The Power of Film or How My Five Year Imaginary Relationship was Sullied and my Brain Melted.

When I tell people that I fancied my English teacher, which, on the whole, I often do, I’m always concerned that what they are picturing is something horribly saccarine and cliched, that they are, in effect, imagining my life as some sort of black and white 40s film entitled “Growing Pains” in which I am played by Shirley Temple and he is played by Jimmy Stewart. Shirley thinks she is attracted to Jimmy because she isn’t really an adult yet and is mistaking her love of English and her respect for Jimmy’s position of authority for an emotion, fortunately Jimmy is kind and understanding and guides Shirley through this period of her life without once giving her a quick feel until, a few months down the line, she meets a nice non-threatening boy of her own age and all the issues are resolved and everyone feels developed (even though their characters are deeply underdeveloped).

If people are imagining this I can’t say I blame them, it’s the sort of thing that the words “I fancied my English teacher” naturally conjure up, but it wasn’t like that at all.

If there were to be a film of it I would probably be played by an unknown Lithuanian prostitute turned actress and he would be played by Owen Wilson in prosthetics. It would just be that kind of film. “Die Schmerz de Wachstums” would be painfully long at a full 3 hours and almost nothing would happen for the first two. Rather than being full of mutual respect and Shirley Temple songs it would instead be full of a lot of unresolved mutual sexuality. David Lynch would direct the last five minutes of it which would be entirely comprised of horrible flashing images set to the music of Wagner. It would end abruptly.

Incase no one ever makes it though, and we all pray they don’t, I’ll give you a quick relatively unemotional run-down here.

When I had first met him, aged 13, there had probably been something very innocent and pure about the whole business. All at once I had looked across a crowded room/assembly hall, etc. It had never been what my mother termed "respect and admiration" (this was her cover-all for any emotion experienced by people under 30,) but was from the start, on my side, a fully committed adult relationship, I really put myself into it. 

For the first few years I figured that when he came to his senses and reciprocated we would probably have to move to a moor, away from the society that would judge us so, and closer to rivers and streams and other things that were pure, like our love.

For the few years after that (or if you prefer, the second hour of the film) I figured that moving was not strictly necessary and that we could probably get by with just fooling about in a low key way between lessons and after school at his flat. There didn't have to be anything particularly star-crossed about our relationship, just a faint mutual affection and a great deal of soaring well-orchestrated sex. We both liked Blackadder and The Clash which was enough to see us home in terms of common ground. I wasn't a stunner but I didn't still look like a child and I wasn't actively hideous. We were well suited enough for a brief affair. Surely?

By the time I reached sixth form, having given of myself in our imaginary relationship for five years, I had effectively run out of patience and wanted him to just give me a hard screw so we could all move on with our lives. I mean really! How long did I have to wait? I was actually in his class now which I had never been before, the oppertunities were plentiful and he had clocked up five years of sex debt. It didn’t even have to be good, it would probably be quite angry sex, but just something to speedily lay to rest the now time honoured link between him and romance. Every so often I would still think of him in his moor-bound capacity, or of us wandering back to his flat, but mostly I was impatient and unreasonably convinced of my own entitlement to him, rather than lovelorn.

Towards the end of the first year in sixth form, for no reason, he showed us a film about nuclear war. Ah, Mr Lynch, how good of you to step in. He took real glee in how distressing it was and it was distressing, the certificate was only a 15 but I really don't trust anyone, 15 or otherwise, that could weather that film, uneffected by it. It had been banned, and while I'm not pro-censorship it deserved to be and the British Film Board aught to have burned all copies of it while they were at it. The subject wasn’t something I had ever really thought about before. I realise looking back that this was because my brain was storing up a lifetimes worth of occasionally thinking about nuclear war in order to compress it into a period of about six months during which time I would be lucky if an hour went by without me graphically and horrifically envisaging it. It made my brain melt.

I wont bore you with the details of the months directly following my viewing of the film during which time my melted brain settled in a trembling pool at the bottom of my skull, completely incapacitating me. Someone told me about a month ago that when I say “melting brain” what I actually mean is “adjustment disorder” Aside from the fact that this sounds like something that people who have had their gender realligned go through a month into the change, I felt that it might be a bit hasty as a diagnosis. I am fairly convinced that that type of thing usually comes on after divorce or redundancy or trauma, and I think that “after watching a nasty film” would probably be conspicuously absent from a list of precipitating factors. But whether pathological or otherwise my point is that the long term effects of my Melting Disorder were that teacher and Film sort of became inextricably bound up in my jellied mind.

This did mean that the link between him and romance was laid to rest, though in a much less sexy and much more vomity way than I would have liked. I didn’t not fancy him but I now couldn’t even imagine him but he was surronded by firey death and laughing gleefully at it, the moor on which our mansion of gothic romance had stood was now an irradiated tundra and whenever we went to walk close by the rivers or streams I found that there were dead radiation burnt children floating in them. If we walked back to his flat after school the people of Rochester highstreet were invariably vomiting up their stomach linings, crawling, weeping, eating their own afterbirths and reaching out quivering hands to us for help. It’s hard to stay aroused when that kind of thing is going on.

He left the school shortly afterwards in a blaze of radiation poisoning and horror. I wasn’t glad to see the back of him because he still owed me some sex but on the other hand it would be nice not to have a daily reminder of the fact that humanity would soon end in a poisonous-fireball of it’s own creation. I think his last words to us as a class were “now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds,” either that or “Fuck The Leather-Clad Head!”.

I forget.

But anyway that is “Die Schmerz de Wachstum” from it’s innocent beginning, through the 2 hours/five years that doesn’t have a plot, to the traumatically Lynchian ending. I basically enjoyed the ride apart from that last bit, and besides my brain has re-solidified now and I only occasionally almost vomit in fear when I mistake fire alarms for the five minute warning. I’d be happy if I saw him again to either write off or receive that sex debt he so clearly owes me. His choice.

If some poor filmicly progressive soul does make “Die Schmerz de Wachstum” I hope they do a good amount of audience testing to ensure that it won't melt anyones brain and that if the BBC shows it once and bans it that the people in charge of the DVD realise give it a higher certificate than 15. They can stick this post on the DVD extras, too. Just a thought.

Sticks and Seduction (Nailing the pretentious title!)

A meeting was called by the Women in Charge mid-way through my first year in sixth form. It was the kind of large important meeting that we were all told about a week in advance and that meant that we all, the entire lower sixth, had to gather in our library-adjacent common room to be addressed as a collective.

The contents then, logically, concerned us all.

The Women in Charge had called in back-up for the occasion and sat against the wall along with her were Mrs Grey (The Gray-ster) and Miss Kermit (Kermy!) Kind and witty, respectively, and not above idle gossip, collectively, The Grey-ster and Kermy were lower-sixth favourites. They had a difficult line to walk however between their natural goodness and the terrible demands of duty. They were for the most part good to us though, like friendly prison guards who gave you extra cigarettes when the warden wasn't looking, or rather like friendly prison guards who let you come in and weep all over their office and abuse the warden terribly, when the warden wasn't looking.

Now the warden was looking they sat ashen faced and uncomfortable, staring at their shoes.

Once we were all settled the Women in Charge waddled her way up to what she must have imagined was her soap-box and tilting forward on the balls of her small feet, trilled at us "Laddddiiies."

"Sorry to keep you after school (general inward grumbling) but there are two things that have come to my attention and that really need to be dealt with straight away. The first is that someone has bought a stick in to the common room, (the eyes of about 10 good friends shifted towards me, and mine shifted towards Sticky, my proposed sixth form mascot who rested forlornly in a corner.) It needs to be removed immediately. The second is that there is still some very inappropriate dressing going on. We have been over this before ladies, sixth formers need to look respectable! I don't want to see any more clevage (eyes probably shifted in various directions here,) any more corsetry (100 pairs of eyes, back to me) or any more, any more...abundancies of lace, (ah, that was everyone, everyone's eyes, even The Grey-ster and Kermy had allowed themselves a quick glance up from their shoes towards my corseted-in-tits-out-lace-swaddled self.) Correct it ladies! ("lady" chimed in everyone mentally "correct it, lady.")" The Women in Charge stepped heavily down from her imaginary soap-box and exited with as much gravitas as she could command.

It would have been annoying if it wasn't so hilarious, The Women in Charge could have just sidled up to me as I walked to a class and said "Anna, stick - out! Stop dressing like a Victorian whore! Comprende?" but a meeting for the entire year? With extra staff members present to really hammer it home? I resolved to purposefully drag my feet on both issues until they could learn to be less childish about the whole thing.

I wasn't given much oppertunity to drag though. When I came in the next day I found that Sticky was not resting in his usual corner.

Sticky. The God of our legend.

Having decided that sixth form was really grim and dreadful, that we had prefered GCSEs, and that all changes being made managerially and acedemically were for the worst, some friends and I had decided to buoy up spirits by appionting a stick we had found in the grounds as Sixth-form mascot. We felt it correctly reflected our disillusionment with the current state of affairs...

"Who is your mascot? Is it a horse like on the school badge?"

"God no, it's that old stick, over there."

The brilliant thing was that, in spite of his unassuming appearance, Sticky was working, a girl with access to the art block supplies had offered to paint him pink and blue and varnish him. We were going to carry him to important events, hold him aloft like a beacon of excellence as the head girls were announced, dress him up appropriately for Christmas. He had brought us all closer and, frankly, rekindled our collective hopes and dreams.

And now he was gone. His favourite corner, empty.

I burst in to The Grey-ster and Kermy's office.

"What have you done, you monsters! Where is Sticky?"

"What? Who?"

"Sticky - The Sixth Form Stick! Don't act like you don't know, we had a bloody meeting about him yesterday!"

"The old stick in the corner of the common room? The Women in Charge made us throw it out back outside where it belonged."

"He! He - and he belonged in our hearts!" - I would have said but didn't.

I turned and exited disappointed with both of them.

When an extensive search of the area below the windows of the common room and a more general sweep of the grounds yielded no Sticky, it became apparent that their "outside where he belongs" business was a crock. It was like telling a child that their cat had gone to live on a farm.

For a long time I expected The Women in Charge to send me woodchippings through the post. Bargaining with me until I was dressed appropriately and Sticky was returned to his rightful place, though maimed and a shadow of his former self.

It never happened. Much more sinisterly he was just quietly and mysteriously disposed of. A-level history had taught us that you don't ask questions when this sort of thing happens, so we didn't ask them then. We made our peace with never seeing him again and our collective heightened spirits disappeared along with him. 

A few months latter having, presumably, matured slightly, The Woman in Charge tried a different tack in regard to my dress-sense. Appearing at my side one lunch time as I sat innocuously reading Pope in the library.

"Ah Anna."

I put Pope down.

"Now let me just say at the outset, I do...like what you are wearing."

"We both know you don't" I should have said but didn't.

What I was and wasn't wearing

"but I mean really, Anna, come on!...it's just too avant garde. It's not necessary! No dresses from now on, stick to jumpers and t-shirts. Please! There will be complaints! I can't have things like dress offending anyone."

She nodded smartly and bustled away.

I nodded back and picked up Pope again. This was ridiculous. Avant garde? As in ahead of it's time? Challenging? I could understand the application of the term if I had come in skin-tight disco-ball lycra. I could understand if I had come wearing a burka that completely obscured my face but that had a panel cut out of it that meant that it also entirely exposed my bare breasts, that she could reasonably worry that my manner of dress might offend.

But I was wearing an empire-line cream dress, and a tailored black jacket. I'd even gradually eased the corsets out of my clothing cycle. Nothing was out, nothing was pinched in, nothing was overtly offensive. I was sat reading Pope in an empty library. I wasn't avante garde. If anything I was extremely retro.

And besides even if I had been a little daring in my sartorial choices it wasn't like everyone wasn't fully aware of why. Unlike the numerous other people in the year who were lounging around with skirts cut up to here and tops cut down to there for no good reason, I was trying to quickly and effectively seduce my english teacher. Everyone knew it. It had become part of the hive mind of Fort Pitt. All members of staff knew it. The years sevens in my form knew it before they had met him or me, as if it was a piece of information passed to them in their introductory assemblies

"Here at Fort Pitt we try to uphold excellence at all times. You will eventually grow used to our mixture of dictatorialism and incompetence. You can eat lunch in your form rooms if your form tutor allows you. There is an avante garde looking girl in sixth form trying to bed a member of staff." and so on.

The refusal of the Women in Charge to publicly recognise my well know agenda as well as the terrible fate of Sticky as ordained by her, meant that I churlishly retained my mode of dress until the day I left, as much for the sake of defiance as for seduction. My spirit outlasted hers. After nine more months of corsetry, ruffles and cream lace she stopped mentioning it, stopped contriving horrible little tete-a-tetes in libraries, stopped calling meetings to address it in front of the student body. 

The last time she ever mentioned it was about a year later when she called me into her office to brief me for my Cambridge interview, just a subtle little dig to let me know that she hadn't laid the issue to rest yet...

"And for goodness sake Anna, if you want to be taken seriously, just watch what you wear."

"...What the fuck have you done with my stick?"

I should have said but didn't.

Languages or Things I'm Really Bad At Part 1.

Five years ago, when I was in my final year of GCSEs, my French teacher dedicated one of her lunchtimes to a half an hour phone conversation with my mother. I don't know if she made some small talk or whether she just dove straight in there, but the purpose of the call was to establish why I was so bad at french. Take a while to consider that. She phoned home to ask why, it couldn't just be that I was bad, I was so bad that there had to be a deeper explanation!

"Anna is perfectly capable in other areas and I was just wondering if there was anything going on at home that might be affecting her ability in French."

"Anything going on at home?"

What my mother should have said, tearfully, was "At home? At..? Oh god I was afraid of this. You see I've recently taken a French lover. It's tearing the family apart but I just can't leave him. Anna's french was perfect before Pierre came into our lives but now she can't bare to use the language that she hears us speak when we make love."

What she actually said was

"What? No. I can't explain it, sorry, she's not good at French. There it is. Bye Mrs C-"

This annoyed my teacher who I think had genuinely expected a reason, maybe not Pierre, but something to explain my complete inability to pronounce "soeur" ("sir" it transpires, not "sewer" or "sue-eeeur-r-r-" In my defense look at those vowels! Freakish.)

There were in fact a few reasons; the one that stands out for me is that my french teacher was one of the most singularly terrifying and intimidating people I have ever met. There was nothing necessarily formidable about her physically (she wasn't some sort of broad-shouldered, leather-clad, Ratched-figure like The Head,) but she was tall and severe and just generally gave the impression of being wound up tighter than a clockspring. Unspeakably intense, she would, before an oral, adopt what I can only assume was her "interested listening position" it involved grasping her jaw-line tightly with one hand, bending her trunk forward so her face ended up about 30 cm from your own, and glaring.

Some people were fine with this but no matter how many times I saw her adopt it I never started an oral without thinking "Ho-lee-Christ, woman!"


Another and perhaps more genuine reason was the one flagged up by my mother; I have no natural skill with French just as I have no natural skill with any language. As far as I'm concerned it was only sheer bloody-mindedness on the part of my parents that meant that I managed recognisable English. I learnt to speak pretty fast, considering my deafness (I was a complete dud of a child,) but in my haste I failed to appreciate the finer points of phonetics. After four years of being "Anna Thavory" a women came once a week to bridge the terrible gap between my loose bundle of speech impediments and actual spoken language, teaching me, with the aid of balloons, how to pronounce Hs, Vs, Ss, Ths, and Bs. A lot of the process involved holding my head against the balloons, talking into them, and feeling the syllables sort of knock playfully against my five year old face. This was fun but looking back I'm really not sure it was an approved technique.
It worked though and "I'm not an animal I'm a fu-thum-fuman b-being." became "I'm not an animal I'm a human being." Obviously that was just a sentence for the sake of comic example. I wasn't given that to say, as few speech therapists like to draw vocal comparisions between their pupils and the Elephant Man
(how ever apt they may be.) It's just not good practice.


I want to say that perhaps if Mrs C- had been aware of my lack of talent for accurate sound making she would have accepted it as the reason she was seeking. It explains "sewer" at least. But it wasn't just pronunciation with French, it was everything. Sense, word order, number of words required for a sentence, the whole haphazard and contrary business of gendering things (vagina is masculine. Why?) Words on their own were fine, I couldn't say them but I liked them, pamplemoose for example, what's not to love about that! Ecchymose, hilarious! But no matter how much I like the constituent parts of the sentence it would be beyond me to say "my grapefruit is bruised." I don't know what sex grapefruit is for a start, and for all I know fruit bruising has a different term. I just can't do it. There is no explanation.


About once every two years I'll forget all this and make tentative steps towards learning a new language before remembering about a month in when things get beyond words and phrases and into construction "Oh right. I'm really bad at this. It's all coming back to me now."
This summer I tried Hebrew and Arabic, I liked the latter because "My name is Anna" translates as "Ana ismee Anna." as in "Anna! It's me! Anna!" and I liked the former because to my mind it is what Bob Dylan would speak to me in the passionate throws of our love making ("Ken! Erev! Ken! Oh, Yekiri, ken,... ahuv sheli." and so on.) Both of them feel more natural in the mouth than French ever did, both make use of the sort of guttural chokes and lispings that I was obviously trying to go with when I first learnt English. I want to say I'll be good at them but deep down I know I won't. There is simply no future for me in Gaza Strip diplomacy.
I know it. Mrs C-, if she's out there, glaring intensely at the screen, she knows it, although neither of us are able to work out the reason for it.


That's all.


Leila Tov and Jayyid Sa'adat.