Ridiculous Golf

Hello. Much to my annoyance I am writing this from my library. Virgin’s useless internet went down at our house yesterday morning and still hasn’t started working again. So I am now sat in the library on my laptop. Still, it’s got me out the house. If was for this frustrating reason that no music Monday post appeared yesterday. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait another week for that.

As ever my life continues to be non-existent outside of uni work. Our lectures yesterday morning were about catering for a classroom with children of different races and ethnic groups in. The seminar for this was pretty much two hours of heated discussion with relatively simple questions like “define race” turning into full-on debates. This area is something I might have difficulties with in the future, depending on where I end up teaching. In my upbringing in rural Southern England, anyway of a different race or even religion was very rare. In a school of around three hundred pupils there were only three children that weren’t white British and two of them were siblings. Ten years on and things are still not really that different. Outside of cities in the South of England there is hardly any diversity, though perhaps a small increase since my childhood. I wonder how long it will take before my homestead becomes anywhere like as diverse as most of the rest of the country.

For some unknown reason I had no history seminar this morning, which as you can imagine led to me sleeping for quite a long time. But today so far has been rather productive, with lots of reading towards by incredibly challenging history assignment. The question is “Are skills or content more important in history?” Umm… I have read lots of useful documents this morning which have helped my understanding considerably. Almost all of them were written by important Professors and discuss various methodologies of historiography and spent lots of time trying to decided what history is, with none of them really reaching much of a conclusion. This meant it was all very complicated and in some of the articles I had to read sentences several times before I had any idea what the hell they were actually talking about. My general thoughts on the essay are thus: History used to be about getting facts about the past. Now it is more about reading sources which present these facts and deciding to what extent they are reliable. Therefore whilst content has a significant place in the teaching of history, skills are probably more important. That’s my assignment right there, once I’ve added another thousand-odd words. Simples.

With a lack of internet and even when I had internet a willingness to spend all my time on there, I’ve been having to find other things to entertain myself with. One of these things was Let’s Golf 3D, which I downloaded onto by 3DS using the Nintendo e-shop (I am so down with the kids). This is a golf game which just relies on timing to hit the ball at the right time. My favourite part is how stereotypical each course is of the country they are supposed to be in. The England course is very sunny and green and set amongst stately homes and the like. Clearly the makers have never been to an English golf course. There is also a fox which wanders around some of the greens which I was also going to say was stereotypical but then realised I’ve known two different golf courses which have foxes wandering around the golf greens on regular occasions. Fortunately this stop being realistic when the fox barks exactly like a dog. Foxes do bark but the do not sound like any random dog down the park. Other stereotypical courses include one in Greece, set amongst various bits of Ancient Greek architecture of course, and Mexico, set among Mayan temples. In fact you play on Mayan Temples at times which I’m sure isn’t allowed. There is also the most impractical golf course in the world, in the Arctic Fjords of Greenland. At least they had a sense to make the ball orange so you don’t lose it in the snow. A full review of this fun but incredibly unrealistic game will be here on Friday.

And I have also been going through my box set of Frasier at quite a rate, though I am still only on the second of eleven seasons. By season two the series had really found it’s feet and is utterly hilarious. Frasier’s brother Niles is completely in love with the housekeeper Daphne, despite being married himself, and this brings in some many funny moments. Regularly Frasier returns to his flat to find Niles doing something slightly inappropriate with Daphne, although there is always a perfectly innocent excuse. And that’s just one of hundreds of reasons the show is so funny, but unlike many sitcoms it has lots of serious bits about relationships, romantic and otherwise, which make it more realistic and in fact more enjoyable. I love it.

That’s enough random chatter for now. It depends to when our internet returns to when I next post but, as ever, watch this space. Thanks for reading, come and say hello and have a lovely time until we speak again.