There seems to be some confusion in the minds of the students I come across when I am teaching regarding how to write and how to type and this is due mainly for one reason alone, that we use computers nowadays for writing. We use the laptop for Facebook, or the iPad for writing an email.

We see the term “writing” in technological terms and think that how we write when we type has to be the same way when getting one of those weird, arcane things [a pen] in our hands and writing an essay for GCSE English. But you are missing something if you think you can write using the same rules you use for typing.

Consider this picture below….

Clearly, this is a typed piece of work [found on Google] and is not about GCSE English, but it does show you that when you get to the end of a paragraph when typing, you do one thing, you press the ENTER key and it automatically takes you down to the next line or two down and you start again. This is the rule we use when typing.

But the rule when we are writing by hand is not the same rule and AQA [as well as all the other exam boards] are assessing you on your hand writing [unless you have special needs provision and can do the exam on the computer].

Consider now, the picture below….

You need to see 3 things in this piece; how the paragraphs differ where they start, from the first picture, how there are no lines missed and the ticks on the work. It matters not what the work is actually about, or if it is a story, but what matters is that a rule is being followed by the writer. AQA Mark Schemes that are available online [type “aqa past papers 4700” into Google and see] show that “indented paragraphs” get you an A*, A, B or a C. They are not evident in a D grade piece of work, so the marker or teacher should not give you a C if you write like we type or vice versa.

So, no more hand written essays or stories or letters where there are lines missed!

Please!

I asked a student to copy the style of the piece of work I did here in this blog and to write about his best and worst meal, based on his experience to date. What follows is his work. Note as well that he is still only 15 years old at the time of writing and it follows the rules for typing, not hand writing an exam answer out.

The Best And The Worst Meal

The nastiest meal ever does not have to be the worst tasting! It could be the greatest tasting thing on the planet, but just cooked desperately badly. This was the case with those gravely cooked beef burgers from the home of terrible cooking itself, Burger King.

Not only was it the home of the supposed burger “King,” itself a euphemism for downright, foul tasting, venomous food, but also it was the home to the worst chefs in the world! Chefs? A chef is a trained animal. These morons cannot have been trained in anything but the culinary arts of the Demon worshipper!

It was not so much the taste of chewing on a half used rubber that put me off, but the fact that it was that cold, they might as well have just served me one straight out of the depths of their endless, bottomless freezers. Although the burger was cold, the Coke was warm.

I wished it was the other way around!

There was no sizzling sensation as the juices poured out of the meat. There was no char-grilled marks on the thing to suggest a cooked piece of cow. It simply looked like a stone slab that had been painted. To touch the thing with a fork was out of the question. It may have just got up and bit me back! Oh, and the smell, well there was not any!

But it was just like someone had had it sitting on the window sill all day, letting the carbon dioxide just bubble on out. What can I say though? Even though it was the worst cooked, synthetic and distasteful meal I had ever eaten, at least I can give them a golden star for filling a hole in my stomach.

It was by far the worst experience in my eating life to date, but the best one simply walked all over it because of how beautiful it was and because it was cooked by chefs who knew what they were doing for a living! There is probably not a name for this beast, but it is the best tasting piece of food I have ever consumed.

My family and I had taken a holiday to the steamy, tropical island of Madeira, and although it was only 15 kilometres in length, it was home to more chefs who knew how to cook than the whole of the USA.  There were several versions of pasta on offer to devour, each of them having their own unique properties.

The feel and sight of the oils of the fish as I picked them up and placed them on my mound of already gathered, classic, Madeiran pasta, was just so beautiful to see. Alongside lay a freshly grilled lamb chop with the juices still oozing out and the sounds of the grill it had just left were sizzling behind me as I carried on walking and continued to devour the rest of this tropical cuisine.

There was no food there that lacked in flavour, beauty or elegance. It was simple yet very effective at filling the body with energy and this was probably done using no sugar, which was a change. The way that every time I went back to fill my plate, new platters of fresh, new and even alien like foods were there, ready for me to devour them.

The food there was clearly cooked by well qualified chefs who had been trained and were dedicated to their profession; not just any old burger flipper with a GCSE or two.

The main and most fascinating part of the meal had to be the sweet. All the bright, tropical colours of the traditional fruit salad, the sweet tasting Walnut Mousse and most of all, the classic Brownie and Ice Cream. The way that everything could be eaten one after another and still tasted magnificent was truly amazing.

For those reasons and many more, such as the setting and weather, that meal has to be put up at Number One on the chart of my best meals.

Matt Barber
Y11 GCSE English

How do you revise for an exam?

Let’s say it is Geography. You may try to read everything, shorten it down, use memory aids and eventually go completely nuts trying to keep all that information in there. So, let me show you some ideas about how you could do this [for every subject].

1. Read everything – go over your notes about certain things. In English terms, look at the terms in GLOSSARY OF TERMS on here. Read them, digest them, understand them and how they are used. Look for them in everything you read from now to the exam. Notice them and how they are used by the writer.

2. Memorize everything – not really, only kidding. You are not a computer that can locate information like that. Your brain is like mine, a sieve at times. You will forget things and that is perfectly normal, but there are ways to help this.

3. Use memory aids. Mnemonic aids help. Not sure what these are? Well, what are the colours of the rainbow? Do you know? Of course, they are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Or better still, I used RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN VAIN as a memory aid to remember them just then. ROYGBIV to be precise. Got it? By doing this we can learn key things for any subject. An example in English might be REALLY RED STRONG MACHINES AGE! This would stand for Rhyme, Rhythm, Simile, Metaphor, Alliteration! Remember these 5 elements of language and the chances are the exam will be easier.

4. Use a recording device. When I did my finals for my degree, back in 1995, we used things like Walkman cassette players to record our notes. Nowadays, Smartphones can record the human voice. It sounds weird in the extreme to hear your own voice, but live with that and get over it, for using this technique to remember key dates in History can be helpful, along with mnemonics. Record it onto the machine and then play back the last thing before sleep for a few minutes at a time. Do not be worried if you fall asleep to your own voice. Your brain is still active at that point and taking in the notes. This is especially good where there are definitions needed in a written exam piece.

5. Pop Quiz – Ever seen the film Speed? The villain mentions a Pop Quiz in there [I am watching it as I type]. Get someone to ask you questions about something – which character is Lennie in OMAM? [Of Mice and Men]. Who kills the dog in the novella? Why is it that George cannot trust Lennie? Then try to answer them in as full an answer as you can. If you can articulate these thoughts, you should be able to write the answer to them. And do this for 15 minutes a night.

6. Plan your revision – 6 weeks maximum. Do it like this:

a – everything read and noted
b – cut down the elements into shorter chunks of information
c – cut down further into bite sized bits with just the key thoughts
d – then bring in mnemonics to aid memory of elements
e – Pop Quiz and recording
f – Time to be sick – only kidding but that is what it will feel like

7. Time your revision. A good way is to know how long you can last before the brain goes to custard. My time span for concentration is 2 hours before I end up a blabbering wreck. So, I revise from 11-1 and then 3-5 and then 7-9 doing 3 sessions a day, Monday to Saturday inclusive. I have Sundays off.

8. Have a holiday the day before the exam. Now on this one I am NOT kidding. If your exam is on the 2nd June, as I know a few of my students this year have, then on the 1st June, off you go to Alton Towers or somewhere, to enjoy life for once in 6 weeks. You have revised, read, quizzed and worked like a mad hatter at his own tea party and now, the day before, it is time to chill and let the dust settle in the brain. It is like dusting is revising; when you dust a room, particles of dust go everywhere. It takes time for it to settle.

Continuing to dust is not possible, so you let it settle and then clean up. The same is true with revision. All that info being crammed into the head at once is nightmarish, so give it a chance to percolate and then, on the morning of the exam, NO BOOKS in front of your face till the exam. If you are the sort who stands there waiting to go in still reading notes, you will not get a higher grade.

9. Learn to chillax. It sounds obvious I know, but this is a stressful time. Whatever your hobbies are, still keep doing them. You have planned the revision out, done it for 6 hours a day if like me, for 6 days a week and in between that, you have done what you love doing, whatever that is. Or at least I hope you have, for if not, then you will be one sad puppy indeed by exam day.

10. Enjoy the exam! What, I hear you thinking. How on earth do I do that? Well, the English exam, as with any exam, is your chance to SHOW OFF your skills. If you do all the rest right, then this last bit will come natural. Show off and be a show off. Have fun. Make things up. Exaggerate. Lie if needs be. English is a creative art form, so here is your chance to show just how creative you can be, especially in Section B of the Language exam.

At the end of all this, ask yourself this one simple question: Have I done my best on the day of the exam? If the answer is yes, then whatever grade you get is the one you deserve. If the answer is no, then ask yourself why!

“Luck is for the ill prepared” is something my University lecturers said to me, so be prepared!

g

You have heard of PEE Chains. You have even heard of PEED Chains, where the D stands for Development [of your own ideas], but I bet you have not heard of a DEE Chain. There is a simple reason. They were only invented a few hours ago, by me.

A PEE chain stands for Point, Evidence and then Explanation. Now that is all well and good where a definition is NOT needed. However, if you were writing about the intentional fallacy, you would be expected to define it. In this case, you would adopt a DEE Pattern of writing, offering a definition of something, followed by the example from the text [or possibly merged together as you will see later] and then you would mention the effect on the reader.

Therefore, you could consider this D E E pattern of writing to ensure clarity and accuracy. This would be vital. An example would be where there is a simile in a piece of writing. Instead of writing about the quote and saying the that this is an example of something [someone’s love being compared to a rose etc], one would try to use the definition of a language item, so the reader can take time to learn these things. In this way, your writing, in the middle section of an essay needs to be as perfect as possible.

Here are a few ideas……

Is this a successful DEE Chain?

When Shakespeare uses the term “the eye of heaven,” in sonnet 18, he is using a metaphor, which is way of comparing two things by turning them into one and it has the effect of bringing a single unified image into the mind of the reader, who sees the image of the sun, shining gloriously in the heavens and uses that image to sense the love that the writer has for his love, which may or may not be the Bard’s mysterious dark skinned lady as mentioned elsewhere. 

In doing it this way, not only are you analysing language, as requested in some of the exam questions, but you are also showing that you know what you are talking [or writing] about. This is important.

Now have a go at locating the simile in this piece and writing a similar DEE chain… explaining the effect on the reader, how the images are used in comparison. Then you will get the idea.

“The air smelled sharp as new-cut wood, slicing low and sly around the angles of buildings.”
[from Chocolat, by Joanne Harris]

So, there you have it. By defining the thing, whether it be simile, metaphor, assonance or alliteration, you get a better, clearer answer. All you need to do now is go to the search bar on this site and type in GLOSSARY and press ENTER and then learn each definition.

Enjoy.

A Burdened Soul

I have lain here for some time in life’s perpetual earth,
Silently ruminating over the possibilities that might have been;
A Royal Kingdom united, babes cherished and adored,
A life dedicated to the majesty and the glory of God.
But what the intervening years display is a criminal, a man
Who you think was led to acts of cruelty, in times of old.
But is that the real King? Is that all that your eyes behold
As you file by in slow and sombre mood to pay your respects?
Is all you see here the remnant of a once noble and powerful man,
Or do you see the remains of a soul in torment for so long,
A burdened soul seeking to be set free at the last day?
I see you looking on and I see your grief for me,
But do not weep; mourn not for me in this rendezvous of man.
Where death leads to life; instead, remember the nature of man
And see that my all my hope indeed, lies in the God of heaven.
I now lay in state, for all to pay homage but that is not what I want;
All I desire is that you see me and consider the value of life.

Richard – Carol Ann Duffy

On the 26th March 2015, we in Britain laid to rest one of this country’s most illustrious Kings. In life, he was a mystery, an enigma. Indeed, William Shakespeare penned him in his now infamous play in a certain way, to make him sound like the villain of the piece, the one person responsible for young, Royal deaths, for the demise of his Kingdom. He was, in the Bard’s eyes, partly responsible for so many wrong things in this country.

When Shakespeare wrote Richard III, he did so with a political and/or moral point in mind, so when a short time ago, an archaeological dig found human remains in their first trench dug in Leicester, under a car park, the world watched on as DNA testing took place. Eventually, there came the news that they had found the remains of the late, King Richard III, slain at Bosworth and hastily buried by Monks at the time. He had been there for nearly 500 years so the story was, and is, immense.

As part of the decision to lay him to rest in Leicester Cathedral, the poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was asked to write a poem that tried to encapsulate Richard in one go. Given the fact that 500 years of British history had gone by, opinions formed and with most of us being able to quote “A horse, a horse, my Kingdom for a horse,” or “now is the winter of our discontent,” it made for an intriguing story.

So, I watched last night on the television, the highlights of the reburial in Leicester Cathedral, and heard the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, himself related loosely to Richard III, read this poem. He began with his usual gravitas, just as, I believe, Duffy would want, when he read the first line, with the voice of Richard sounding through the centuries to us in this modern age.

Those words: “My bones, scripted in light,” resonated the meaning straight away. The reader, if you are ever studying this at some point later in GCSE or other studies, is left in no doubt that Richard is speaking and that is a very clever skill from Duffy, who gives such an enigma his voice at last.

Gone are the myths. Gone are the rumours. All we have is this one, lone voice, who has laid “upon cold soil, a human braille” for so long now. His burial would have been hasty. In those days, Kings won their power in battle and tended to lose their heads at the hands of their victor. Anyone who has read and studied Macbeth will know what I mean.

His voice asks us to consider certain certain things in this poem. He says “my skull, scarred by a crown, emptied of history” which is meant to make us think of the time when he did wear the crown of England and would have done so with pride. But there is a deathly element to the words as well for his skull is indeed, scarred by the rigours of being buried where he was for such a length of time.

“Describe my soul,” he asks, and see what you get. Can we describe a soul? Not really, but the myths that surround Richard III are ones that develop his mystique in such a way as to be villainous and we do not really know if this is true or not. “Describe my soul as incense” makes a little more sense in the fact that this poem was meant to be read out by someone at a church service for Richard III’s funeral. Incense is used at such a burial in the Church of England and in Catholic Churches.

The word “votive” is a strange one, so please do not get hooked up on it. You are better suited looking at the rest of the words, like “vanishing,” reflecting the vanishing nature of Richard’s remains over time. Each word is a reminder of where such a nobleman has been hiding for the last half of a Millennium. This, coupled with the words “Grant me the carving of my name” lead to a powerful pause in the thoughts of those who read or hear this.

Up until now, this poem has been more about Richard and his soul. Now, he refers to the “relics” and asks us to “bless” them. We hear him say that he imagines us as we “re-tie a broken string and on it thread a cross.” This Christian symbol is one that was taken from him when he died, so Duffy relates this as she has the King uttering “the symbol severed from me when I died.” It is as if the King himself is not dead, but speaking to us directly in a very powerful manner.

And then we see a change in direction as Duffy refers us to the “end of time.” This is a Christian belief in what will happen at the end of days, when God will end this world as we know it and all things will be made new, as it says in the book of Revelation. But as this happens, there will be “an unknown, unfelt loss,” according to Richard III and Carol Ann Duffy, unless there is actually something we call “the Resurrection of the Dead.” The ellipsis at the end of the line is meant to make you think of what comes next; heaven, Nirvana, rebirth, reincarnation etc.

Many a great and wonderful war poet has tried to get over to the reader the idea of what it is like to be on the battle field. But here, Duffy does this in a different way, for she has Richard telling us all, as readers, that as a man, he “once dreamed of this, your future breath in prayer” for him as he was lost in clay. But now, after all this time, he is now “forever found.” To some readers, there is a clear spark of recognition here at these words because some of us know about the story in the Bible of the Prodigal Son. We know what happens and how the son “comes to his senses” and returns home to a fully welcoming father. There are words there that remind us that once, Richard was lost, but now, he is found. The poem is meant to make that connection [cf Luke 15 – The Bible].

In all the time he has been hidden from our view, he has “sensed [us] from the backstage of [his] death, as Kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.” What a powerful ending that is! It is the sort of ending that if read correctly, as Mr Cumberbatch did, is meant to bring forth the idea that even in death, we can sense that which is around us, as if in all that time, the missing King has been waiting to be found. And that is how it came about – someone said we should dig in a certain place and when they did, they found a body that matched the DNA of King Richard III of England. It was a once in a million chance and it came off.

What Carol Ann Duffy has done here is produce a piece of work that quite simply gives the King a voice, and it is one that does so in such a unique manner, for it allows us to humanise that which has been dehumanised. Now that is very clever indeed! The King is dead. Long live the King!

RJ March 27th. 2015

In all my travels as a teacher, I can safely say one thing is true, that structure is everything in your writing. Whether it be a Language and Power essay at A Level, or an essay about a novel at GCSE, structure is everything. It is vital to get your points across in a clear and logical fashion. If you fail to do so, then expect a D grade, or lower.

I have made play of my 5 point essay structure elsewhere on here but the thing actually works. It is one way how to keep to the task and not veer off in a tangent to some other train of thought.

Consider this, for a second. If you are asked to write an essay [on any subject] you would do so, or want to do so, clearly and logically. Hence the need to structure your writing instead of going off half cocked, rambling about anything and/or nothing. A complete waste of your time.

So what if someone asked you to analyse a speech? What if you had to analyse a famous speech, like the I Have A Dream speech from Martin Luther King Jr? Dare you unpick that beauty?

I dare!

This is how:

1. Introduce how the speech is dramatic. Explain that it nearly never came about but for the intervention of the great singer, Mahalia Jackson, who saw MLK flagging somewhat in his speech and yelled “tell em about the dream Martin!” So, he pushed his notes to one side and began with “I HAVE A DREAM!” The rest, as they say, is history. I admire his guts in doing so!

2. Analyse the language – repetition of the word “dream” and how it has differing meanings. Look for ambiguity in meaning. Analyse how he uses the language to great effect.

3. Analyse the audience he was speaking to and if he used appropriate enough language – 1960s black America – the struggles – the history etc. Link to the American Dream [if not sure what this is, where have you been?]

4. Analyse the style of words used by him. Words like “babies” when referring to his children suggest a paternal desire, a need to see improvement and also something else in him; the great preacher. [I too am a preacher and have been for 25 years so know some of the tricks for making hairs stand to attention on necks]

5. Then, a conclusion. Was he successful? MLK’s speech back then is heralded as one of the greatest speeches of all time. I think the answer is yes, he was successful, but allow yourself the freedom to suggest how he may have lost and segregated another audience at the time; the white American who supported him.

By solely concentrating on the black American, was he isolating himself off from the mainstream? This is not even hinted at in the speech but one comment about it and you make your marker [or teacher] THINK!

THAT gets extra points in the exam or in coursework!

So go for it and have that dream, to one day live in a world where getting the A grade is possible. Have that dream today!

Here is the exam question from the last paper that when I saw it, I nearly had heart failure in gleeful surprise.

‘Talent shows like The X Factor provide cheap television, gossip and nothing of any value. There are better programmes than these.’ Argue for or against the views expressed in this quotation. Your piece will appear on the entertainment pages of a website.

What follows is how I would have written it, given half the chance to show off and have some fun!

[To be read in a farmyard, yokel voice]

“Oim a farmer from Summerset, me, a rough, tough, lathered aul’d soul who has never seen a television, let alone seen what is on the thoing, so why should I care?”

Right, now that I have got your attention, let me tell you a few things about these so called ‘talent shows.’

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a man who watched these television shows and loved them. He loved the way that the likes of men called Cowell could act up to the first three letters of their surname and be bullish in their comments to people, who frankly, should have known better than apply to go on the show in the first place. There they were, those ‘Judges,’ sat in their fancy chairs, pontificating over the likes of you and I and making us look ludicrous and the likes of you and I lapped it up. To us, it was entertainment in a life that possibly had little entertainment in it.

But then, after three or four years, these shows like the X Factor and now, with the advent of the BBC show called The Voice, a play on words on the fame of Sir Tom Jones, who can sing, we see the same thing beginning to happen. We see how the originality of the show has gone, leaving with it the sense that next year it will be the same thing all over again. It is this that sticks in my craw. It is this that makes me want to head for the remote button, or in my case, disconnect from mainstream television until the BBC and ITV decide to put something worthwhile on.

I mean, come on folks, The Voice and The X Factor – television for those needing to be drugged out of their already dreary existence? What are we watching these shows for if not to make fun of others or to wish that we had, as Andy Warhol once suggested, our fifteen minutes of fame? Are you watching because you actually want to? If so, you must lead a very dreary life.

Once, I loved these shows, but it is now becoming a case of “the same old same old” each week; Will.i.am paying up to the camera, a new female coach bringing a bit of glitz into proceedings and a group of contestants that frankly, look like they came out of the Dark Ages in places. And we call this entertainment? We have missed the point at some point in our lives I think.

Your commenter stated that “talent shows like The X Factor provide cheap television.” Oh how this is correct. There is little or no value to these shows, just the hope that they bring to a sad, deluded world. Then your commenter said there is nothing but “gossip and nothing of any value.” I have to agree here for as suggested, “there are better programmes than these.”

Once we get past the initial value of seeing someone embarrassed in front of six million viewers, we then see the need to do one thing; switch off. Only then will we begin to grab back some semblance of normality to our weekend viewing, which at one time not a few years ago, was sparkling and excellent, but now, all we see are so called talent shows led by talentless individuals [apart from Sir Tom, who rocks at 74 years of age].

Come on British viewing public, get your finger out and hit that red button!

There is a thing in the AQA 9715 Lit exam that should alarm students. It is like finding a nest of dangerous spiders inside some bananas and finding they are the world’s deadliest. It is a task that asks a student to write about a poem from an ‘unseen’ perspective. For many, this is the thing they fear, which is why my college taught the 4700 syllabus and not the 4705/9715 option. We did not have to do it.

WJEC do this also and add in their teacher pack a document called ‘Unlocking a Poem,’ which is on this blog. It helps you to try and write something sensible about the poem in question. In last year’s AQA unseen poem question, they chose the Linda Pastan poem, To A Daughter Leaving Home and asked for a response.

This would have been mine, had it asked for me to write about the poem in question.

***

The poem To A Daughter Leaving Home, by Linda Pastan, immediately makes the reader think of what it must be like for a parent to see their child finally leaving the family home, flying the nest as it were. It is a poem that reflects and shares the joys and the heartaches of being a parent, of bringing up a child seeing them go through formative years and disappear off into the wide unknown, ready and prepared for what life has for them.

Linda Pastan, in one very emotive poem, tells the reader just what it was like for her, referring to a time when a young one learned to ride a bike. The first line is soaked in pain and intensity, for it tells how the parent taught the child “at eight to ride a bicycle,” something a teenager reader may not react to favourably, but an adult learner might.

For example, I can remember taking my son, aged five, to the park with his bike, pushing him, with my hand on the back of the seat, as he squealed off down the lane in the park. As he did so, I can remember saying “you can do this” and letting go after twenty five yards, seeing him wobble and eventually get to grips with the bike. I can remember the look of complete elation on his face as he stopped, turned to me and let out a really throaty growl of satisfaction.

So when I see a poem like this, with the father [or mother indeed] “loping along beside” the child, I remember with fondness these times of joy. But I also remember the pain involved in bringing up a child. Being a father is the hardest job in the world. It is a cliche I know, but true nonetheless. I can remember as my son learnt to ride his bike, how “my own mouth [was] rounding in surprise” as he “pulled ahead down the curved path of the park.” It was a time to cherish and one I can never forget, however old and decrepit I may become.

I, like the parent in the poem, “kept waiting for the thud” as he crashed, but it never came. All the angst beforehand was gone. All the nervousness and build up was now past history and here was my son able to ride off into the sunset on his own. And even if he had crashed “as I sprinted to catch up,” there would still be the pain and the concern in my face, as I worried for his needs.

As he grew up, he moved away from me as a father-son relationship goes and now he lives in a flat in a city fifty miles away, working to better his own life, but I share the memory “while [he] grew smaller, more breakable with distance.” This is a metaphor for life and how it tends to separate us from our loved ones. It is a powerful way to get across the idea that with age comes suffering and pain.

It is this memory, on the bike in the park, where the poet asks us to concentrate our efforts into the young boy, who is “pumping, pumping for [his] life, screaming with laughter,” as his hair flaps in the wind, rather like a flag in the wind. The hair in the poem is described in such a way as to make the reader think of what it will be like for them when their time comes. This sense of saying “goodbye” is prevalent throughout the poem and it is one that challenges us to think of others as we think of ourselves.

It is, in essence, a place where Junior can go to when he needs some time to himself, a club, a solace from the perils of life and one that has to be cherished at all costs; such is the pain and turmoil that can come with moving on in life. This is why this is such a good poem; it is a memory of a time gone by where there has been chance to shine at something as you grow older. It links especially well with Give, by Simon Armitage, in the way that it has the one voice talking, and also with the Clown Punk, as the driver shares a memory from the past. It is therefore, an excellent poem aimed at sharing some of what it is to ride off into the sunset of life.

NB. In the exam, feel free to write about the poem as you have been taught by your teacher, and me, but also add in how the poem fits with other poems in the anthology. Now that is “Brownie Points Time.”

I was tutoring the other day and discussing the poem, by Simon Armitage, when I had a bit of an epiphany, one of those wondrous moments where you see something you have not seen before and you sit there thinking “how on earth can I have missed that?”

It was after watching a short clip where Armitage explains where the ideas came from for writing the poem and he says that he was a ‘follower’ like me, of the Punk movement in the late 1970s. We are of similar age after all. I suddenly remembered the age old use of the ‘aside’ in acting, the point where an actor stands on stage, looks to the left or the right and then says something softly, or sotto vocce [I think] and under the breath, before coming back to the audience with the rest of his/her lines.

I think, after seeing the video, that throughout the poem, Armitage is talking to the children in the back of the car, maybe his young daughter and a friend, who shriek as the punk “slathers” all over their windscreen in an act of defiance and possibly drunken stupor. But, the last two lines are indicative of him then turning his attention inwards on himself and saying them to himself, like the aside, as he says to himself that he should think back to when he was a lad and fond of the music, as I was, and remember those heady days and how we felt we were everything the leaders of our country hated and could not understand.

This man in the poem still dresses and looks the part 25 years on from 1979 [so this sets the date of the poem to 2004] and still holds to the anarchic styles and attitudes, whereas Armitage is now married [presumably] with a daughter and a home and everything that middle class suburbia brings. And it is this that any true Punk would baulk at, would hate in someone like Armitage [and myself]. This, if we take the ending of the poem like this, is Armitage telling himself to remember and to think that he was one of the ‘Punks’ that blended into society and then vanished through the cracks. Like him, I now see those last two lines as extremely evocative and critical towards self.

Try getting this lot into any exam response, if your exam title allows it. Here, below, is the video clip.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zfknvcw