Micro-blogging: the power of great actors

This morning* I listened to Mark Rylance being interviewed on the radio. And I was reminded that I have seen him live on stage. It was 1997, and the first full season of the newly built (re-built? re-created?) Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames. The production was Henry V, and Mark Rylance had the title role. I was there with GrannyBear and my aunt and uncle. We had tickets as "groundlings", standing in the pit of the theatre. We stood, if not at the front, within a few rows of the front, and gazed upwards onto the stage.

It was one of the most powerful, and immersive, pieces of theatre I have ever been part of. When Rylance stood on the front of the stage before the battle of Harfleur, to rouse his men "once more unto the breach", I swear I would have followed him anywhere. Unlike the hushed reverence of many theatres, the Globe unleashed a rawness and immediacy that allowed the crowd to shout and cheer and be the soldiers ready to Cry 'God for Harry! England! and Saint George!' It was an inspiring moment in which the power of a genuinely great actor was revealed to me for the first time.

* "This morning" is now two days ago, because it turns out I'm pretty crap at even finishing a short blog post.

Micro-blogging: zen and the art of football management

Whether I've just been writing this blog for too long and run out of things to say, or I've been stuck in the house for two years and run out of things to say, or I've taken on too many other responsibilities and have run out of time to say whatever it is I might have to say, I couldn't tell you.

So, in another attempt to re-ignite my blogging mojo, I'm going to have a go at "micro-blogging", try to overcome my natural verbosity, and write short posts about random things on a much more frequent timescale. Maybe even daily.

And I'll be avoiding politics (sometimes). There's a definite downturn in my readership when I write about politics. When I say "downturn", I mean tumbleweed blows across the barren wastelands of my stats page.

So...

Last night I slept well. I didn't wake up at 5:30 and lie awake for two hours. This is notable because this is the very first time that I've been in charge of my football team, and not woken early fretting about it on match day. 

Every other match I have lain awake in the wee small hours, going over and over and over who is playing where, for how long, who's subbing on, when, into which positions. What warm up to do. What to say in a team talk. When to set off. Where to park. Whether the parents actually all hate me. Whether I will have to Have A Word with my co-coach about his habit of running up and down the touchline shouting at the boys.

I'm not sure that this is a sign of huge personal growth and a new-found zen-like approach, but it was a nice change. It was definitely helped by some really positive exchanges with most of the parents in the few days beforehand. And a good training session on Monday. And knowing co-coach wouldn't be there, shouting. Which is a less good sign.

Time for a revolution

Fore-foreword: after the horrific attack on David Amess, I decided not to immediately publish this post. It seemed like a time to reflect on what I was writing, and whether the level of anger I feel towards our government is something that it's acceptable to post online. I have a very, very small readership, most of whom I know personally, so I hardly think I'll be inciting acts of violence. But on the other hand, I am contributing to a wider malaise of rage and intolerance, and maybe I shouldn't be. But what is it that I'm intolerant of? Not race, or gender, or sexuality, or religion, or age, or ethnicity, or nationality. I am intolerant of hypocrisy, of a cavalier attitude to facts, of lying, of greed, of cruelty, of lack of empathy. And honestly, I don't want to become tolerant of those things. I don't want to sit back and stop caring. So I stay angry.

Foreword: I found a draft of a post I started writing in November 2020. At the time it all got a bit rabid and then petered out and I never quite finished it. Nearly a year later, and not much seems to have changed within my opinions. So to maintain my eco-credentials, I'm just going to recycle it with a few updates that take account of the passage of time. For the sake of historical accuracy, I'm going to make those edits obvious.

I'll start today with an an observation and a warning.

My observation is that it's quite apparent that in the dark and troubling times* we're living in, people are looking for positivity wherever they can find it, even if that's in random whimsical blogposts by some woman they once met outside the school gates. In the past, when looking at the statistics from my blog posts, I consistently had a higher readership for my political rants and introspective anxiety-bleats than anything else I wrote. If I ever produced anything light and fluffy, it was generally met with a bit of a "meh" response. Now, Last year, however, my ten days of positivity each garnered twice as many page views as my grumbles about the shit-weasels governing the country. So, perhaps I should try and stick to some more positive posts - give the people what they want eh? 

And now for the warning:

This post is going to be absolutely rammed full of expletives. I shall curse, swear and profane profusely. If you think this is an impoverished use of language that reveals a lack of imagination and creativity, or if you're just plain offended, tough. Piss off and read about kittens instead.

Back on track...

I cannot write positively just for the sake of it. I'm not positive all the time, and even writing 10 days worth of good cheer was seriously difficult. There were a couple of days I dreaded having to stick to my self-induced schedule. 

I've had enough. I've fucking had it. I'm pissed off. I hate everything about the way the world is. I hate our lying, conniving, self-serving, contemptible shits of politicians. I despise every fucking Brexit-supporting moron who thought "taking back control" was such a fucking good idea they chose to condemn us to becoming a pariah floating in the North Sea. There was never any positive outcome to Brexit. Never. Every sodding thing I wrote about before the referendum was right. I'm not saying I'm some kind of genius. Far from it. I'm pointing out it was blindingly fucking obvious that leaving the EU was the most half-arsed, blinkered, navel-gazing, dim-witted thing we could possibly do, and that it absolutely didn't take a genius to spot that. And if the fact that it was a stupid idea didn't put you off, the fact that the campaign to leave was led by the biggest bunch of lying, power-crazed, wealth-obsessed shit-gibbons this country has ever seen should have been a bit of a clue.

But never mind Brexit, eh? Not while we've got over 500 100 people a day dying of a pandemic (again), while the Brexit-cock-wombles' friends are lining their pockets and failing to answer questions before a Select Committee. How many billions have we spaffed** up the wall on contracts for nothing, or PR campaigns, or "consultants"? How many more people have to die while our government refuses to learn any lessons from the first 50,000 160,000 dead? What the fuck is wrong with these people? Is anyone actually able to stomach listening to Johnson's bullshit waffling at his press conferences everywhere he goes. Waving his arms around, randomly clenching his fist, burbling pointless, frequently military, analogies. Why the fuck did anyone vote for this scum? THIS IS YOUR FAULT.

I'm just so fucking angry with everything. I'm trapped, and fed up, and powerless and it's all just so bloody exhausting. We have a government of incompetent, ill-informed, immoral lickspittles, who kowtow to a stupid, narcissistic, man-baby whose expensive education has left him with nothing more than a veneer of pseudo-intelligence and the mistaken conviction that he is entitled to rule. A man who is incapable of listening, learning, understanding, empathising or indeed leading. A man who escapes on holiday to his billionaire-friends' homes as often as possible, apparently oblivious to the fact that his presence or absence has absolutely no impact on the efficiency or effectiveness of the governance of the country. A man who has no strategy, forethought, policy or direction beyond feathering his own nest and being patted on the back. A man who will say or do absolutely anything for a cheap laugh or a round of applause, but who will renege on every promise he's ever made, personally or professionally.

And this personality cult that's masquerading as a political party has an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. A majority that they're busy trying to make unassailable by changing voting laws, banning protests and limiting freedoms. A majority that is baked-in to our antiquated FPTP voting system. A majority that is still, gobsmackingly, approved of by some 40% of the voting public. 

Where the hell do we go from here? Where are the decent Tories who will stop this nonsense? Are there any? Because it's only Tories who can currently do anything about this fiasco of a corrupt, incompetent government. 

And then it's time for a revolution, and the creation of a mature democracy fit for the 21st century. Who's with me?

* A year on, and a question for the reader - are times more or less dark and troubling now, or is it much the same?

** For those who are not followers of the Parliamentary sketch-writer John Crace, he habitually refers to Johnson as "spaffer" after his obscene complaint that money spent pursuing historic cases of child sex abuse was being "spaffed up the wall". He later attempted to claim he was not aware that the term was synonymous with ejaculation. He is an utter, irredeemable shit.

Imposter Syndrome (or just an Imposter)

I have previously mentioned Imposter Syndrome as it applies to my work as a physicist.  On that happy occasion, I was revelling, slightly, at discovering that I perhaps wasn't as shit as I'd always thought I was. Since I'm a glutton for punishment, it was not enough to finally feel confident and secure in my abilities, so I have found new and interesting ways to feel useless.

It is unlikely to have escaped anyone's notice that I am reasonably firmly embedded in LittleBear's grassroots football club. I have not gone into a great deal of depth here about the degree to which I am embedded, or how and why. As with many things in my life, the full story is too much someone else's story for me to be entirely comfortable writing about, so it remains just "one of those things". However, suffice to say that, while I started out four years ago helping with the administrative side of running LittleBear's team, I'm now the manager. I'm a qualified FA Level One coach. I run training sessions, with the original manager assisting me*. I run match days, planning team-sheets and line-ups, making substitutions, encouraging, coaching and supporting the boys**. I'm the First Aider. I'm the administrator. I'm the accountant. 

Some of those roles I take in my stride. Managing a bank account is not beyond the wit of PhysicsBear. Applying an occasional ice-pack is quite do-able. And despite a certain amount of swearing, I even survive the vagaries of fighting with the tentacles of the FA websites to undertake the arcane aspects of team management. But the training, the teaching, the coaching, the football?

I am lost.

I am at sea.

I have less than no idea how to maintain any semblance of control, or convey any teaching points, to a rabble to 9 and 10 year olds. Occasionally a training session has the air of running smoothly. This largely occurs when the stars align and I happen to ask the boys to do something they wanted to do anyway. When I try and get them to do something new or, heaven forfend, something involving applying brains or concentration, the chances are that I will spend 50% of the session telling them to stop interrupting and to listen. 

I am not a teacher. I have never wanted to be a teacher. I have never thought I'd be a good teacher. And yet, here I am, teaching. If I were teaching something that I felt secure in, like physics or chemistry, I would find it stressful (as indeed I did) but at least I'd be sure I knew what I was talking about. Instead, here I am teaching something about which I know almost nothing. 

We have all seen, over the course of the past two years, how rapidly people assume a mantle of expertise on subjects about which, quite frankly, they know bugger all. Everyone's an epidemiologist these days aren't they? Football has always had this feature, well before it was fashionable. Football is populated by the kinds of people who have no qualms at all about phoning national radio stations to explain what exactly Pep Guardiola has done wrong in his tactics this week. Football is also an immensely popular sport in this country. Which means across a squad of seventeen boys that I train, at least fifty percent of them are in possession of parents who have firm opinions about football. Parents who will express strong views about Klopp's choice of starting 11, how to play against a high-press, and (ad nauseam) the impact of VAR on the Beautiful Game. Parents who certainly appear to know an awful lot more about football than I do. Most of them have the advantage of having played the blasted game, which is more than I've ever achieved.

I watch football. I enjoy football. But I have a guilty secret. I always end up watching the ball. For those non-football-afficionados here, this may not seem such a stupid thing to do. It is football after all. But for those who actually want to understand what's happening on the pitch, watching what the players without the ball are doing is key. And I don't. I try, but I'm very easily distracted by the ball. 

So I know, deep in my soul, that I am not an expert. And without an expert's level of understanding and knowledge of how to play, I have absolutely no idea how or what to teach my boys. I try. I really do. I watch YouTube videos. I read FA training plans. I study books of training ideas. I want to know what to do. I want to get it right. I want to be good at it. But I'm not. I know I'm not. And I know that it's only a matter of time before the boys, and their parents, realise that I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing. If they haven't already. 

I'm just about keeping my head above water this season, coaching 7-aside football with an under-10 side. But I find it hard to imagine being able to offer any technical or tactical insight as we progress through to full-blown, competitive 11-aside football.

I don't want to give up. I don't want to abandon my boys. I don't want to fail. 

But I don't know how to be better. I don't know how to learn the huge amount that I don't know. There aren't enough hours in the day to be physicist, mother, wife, daughter, football coach, friend and me. I can keep going, being a bit shit, hoping nobody notices that I'm a bit shit. Hoping the boys learn something by magical osmosis from somewhere else. Hoping they don't see through me too soon. Hoping the parents don't think their boys would be better off elsewhere. Or I can walk away. With my head down and tears in my eyes, betraying my son's faith in me, and his team's need for someone to run things for them. 

My name is PhysicsBear, and I don't know what I'm doing.

 

*Yes. I find this as toe-curlingly awkward and difficult as it probably sounds

** I do have a lovely assistant for this, and she is supportive, kind and helpful, and does everything I ask of her, and more. But my own over-developed sense of responsibility means that as the one with "Manager" written next to my name, I take emotional ownership of it all. 

PSA: graphene

I would like to say that the world is full of idiots, except apparently calling people idiots is not a good way of winning an argument. So, instead, I shall assume the world is full of people who are a little bit scared of science. People who've never had reasons to know about or understand nanotechnology. People who aren't necessarily educated in the realms of materials science or chemistry. And that's OK. Nobody is an expert at everything. But... (and it's a BIG but)... if you're not educated in these areas, and you don't understand, and something sounds big and scary and weird... maybe the thing to do is to find a reputable source of information and try and educate yourself?

That in itself appears to be a challenge. Reputable source of information. Reputable source of information. Not someone with a diploma in aromatherapy. Not someone whose grandma felt a bit funny after a flu jab one time. Not someone who wants to explain to you how the moon landings were faked. Not someone who writes a blog you quite like... oh... hang on... Seriously though, I could be anyone. I happen to be a Fellow of the Institute of Physics whose professional area of expertise is in chemical analysis, with a focus on material structure. But I could just be saying that. 

So... you probably shouldn't just believe me... you should probably follow some of my references if you really want to know whether I'm right. And I have deliberately chosen not to reference Wikipedia. 

Today's little piece of science will address one of the more bonkers theories I've read about the covid vaccines. The claim goes something like this: the vaccines contain graphene, and once the graphene is in your bloodstream, it self-assembles into a nano-bot that can form a brain-computer-interface and thus control/intercept your thoughts. 

Graphene eh? Nano-bots? Sounds pretty scary doesn't it? 

Would you like to make some graphene? I bet you can do it(1). Grab yourself a pencil, and some sellotape. Start with one piece of sellotape and press the sticky side against the "lead" of the pencil. Peel it off. You should have a grey smudge on your sellotape. That's graphite. Not quite graphene yet, but you're getting there. Now you need to repeatedly fold the sellotape in on itself and peel it apart again. Ten to twenty times should do it. Apparently Scotch tape works particularly well for this, as the peeling apart stage is easier. Any low-tack tape will do though. I'm not being paid to advertise. 

Each time you stick and peel, the smudge of graphite is pulled apart a little bit more. The graphite becomes thinner and thinner until eventually you'll have fragments of graphene. Because graphene is simply graphite in a single, one-atom-thick or "monatomic", layer. 

But what is graphite? And is a monatomic layer of it scary? 

Graphite is carbon. That's it. Just carbon. Carbon arranged in a nice, neat lattice. Each atom one member of a hexagonal ring, and many rings together forming a stable sheet (2).

So, there we are. We now know what graphene is - one layer of graphite. And we know what graphite is - a hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms. I don't even need to address whether covid vaccines do or don't contain graphene. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Instead we're going to think, just a little bit, about whether little hexagons of carbon atoms are going to find each other, assemble themselves, and create a robot, nano or otherwise. I'm hoping that this thinking isn't going to take us too long. I'm hoping that it will be but a fleeting thought that will allow us to realise that the chances of fragments of carbon assembling themselves into anything is about as likely as your IKEA Billy bookcase assembling itself, or your pencil becoming self-aware and writing down its Christmas wishlist.

So, there we are. Hopefully one stupid covid vaccine myth debunked. There are no self-assembly graphene nano-bots in your blood-stream controlling your thoughts. 

(1) https://physicsworld.com/a/how-to-make-graphene/

(2) Fig 1 in https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/cp/c8cp07592a  

Never did me any harm...

There is a prevailing, and to me misguided, view that often gets expressed that those things one has experienced oneself, and survived, can reasonably be inflicted upon the next generation.  I hear it about student debt relief - that cancelling student debt for this generation is unfair on those who did pay off their loans. As though one's own suffering justifies others' suffering. I've heard it about unpaid internships, or about appalling working hours for junior doctors. About corporal punishment in schools. About cold baths in boarding schools. Any number of unpleasant, or downright dangerous, experiences that could justifiably be left well and truly in the past.

It will come as no surprise to hear that the arena in which I'm currently hearing this is football coaching. And more specifically, the coaching of young children. How much is it OK to shout at children? How much yelling is too much? How much stick is "needed" compared to the carrot? Those who know me, know that my own style is not to berate children, or tell them they're not good enough, or yell and scream from the sidelines*. 

I've had several people lately tell me that being yelled at and intimidated by your coach, and told you're not good enough, is just how it is in football. That it's what their own experience of youth football was like. That it, "never did me any harm".

And, for me, there are two obvious responses...

Firstly, how do you know it didn't do you any harm?

Who would you have been without that experience? What might you have done differently? How might your interactions with the world, and the people you love have changed? None of us can know the path not taken.

Secondly, forget about yourself, some things aren't just about whether you were fine. What about all the other children? What about the boys and girls who were terrified by the shouting, intimidated, made to feel useless or worthless? What about the children who couldn't handle it and who left the sport? The ones who stopped playing football because they cried after every match where they were shouted at. Football, sport, life, none of those are only supposed to be for the thick-skinned, the robust, the supremely self-assured. We should be making space in life, and in sport, for those who are not sure, those who have self-doubt, and building their confidence, not breaking it. 

Maybe, once you reach the top-flight of international sport, a certain resilience is required. The ability to believe in yourself, despite what others may say, is almost certainly needed both to rise to the top, and to stay there. Even there, the honesty of people like Marcus Trescothick, Ben Stokes, Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles reveals that it's not that straightforward. That even at the top, doubts, fears, depression and anxiety may be an ever-present enemy. But when we're talking about children playing non-competitive, grassroots sport? Inclusive, open, sport played for fun, should be, well, fun.

And if we can nurture today's children, and show them that it's possible to participate in team sports, and give your all, even when you're not the best, without being demeaned and belittled, then maybe when today's children grow up, they will be part of a kinder world.

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

 

* Obviously, I do yell from the sidelines, but it's generally anodyne stuff like, "Well done!" or "Keep it up!"  or occasionally even such tactical gems as "Man on!" It's possible that at a recent training session the phrase, "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" was also used...

Pleasing none of the people none of the time

The thing about random memes on Facebook is that most of them, aside from being poorly spelled, poorly punctuated, and frequently involving utterly invented quotes, are complete tripe. They sometimes make me wonder whether I really know my friends when I see the things they link to. On the other hand, there's the odd thing that pops up that stops me in my tracks and actually makes me think.

Here's one of them (with apologies for spelling, punctuation, grammar and colour-scheme):

And the problem is, I am absolutely not OK with not being liked. In fact I spend an inordinate amount of emotional and mental energy contorting myself attempting to be liked. I volunteer, I help, I smile, I cook, I step up, I try so damn hard all the time to be a person other people will like. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. The people who like me, like me anyway. And the people who are either indifferent to me, or don't particularly like me, are not going to have their minds changed by me spending hours of my free time doing things for them. They'll just willingly soak up my kindness and carry on with their lives, not liking me any more or any less than they did before. I am an irrelevance to them.

It would now appear that I have engineered myself into a hole. I have spent so much time contorting myself in desperate and futile attempts to be liked, that now if I stop being the ever-biddable, ever-self-sacrificing, ever-helpful me, I am resented for not bending over backwards. I am now expected to be all things for all people, and I am burnt out, unable to keep offering more and more of myself. And yet I keep doing so, because to stop, and to risk not being likeable enough is still unthinkable to my needy little mind.

Every day I receive emails, WhatsApp messages, text messages, phone calls, taps on the shoulder, all asking me for something. Sometimes it's a simple question about a date or a time, sometimes it's a request for information, and sometimes it's a request for help. But it's always something. Always requiring an answer, or effort, or work, or commitment. Worst of all is that sometimes it requires a decision. A decision that I know is not going to please at least one other person. And then my need to please slams up against my need to do the right thing, or my need to be clear and honest, or my need to be organised. It's not possible to be honest, and honourable, and moral and also please everybody.

I have to find a way to tell people things that they won't like. I have to find ways of telling people what I think or believe without worrying about whether they will or won't like it. 

I have to find ways of saying "No", without being paralysed by the fear of being disliked. I have to find ways of doing what I know to be right without spending hours agonising over the wording of the email that needs to be sent, and then days agonising of what I have (or more likely haven't) heard in reply. 

I have to find ways of accepting that I cannot please all of the people all of the time. I will be lucky if I can please some of the people some of the time. 

At the moment it feels like I'm pleasing none of the people none of the time.