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I Made A Plan
It has been a ridiculous school term. A ridiculous school year. A year when two schools amalgamated to save their skins and their jobs. And a year of… downward adjustment, to simplify.
It was doing my head in.
Teachers are used to being asked the same thing dozens of times even though they have explained things well. I was producing an in-house show that involved kids and some volunteer staff. The staff, having offered their services to what was essentially an end-of-term entertainment, suggested (in one woman’s case) that she (the woman in question) could sing a medieval hymn about the resurrection of Jesus with a Y10 girl giving a solo dance interpretation across the floor. (She was to be sandwiched between a rapper in a hoodie and a scratch band knocking out I’m A Believer).
The show went on and folk loved it, but I notice that as my blood boils as a teacher with the stupidity of my colleagues, it can be the pupils who cop for it and not the staff. It really should be the staff.
I made a plan.
In this manic no-stopping daily routine, I saw a three-day patch of freedom before family holiday obligations (funny term, but apt) would kick in. I have had to sit through quite dreary ‘twilight’ sessions from 3.30pm to 5.45pm on subjects like e-safety (don’t let schoolkiddies be your Facebook friends DUH), recognising additional needs (well… they walk in every day, love), and advanced minibus driver skills (so butch). These twilight hours, accrued, mean you can get three or four days’ extra holiday. They replace teaching days.
So I put the plan into action.
On a local musos’ site, I asked about where I could go camping locally on an excellent site. They came back with Little Switzerland campsite in The Warren in Folkestone.
And it is wonderful. Small terraced pitches. No slot machines. No swimming pool. A caf?-bar selling good English meals… and a glorious, unspoilt vista of the white cliffs arcing northwards towards Dover, and the open sea glinting blue to the south-west beyond Folkestone. AND spectacular views of the French coast where you see Calais, Cap Gris Nez, Cap Blanc Nez, Boulogne and the ships in the Channel. The light makes the distances come and go, and the cross-channel ferries loom large enough in front of you to pick out of the water.
If any of you folk need somewhere to break a cross-channel journey, I recommend you this spot.
I have watched rabbits scampering all around the tents. I have looked at multi-coloured lizards scampering up white walls. I have seen seagulls overhead that were the size of spitfires. I have heard silence at night. No road traffic. The occasional train. The occasional ferry sound. The lap of small waves down on the beach. Dutch, French, German and a few English around.
I heard Dutch hysterics when someone farted through the canvas in the early hours. I farted back. More laughter. And on for five more random shots from around the site. This is internationalism.
I have been sunned. I feel muscles that I haven’t felt for a few years because of carrying things. I have taken cool showers during the day.
And so what? Why write this?
Well… Partly because I purposefully left behind all technology because websites and iPhones have been interrupting me so much lately on top of the day job. I needed to see if I could do without them.
And I certainly could.
Because I only can here, really. I will put something anodyne on Facebook and my music site, but what matters is:
THIS WAS ALSO A CIGAR MAN’S HOLIDAY.
The pleasure I took in loading my black rubber-y Czonka to take away was exciting. I loaded it up with twelve excellent Robustos, and I’ve smoked eight of them. I was smoking a Bolivar Royal Corona on the seating terrace overlooking the early sun-glints on the English Channel at 0500 this morning. And why not? It was superb.
I have taken my usual pleasure in hanging around in a Stetson and smoking phat ones. Cigar-posing. I won’t deny it. I am John Wayne outside the bar. I am Orson Welles overlooking the Channel. I am Demi Moore holding a hosepipe. Whatever.
Actually I WAS ME – and that’s what is important.
On the Channel terrace, I got a
“Hi. Vot is dat you are schmokink?”
“It’s a Cuban cigar. (Shows band). A Bolivar Royal Corona”.
“Ah. Vell done! Very gut!”
Ten minutes later, some people came to sit down. I worked out they were from Thanet. I was smoking the same Bolivar.
“Oi. What’s that stink?”
“It’s im and is cigar. Look”
“It bleedin stinks! Can’t we move?”
I don’t budge at all to this, and wonder if you do. Sit quite still and transmit Fuck Off.
Smoking around the site is one thing. Smoking in a tent was brand new to me. The pleasure to be taken from lighting up a good cigar under canvas and watching the smoke curl, ripple, drown you when it turns back, is a fantastic pleasure. I couldn’t get away with it with my wife and kids with me. It doesn’t matter if you smell like a cigar whore. It all blows away in the fresh air. I really love rubbing baby oil onto a pair of ample breasts after a good day by the ocean. This orgiastic smoke-bath you can take is not quite as good as the breast rubbing, but it’s a mighty fine darned gentleman’s pleasure. I lined all my 50 ring Robusto butts in line like tin soldiers under the tent flap – and the long grey ashes – and they were my close friends for the duration. I thought I might leave them as a trophy for the next people on the pitch, but decided against that and tossed them into the beautiful lavender bushes all around.
I would like to think that all of those people on the site saw a man in a cowboy hat smoking a cigar over the last couple of days, and that – late at night across the pitches – some people would have said to themselves.
“There goes that cowboy man smoking a cigar again”.
And I’m happy to say that doesn’t make me feel silly. On the contrary, it makes me feel something approaching joy.
It has been a ridiculous school term. A ridiculous school year. A year when two schools amalgamated to save their skins and their jobs. And a year of… downward adjustment, to simplify.
It was doing my head in.
Teachers are used to being asked the same thing dozens of times even though they have explained things well. I was producing an in-house show that involved kids and some volunteer staff. The staff, having offered their services to what was essentially an end-of-term entertainment, suggested (in one woman’s case) that she (the woman in question) could sing a medieval hymn about the resurrection of Jesus with a Y10 girl giving a solo dance interpretation across the floor. (She was to be sandwiched between a rapper in a hoodie and a scratch band knocking out I’m A Believer).
The show went on and folk loved it, but I notice that as my blood boils as a teacher with the stupidity of my colleagues, it can be the pupils who cop for it and not the staff. It really should be the staff.
I made a plan.
In this manic no-stopping daily routine, I saw a three-day patch of freedom before family holiday obligations (funny term, but apt) would kick in. I have had to sit through quite dreary ‘twilight’ sessions from 3.30pm to 5.45pm on subjects like e-safety (don’t let schoolkiddies be your Facebook friends DUH), recognising additional needs (well… they walk in every day, love), and advanced minibus driver skills (so butch). These twilight hours, accrued, mean you can get three or four days’ extra holiday. They replace teaching days.
So I put the plan into action.
On a local musos’ site, I asked about where I could go camping locally on an excellent site. They came back with Little Switzerland campsite in The Warren in Folkestone.
And it is wonderful. Small terraced pitches. No slot machines. No swimming pool. A caf?-bar selling good English meals… and a glorious, unspoilt vista of the white cliffs arcing northwards towards Dover, and the open sea glinting blue to the south-west beyond Folkestone. AND spectacular views of the French coast where you see Calais, Cap Gris Nez, Cap Blanc Nez, Boulogne and the ships in the Channel. The light makes the distances come and go, and the cross-channel ferries loom large enough in front of you to pick out of the water.
If any of you folk need somewhere to break a cross-channel journey, I recommend you this spot.
I have watched rabbits scampering all around the tents. I have looked at multi-coloured lizards scampering up white walls. I have seen seagulls overhead that were the size of spitfires. I have heard silence at night. No road traffic. The occasional train. The occasional ferry sound. The lap of small waves down on the beach. Dutch, French, German and a few English around.
I heard Dutch hysterics when someone farted through the canvas in the early hours. I farted back. More laughter. And on for five more random shots from around the site. This is internationalism.
I have been sunned. I feel muscles that I haven’t felt for a few years because of carrying things. I have taken cool showers during the day.
And so what? Why write this?
Well… Partly because I purposefully left behind all technology because websites and iPhones have been interrupting me so much lately on top of the day job. I needed to see if I could do without them.
And I certainly could.
Because I only can here, really. I will put something anodyne on Facebook and my music site, but what matters is:
THIS WAS ALSO A CIGAR MAN’S HOLIDAY.
The pleasure I took in loading my black rubber-y Czonka to take away was exciting. I loaded it up with twelve excellent Robustos, and I’ve smoked eight of them. I was smoking a Bolivar Royal Corona on the seating terrace overlooking the early sun-glints on the English Channel at 0500 this morning. And why not? It was superb.
I have taken my usual pleasure in hanging around in a Stetson and smoking phat ones. Cigar-posing. I won’t deny it. I am John Wayne outside the bar. I am Orson Welles overlooking the Channel. I am Demi Moore holding a hosepipe. Whatever.
Actually I WAS ME – and that’s what is important.
On the Channel terrace, I got a
“Hi. Vot is dat you are schmokink?”
“It’s a Cuban cigar. (Shows band). A Bolivar Royal Corona”.
“Ah. Vell done! Very gut!”
Ten minutes later, some people came to sit down. I worked out they were from Thanet. I was smoking the same Bolivar.
“Oi. What’s that stink?”
“It’s im and is cigar. Look”
“It bleedin stinks! Can’t we move?”
I don’t budge at all to this, and wonder if you do. Sit quite still and transmit Fuck Off.
Smoking around the site is one thing. Smoking in a tent was brand new to me. The pleasure to be taken from lighting up a good cigar under canvas and watching the smoke curl, ripple, drown you when it turns back, is a fantastic pleasure. I couldn’t get away with it with my wife and kids with me. It doesn’t matter if you smell like a cigar whore. It all blows away in the fresh air. I really love rubbing baby oil onto a pair of ample breasts after a good day by the ocean. This orgiastic smoke-bath you can take is not quite as good as the breast rubbing, but it’s a mighty fine darned gentleman’s pleasure. I lined all my 50 ring Robusto butts in line like tin soldiers under the tent flap – and the long grey ashes – and they were my close friends for the duration. I thought I might leave them as a trophy for the next people on the pitch, but decided against that and tossed them into the beautiful lavender bushes all around.
I would like to think that all of those people on the site saw a man in a cowboy hat smoking a cigar over the last couple of days, and that – late at night across the pitches – some people would have said to themselves.
“There goes that cowboy man smoking a cigar again”.
And I’m happy to say that doesn’t make me feel silly. On the contrary, it makes me feel something approaching joy.
...a long distant memory.
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