By The Landlord
“Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work.” – Steve McQueen
“I had to get back to work... NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement.” – Tina Fey
”I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.” – Bette Davis
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” – Robert Frost
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” — Oscar Wilde
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." — A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” — Albert Einstein
The smell of damp coats on rows of hooks, of ink, and chalk, of Copydex glue, poster paints, brand new pencil cases and notebooks, pencil lead and shavings, rubber erasers, pump shoes and gym kits, of milk, mashed potatoes, gravy, boiled cabbage and other steaming trays of school dinners.
That distinctive young human fug of classroom apprehension and excitement, that odour of watchful dread and drudgery, the squeak of chair legs and clunk of desks. It all transports me back.
The lingering whiff of cleaned carpet, of bleached linoleum and detergent. The trundle and whir of churning photocopiers and burbling water coolers. Of rushing new-shoe footsteps, banging, clanging doors and clattering lockers. All those creased and poorly fitting uniforms, a rising cacophony of shouts and chatter, and the sudden urgent attention of an electric bell.
Trickles of old friends, and seas of new faces, some greeted with pleasure, others ignored with muted horror. Everyone looks the same, and yet they're also different. It's dreadful, but also familiar.
Urgency, awkwardness, mediocrity, effort, indifference and ambition all trip over each other.
So for most, the holidays are now over, and while September is a season of change, and it might bring a sinking feeling, but also a sense of relief. For some, starting anew, that might be inspiring or energising, dull, or simply comforting. It's a return to the old routine.
It's the old normal. But whatever happened to that, in an extraordinarily unstable world, in which everyday news items are what in the past would have rare events?
Sometimes we need the habitual, the familiar, the regular, like an old cardigan, a familiar tea cup, a desk, a plant, a timetable.
So this week then, it's songs that are something that capture all that with a whole mixture of feelings and stories, set around the setting of returning to school, college or work.
Here are a few images for possible inspiration, all of which combine the odd and the ordinary, some of which are from my formative years and a couple of later examples:
Grange Hill (1978-2008) with Tucker Jenkins and co …
9 to 5 (1980) with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton
Election (1999) starring the precocious young Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick as her teacher
Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Idaho-based oddness starring Jon Heder
And while there are many other TV and film dramas with such settings, I leave you with a couple of video clips, capturing the droll and the comic. While US readers may be more familiar with their own new version of The Office, here is a classic scene of the humdrum and awkward, as David Brent tries to do Big Keith's appraisal.
And finally, a little more of that masterpiece of school-setting feature films, Bill Forsyth's 1980 Gregory's Girl, starring John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and co and an overall fantastic cast of unknowns, with all the brilliant embarrassment, awkwardness and ordinariness of teenage routines, set in a normal Scottish secondary school. There are many truly brilliant scenes, but here's a charming and slightly alternative clip summary, filled, not with dialogue, but with small, habitual noises – whistles, hums, giggles and more – a fantastic squirming cinematic symphony of awkwardness with group acting at its best - mixing oddness, eccentricity and perfect moments of adjustment:
So then, who is this week's office manager and school corridor monitor? After a stint in the art department, it's the geography lesson-rich Loud Atlas! Place your songs in the tray below for the school and work bell going off at 11pm on Monday evening UK time. Alright, everyone, back to work then ...
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