Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Brentford

And your missus does what again? lol

 

Brentford head coach Thomas Frank has been named as one of the 112 in the English Football League to test positive for Covid.

All those who have tested positive will self-isolate for 10 days under EFL and government regulations.

 

Sssssshhhhh!

Most of the times that Me, Mrs B and my brothers meet up, I wince when someone says..."Do you remember when we...". I remember well enough...but I don't tend to say it out loud!

 

Tell me about it.I'm reminded about:-
1. Drunk in a police card in Ostend and dumped in the country.
2.Drunk in a Munich beer hall trying to get Adolf Hitler's barmaid twin sister to smile. I lost that one too.
3. Total embassasment......ssshhh! at a London cheese and wine party.Woke up 24 hours later!!

.....and I still enjoyed beer.Not wine.....amazing that I reached my age. But I was always laughing not violent.

Enough about me. Next gent please....

 

I've been going through a few stories from 'back in the day' and they're not things that I want to own up to even now.

My kids recently reminded me of something that I told them when they were off to senior school - "You can do anything you like in life...as long as you don't get caught." It's still sound advice...and if you get caught, admit to nothing!

 

I think the big thing in my life was failing my 11+ with the help of my Jewish friend Ken Gordon. I had to transfer for most of my final junior school term. He had already had that final year but his age kept him back a year.So he messed about and I,like a twit followed my mate. Hence the failure. Well he passed and went to Tottenham Grammar. I failed and went to Parkhurst Sec Mod. He didn't want to know me after that. Funny thing.My exam marks were so good at Sec Mod,I was told I could be transferred to the Grammar School,but was advised I would be several months behind and I may not catch up. So I didn't transfer.To this day I've wondered about that.But as it happened I've had a pretty interesting life that others may not have experienced.

 

p.s. I do envy your kids Brian. My wife was told she had cancer 10 days after we married.So hysterectomy! We thought of adopting but after arriving in the USA we just could not afford it.I was 39 when I arrived.........

 

I failed the 11+ too. Looking back, I must have done it to **** off my parents and teachers. However, I ended up in the new comprehensive system anyway, so it did me no good. I have since discovered that winning arguments and proving points are significantly overrated.

One of my mates has no qualifications at all but is as smart as pretty much anyone I've ever known...and most importantly, he's happy. My dad was a ****ing genius but was probably never truly happy for a single day in his life. You can either mourn your losses and failures and fret over the person you aren't...or accept yourself for who you are and allow yourself to be happy.

Watching my brother fight to recover from his stroke has reminded me that, how we feel about the life that we lead is a choice.

 

Wise words, Brian!

 

Well Said Brian

I passed my 11+ and ended up Grammar school,and hated almost every day that I went (in which the first 2 years was infrequently). I never fit in, I was academically bright, but always happy to do just enough to get by (I haven't changed). Grammar school made the assumption on the day that you started that you were passing through on your way to University and attempted to teach me many things that I had no interest in. Maths is the best example, certain Mathematical skills are invaluable and should be learnt by everyone and i have used my basic arithmetic skills almost every day, but learning Calculus and the vast majority of algebra and trigonometry is waste of most pupils time, I have never had to solve simultaneous equations and I doubt that 40 years after leaving school I ever will.

I left 3 months before my 16th birthday and have never regretted it, I will admit that I was lucky enough to join a company who were happy with my 5 'O' levels to get me through the door and then promoted based on your suitability for a role and provided additional training as required . When I reached the level in that company where the stress was just beginning to get to me they closed the office and made me redundant but with 20 years service the pay off was decent and I have now spent 10 years in the most stress free environment imaginable, I recently paid off my mortgage and now live debt free, stress free and only working 14 days in every 28, the only stress in my life comes from THFC!!

 

Back in the Sixties, I taught in a Grammar School and then a Sec Mod. Had the best A Level results in my whole career with the 6th formers (yes!) at the Sec Mod (yes!). Tells you a lot about the 11+. After that, I decided to work in Comprehensives.

 

You are taught these things on the premise that :

1. tis better to have been taught / understood them and
then discard them, then never have the ability to learn it all
from scratch as an adult if your life depended on it.

2. unless you can see into the future, you cannot say
what of your school education will ultimately be a waste
of your time.

 

I had a feeling that you would respond! In my opinion and experience It is not better to be taught aspects of a subject that frequently put people off and cause them to struggle with said subject, most of these more advanced mathematical topics are taught as you need them if you wish to study Maths and Sciences at A level and beyond. I wonder how many employers who ask for a maths qualification are worried about your ability to solve equations or more worried that you can add, subtract etc. If I had been offered the choice at 14 of just doing a basic maths qualification I would have jumped at the chance, I knew that I was not going to be a student of the sciences and so did lots of others at my school.

My Maths experience is also confirmation of the difference good teachers make. At 14 my school split the 4 alphabetically ordered classes in to new classes based on exam results - the top 25% in the top set, the bottom 25 % in the lowest set. The middle of half the year (the average Joes like me), were split alphabetically, 2 years later the difference in 'O'level results between the 2 middle sets was stark, from my set 6/30 got a C or above, the other set 28/30 got a C, they were taught by an excellent maths teacher who had taught me in the 2nd year, we were taught by an ex Phantom pilot who was fresh out of teacher training, great bloke but at that stage not a great teacher.

 

Ostend? That's Belgium isn't it?

I was on a stag weekend with about 15 other guys going to Amsterdam. The friend who was getting married worked on the Ferries so he got everything at crew prices. We got a bin liner full of ice and bought every bottle of champagne on the ferry and drunk them all, then hit the dutch gin.

Two of us decided to have a pissed play fight on the train from the Hook van Holland into Amsterdam, which wasn't very clever, as it got out of hand. Everyone else left us and we got split up. I went out for a night in the red light area alone, drinking, spliffing etc. after which I needed somewhere to sleep. I still had plenty of blood on me from the fighting and being pissed/stoned no hotel would take me, so I found a train with the lights off in Centraal Station. I slept there.

On awakening, the train was moving, I looked out of the window and saw cars with white number plates with red letters so I figured I was in Belgium. I then noticed my feet were no longer wearing the brand new DM's I had been wearing the previous day. I then checked my pockets and found, money, credit cards, passport and tobacco missing. Sh!te methinks. Anyway, first stop was Antwerp where I got off, I checked the trains back to the Dam and got on the first one. I was OK until the train crossed the Dutch Border where the Dutch officials wanted to see my ticket, I told them to bugger off so the arrested me. When we got to Den Hague, they took me off the train and took me to a room/cell on the Hague platform. I explained the situation and they said you are not getting back on the train without any money and threw me out of the station. They told me to try the british embassy.

What a waste of space that was. I explained the situation to a rather rotund red faced clerkish character and advised him that I needed to borrow some money to get back to Amsterdam, find my friends and finish the stag weekend. He surprised me by saying 'this is not a bank sir'. I told him that I knew I wasn't a bank but I needed some money. He shook his head and said that he could provide me with a ticket home and a travel document in lieu of a passport. I said 'I don't want to go home, I've only just got here'. 'How about shoes?' He replied 'we are not a cobblers either sir'. I was getting pissed off by now, I said 'I don't suppose anyone smokes?' He shook his head again. 'Not much point of me being here then is it?' I said and left, then found the road heading towards the Dam and started hitching.

Along comes a big American Car driven by an American, who stopped. 'Why are you covered in blood?'/'I was mugged'/'where's your shoes?'/'muggers took them'/'Where you going?'/'Amsterdam'/'I'm going to the American Consulate, jump in.' Strange chap, every time he saw a windmill he stopped on the hard shoulder and took a photo of it. It took a long time to get to Amsterdam, there are a lot of windmills between Den Hague and the Dam, but get there we did.

To recap, me, no money, no passport, no shoes, no tobacco, bit bloody, nowhere to go. Then I saw a generous dog-end in the gutter, I picked it up, but then I realised that I had no lighter. The first person I saw smoking I asked for a light. He'd seen me pick up the dog-end and gave me a packet of cigarettes with about 15 cigs in it plus a lighter, brilliant! things were looking up. I lit a cigarette, walked towards the red light district, turned the first corner and ran into all the guys I'd travelled over with except the one I had a fight with. 'Where you bin? Where's your shoes?' / 'Antwerp, stolen....blah blah blah'

The guy who was still lost could tell a story just as incredible as mine, we didn't find him until the ferry back, he'd lost half of his clothes, his money and was nearly raped. But that is another story.

I bunked on to the ferry on the return trip and then talked my way through British Border Control. Two nostrils full of cocaine made that relatively easy!

 

I'm speechless!!!

 

You teach mathematcs topics in :

1. the order that they are needed (the axiomatic process)
2. a manner that shows real world application

#2 is very important, because it is the key mindset
differentiator between scientists and engineers.

 

And if you don't want to be either - then it's an unnecessary burden on the student (in my opinion)

 

You should sell the script to Guy Ritchie

 

I didn't want to be a historian, but I still got an O level
in 20th century history,

I didn't want to be a cleric, or a theology scholar, but I
still got an O level in RS.

I didn't want to be an interpreter or translator, but I still
got an O level in French.

All of them are irrelevant to the qualification I finished with,
and the professions my career has entailed.

But I am a better scientist and engineer by virtue of having
done them.

 

As an engineer, most engineering applications can be solved by engineering software, which solves millions of iterations/simultaneous equations and outputs answers. The mathematical understanding and methods, inverting matrices etc. is only needed by the software developer. Most engineering applications are repetitive. The ability to check the output, i.e. summate shear forces at an abutment and check against a know value is what is important. QA to validate the output is simple arithmetic.

The scientist, I guess has to be the developer, as in the case of Neil Ferguson, and without relatively easy methods of QA to validate, there is a much higher probability for errors to creep in. Particularly where software extrapolation is involved.