A Gentleman's Game

It has been a long time since I last posted. I have found work. I work in a kitchen, a male-dominated environment in which the work is hard but I don't mind too much. It is interesting and busy enough that I don't count the minutes. This is particularly lucky as sometimes I work an 11 or 12 hour shift or 720 minutes. I wash the pots. In this respect I am the lowest of the low. The chefs tell me what to do, the waiters and waitresses tell me what to do. I am at the bottom of a very long ladder. But unlike working in an office I do have a certain amount of autonomy. In at least my space; the realm of the sink I am queen, and I can get a little grumpy and officious when people mess up my space or waste my time. I find it interesting that the component parts of the kitchen all need to be in place for it to run smoothly. The little bitty jobs that waste time and are unproductive but still need to be done fall to me frustratingly, but sometimes everything runs smoothly.

I do not like the pay. THE PAY IS BAD. It is disgusting, it has always been disgusting that the minimum wage is graded down based on age. Anyone who is old enough to be working full-time. Who is trying to support themselves beyond the aid of their parents deserves minimum wage. Whether they are 16 or 18 or 21. I am fortunate that I am 21. On October 1st the legislation will change I will earn the full minimum wage. 5.90 an hour. Hopefully by then my tax code problems will be resolved. As it is I am working for £4 an hour after tax. I am desperately poor. But it hasn't kicked in yet. Provided I can sustain myself for this month I should be able to support myself.

James seems to be unable to motivate himself to find work. Apart from getting press-ganged into an interview for telesales the progress is very very slow. He is afraid. He is so afraid that even if we designate a day to go into town and find work we will not arrive before around 2 and often it is much later, leaving little time to actually talk to anyone. He doesn't search online, he doesn't try and he is unafraid of abject poverty. I don't really know what to do.

The Chalet School

I've taken a break from my satanic reading list because it is a wee bit heavy at times to read a couple of chalet school books. The chalet school series was the creation of Elinor Brent-Dyer published (at least according to wikipedia) between 1920 and 1970. In that time she wrote over 60 of the damn things. They are annoying books and that's probably why I can't stop reading the dreadful copy I'm reading at the moment. The main reason I am fascinated by these books is there potent anti-feminist message and staunch continuation of not simply 50s ideals but victorian ones.

Excitements at the Chalet School was published in 1957. It tells the story of an entire class of delinquents who upon the proposal of a festival (the school is turning 21. Apparently this is important) decide to reform themselves so that their ideas get taken seriously. It is the typical story of bad girls reformed. But unlike in Blyton's The Naughtiest Girl in the School, the bad acts are swiftly described and dealt with. Blyton on the other hand delighted in the details. I can still vividly remember reading over and over about how the protagonist elizabeth would put cockroaches in her governesses bed and delighted in spilling ink all over the carpet. She likewise comes to be reformed but maintains her outspoken and witty ways. She never becomes perfect.

In Excitements however the naughtiness of the form inter v is squashed quickly. Disliked characters are bitter and shallow cutouts, their concerns are always sidelines by the homogeny. As such I am drawn to liking the characters who are basically bullied by a consistent system of exiling the non-conformists. For example, one girl called Yseult suggests they do a play and chooses the one she would like to perform: "The Land of Heart's Desire, " Yseult said promptly. "What?" Miss Ferrars exclaimed. "But my dear girl, you couldn't touch it! It's far too difficult for schoolgirls!" The teacher enfantilises and humiliates a 16 year old. The material she suggests is tainted by the sexualised promises of love. It is desire and passion. The naughtiest form in the school is made of pupils ranging from the age of 14 to 17 it is an inbetween form. The girls who are too stupid to make it into Va or Vb senior forms are placed there with exceptional middle schoolers. They are the displaced and difficult pupils treated like children because their classmates are still "girls." 70 years earlier Yseult might have already been married and enacting her hearts desires. She is cast as the bitter outcast whilst the mary-sue characters of the novels are very much reinforcing the dominant values of the schools.

This distinction is outlined by the ways in which the two different groups suggest ideas for the all-important festival. Yseult would like a new uniform which is more "artful" whilst The Maynard Triplets (children of Brent-Dyer's original characters) propose that two new chapels be built. One proposes non-conformity, the others reinforcement of the christian values so perpetuated by the school. The teachers laugh at Yseult's idea they ignore the enormous expense of the triplets' idea and instigate it. Conforming gets you taken seriously.

Shrews are tamed at the chalet school but as yet (I've not finished this novel just yet) Yseult has undergone no change and there is no hint that she will. She is not out-right naughty, she is not punished, she is just persistently mocked and ridiculed by teachers, prefects and classmates alike. The chalet school is dated and this rant about a series of books which is rarely read anymore is unimportant. But it is an interesting expression of the tensions of a 1950s Britain which tried to suppress the heart's desire only to find themselves with an angry new creation. The teenager. I am contemplating a rewrite of the chalet school books; a trashy piece of hardcore pornography in which the sexualised humiliations of the young women are made a little less subtle for the gratification of a wide and varied audience of exploitative adults.

Shop work

The end of unemployment could be upon me! I have one small job and that means that I can start the long and winding process to being self-sufficient. I'm working in a little newsagents on Badger Hill. It's a lovely little local shop and I work alone which is a very interesting experience. It's a little dull and can be quite quiet, but work is work and a colleague told me there may be the potential for more hours.

What will I complain about now?

Possibly the loneliness and isolation of living on Heslington East Campus. No shop, no cash machine, no housemates. No nothing. If it weren't for James I would have gone mad 2 days ago. Yay for James.

sainsbury's ne me voudrais pas?

POUR QUOI!!!!!!!

"Human Resources"

The phrase human resources sounds like people who treat other people as renewable energy source. *shudder*

Humans are expendable and easily replaceable after all.

Just a quick note today to say thanks to the lovely boys who played in my D&D campaign today. Not only was behaviour very good with barely any rules lawyering/ cheating, they really put some thought into the second encounter.

I never would have dreamed that Grimm's Mr. Fox would find himself impaled and crushed in his own iron maiden. Bravo.

Grandma's footsteps.

I'll begin by reprinting a sonnet I wrote after my 21st birthday party:

21

Good age. Good enough for a sonnet?
Of course nothing too glib or too fancy.
Just a short collection of warm snapshots.
A dark bar, some close friends, diesel drink.
Folky music, and home before midnight
To play poker not even for pennies.
A quick sleep then presents; casserole dish
Water colours, truffles, and an apron.
Blowing bubbles in the morning sunlight.
Saying goodbye again. I always have to.
Then baking and making - cakes and salad,
Far too many desserts for one party.
Grandma’s footsteps and murder in the dark.
No-one died - we just laughed and played old games.

Games in my little little sonnet are important. Because the games which feature are a method of expressing the passage of time. Childhood: playing playground games, Adulthood; turning twenty-one. And of course the inevitable death; murder in the dark. Grandma's footsteps the old woman stalked by successors. The title, of this poem 21, as pointed out by Emily, (she gave me a home made card with a queen and an ace glued to it and wrote pontoon on the inside) is a game as well as a birthday. Games are not as simple as they seem.

I forced my friends to play footsteps again this afternoon, we stood in the courtyard and stalked each other. Some people played others sat out, but everyone engaged. Those who weren't playing were watching, commenting, laughing. Games are infectious and terribly addictive.

Take for example Magic: The gathering a wickedly addictive game which is rightly known in York at least as cardboard crack. But the returns on magic can make it so worth the costs. Yes it is expensive and yes fate is a strumpet, but to win is to reap rewards big time. Likewise computer games offer this input. You pay the costs of money and time: (time in particular) and you reap the rewards of success and constant feedback. This can be dangerous. Games can be selfish as well as social.

I have little direction to this post. No real argument, just a desire to remind people that adulthood is in no way separate from games. No other activities offer the scope and stage for effective learning and the continuation of development. No other activity can potentially better simulate or analyse our cultures; by which I mean that games and these kinds of media could very easily over take literature; very easily be the next step to exploring cultures. Because games are not passive, they are involving.

Play on.