Archive for the ‘nostalgia’ Category

Posted on January 13, 2008 - by MG

In Praise Of Maths and Mr Graham Sadler

Our teenage daughter made me very happy today by telling me that she’s choosing maths as one of her four ‘A’ Levels next year.

Maths is a subject that she’s always found a challenge – and I like to see her push herself, to do a subject that she really doesn’t find easy. This year I’ve had occasion to field phone calls from several annoyed teachers complaining about her not handing in coursework on time – and the maths teacher was one of them. But in the past few weeks her attitude has shifted somewhat. I hope it lasts!

Something similar happened to me – maths was always a subject I grappled with, and yet bizarrely I ended up taking it as an ‘A’ level and even having to sit the Oxford University entrance exam’s ‘maths for scientists’ paper. Crumbs that was scary.

In fact, it’s fair to say that maths was my weakest subject at ‘O’ level. I wasn’t an all As student, far from it. I even failed my maths mock ‘O’ level, which ignited a panic – you needed maths ‘O’ level for most science university degree courses in those days. So my mother found me a tutor – Graham.

Graham was the partner of one of my mother’s best friends. He was vague and eccentric, but a brilliant mathematician and a teacher at Xaverian 6th Form College. An unreformed hippy, Graham was fair-haired and raggedy-bearded with sad blue eyes and a pensive countenance He hardly ever smiled, but told many jokes.

Graham’s Victorian terraced house in Chorlton was a shrine to his interest in music and his travels in India. The walls were draped with rugs, pictures of Hindu deities, old stringed instruments including a sitar. The front room was so crammed with antiques and knick-knacks that you could barely shuffle in between the upright piano and the setees, Ottoman and mahogany coffee table. The air was infused with the smell of marijuana mingled into sandalwood and cloves.

While Graham and I talked quietly about maths in the back room, my mother and her friend would drink tea and talk about German literature in the front room. Graham would look over what I’d done in class that day, explain anything I didn’t understand and sketch out problems on scraps of paper. He’d chain-smoke hand-rolled cigarettes throughout and I’d try not to show that it bothered me. When we’d finished Graham and I would join the others in the front room and we’d eat poppy seed cake or some other home-baked German cake. Graham would play – very badly, a Chopin Nocturne, almost oblivious to our conversation.

It was Graham who persuaded me to do ‘A’ level maths. When I told him I was too thick he just shook his head. “You’re good at maths. You’d be even better if you just believed it.” It was Graham who persuaded me to move away from my beloved high school in the middle of the lower 6th, to Xaverian – a place which would provide the serious hard work and challenge I’d need to have a shot at Oxford.

It was Graham who nodded calmly when I told him in a breathless panic that I…I who couldn’t string two numbers together…would have to take the maths entrance exam paper for Oxford. I was almost choking with fear.

Graham and his then-partner had a child together – Sebastian – named for J.S. Bach. Since he refused to take money for the tutorials, I used to babysit Sebastian a little, until I left for Uni. But nothing like as much as I owed them.

Many years later I asked after Graham of my mother’s friend. Apparently he’d died alone of some gastric complaint and been discovered several days later. A pretty sad way to go and I really felt for his son. Graham wasn’t a good friend and was definitely a difficult man, but he stuck by me that year for no personal gain, just because he believed in me. That’s a REAL teacher.

Anyway…thanks to Graham I got B’s at both ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level maths. And I still hold as one of my personal triumphs that my mark for the maths entrance exam wasn’t my lowest – I got an alpha minus. My tutor at Oxford maybe thought I was some sort of maths genius (biochem candidates notoriously did appallingly on that paper…) - could be that’s what tipped him into awarding me the entrance scholarship.

But honestly it was a stroke of luck; a good paper and the calming influence of Graham Sadler, may he rest in peace.

Posted on December 31, 2007 - by MG

Fin de ano in Summertown Costa

Fin de ano in Summertown CostaOriginally uploaded by mgharris

It’s usually more crowded than this…

If we’d got our act together and organised a babysitter we could be looking forward to a sizzling New Year’s Eve party tonight, at Vauxhall’s Club Colosseum, chez Salsa Republic.

But…pfahhh…London. Who’s got the energy?

So it’s a quiet night in with our youngest whilst Teenage Daughter stays up all night with her mates.

We’re going to close Costa…they’re trying to grab the chairs from under us.

Happy New Year, y’all. Hope I get to meet some of you in 2008.

MG
XXX
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on December 18, 2007 - by MG

Physics Department Carol Service and Tomas Luis de Victoria

For me, Christmas always begins with the Physics Department Carol Service in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Organised by atmospheric physicist, my old pal Jim Williamson and the former Secretary of the Bodleian Library, Charles Mould (who played organ at my wedding!), the impromptu choir consists of Jim’s friends from the Christ Church Cathedral Voluntary Choir, people from St Cross College like Becs and I (and indeed, Jim and Charles), and some physicists. We get together at 2.45pm for a very tightly managed rehearsal and the carol concert starts at 4.30pm. Afterwards choir and audience troop upstairs to the wood-panelled upper room and have wine and warm mince pies. It’s very seasonal!

The service is traditional style Lessons and Carols, like at King’s College Cambridge (but we have only two lessons). The Vicar of St. Mary’s takes the service, which always reminds me of my great affection for the Church of England. (I went to very High Church Anglican schools until I was 16.)

Thankfully I’ve been singing in this choir for about 19 years now…since I was a graduate student at St Cross. Only the fact that I’ve sung most of the difficult music before saves me, because as a sight-reader I am terrible!

This year though, Jim managed to pick a bunch of pieces I hadn’t sung before, or not for many years. Including the motet Hodie Christus Natus Est by Poulenc. I think we did it once before and I barely scraped through…

We also sang the motet O Magnum Mysterium by the sublime Spanish renaissance composer, Tomas Luis de Victoria. Victoria is one of my very, very favourites, in my opinion he’s better than Byrd, Tallis and even Palestrina. In fact, when I die, I want Victoria’s Requiem sung, with the deliciously gloomy Taedet, please, thank you very much, and lots of tears from my grieving relatives, okay?

Here’s the Taedet from Victoria’s Requiem sung by the brilliant Gabrieli Consort, including my friend the Chilean tenor Rodrigo del Pozo…who appears as a character in Joshua Book 2! (bringing some important and very surprising news to Josh and his mother…)

And here are the wonderful, sorrowful words in which someone asks of God – “What the heck do you know about our suffering? And who are you to judge?” – a thought that even the most devout believer will have at times of difficulty. I admire the lyric for its brutal honesty.

(translated from the Latin)
My soul is weary of my life;
I will leave my complaint upon myself;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say unto God, Do not condemn me;
show me wherefore thou contendest with me.
Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress,
that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands,
and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?
Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth?
Are thy days as the days of man?
are thy years as man’s days,
that thou inquirest after mine iniquity,
and searchest after my sin?
Thou knowest that I am not wicked;
and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

And for another treat, here’s the O Magnum Mysterium performed by a Spanish choir.

Posted on December 3, 2007 - by MG

From Mexican masked wrestlers to Batman

On the left: my sister (in the pretty dress) and I (in the Batman costume) dine out with clowns at Mexico City’s Mauna Loa restaurant. I’m probably 7 years old here.

On the right: our six-year old daughter as Mistico, the masked wrestler, taken a few weeks ago by new friend via Flickr, Alejandro.

Our six-year old daughter has a thing for Mexican masked wrestlers. I’ve seen it all before and I know where it leads.

I became fascinated with Batman via a fascination with the masked wrestlers who were and are still such big heroes in Mexico. When I was little it was Blue Demon and El Santo. These days there are others, like Mistico.

Truthfully I had no idea that the costumes I saw being sold all over gaudy stalls in Mexico’s Chapultepec park were anything to do with wrestling. I thought they were caped crusaders. And that was cool. So when our little daughter begged us to buy her a Mistico mask in Playa del Carmen recently, I knew just how she felt.

Somehow that fascination turned into a full-on obsession with Batman (that I’m not really over to be honest…). My Uncle Johny, a childhood pal of my father’s was always crazy for comic books and ‘pulps’. So naturally his boy, my cousin Juan Fernando, had the best batman suit money could buy. How I envied Juan Fernando that suit. I coveted it something rotten, so when Juan grew out of it, my uncle and aunt kindly gave it to me. The true owner! Only I truly loved that suit.

I wore it everywhere and all the time. I wore it to the university where my grandfather worked and the students would ask ‘Hey Batman, where’s Robin?’ until I actually got fed up.

There wasn’t always a Robin, yanno…

I wore it to restaurants. There was no point arguing with me on this. Thank goodness there were no family weddings or christenings that summer or I’d have worn it to them too.

My Uncle Johny had a library that was to me, basically like a temple. It was full of book shelves and cases of precious sci-fi books, adventure stories, comic books and collectibles. He used to lend me his Ellery Queen books and his Batman paperback versions of the comics. It was in Johny’s library that I first read the Batman origin story, the most impressive one, I believe, for any caped crusader. A rich, privileged boy sees his beloved parents murdered in an alleyway by some thug, all for a string of pearls. And that’s it: over. His life of privilege and all his riches can never replace what he loses right there – his childhood. Bruce Wayne spends his whole life trying to put back something that can never be fixed. And he’s never content – how can he be? No bereavement counselling for Bruce – just a premonition in a bat cave and a life of violence and vendetta against the breed of scumbag who destroyed his life.

Gosh it’s cool.

Posted on November 17, 2007 - by MG

Back to the Eggli

Here’s a photo of the Eggli mountain in Saanen, Switzerland. It’s taken from the hospital where I broke my leg. In fact I had this great view of the slope from my window while I was there, and could watch clouds of billowing snow shot from cannons in the evening and early morning, saw the snow-cats preparing the piste for skiers, and then the carefree skiers sashaying down the slope.

It really made me want to ski again. I promised myself I would too, until I understood the nature and tedium of the physiotherapy that would have been required to restore my hamstring even to it’s formerly feeble state.

And then I thought…meh. Skiing – it’s not that great.

I’m sitting here in my brother and sister-in-law’s gorgeous chalet in a tiny mountain village near Gstaad, watching their twin babies while their parents finally grab a chance to ski. The babies are scrumptious! One pink and one blue. The village sits at the end of the valley, smack up against the Spitzhorn mountain, of which I have a terrific view, also of the nearby glacier (where there’s a roller coaster at 3000m!!!).

And it’s around -10 degrees celsius outside – not even December yet!

Maybe my brother will shut up about global warming for a bit now.

Well I can’t sit here blogging all day. I’ve bottles to prepare and nappies to change!

And a manuscript for ‘Jaguar’s Realm’ that needs looking at…