English school exams are fatally flawed

Covid-19 has brought exams firmly into attention with each of the UK regions struggling to find fair ways of assessing students when many of them have been forced to either miss lessons or receive a lesser education online. 

In all this the assumption has been that we must hold final exams if we can as they are the best way of assessing students, an assumption that led Gove to drop both continual assessment and AS levels.

It is an assumption that is wrong.

Exams are inaccurate

This is clearly true. I do not think that anyone expects that if a class of children took the equivalent exams, say a Geography GCSE, five days in a row that they would all get the same marks every time.

The question is not, therefore, whether exams are accurate or not but how inaccurate they are.

How inaccurate are they?

Surprisingly nobody seems to know. The best that I can find on my Google search is an Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation paper from 2010 that states, "The results showed that, for the GCE and GCSE units analysed, at least 89 per cent of all candidates with a particular grade (other than the highest or lowest grade) have true scores either in that grade or immediately adjacent".

That does not strike me as being particularly accurate and that statistical analysis is supported by the number of successful appeals against grades. Statistics published by Ofqual show there were 1,240 appeals in 2019, up from 857 in 2018. A total of 675 of the appeals were upheld, up from 406 the previous year – an increase of 66 per cent. These may be relatively small numbers but that is not the point, they are just further evidence that exams do not always give the correct result. 

That exams are inaccurate is not an opinion, it's a simple fact, yet most commentators talk as if they were perfect.

Sadly even education professionals make this mistake. When I was a school governor an LEA Inspector was concerned that our Teacher Assessment grades varied significantly from the results of the subsequent exams and the firm assumption was that the exams were right and the teachers were wrong. I asked them how accurate the exams were and they had no idea, to be honest I am not even sure that they understood the question.

Exams are just one data point

Many people will remember dealing with inaccurate measurements in school science lessons and part of the solution is simple, repeat the experiment many times and assess that actual results from the spread of results achieved.

So, if the class did take the equivalent exams five days in a row we would have five results for each child to work with and could, for example, take a simple average (mean or median, there are arguments for using both methods) of the five results and use that. This would not be perfect, five is still a small number, but it would be many times better than what we actually do.

Continual Assessment may have issues with personal biases etc., and I would not want to deny that, but it does provide a lot more data to make the final assessment from than a single exam ever can and there are ways to address the other concerns which would make some form of Continual Assessment a fairer method.

This, of course, is how assessment works in most workplaces during the Annual Appraisal process with employees having to cite examples of their work throughout the year as well as seeking feedback from multiple sources.

Conclusion

One data point that is measured imprecisely can only ever be right by chance (like a stopped clock) and that is why exams as used in English schools are fatally flawed.

I made it to Hatton Cross

Most of my long walks are ad hoc and unplanned but I have also done some well established routes like the Thames Path, Capital Ring and London Loop, all of which pass very close to where I live. Of these London Loop has proved most problematic with me losing my way in Hounslow Heath. Twice.

This day I was determined to complete London Loop Section 9 Kingston Bridge to Hatton Cross and I enlisted the help of Google Maps which has a copy of the route that I could copy to my maps and view on my phone.

The first part of the route was of my own making, partially because it was easier to cross the Thames at Teddington than at Kingston and partially because there were other places I wanted to go.

I did join London Loop for a while in Bushy Park but then I took bit of a detour which included a longer section of the River Crane Walk because it is pretty and I knew that I could get a coffee in Kneller Gardens.

I rejoined London Loop as it passes under the A316.

From there it was largely a matter of following River Crane as closely as possible.

I was more confident about Hounslow Heath this time and Google Maps did the job, it helped me to turn left, just above the "H" in "Heath" when I saw nothing on the ground to suggest this. That is where I went wrong the second time.

The other wiggling in Hounslow Heath was all part of the route and helps to show why it is possible for people like me to lose my way there. The first time I missed the doubling back above the "un".

I also managed to avoid my previous error of confusing Duke of Northumberland's River for River Crane just north of Hounslow Heath and I managed to keep on the correct path all the way to Hatton Cross.

This section was new to me and that helped it to be my favourite section on the day. The other reasons for liking were that I saw just two other people and for most of the time I was walking on a raised wooden path through trees. It was hard to believe that I was almost at Heathrow.

I was tempted to continue along River Crane but a dual carriageway, tube line and Heathrow all got in the way at the end of the section and it was a lot easier to hop on a 285 bus which took me almost all the way home.

My extended route was just over 20km and took me just under 4 hours. The slightly slower than usual pace, 5km/hour, was due to some route checking and correction along the way and, to be honest, a few pauses to take out Pokemon Go gyms.

River Crane very much dominates this section of London Loop, and rightly so as it is relentlessly pretty and universally well maintained. My decision to include more of if at the start was a good one even if that meant tramping further through the mean streets of Fulwell (and other indistinct suburbs) to do so.

Having cracked London Loop Section 9  I now have my sights on Sections 10 and 11 which will get me all the way to Uxbridge.

Walking with Google Maps

Why I am doing this

I walk a lot, around 30,000 steps a day at the moment, and I use maps several times a day so I thought that it was about time that I documented my experience, good and bad, of using my most common tool, Google Maps.

The last time that I wrote about maps was in 2009 and things have improved since then.

I have also been asked by the local Ramblers group to say something about editing maps and so I will cover that in this longer piece.

Planning a walk is easy

This is probably the best thing about Google Maps and the reason that I use it the most.

Like most mapping systems that I have (but not the free OS one) it can draw a walking route between two points. For my main weekly walk, with a friend when permitted, we think of a part of Greater London that we want to explore and let Google Maps do the rest.

In this case we fancied going to Hampstead Heath and chose two endpoints that are on direct train routes from Richmond, we can get to Embankment on the District Line and back from Hampstead Heath on the Overground.

Google draws the most direct walking route between the two. Sadly the distance is given in miles (this can be changed but you have to do it every time) and the walking speed is a little slow but it is a useful start for planning.

As drawn, this route is too short and too ugly, in particularly it avoids the two large parks in the area.

And this is where Google Maps comes up trumps, you can simply select a point on the route and drag it as required. 

You can do this multiple times to add all the places and routes that you want to include in the walk.

I do not play around too much, the aim is just to get a better guide and the decisions on where to actually walk will be taken on the day according to the prettiness of the landscape and the condition of the paths.

By adding a loop in Hyde Park and a route through Regents Park our planned walk increased to a more meaty 14 km with scope to increase it further on the day.

A (small) library of walks

Having created a route on Google Maps it is possible to save and share it. There is no point in doing this for our ad hoc routes but, luckily, other people have done it for established routes like London's Capital Ring.

This map is not on the Capital Ring page and I found it through a simple Google Search, on the optimistic assumption that someone would have mapped it, and they had. The map is here.

Unfortunately the use of Google Maps is inconsistent among walkers with many other technologies also being used, most of which lack the familiarity and near ubiquity of Google Maps.

Keeping track on the walk

The big advantage of using a mapping app on your phone, as opposed to a static guide, picture or pdf, is that you get a little blue dot showing where you are on the route or, as often happens to us, if you drift off the route it is easy to see how to get back on it without necessarily having to retrace your steps.

I have done walks using the "turn left in 150m" type instructions and having got lost it has been quite an effort to work out where the mistake could have been made and/or what could be done to correct it.

Adding missing paths

Google Maps is pretty good at including paths, it is better than Apple Maps but not as good as Open Street Maps (I use the Pokemon Go interface continuously while walking) but there are times when things are missing and this can be frustrating.

These errors, in my experience, are usually small in size but significant in impact. Here, for example, Google does not know about the two (!) paths from the end of Mead Road to Lock Road and so takes you all around the block. Having been slightly derogatory about Apple Maps earlier it is worth saying that they do know about these paths.

Similarly, until recently Google Maps did not know that you could walk through Sheaf Gate or Sandy Lane Gate to get into Bushy Park, despite the rather obvious clue in their names.

The reason that Google knows those paths now is because I told it.

Within Google Maps it is a simple matter to "Report a data problem" but I find the approval process a bit hit and miss. I had to try adding a new unnamed path through Sheaf Gate a couple of times before it was accepted.

One error that really annoyed me, a long path stopping pointlessly just 2m short of another so that they were not connected, took me several attempts to get changed, this despite the fact that a lack of any obstacle was very clear from the satellite view in Google Maps. 

Likewise I do not know why they would not accept that Sheaf Gate is a gate the first time despite this being clear in their Street View as well as in its name.

It is a question of being precise in describing the error and patient in pushing the amendments through.

Common problems with maps

Google Maps suffers from some problems that are common to all mapping apps that I have tried:

• There is no indication of gradient so the steep climbs to places like Dawson Heights can be something of a shock, outside of the centre London is quite hilly!
• What is shown as a path can vary from tarmac to unwalkable mud.
• Some green spaces are things like centenaries or golf courses and while these may have paths across them they may be gated and locked. 
• Similarly places like Bushy Park have fenced off sections that are not shown on the map. The counter problem to this is that it does not recognise that you can walk almost anywhere in places like Regents Park, because it is just grass, and are not restricted to the formal paths.

None of these problems are catastrophic but they all lead to adjustments on the fly when I am out walking.

In summary

Google Maps is excellent for planning routes and for tracking progress on the day but data quality issues mean that you have to be flexible and, for example, use other tools as well or change plans slightly as you go. And where you find data errors it is worth trying to get them fixed for everyone's benefit.

Walking from Wapping to West Hampstead to get a beer

During the various stages of Covid-19 Lockdown I have been walking more than usual and one consequence of this is I have not found the time to write about them. Hopefully this post will break that trend.

The monthly BCSA socials have been paused for obvious reasons but the venue, Bohemia House, has reopened and so I arranged to meet a friend there on what would have been the regular date for the social (second Wednesday). 

I would have walked there anyway, the only question was which route to use, and I used the opportunity to visit one of my sons in Wapping and walking from there. The route was to walk east until I got to Limehouse Basin and to follow the Regent's Canal from there all the way back to Primrose Hill before wandering the last few streets in West Hampstead. Google Maps estimated it at 18 km which meant that it was going to be a three hour walk. A simple plan and a good one.

I have walked all of the Regent's Canal and some sections of it many times so I knew what to expect and the walk definitely lived up to those expectations, starting with this typical view from early in the walk.

Here the old lock and the not as old social housing have been joined by very modern looking private housing and a bridge. There was a constant reminded that for most of its life Regent's Canal supported and was surrounded by industry and it is only in recent times that people have started to reclaim it.

There was one surprise along the way and it was a very nice one.

There was plenty of other art along the canal, mostly painted, and I found it a more artistic experience than The Line Art Walk which only has eight pieces, most of which are clustered around the Greenwich Peninsular.

It took me about two hours to get to my former office at Kings Place and immediately after that I had a coffee and a short rest in the recently opened Coal Drops Yard. I deserved that.

A brisk hour later I was at Bohemia House and attacking my first pint of Pilsner Urquell. It was followed by several more.

I also had the mandatory fried cheese but, being out of the habit, I forgot to take a photo of it and Instagram will always be the poorer for that.

The social was, of necessity, a lot quieter than in the pre-covid days but it was still a great evening and I shall be going back in October. I just need to decide where to walk there from.

We have solar power!

We had been put off installing solar panels because our roofs face east and west but we finally relented when invited to join a joint procurement scheme run by Kingston Council with Spirit Energy as the contractor.

It all went very smoothly and we now have ten solar panels on our back roof (facing east) with a total generation capacity of just over 3Kw

Obviously the sun does not shine all the time, even on a bright day, and the panels only catch the morning sun, and then increasingly obliquely, but we are managing to generate around 13Kwh per day at the moment, which we are happy with.

During the design stage we went through the financial models but, frankly, that was not the point. We all need to reduce or consumption of fossil fuels (and their derivatives) and this is one way that we could do that.

The latest version of X-Men is astounding

I have been reading X-Men comics for over fifty years and they have gone through many changes, relaunches and different titles in that time, several of which I have commented on previously. The latest relaunch by Jonathan Hickman is something else again.

Other relaunches have changed the team membership or changed the base location but this relaunch changes everything and it is world building on a phenomenal scale. There are not just new characters or new civilisations, there are new hierarchies of civilisations and categorisations of artificial intelligence. These are explained in all text pages within the precursor limited series that Hickman also wrote.

This breathtaking world building, while of interest in itself, is just there to hold the stories and nine issues into the main title I am gripped by the stories.

X-Men is something of a flagship title for Marvel and one of the best writers of the day is ably supported by one of the best artists, Leinil Francis Yu. The drama in the page below speaks for itself.

It is comics like this that show how superhero comics can do far more than have heroes punching pantomime baddies. I have picked up some of those in ComiXology sales and titles like Uncanny Avengers did absolutely nothing for me and are why I largely stop reading the genre.

I do not know how long Hickman is committed to X-Men for but I will be there for the ride.

A walk on the dark side

The partial lockdown that we are all under to contain coronavirus has, understandably, had quite an impact on my walking.

The main impact is that I am only allowed one exercise walk a day whereas I am used to doing several walks including at least one longish one of at least 90 minutes.

The second impact is on where and when I go and it has taken a few days to find some sort of routine that safely avoids crowds.

The big trick is to walk later at night, starting after 8pm, as there are a lot fewer people around then. Again, no surprise there as most people prefer to walk in daylight when they can see both the pretty things around them and where they are going.

I have also modified my walk to ignore the closest and most convenient bridge, at Teddington Lock, as this is long and narrow which makes it impossible to pass people safely. It is better after 10pm but I do not always want to walk that late!

So the new route takes me over both Kingston Bridge and Richmond Bridge, and through Hampton Wick, Teddington and Twickenham on the Middlesex side. As always there are many options on which roads I walk down, which I choose as the mood takes me, and on this day the route chosen came to almost 17km.

It is good to walk.

The Might Thor by Walter Simonson is one of the best comics series ever

Walter Simonson's run on The Might Thor from 1983 to 1986 is one of the greatest series of comics ever. It is alongside, but not surpassed, by the likes of Frank Miller on Daredevil.

The comics that he both wrote and drew are collected in Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volumes 1, 2 and 3, covering 33 issues from #337 to #369, a total of some 760 pages. It was a joy to read every one.

In my mind Simonson is more an artist than a writer and I have got many comics that he drew for other writers. I love his distinctive style and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to see so many pages of it again. It was very hard to pick just these two examples to try and explain why.

The writing surprised me. I remembered the some of the main these and some of the small scenes, such as the Executioner defending the bridge from Hel's realm that made it into one of the recent Marvel films, but I had forgotten just how much was going on at the same time in the stories and how much had been made of Norse mythology. It is a saga full of trolls, frost giants and a large cast of gods from Asgard.

There is also an incarnation of Thor from another planet (Beta Ray Bill below) and Thor as a frog thanks to Loki's mischief.

I was also impressed with the way that Simonson frequently used dialogue balloons to straddle panels. As a reader this helped the directional flow of the story and as a creator it gave Simonson more space to play with, i.e. the white gutters between the panels, which meant that he could use more words or, by moving them, more space for the art. It was a simple idea implemented effectively and I really appreciated it.

The Might Thor by Walter Simonson is a rich, unexpected and exciting story told with immense skill. Did I mention that I loved it?

War of the Worlds

Spending a lot more time at home than usual is allowing me to hit my rather large comics backlog. I started with War of the Worlds.

The simple premise of the story is that the Martians from H. G. Wells' famous story, were not wiped out by bacteria and went on to win the war. A few humans remained free to fight them and Killraven was one of these.

I have several of the original comics in my attic (somewhere) but I had never read the full run before. It was always on my to-do list and I bought Killraven Masterworks Vol. 1 when it hit the ComiXology sales a while ago.

That 470 page volume included the 65 page Marvel Graphic Novel #7: Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds which I had previously bought a digital copy of to add to my existing paper one.

My driver to read the series was to enjoy the P Craig Russell artwork and this cover shows you why. It surprised me how much of the series had been drawn by other artists but as these included people like Herb Trimpe, Neal Adams and Gene Colan that was a bonus.

The story was constrained, as the helpful foreword explained, by not being allowed to end the War of the Worlds. The result was a series of encounters between Killraven and his small band with Martians and their human helpers. These encounters were fantastical and horrific with the Martians engaged in grotesque activities such as farming human babies for food.

The story telling style was very much of its time, early 70s, with a lot of text in addition to the dialogue. It was nice to revisit that style and I think that there is still a place for it.

What I had completely missed when first reading it was the racial sensitivities of that time and place, particularly the Deep South, and the first interracial kiss in comics was only allowed after much discussion at the highest levels within Marvel.

I liked the story and the way that it was written but, as expected, it was the art of P Craig Russell that I loved the most.

A regular walk through Teddington and Twickenham

One of the features of the Thames locally (and elsewhere in London) is the lack of bridges which, for me, means there are only two crossing places that I can easily walk to; and they are, going north to south, Richmond Bridge, Teddington Lock Footbridge and Kingston Bridge. Several of my regular walks take in two of these, i.e. Teddington Lock and either Richmond Bridge or Kingston Bridge.

That gives me two basic routes and as I can do them in either direction that makes four. Then I can vary each of them as I go to add more variety and interest.

This is an example of using Teddington Look Footbridge and Richmond Bridge travelling clockwise.

There are various ways that I can get to Teddington Lock and the prettiest is to head straight for the river.

On the other side of the bridge there is no path along the river and the main road that parallels it is busy and boring so I usually head into Teddington. Where and how far I do this depends on my mood. This time I went quite a way away from the river before heading past St Mary's University and rejoining the river at Radnor Gardens.

The river disappeared again until I got to Twickenham Riverside, by Eel Pie Island, which is one of the prettiest parts of the route. It is all nice from there until the other side of Marble Hill Park. I could have stayed by the river then but it is a longer route and I was getting late for my afternoon tea (no cafe stops any more)!

Once over Richmond Bridge it is back home along the river and the only question is when to breakaway from the towpath and head home. The quickest route is to do that early, as the river bends at Petersham and the longest is to follow the river all the way back to Teddington Lock. This time I took the medium option and followed the river to Ham House then walked straight up Ham Street and past Ham Common. Ham Street is full of old buildings and is (mostly) quiet.

This variation of the route was 12.5 km and took a leisurely 2 and a half hours.

How to renew your garden waste collection in 12 easy steps

I have had a garden waste collection service from Kingston Council for a few years now and every year the convoluted renewal process annoys me so this year I thought that I would record it step by step.

This is the web page that the renewal letter (not an email) from the Council tells you to go to.

There is a big Subscribe button and no mention of renewal, but this is the right place.

Press Subscribe.

I am an existing customer but the system pretends, for the moment, that it does not know me and starts an address search.

If you are asking for house number and post code then you do not need the full address too. No other website I can think of does this.

Success, it has found me!

Sorry, it has not found me, it has only found my address.

Now it needs to do a second search to find the service at that address, the one that I am here to renew.

We both agree that I have one garden waste bin.

For reasons that escape me, at this point, in the middle of the process, it decides to ask me if I really want to do this.

Basically this is the same screen as the one two back where we both agreed that I have one garden waste bin that I wish to renew.

No, I have not changed my mind since you last asked me two screens ago.

A payment request, now we are getting somewhere!

I minor point but the payment process is embedded in the renewal process and behaves differently. The dark blue square buttons are now rounded and light blue, and Next has been replaced by Continue.

I was about time we had another confirmation screen. This is number three.

All done and the transaction is confirmed.

Note that in this dialogue it uses the word "Confirmation" to mean both "your confirmation is required" and "our confirmation is given".

Saying Thank You is so important that it gets a screen of its own when saying that on the confirmation screen would have done the job.

Weekly walks: Local parks

A lot has happened in the two weeks since my last long walk, all of it related to coronavirus.

Ten days ago I got flu-like symptoms (it was probably flu!) and I started following the then guidance of having seven days self isolation. I was a bad boy and, with some care, went to the theatre on the fourth day and while I felt well enough at the time I had something of a relapse and another four days in bed.

During that time the coronavirus reaction ignited in the UK and we went from just wash your hands to never see anyone else ever again, or something like that. I was not sure about whether to resume our long walks as the Social Distancing guidance said nothing on this but as we would be outside all the time and could avoid busy places we decided to go ahead as usual.

The first concession that we made was to avoid public transport and to walk locally instead and we agreed to start at Teddington Lock.

From there we took the vary familiar path along the river to Kingston Bridge before crossing it to take the less familiar but still well known route along the river on the Middlesex bank to Hampton Court.

We walked through the gardens there before crossing the road into Bushy Park where we headed for The Pheasantry cafe. Like everyone else we took a table outside some distance from anyone else. We were helped in this by the cafe which had put more seats outside and had spread them out too.

We then took the pretty route through the Woodland Gardens, this is the sharp turn west on the map.

From there it felt like we were home though we still had some way to go. I used to work in Teddington so was able to lead us on a quiet route through some back streets before we hit Twickenham.

There we were able to find the river again and head back to Richmond where Colin left me, on the reasonable grounds that we were walking by his house. That was also fair as he had walked further to the start of the joint walk than I had.

We skipped the usual congratulatory beers at the end because of our Social Distancing.

I carried on to Richmond Bridge  and crossed back to the Surrey side and the much walked route home. Time pressure persuaded me to catch a bus the final leg.

The statistics of the walk were just oner 19km walked in something shy of four hours. Our pace was slightly slower at almost 12 minutes a kilometer probably because I enforced a few pauses to play Pokemon Go! I do not usually play while on our walks but we were close to home this time and there were some gyms that needed taking out.

If the coronavirus remains much the same this week then we plan to do the same next week, i.e. stay local and only go to a cafe and/or pub if we can sit outside in space. But a week is a long time at the moment. 

The Kite Runner at Richmond Theatre was magical

I had heard of, but never read the book, and that basic awareness was enough to convince me to go and see the touring stage show when it hit Richmond. These shows usually have a high standard of production and know what they have to do to entertain. My ATG Theatre Card again proved useful and I got £5 off my usual seat Dress Circle A25 making it only £28.25, well within my don't-even-think-about-it range.

In the days before I spent most of my time in bed with seasonal flu listening to endless radio reports about corona virus and I was glad to be able to finally get out of the house. Fully aware of both my condition and potential risk from others I did some cautions social distancing by, for example, going into the theatre late to avoid the crush in the lobby and not taking my seat (almost on the aisle) until the last moment.

Almost all I knew about The Kite Runner was that it was set in Kabul and thanks to several significant events, and Rambo III, I at least knew something of the geo-political context. That helped.

The story that unfolded was not that distant from, say, The Far Pavilions, in that it was the story of one man growing up in an exotic country (from our perspective) that is facing conflict, it spanned several countries and had lots of violent and a few tender events along the way. For some reason it also reminded me of Thomas Hardy!

Like The Far Pavilions and Thomas Hardy the story gripped me from start to finish, even though it was impossible to sympathise with the main character who was also the story's narrator. He did some pretty bad things early on and while they drove the story into some unexpected directions they also made the hero a villain.

While we are on the subject of minor gripes, it also annoyed me slightly that the actor playing the Kabul boy/man was not very ethnic looking when a lot of the supporting cast were. As usual the Richmond Theatre website does not give the actor's name which is a shame because, his colour apart, he did a great job and fully deserved the ovation he got at the end.

As hoped, the production was excellent with several nice touches including a musician on stage throughout and a pair of cloth sheets, shaped like a kite, that were used to project images on to. The movement was excellent too with the cast gently rearranging things to make different scenes from a simple set.

The Kite Runner was everything that I had hoped for and more. It was a magical evening.

Love, Love, Love at Lyric Hammersmith was nicely done

Lyric Hammersmith is one of my home theatres, that is it is one of the easiest to get to/from, and so it is one that I go to quite regularly. Of course the theatre's location is not enough of itself but the prospect of a Mike Bartlett play (yes, another one) was enough to get me there and getting Circle Seat A23 for £21 seemed like a great deal.

Pre-theatre for Lyric Hammersmith has long meant eating in the Cafe and Bar beforehand and more recently it has also meant having a coffee and some cake in the ground-floor cafe too. Between the two I went for something of a walk/explore through Brackenbury Village which was good for both exercise and curiosity. The walk kept me away from the theatre for more than originally planned and I had to forego the main meal I had planned and go for a couple of small plates instead, and that turned out to be a great plan.

The central devise of Love, Love, Love was unusual and clever with the play consisting of three scenes in the same family each scene separated by twenty years.

The story started in 1967 and so we also had the "Love, Love, Love' lyrics from The Beatles' song All You Need Is Love.

Scene 1 felt something like The Young Ones with two students and one of their brothers together in a scruffy flat for a date that does not go to plan. This was more chaotic than romantic and there were plenty of laughs too.

In Scene 2 they are a couple juggling teenage children and their own professional and social lives. It was almost My Family. Somewhere along the lines a few wheels fall off a bus.

In Scene 3, and an ice cream later, the parents are living the Baby Boomers' dream with financial security while the two children, for different reasons, are struggling. This was a dark scene and no sitcom comes to mind. Love here became an excuse for not doing more, "I love you but ...". The main point made here was one that I had already accepted and I could watch this scene in smugness rather then shame.

My enjoyment was enhanced by the presence of Nicholas Burns who played the hapless Martin in Benidorm. It is always a treat to discover a Benidorm actor on stage. Surprisingly, his biography on the Lyric Theatre website does not mention this major role, especially when it helps to confirm his comedy pedigree which was very much on show here.

Love, Love, Love did not push any boundaries or stretch any mental muscles but it was funny and clever and nicely done.

Weekly Walk: South London parks

Last week's walk around some parks in North London last week worked well so we thought that we would do much the same thing in South London.

The big difference from me was I knew this area a lot less well and I was looking forward to visiting some new places.

The starting point was somewhat dictated by not being able to use mainline trains before 9:30am so we took the District Line from Richmond to South Kensington and headed south for Albert Bridge.

I had walked through Battersea Park several times, usually when going to Theatre503, so I led the way here and we went to the pagoda, the Festival of Britain Pleasure Gardens (my favourite part), the Bandstand (as seen in Good Omens) and then around the lake.

The worst section of the walk, as I knew it would be, was the section from there to Clapham Common as the profusion of railway lines restricted our choice of routes and we had to spend some time on busy roads. We also walked up Lavender Hill.

Clapham Common was flat, featureless and boring.

The route to Brockwell Park was not bad as we managed to use side streets all the way. Brockwell Park had a lot in it, including a hill which we climbed to get our first view of the day of the City. I knew the park reasonably well from my time at LB Lambeth in Brixton but had not walked along the top of the hill before.

There was another pleasant hop to the cafe at Dulwich Picture Gallery where we had a late coffee break, it was midday by then. Dulwich Park was just across the road and this was the first of my first-time parks. It was nicely ornamental if a little small, even though we tried to find a long route through it.

The biggest hill came next as we climbed Overhill Road (the clue is in the name) and at the top we found the striking Dawson Heights.

Peckham Park was small but had some interesting parts, notably the Japanese Garden in the centre.

We ran out of parks then for a while but Peckham Rye made up for that. It was one of those neighbourhoods dominated by relatively poor and/or recent immigrant families. This makes for a vibrant high street with lots of small shops and lots of people carrying bags of shopping.

Burgess Park was the big hit of the walk. It is something like a kilometre long and, we learned, was created from the Grand Surrey Canal, which I had never heard of.

The last green spaces were Kennington Common and Kennington Park but it started raining fairly hard by then so we did not pay much attention to either of them. This did not concern me as I knew something of Kennington Park from my visits to White Bear Theatre.

A beer was deserved by then and I was taken to Molly's close to Vauxhall Station, our end point. There I paid £4.5 for a third of a pint of decent beer and £5 for a remarkably good toasted cheese sandwich.

The arrival of rain curtailed our walking a little and we ended up doing 23.6km in something under four and a half hours.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Far Right Terror

I love intelligent discussions on interesting subjects and that is why I try to get to the South West London Humanists (SWLH) monthly meetings.

This month we were really luck to get Simon Murdoch, from Hope Not Hate, talking about 'Hate in Britain: anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the Far Right threat' and were doubly lucky in that it coincided with their just published report State of Hate 2020.

I found the presentation before the talk fascinating. I had come across some of this before the breadth and depth of the information was exceptional. It is always good when a talker is fully on top of their subject like that.

My main takes from this part of the evening were:

Far Right organisations (BNP, NF, etc.) are in decline but the Far Right is still very able to get people out for demonstrations and protests. Some of this is built around "personalities" like Tommy Robinson and fuelled by social media.

The rhetoric and arguments of the Far Right have been mainstreamed by the Centre Right including major figures like Nigel Farage, Theres May ("Go home or face arrest") and Boris Johnson ("piccaninnies").

Conspiracy theories are a good way in for recruits; the report gives examples like a gunman who attacked a restaurant because he thought that it was being used by a child sex-trafficking ring led by Hillary Clinton. Conspiracy theorists tend to believe lots of strange things and from there it is a short step to blaming immigrants (or women) for all sorts of things.

There was far more to the talk than that (writing notes while listening is still a skill that I have not mastered) and the report is worth a read to get more details.

The following discussion was less good. There were a couple of people there who wanted to talk about Islamic terrorism despite that not being the subject of the meeting and a couple more who asked questions beyond the expertise of a researcher who contributed to a report - as he tried to explain more than one, the report outlines the current situation and it is up to other people to decide how to respond.

There were some good questions too, and I hope that mine was one of them! I was interested in the mechanisms of the mainstreaming of Far Right memes and mentioned the many appearances of Nigel Farage on BBC Question Time and the way that the programme had highlighted strongly racists comments by a NF Parliamentary Candidate on a recent show. I was pleased that the speaker agreed with me.

The disappointing discussion did not diminish from the presentation and I was glad to learn more about the subject and even gladder that organisations like Hope Not Hate are peering analytically into these dark places.

The Cat and the Canary at Richmond Theatre thrilled entertainingly

This week's touring show at Richmond Theatre was The Cat and the Canary. Apparently the story is strong enough to have been made as a film three times but I have no recollection of ever seeing any of them. However that was sufficient recommendation to go and see it and I booked my usual seat Dress Circle A25 for just £17.25 thanks to an ATG Opening Night Offer.

Just in case you have not seen any of the films either, the premise was, "Twenty years after the death of Mr. West, his descendants gather at a remote mansion to learn who will inherit his vast wealth and the hidden family jewels."

Obviously there were tensions between the distant family members and plans to thwart Mr West's intentions. The questions was who was doing this? This was a whosdoingit rather than a whodunit.

Watching it being done was exciting as the tension was built with devices like thunder storms, and escaped madman and ghostly hands emerging from secret panels. These are all familiar thriller tropes because they work and they worked very well here.

I was not that surprised when we found out whosdoingit but I was just falling into a trap and there were several surprising revelations after that.

The Cat and the Canary set out to thrill and it did that entertainingly.

Kew Orchids (29 Feb 20)

My second visit to Kew Orchids this year was to take my sister there and it was a second visit that I was happy to make. In previous years, before long queues and ticketing, I would visit the exhibition several times; once in-depth and other passing visits because it was a pretty place to go.

We went for the first timed slot of the day, 10:30am, and the careful planning worked out very well. Our 65 bus arrived at Victoria Gate just after they opened at 10am and we were able to walk in via the members' queue with almost no waiting.

We ambled across to the Princess of Wales Conservatory knowing that we had half an hour to get there. Even ambling we were there in about fifteen minutes and were resigned to having to wait for another fifteen so we were very pleasantly surprised to be allowed in straight away. Not only did the remove the need for any queueing but it meant that we had forty five minutes before the next group would be allowed in.

The first big display of orchids was a series of arches in the large central section. Displays like this are best appreciated at a little distance (rather than admiring the individual flowers close-up) and that was a lot easier to do with not many people around. We were back there towards the end of our visit when it was a lot busier and there were several people patiently waiting for a gap in the crowd so that they could take the phots they wanted.

From there we took a necessarily circuitous route and tried to cover all of the main paths in all of the rooms without retracing our steps too often. Without planning, but with good knowledge of the building, I think we achieved that.

The festival seemed less intense this year with fewer staged displays and more flowers embedded in the existing beds. I liked that as I prefer the natural beauty of the individual flowers to the manufactured beauty of the displays.

As this was my sister's first visit to Kew Gardens when it was fully open (the Christmas Lights are a separate thing) we invented a route through the gardens and that worked well too. That had to start with a drink and some cake in the Orangery and from there we went to Rhododendron Dell, Minka House, Bamboo Garden, Sackler Crossing, Temperate House (mandatory) and, finally, The Pavilion to do some shopping.

It was a packed couple of hours and still left us with plenty to do on our next visit.

Blitz! at Union Theatre was joyous

I do not need an excuse to see a musical at Union Theatre having seen so many good ones there and my only problem is finding the time to do so. Blitz! was always on my radar and a visit from my sister (to visit Kew Gardens) was the spur to pick this evening and I dutifully bought three tickets at £22 each.

It was a change in personnel but the same plan; meet in the theatre cafe for a coffee while waiting for the box office to open, secure tickets in Group 1, go to Culture Grub to eat then back in time for the opening of the theatre and to claim seats in the centre of the front row.

All I knew about Blitz! was that it was by Lionel Bart, which was both a recommendation and more than I knew about other shows I have seen.

The first scene hit the ground running with most of the cast on stage singing as they sheltered from an air raid in an underground station. I almost always like songs with lots of singers and I certainly liked this one.

b.t.w. another play that I have seen, The Shelter, told the story of how Churchill was forced to allow working class people to have shelter.

The main story, possibly taking from Romeo and Juliet, was about two local families who argued constantly but two of the children fall in love with each other. A simple but effective premise.

A second theme was about another son who had gone into the army and was home for a few days before going abroad. He was a bit of a jack-the-lad and fell in with some bad people.

The blitz was the other main character in the story interrupting and destroying lives and giving the cast plenty of opportunities to sing anti-Hitler songs.

Having sent the scene quickly and successfully the musical moved forward joyously with plenty to enjoy in the story, the music and the performances. There was quite a large cast and they were called on to do a lot of dancing as well as singing. The movement was superb throughout, as was every aspect of this production. That was hardly surprising given that Phil Willmott's name is on the poster and I know from many past experiences that he creates great shows.

Jessica Martin, as the matriarch Mrs Blitztein, was the star of the show and lived up to that billing. She was more than ably supported by more people than it is possible to mention here. There were many characters in the play telling many little stories and they were all told with flair.

I had expected to enjoy Blitz!, mainly because of the various people involved in it, but it far exceeded my reasonably high expectations. It was simply joyous.

Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: The University of the Future

It is great news that David Gurteen is planning to run several Knowledge Cafes in London this year and good news that I was able to make the first one.

Keeping with the good news, it was held at Regent's University, in Regent's Park funnily enough, and it is always nice to have an excuse to go there. The travel worked reasonably well (Richmond to Hammersmith to Baker Street and then walk) and I got there around 6:15pm which gave me plenty of time to have a few veggie sarnies and a cup of coffee before the event started at 6:30pm. I also had the chance to say "hello" to a few of the other regulars.

The reason we were there was to discuss The University of the Future.

At first glance this is of little interest to me but, on the other hand, I was involved with schools for several years, I like to go out of my comfort zone and I love Gurteen events.

The session was expertly introduced by Peter Sharp who, amongst many other things, has a PhD in Knowledge Management and has worked in the field of business management and professional skills at Regent's University.

In a few drawings (a welcome change from the usual slide format) he explained some of the pressures that universities were under in several areas including money, expectations on all sides, and competition.

That set the conversations rolling. As usual we did these in three rounds of small table discussions (with people moving to different tables in each round) before having a group discussion at the end. Also as usual I took very few notes at the time because the conversations got in the way and what follows is a mix of these notes, additional memories and subsequent analysis in a desperate attempt to produce something coherent.

I do not usually comment on the conversations themselves but it is worth doing so this time because they had a different feel. Having universities as the theme attracted a lot of people from universities which tended to restrict the scope of some of the conversations and they were restricted even further, in my experience, as they seemed to have come with their answers prepared rather than waiting for the conversations to provide some. They were still good conversations, perhaps I felt that because I was an exception to the universities rule (there were others), and I both enjoyed the evening and learned from it.

Peter Sharp opened by contrasting Balir father (50% to go to university) to son (apprenticeships are better) but we never addressed that argument directly as the argument for apprenticeships was not in the room. I think that was a shame as there are clear issues with the universities model and I would have liked to hear how outsiders playing in the same area feel.

If we look at a cube (sorry, I cannot draw this) with numbers of people along one axis (say 0-6 million), their ages along another (say 0-100) and then all the things that universities might provide to students (academic teaching, clubs and sports, social interaction, etc.) then universities fill a very small part of that cube in that they provide some of those services to only 50% of the population for only 3 or 4 years.

There are many other providers of all of these services and the cube is fully populated. The big question for universities, I feel, is deciding where to be in that cube. For example, it may make sense for them to be more engaged in life-long learning so that they can use their skills, knowledge and facilities to provide formal education after graduation instead of leaving this to professional bodies (e.g. Institute of Chartered Accountants) and probably the easiest way to do this would be to absorb such bodies.

Michael Porter famously said, "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do" and I think that applies here. There are lots of things that universities do (e.g. sports) and/or are interested in doing (e.g. teaching life skills like critical thinking) that may be best left to others with universities commission these services for their students for the period that the have them.

Part of this is to ensure that useful skills, like critical thinking, are not exclusively the property of the 50% or so who go to university but are available to all. Someone ranted in the final whole-group session on how this focussing reasoning skills on just the elite had enabled Brexit and Trump. It was me.

There are a lot of players and potential customers in the university world, in its broadest sense, and I think university will operate better if they become part of the community rather than just a campus.

[The photo from the event was copied from cooperativelearning.works who also wrote a blog about it.]

Weekly Walk: Around London

This week's walk took a lot less planning and being close to home we could do a slightly longer distance too. My partner in walking wanted to revisit a couple of parks and to explore some of Central London, so we did that.

The only parts of the plan we had fixed were to start at Hyde Park Corner (we can use the tube for free anytime of day), do Hyde and Regent's Parks, head for Tower Bridge and then back to Waterloo.

Things started well and Hyde Park was busy with other people having similar ideas. It got a bit messy as we hit the north-east corner of the park as roads got in the way of the footpaths for a bit. Walking in London is a constant reminder that pedestrians are second-class citizens.

Regent's Park reinforced that lacking an orbital walking route that does not run alongside the road. The pointed shape of our route shows that.

The section onto Tower Bridge was a succession of relived memories of times working in various places across London and while I had not walked the full route before I think that I had walked every bit of it several times before.

Local knowledge came in useful as we looked for somewhere to have lunch and we hit Rosie's Cafe just behind Tate Modern. I had used it regularly when working on a project in Southwark Bridge Road.

We had to finish the day at The Kings Arms in Roupell, so we did.

There were so many highlights along the way including formal gardens in the two parks, almost all of Clerkenwell, Art Deco grandeur in Herbrand Street, listening to the Fleet running underfoot and crossing Tower Bridge.

A surprise was just how busy it was. This was a grey, if dry, day in February and I would have thought that tourists would have better things to do than come to London at this time of year. Apparently not.

For the record, we covered 25 km in 4:18 hours of walking.

Albion at Almeida Theatre ran out of steam

There is something of a Mike Bartlett meme going on at the moment and while not a devout fan of his I will always be interested in seeing his work because of Charles III. Almeida is not my favourite theatre either but it is good enough and has a habit of putting interesting plays on. What hooked me this time was the simple statement, "Following a sell-out run in 2017, The Telegraph’s "Play of the Year" returns to the Almeida".

As is usual when visiting Almeida (and elsewhere, to be honest) I went for the cheap seats and booked Circle Row A Seat 40 for £20. This was at the far end of one side in a section that is often not open as it is hard to see the back of the stage from there but with the stage flung out into the middle of the auditorium the location was fine.

Also fine was the cafe beforehand. Circumstances meant that it was easier to eat at the theatre than elsewhere and the tomato and dahl was delicious and superb value at £9. The bottle of Pride beer was  fine as a drink but the £5.2 was on the steep side.

Albion, as the name makes clear, is a play about England today as we go through the tumult of Brexit. Here a successful business woman, Audrey Walter, was leaving London (EU) to rebuild her own Little England in the rural countryside.

We had village traditions, Polish workers, a reluctance in some quarters to leave London, and uncertain business conditions. It was Brexit laid bare.

For the first half of the play (one and a half hours) these themes were examined and explored with great effect with a range of characters adding different perspectives as Audrey Walters drove into her project with relentless zeal.

Then the interval; came and, as always, I took the opportunity to have an ice cream.

In most plays if I have been suffering from a little lack of attention in the first half the ice cream stirs me and it gets my full attention in the second. This time, and for the only time that I recall, the opposite happened and I found myself losing attention in the second half. The story progressed little (until the final moments) and I did not see the point of it.

It was still funny at times and still interesting but there was too little progression, too little change, to justify anther hour of much the same. Perhaps I missed something but the second half simply did not work for me. I could gladly have gone home at the interval and been satisfied but having stayed to the end I felt disappointed.

Kew Orchids (24 Feb 20)

The annual orchids festival at Kew Gardens is very popular and for several good reasons, orchids being the main one. This popularity has led to very long queues in recent years and to a timed ticket system this year.

I was able to avoid both by taking advantage of one of the early openings fo members which meant getting there by 9am, a time when I am normally thinking about having a second cup of tea in bed. The early start was something of a challenge but it did mean being in the conservatory when it was only busy rather than too busy.

The display seemed slightly muted this year, especially away from the central display and it only took me an hour (!) to see everything.

With fewer extravagant displays to grab my attention I was able to concentrate on the individual flowers; more of an opportunity than a problem. I picked this one photograph as an example of the delights on show.

Kew Orchids 2020 was certainly worth getting up early for.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (23 February 2020)

My turn as quiz master at the weekly Willoughby Arms Pub Quiz seems to come around very quickly and so it is vital that I have a process for producing the quiz.

That does change slightly and in recent months I have been using a theme for the whole quiz on the grounds that should make choosing the subjects of individual rounds easier. I am not wholly convinced that it does but I will stick with the approach until it breaks or I think of something better.

This week it was Cats and Dogs.

I changed the order of the rounds slightly (I should have done that ages ago) so that the potentially easier rounds on popular culture where alternated with the harder rounds. The rounds were music, facts about cats and dogs, films, famous cats and dogs (mostly dogs!), people associated with cats or dogs, and this week's news.

I think it worked OK though it was something of a struggle to find ten people associated with cats or dogs which I think made that the hardest round.

maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre

Getting to see dance in South West London remains a challenge so the opportunity to see maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre was a no-brainer, especially so as I had enjoyed maliphantworks2 there almost two years previously.

This time we went with friends. It was too difficult to meet up beforehand with us coming from three different directions after doing three different things but somehow we all found ourselves in the Old Swan at the same time. It was a pub I knew reasonably well from my many visits to the Czech and Slovak Embassies nearby and while the pub did nothing special the beer and vegetarian fish and chips were perfectly acceptable. They both did the job.

It was a short walk from there to The Coronet Theatre and we made sure that we arrived in good time to enjoy another drink in what must be the most eclectic theatre bar in London.

The performance opened with the main (i.e. longest) piece of the evening, The Space Between, developed with a video artist. Here light and sound were as important as the dancers who were often lost in the darkness only to slide back into view again. Possibly not for dance purists but I loved it.

After a short break we had two short films that had even less dance in them and just about took me to my limit of being able to accept this as dance. Perhaps that was the point. They were still attention grabbing but in a different way.

The evening closed with Duet which I had seen and loved before, and loved again. It was similar to the first piece with the lighting playing a lesser role, that did not make it better but it did make it different.

The dancing throughout was gentle and fluid, no leaps or rolls here, and the focus was very much on the upper body. The deliberate gloom and the clothing his the details and what we saw was shapes rather than gestures. It was a mood to sweep you along rather than something to focus intently on.

If there is ever a maliphantworks4 I will be going to see that too.

Weekly Walk: Richmond to Harrow on the Hill

As with last week's walk, this route was directed mostly by curiosity and the transport network.

On previous walks we had gone through various parts of West London mostly travelling east to west so we wanted to go south to north to see different aspects of these suburbs.

The Overground was the most obvious route home so we set off at 8:30am heading for Harrow and Wealdstone. We had no firm route in mind but we did have a destination.

Initially we followed the river to Kew Bridge, a path well-travelled but it was better than going by bus or train. Once across Kew Bridge we were in new territory where we remained for (almost) the rest of the journey.

Between the M4 and several railway lines was a massive development of flats and the new home for Brentford FC. We were the only people there ot wearing hard hats and we had to wait for overhead operations to stop at one point.

Crossing under the M4 we came into Gunnesbury Park. We started by a pond and left by another. In the middle were a few playing fields and not a lot else.

From there we walked north to Ealing along minor roads that ran in parallel with the familiar 65 bus route. It was quiet on the streets and many of the houses were attractive Victorian brick-built. It was a pleasant enough walk though, being suburbia, there was little of substantial interest.

One of the features of the walk was finding ways to cross major transport routes that crossed ours. The first was the main line into Paddington and to cross this it was easiest to go through the centre of Ealing and to use the bridge by the railway station.

Immediately passed that we reentered side-roads. Here the housing went up a notch ot two.

It was not long before we hit the next obstacle, the A40. My phone kept advising me to turn right and to follow the North Circular but I was never going to do that so once we had got past Hanger Hill Park we turned left and were soon rewarded with a subway under the many lanes of thundering traffic.

That only delayed the problem and we were forced to follow the A4005 for a while, at least that was not as busy as the North Circular which turned towards the west at that point as we carried on going north.

At the first opportunity we came off the main road and headed east for a while into South Perivale before resuming our journey north.

We hit Perivale at a good time for coffee and headed to The Lunch Box where we had been a few months before when forced off the nearby canal due to resurfacing work. I think we both had the same as we had last time which for me was Set Vegetarian Breakfast No. 1 with brown bread and a latte. Good food and great value. Places like that are a highlight of our walks.

It seemed easiest to follow the A4005 after that as it was going our way and was not that busy. We veered off when we saw a sign for Harrow on the Hill and we started dreaming of expensive beers in ancient pubs. It was quite a long detour and as hilly as we remembered from the last time we were there.

Unfortunately we had forgotten, ot not realised, that there are no pubs along High Street in Harrow on the Hill. There may have been some on one of the side roads but they all fell away steeply from the High Street we were not tempted down in fear of having to come all the way back up again having failed to find a pub. At least Harrow on the Hill had given us several nice buildings to look at which was a pleasant change.

So we headed for Kenton.

Kenton is as nondescript suburbia as everywhere around it but at least it had a pub. Sort of. Next to the railway station was The Beefeater, as bland a pub as you could find and with no draft bitters available. I had to have a Staropramen which was OK but a long way off a first choice.

From there the Overground took us back to Richmond in about half an hour. Getting there had taken us a fraction under four hours of walking in which time we had covered almost 23km.