Just William

The road from Matlock to Bakewell in Derbyshire passes a large Victorian pile which was once St. Elphin's boarding school for the daughters of the clergy, but is now a retirement complex.

I must have passed the school many times without ever realizing that Richmal Crompton went there as a pupil and later returned as a classics teacher. She was of course the author of the hugely successful William books, all of which I devoured in my youth.

Quite why I took to them so avidly I’m not sure. The hero of the books was William Brown, a decidedly middle class boy, while I grew up on a council estate. His was a world of domestic servants such as  maids to open the front door and cooks to prepare the family meals. Not my world by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe that’s it though – the vital ingredient of Crompton’s books. They stirred the imagination – at least they must have stirred mine, because I loved them. Even the pen and ink drawings seemed right somehow.

William in William below stairs

I read one recently – once I'd made this momentous discovery about the connection between Richmal Crompton and St Elphin’s. The books still read well, even now. Clearly written, not condescending and each story has a beginning, middle and end. 

Boyish stories I suppose – in an old-fashioned sense. Camp fires and strange cookery experiments, climbing trees, dirty knees, running wild and mischief.

William had his arch-enemy too - Hubert Lane, leader of the Laneites. If my younger self had a criticism of the William books, it would be the too infrequent appearance of Hubert Lane. I enjoyed William's battles with Hubert. Essentially they were battles of wits where of course William always emerged victorious in one way or another.

And who could ever forget Violet Elizabeth Bott, the lisping daughter of a local nouveau riche millionaire? Who could forget her blood-curdling threat?

I'll thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick.

Do young people still read them? I don't know, because William's world has mostly disappeared now.

Kindle improves reading for boys?

This story from SMU Research suggests :-

Middle school boys rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader, according to a new study.

The findings come from a study of 199 middle school students who struggle with reading and who participated in a reading improvement class that included Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, said one of the study’s authors, Dara Williams-Rossi, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The study only used a small sample, so not too much should be made of it, but surely this was an interesting observation.

Technology motivated boys; girls appear to prefer actual books
“The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read, while many girls preferred the actual books,” said Williams-Rossi, who is also director of undergraduate programs in Simmons. “The data showing the girls’ preference were statistically significant and particularly intriguing. This is part of a 3-year study and this data came midway through, so we are continuing our investigation and interviewing girls to understand their reaction to the e-readers. It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.”

So boys may need teaching methods which keep up to date with technology, or they need their interest to be aroused via technology? Certainly, my two most memorable and effective teachers used the technology of the day to arouse our interest. From electromagnets to a vacuum discharge, it worked for me fifty years ago. 

Are we missing out on something here - an essential masculine element in teaching? Something specifically to do with techniques of engagement aimed at boys? I don't know because I'm not a teacher, but it's surely an interesting possibility.

Note this comment from Roger on yesterday's Kindle post.

FWIW I know someone who was never a great reader, perfectly intelligent and successful but they could not cope with all those black squiggles on the page. Got given a Kindle and he is now a keen reader. Not the only tale of this kind I have heard - maybe there is something to study here. 

Every medallist

Kindle ebook sales climb

The BBC reports that Amazon now sells more Kindle ebooks than paperback and hardback sales combined.

The UK's biggest book retailer Amazon now sells more ebooks than hardbacks and paperbacks combined, the company has said. For every 100 print books sold through the site, Amazon said it sold 114 titles for its Kindle e-reader device.

I don't find that surprising, especially for fiction. What I find more interesting is this finding.

It added that the average Kindle owner bought up to four times more books than they did before owning the device. 

That fits well with our experience. My wife and I both have Kindles and we read more now than we used to when we were just reading paperbacks and hardbacks. I don't think it's a factor of four for us, but we certainly read more - and more widely too.

But Kindle content is controlled by one multinational company - Amazon. Okay there are other readers and other formats, but not many. How will that pan out?

It isn't just Kindle owners who are reading more though is it? Huge numbers of people may be reading more simply because they can select what to read on the web and read it any time they like. And select means make more personal and more interesting - more specific to me. Anything from news to political commentary to the latest UFO sightings to... well you name it.

Technology is changing our behaviour.

Do you find your political views changing? Firmed up, loosened, shifted to the right or left? Perhaps not much, but some aspects may have changed, some ideas or ways of thinking may have inserted themselves into your way of thinking. Are you more radical or less? Or about the same? 

I've certainly been affected by the web. Nothing dramatic, but it's real. I'm not what I was. Neither, I strongly suspect, are you. Not quite. 

Just tell the milkman

When my wife's parents wanted to sell their house in 1960, what did they do?

They just told the milkman.

Later a couple knocked on the door and bought it.

Simple.

Graveyard chat

About fifteen years ago we were in the cemetery putting flowers on our daughter’s grave while a guy did the same at his wife’s grave nearby. It was quiet as it usually is and for some reason we started chatting. He told us his wife had died from breast cancer. She’d consulted a local doctor about a lump on her breast, but he said it wasn’t cancer.

The doctor was wrong.

Understandably the guy was still bitter about that doctor – who wouldn’t be? Even worse, it turned out to be the same doctor who had originally diagnosed our daughter’s headaches, vomiting and double vision as severe catarrh and prescribed Mu-Cron.

Wrong again.

In fact our daughter had contracted a fast-growing, malignant brain tumour - glioblastoma multiforme. A few months the absurd Mu-Cron prescription, a hospital consultant sounded the alarm after a short time spent looking into her eyes. She died two years later – just seventeen years old.

Most of us must have at least some indirect experience of the highs and lows of the NHS. Good service and bad, good doctors and bad. It inevitably colours our perceptions of whether or not the NHS as a whole functions as we expect. Are the bad stories too common? It certainly seems so if you've had some personal contact with one of them.

The doctor moved on some years before we compared notes with that lonely guy in the graveyard. In our daughter’s case, an earlier diagnosis would probably not have made any difference because the tumour was inoperable and incurable.

We didn't have any major issues with her treatment either - once a correct diagnosis had been made. Yet in the case of that guy’s wife, a correct and timely diagnosis could possibly have made a crucial difference.

Is that same doctor still bungling diagnoses? I don’t know, but it skewed our perception of doctors and the NHS. My recent NHS treatment has been good, but my perception of the NHS is still affected by that graveyard encounter all those years ago. Two bungled diagnoses by the same doctor – it’s too much to disguise with platitudes.

Bright-eyed faith in the NHS won’t do.

Electric sales

According to Daily Tech

Ford's electric Focus hasn't had much luck in the sales department during 2012, and this was evident in July's numbers.

The electric Ford Focus, which is a 5-door hatchback electric vehicle (EV) that was first produced in December 2011, had a total of 38 sales in the United States for the month of July.

This was a pretty big drop from the 89 Ford Focus Electrics sold in June. However, for the total seven months of 2012 so far, the automaker has only sold 135 of these EVs.

Climate change certainly has those US car buyers worried doesn't it?