and have "The Floating Egg" ready to try again.  (Note: These aren't recommended reads, just examples of variety.)

Three: Look for somewhere new to write.

I admit this is one of the things I find hardest to do:  Leave your familiar corner / pc and desk, and seek out a different place to think and write, especially ones like art galleries or museums or nice cafés: places that have lots of objects or an ambience that sparks fresh thoughts and ideas. (If you’re truly low, I’d advise against libraries or bookshops: too many other, better books weighing down on all sides and possibly too many recent titles already culled for sales or remaindered.)

 Four: Try poetry.

Try reading poetry, often. Collect a few poetry anthologies together close by a handy reading chair or by a bedside or similar spot to stop. 

Idle through the pages when you have a few moments and maybe those blasts of other voices will really rest the rhythms in your writing mind. Which leads into  . . .

 Five: It's the first of April . . .

This date starts the 2015 National Poetry Writing Month, which is one of those big, full-of- oomph American ventures that can produce masterpieces, mayhem and maybe too much stuff that needs a lot more work. However (although this is just my opinion) you don’t have to go the whole hog by submitting your site and/or your uncertain poems. 

Better, perhaps, to keep a quiet eye on the website - NaPoWriMo.net- and pick up and use any daily writing prompts that will help you to find some fresh words for yourself. Try it out. Start a scribble journal, stuff it under your pillow and  use it as a place to collect some poetry ideas and attempts together. Over the month, perhaps, NaPoWriMo will give you – and me -  a chance to find more working voices than the one that's muttering across the screen now?

 

That’s all. Back to work – and Happy April - but do you have any ways of letting the writing light in again?    

Penny Dolan

.

Detail: LETTING THE LIGHT BACK IN by Penny Dolan

0 WEIGHING THINGS UP by Penny Dolan

To my mind, February always ends suddenly, as if it decided to take a couple of days off without telling anybody. Two-headed January bumbles past but then - today! -  March is here and already and it's looking scarily busy. Not only do I have a couple of big family events, some World Book Day Week/Fortnight school visits to do - but I really, really need to get on with some writing.  

A little tense? Moi?

However, Eric Maisel, a creativity "guru", mentioned recently by Heather Dyer, offers an interesting concept. He believes artists have to face two kinds of anxieties.

On one hand, there are all the anxieties you suffer when you aren’t able to work for a variety of reasons. You’ll be anxious because you have no time to think, no time to turn the thoughts into words. You’ll feel the frustration of being caught by other demands, the sense of being suspended from what you should be doing, uncomfortable at a deep, gut level, even when you try to still the emotion. Recognise that feeling?

On the other hand, he says, are all the anxieties that come when you are working: all the self-doubt, the tangles in the working process, the crises of confidence, the feeling that the work is not going as it should, that it is no good, blah blah blah. Working is often uncomfortable too.

Eric Maisel suggests that the artist -  in this case, the writer -  is better off learning to accept that both states of anxiety constantly exist, rather than wasting energy over the conflict between the two states of mind. 

Maybe that's why the use of an outside device, such as the famous timer, acts as release from that transfixed "blank page" state?

In addition, I also heard – while busy with my tax returns - someone on the radio explaining that each time we spy an email, go to Facebook, play a quick game, tweet and so on, we get a buzz, a small dopamine reward. 

She said that the danger of those small social media "rewards" is that they help you procrastinate, and deter you from the harder and longer work where the rewards aren’t so quick. Oh bother!

Hmm. On one hand, some things to think about . . .

On the other hand, stop wasting time looking for "rewarding" answers.

Memo to self more than to others: GO DO THE WORDS!

Have a great World Book Day!

Penny Dolan

Detail: WEIGHING THINGS UP by Penny Dolan

0 2015: THE YEAR THAT LIBRARIES DIED?

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is proved by the awful headlines splashed across the news  daily – but  the terrible bleeding away of the public and school library services seems to be almost invisible. 

There’s no gory red stuff on show, no heart-rending images to display, so even as financial axes have been slashing and cutting - and are now being freshly re-sharpened, there’s little response in the news media.

Library cuts don’t make for sustained headlines or passionate press campaigns. Even  the reports on cuts to Birmingham’s showcase library – the one that was supposed to be the glory of that authority’s much pruned provision - had a world-weary touch of “what else did you expect?”

 In honour of the Great Austerity, central government cut all regional funding so steeply that councils have little money to support essential services. However, because the funds are now in regional and local hands, the government can raise its political eyebrows and say it’s not their fault when those cuts hit home. With community centres, care of the elderly and more being hacked away, the idea of a library service comes across as almost luxurious. Books rather than bedpans? Pages of text rather than playful toddlers? You elistist! 

There have already been cuts and casualties: the closure of 324 libraries, the handing over of 400 more to volunteers, and the loss of 6,000 staff jobs since 2011 - and probably many more. Statistics have a way of being out of date by the time they appear. However, the cuts planned for 2015 – possibly concealed by both the noise and the silence leading up to the election – will be truly severe.

Furthermore, librarians are not, I heard elsewhere, allowed to comment on the matter. Most I know are desperate to keep their library services running in a positive way - but how hard to do that against the onslaughts of rationalisation; hours reduced means usage reduced means less need. Isn't that how it works?:

Visiting my local library, in the centre of a prosperous conference town, as well as the “middle class readers”, I see elderly people on their own, families with young children, students working at the few tables, newly arrived immigrants and more: people to whom the library service is essential.

Lucy Mangan, writing recently in the Guardian, mentioned the Independent Library report that Ed Vaisey – not a name trusted by many – commissioned a couple of years ago. He asked William Seighart to investigate the current state and possible future of libraries. According to this report, 35% of people in England use their local libraries, rising to 50% among poorer and immigrant groups.. The report points out that “The [socioeconomic] AB group, who run the country and the media, don’t use libraries. They do not understand how vital they are, or how many social problems they deal with.”

Hooray for Lucy for even writing about libraries, though she suggests a far more optimistic picture of the future library service than I’m witnessing.  Meanwhile, too many of the pitilessly bright political and media folk seem to be giving a cultural shrug, happy to disregard the damage being done to the libraries. After all, there’s still the London Library isn’t there? And everyone has wikipedia on the computer at home, don’t they? Or is there, somewhere, a belief that stripping the library service of its assets until it is unsustainable is a valid thing to do? Or is this another version of “the poor don’t deserve libraries” attitude of the past? What do you think of that, Andrew Carnegie?

Of course, damage isn’t called damage. It is presented as a “new model”, given a fresh positive spin. Here in North Yorkshire, people are being “consulted” about new library service proposals, because by 2020 this County Council’s library budget will be half what it was in 2010. How about where you live?

I, being lucky, live near what is proposed as the “core”library for my district. (Less lucky are the many library staff losing their jobs under these proposals.) There will be one core in each of the seven districts of this large and often rural county, acting as an “engine”; advising the remaining libraries, says the document.

What “remaining libraries”? Five “hybrid” libraries will remain in towns where there are large and busy daytime populations. Each will have access to a librarian but be run by volunteers. Will the librarian be based at the library? Not necessarily. Is this one of the now very few librarians back at the core? Yes.

The rest will remain, but not as we know them. They will be become twenty “community libraries”, where not only the running but the cost of maintaining the building will fall on the local users and fund-raisers and these will be staffed by volunteers. Not surprisingly, these smaller libraries are mostly in rural and poorer areas of the county.

In addition, everyone who fills in the form is asked to tick the “volunteer” box, because that is how libraries will be run in the future. I have to say that, looking ahead, my heart sinks. Volunteers are good-hearted, capable people, eager to help when it doesn’t inconvenience them or interfere with the other, very real demands on their time. How will the leadership & structure work out among these often strong-minded people? Who will tell who what to do once the librarians have gone? Where will the responsibility lie? What about the maintenance of these community buildings a few years on? And who will cough up the money for replenishing book stock – a subject that is hardly mentioned in all the proposals? (Reduce stock, reduce use, reduce “need: that useful model again.)

This is my example, but I know the same is happening all across England and Wales. Truly, I fear that once the dynamic central expertise has disappeared, the whole library system will be so weakened it will fade.

 

Of course, then it will cease to be a bother. Proof again, no doubt, that the people just do not deserve libraries. Besides, as many young people probably won’t have had librarians or libraries in their schools, they won’t feel the loss anyway. Job done, eh? Spit spot.

Oh dear. 2015, what bodies will you bring? Maybe if there was blood on the carpet, the media would notice. Where’s Professor Plum with the hammer when you need him?

Otherwise, Happy New Year! 

(Money for fireworks but not libraries, eh?)

Penny Dolan

Detail: 2015: THE YEAR THAT LIBRARIES DIED?

0 ALMOST AT SEA: Penny Dolan

My local writer’s group holds a recitation evening at this time of year, when people seem drawn to old stories and songs and poems. The poem below, although not traditionally wintry, is my own favourite for this season. 

Almost a short story, the poem was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, who was the son of a lighthouse engineer, and appeared in 1888 after the publication of his Treasure Island.  Although the poem seems to be about danger at sea, the emotional conflict and longing seem to me a deeper part of the celebration itself, whether on land or sea. Please, if you have a moment, do read through to the end.

 Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose top gallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson, cried.
… 'It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,' he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

 * * * * *

The Awfully Big Blog posts are mostly about fiction, but there are poetry readers and writers too. 

What’s the title - and author - of your favourite poem at this time of year?

Penny Dolan

(The painting is by Aivasovsky Ivan Constantinovitch. 1899.)

Detail: ALMOST AT SEA: Penny Dolan

0 TWELVE DECEMBER DREAMS FOR YOU by Penny Dolan

 

Grunts, groans, and sits down with a sigh. Yes, I’m just back from the “Christmas Market” in my town. How much boozy chocolate, mulled wine variants and worryingly early mince pies does a nation need? As I walked back, I thought about things that might be useful for you in the run up to the festivities.

So, here’s wishing you:

 

1. A cunning clock that shifts time about so you can do the writing you need to do.

 

 

2. A Light to help you see a clear path through the wintry fogs, mists and gloom of  Plots Gone Bad.

 

3. A pair of swift Writing Skis, and the skill to use them, so you can speed onwards whenever there’s a clear patch ahead.

  

4. Exceptionally Magic Ears so you can still hear the words of your Work In Progress way above all the nagging seasonal music and unwanted requests.

 

5. An Optional Food Fairy or three. Plus a happy flock of Clearaway Elves. For more than one day. 'Nuff said.

 

6. A Santa Claus who will stop faffing about on cakes, cards and comfy chairs in grottos and  actually bring all those presents on Christmas Eve. Like he’s supposed to, you know!

  

7. A Cheery Facemask so you can smile at Party Questions like. “When are you going to write a book for adults?” or “We’ve just bought Russell Brand’s Pied Piper. Do you ever have ideas like that?”

 

8. A Book (or more) so admirable that it will thrill you, please you, bring you knowledge and understanding - without making you weep in desperation at your own feeble talent. Plus bookshelves to fill to your hearts’ content.

9. A Very Large Spoonful of Good Health for you and for yours.  (This one is so important that I’m not even joking.)

 

10. A Deck of True Patience Cards so you don’t waste too much of your your writing time waiting for your editor/agent/publisher/whatever to call.

11. And a Collection of Good Writing Friends, who will let you grumble and witter on like this . . . and know it’s only half the story. (Thanks! You know who you are!)

12.  Plus whatever else YOU need to wish for, of course.

Have a happy and peaceful December, everyone!

Detail: TWELVE DECEMBER DREAMS FOR YOU by Penny Dolan

0 A LIBRARY IS A LIBRARY IS A LIBRARY? by Penny Dolan

My local “Friends of the Library” group has just raised enough money for an external Library Notice Board, and today the board was fixed to the Library railings.  

 I feel rather proud. The board will display information about what’s on inside the Library building. Pedestrians outside, seeing the notices, might be encouraged to come inside and make use of the town’s Library itself.

 So today I’m happy and positive and, although not everything is perfect, I live where there is a Very Nice Library.

 

Yet my heart sinks. Right now there are rumblings of more cuts on the way. Nothing to do with the Big Government, of course – ha ha! - as these will just be local cuts for local people.    

Which means it’s “not my responsibility” says Somebody Important Minister, no doubt smiling.” Hey, look at my clean hands! Besides, I have people who do all my reading for me. I’m just too busy for books to matter in my life . . . Or I can buy what I need anyway . . .”

Honestly, I feel very lucky because when I go into “my” library, because I witness:

easy chairs so people can reading papers and magazines and books (or snooze);

rows of computers with almost every machine in use;

plenty of fiction, both general and genres;

information books on a wide range of subjects, including topics I am not interested in yet; 

reference books;

a large local history section

books in foreign languages and books for second language learners;

large print and audiobooks for the visually impaired; 

films on DVD and, still, a few music CDs;

spaces with tables where people can study or write;

a children’s library, with a wide selection of books;

space for storytimes with a weekly programme of events;

a tea and coffee area; 

community rooms

and more.

Who uses it?

Older people. Retired people. People probably out of work or on low income. People with disabilities.  Mothers. Children. Fathers. Carers. Children’s health clinics. Parents. Students of all ages. Solitary teens. Lone readers of all ages. People who like the conversation group. People learning English as a second language. Reading groups. Computer groups.  Local history groups. A WI group. A handicraft group . . . And all of them involved with reading in some way. 

It is a busy library!

How does it feel?

Busy. Warm, Friendly. A place for browsing. For meeting. Free to all, without means testing, and funded by taxpayers money. Possibly the last space in this tourist town where you can sit, rest, work or read without paying. In many ways, this local Library is the last indoor democratic area.

Who runs it? The whole place is run by a core of trained librarians, supported by groups of volunteers. (Oh dear. Another anxiety, with these cuts coming on! In my opinion, volunteers can’t hold a library service together on their own, not for long. I worry that as genuine library expertise seeps away, libraries will just become large rooms filled with books on shelves. Then e-rooms. Then non-existent and the space for the community lost. . . )

Now I don’t want to offend people, but I do get angry – very angry – when newspaper and other articles suggest that a nicely-decorated ex-phone-box crammed with book shelves is “a Library”.  It isn’t, not for me. It’s a nice, enjoyable community project and I’m very glad that such things exist and am happy for the people who care for it and make use of it and the places where they are found.

However, as council library services are being decimated, I resent the way that local media and local bigwigs promote such “pretty new library” stories, implying that these libraries will make up for all the lost Public Libraries.  A library is more than a collection of books, isn't it?

I feel blessed because this post is about my local library, right now. Happy face.

I also know that - right now! - libraries in Liverpool and elsewhere are being hacked about, weakened, cut and closed, their school library services shut down and, I suspect, companies approached to take over “ailing services”.  For non-profit? Ha! Angry face!

Yes, people. It’s cultural vandalism gone mad! Grrr!

Put that on any new Notice Board as a warning for passing people to see!

Penny Dolan

Detail: A LIBRARY IS A LIBRARY IS A LIBRARY? by Penny Dolan