Stupid People
oh, what a busy past 10 days or so. Nottingham Nurse came down to visit his bro, but unfortunately (for him, fortunately for us) his visit coincided with our new washing machine arriving and the kids coming down sick. So he spent his visit hefting machinery around and mopping the childrens' brows. Never mind, the brothers did manage to squeeze in a trip to the Imperial War Museum and staggered out of the Holocaust section, wan, traumatised and wanting to hug their children.
Mo went to see Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with some other kids from the ADD therapy centre and also staggered out wan and traumatised.
We went to see Ivanov at Donmar West End last night with the Moaning Accountant and her husband, the Lovely Teacher. It was really good and made me realise that, all this time, when I thought Chekhov was a bit dull, actually it was that I was just too young to appreciate him. You have to be over 40 and have tasted despair, defeat, failure, the death of all your hopes etc, to really understand Chekhov. Which is odd, since he wrote Ivanov when he was a 27-year-old successful glamorous doctor/playwright.
Dinner afterwards at the Cafe de Hong Kong, which gave us a welcome nostalgic blast of HK, with all the right details in place - specials under the glasstops of the tables, luncheon meat and fried egg instant noodles on the menu etc. I had stewed pork belly and preserved mustard with rice - yummy!
Poor old Larry is not enjoying her tuition. First she complained it was boring because it was too easy. So LSS mentioned it to her teacher. So the next week, the stupid old trout gives the class an incomprehensible maths problem, doesn't explain the techniques you need to solve it, doesn't check whether anyone had any trouble with it and leaves Larry miserable and feeling useless - as if to say, How dare you suggest that my classes are too easy! I'll show you, you arrogant little twerp.
This, I need hardly say, is not the attitude one wishes to find in a tutor that one is paying GBP40 a session for. If I needed someone just to hand out impossible questions, not explain how to do them, and not check to see if they had been done properly, I could do that myself.
I asked Larry why she had not asked the teacher for help. She said she was too scared to. So this week, LSS has been posted of to tell the tutor that Larry finds her scary and could she be less terrifying.
I don't expect this approach will work, so I will end up having to pull Larry out and tutor her myself. Just heading off to Smiths to buy old 11+ papers.
It's strange how the world is full of people who, superficially, seem to be sane pleasant people - but when you scratch the surface you find that underneath they are living in a world of self-delusion and fantasy, and will go to any lengths to preserve that delusion, rather than risk discovering the unsavoury truth about themselves - rather like Ivanov. In his case, unwilling to accept the truth that he is really as cowardly, selfish and money-grabbing as everyone thinks he is, he shoots himself. In the case of someone I once knew at work, the unsavoury truth I fear was - gasp! - that he was not one of life's natural accountants. Frankly, I think there are many people who might have been able to see the bright side in that, and take themselves off to go and find a career that they were better suited to.
Mo went to see Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with some other kids from the ADD therapy centre and also staggered out wan and traumatised.
We went to see Ivanov at Donmar West End last night with the Moaning Accountant and her husband, the Lovely Teacher. It was really good and made me realise that, all this time, when I thought Chekhov was a bit dull, actually it was that I was just too young to appreciate him. You have to be over 40 and have tasted despair, defeat, failure, the death of all your hopes etc, to really understand Chekhov. Which is odd, since he wrote Ivanov when he was a 27-year-old successful glamorous doctor/playwright.
Dinner afterwards at the Cafe de Hong Kong, which gave us a welcome nostalgic blast of HK, with all the right details in place - specials under the glasstops of the tables, luncheon meat and fried egg instant noodles on the menu etc. I had stewed pork belly and preserved mustard with rice - yummy!
Poor old Larry is not enjoying her tuition. First she complained it was boring because it was too easy. So LSS mentioned it to her teacher. So the next week, the stupid old trout gives the class an incomprehensible maths problem, doesn't explain the techniques you need to solve it, doesn't check whether anyone had any trouble with it and leaves Larry miserable and feeling useless - as if to say, How dare you suggest that my classes are too easy! I'll show you, you arrogant little twerp.
This, I need hardly say, is not the attitude one wishes to find in a tutor that one is paying GBP40 a session for. If I needed someone just to hand out impossible questions, not explain how to do them, and not check to see if they had been done properly, I could do that myself.
I asked Larry why she had not asked the teacher for help. She said she was too scared to. So this week, LSS has been posted of to tell the tutor that Larry finds her scary and could she be less terrifying.
I don't expect this approach will work, so I will end up having to pull Larry out and tutor her myself. Just heading off to Smiths to buy old 11+ papers.
It's strange how the world is full of people who, superficially, seem to be sane pleasant people - but when you scratch the surface you find that underneath they are living in a world of self-delusion and fantasy, and will go to any lengths to preserve that delusion, rather than risk discovering the unsavoury truth about themselves - rather like Ivanov. In his case, unwilling to accept the truth that he is really as cowardly, selfish and money-grabbing as everyone thinks he is, he shoots himself. In the case of someone I once knew at work, the unsavoury truth I fear was - gasp! - that he was not one of life's natural accountants. Frankly, I think there are many people who might have been able to see the bright side in that, and take themselves off to go and find a career that they were better suited to.
posted by FBT at 11:21 am
4 Comments:
What about those of us who can see own own shortcomings all too clearly? Well, at least some of them.
See them and admit them in public are perhaps two different things. I find I'll confess any embarassing detail, now that I'm all growed up. What do I care?
Under what circumstances does the Moaning Accountant moan, may I ask?
Not when watching porn films, oddly enough.
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