The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

In which I reflect on the year that was... I awoke in a cold sweat in the early hours of Boxing Day. I was staying at my Mum and Dad's for the first time since last Christmas and found my heart racing after an anxiety dream. These are not unfamiliar to me, usually some real-world based scenario that causes great anxiety and can leave me feeling unsettled for much of the day. Sometimes my brain struggles to develop original programming for dreams and so will broadcast a repeat. This dream was a replication of a dream I had exactly a year before and was based around going on teaching placement and being completely shit. Due to dream logic being non-sensical, my brain was able to fill in the gaps it had last year because said experience is now in the past rather than in the future.  As I said, anxiety dreams can leave me feeling unsettled for a fair portion of a day when they occur. Not this time. I blinked my eyes open and realised I was in my old bedroom at my Mum and Dad's hous...

It's time for my list of the best films of 2023. Films eligible for this list are those that were released in cinemas or on steaming in the UK during 2023- this means there could be some films that were released in 2022 in the US and that there might be films from other lists online that are conspicuously absent here because they have yet to have a UK release (I'm looking at you Poor Things ). I've also included where you should be able to see each film should you be so inclined. 10: Pearl (Rent Online) I enjoyed Ti West's 2022 horror film X  but it turned out he secretly made a prequel at the same time. Pearl sees Mia Goth reprise her role as the villain from X. In 1918 Pearl is living on an isolated farm during the Spanish Influenza and she is desperate to escape and become a dancer. It takes cues from the Golden Age of Hollywood with inspiration like The Wizard of Oz , though Pearl's interactions with a scarecrow are somewhat different from Dorothy's. Whilst ...

In which I share some wildlife highlights... Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some end-of-year posts. As you may know, I am very much into my wildlife and I have been very lucky to have had some utterly incredible wildlife encounters in 2023. To avoid this being a novel-length post I've kept it down to ten moments and they are, more or less, in chronological order.  Red Squirrels I managed to attend an event on the beautiful Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour back in April, an early morning walk before the island is usually open to the public. This in itself was great but we could stay after the walk had finished and the island was still very quiet as it had only just opened. Brownsea Island is home to one of the few populations of red squirrels in the South of England. This is our native species of squirrel that has been lost from the majority of England due to the arrival of grey squirrels from North America. Early morning in April is the peak time to see them and I heade...

In which I discuss my favourite TV show... "Run!" said the man and in that moment my life changed. It was the 26th March 2005 and Doctor Who was on TV. My parents had both watched the original version of the show when they were growing up in the 70s and I'd had some vague exposure to it before but this crazy episode with walking shop dummies and a burping dustbin really caught my attention. I was hooked immediately.  I'd been into things before but never in quite the same way. The timing was rife for the early days of social media and Wi-Fi becoming more widely available meant the internet wasn't just restricted to the family computer on dial-up. I devoured every episode and my obsession grew and grew. I went back and watched the previous forty years of the show, getting to grips with the old-fashioned feel of 60s television. I read Doctor Who books, listened to Doctor Who audio plays and played (rubbish)  Doctor Who video games. I did location filming tours and v...

In which I get annoyed at everyday things... Is becoming increasingly more grumpy a part of the aging process? There are lots of big things to be angry about and I certainly am angry about them, but as I go about my everyday life I find the tiny irritations really wind me up. It's time for Game of Moans, Strictly Come Groaning, The Great British Hate Off, The Despair Shop... (I could almost just do a whole list of these!) One of the most annoying things I do is go to the supermarket. By the time I arrive back home, I am filled with inexplicable rage. First of all, I have to jump in the car and drive there. I do not claim to be a good driver by any means- I'm frankly pleased if I make it to my destination without having hit anything. But my reactions are fairly good. This doesn't seem to be the case with many drivers on the road. I live in a busy town with a lot of traffic and it is so annoying when drivers fail to pull out in perfectly good gaps in the traffic.  The most an...

In which I do some imagining... I thought about writing an angry piece about world events today but in the end, I settled with something much lighter. If you enjoy this experiment do give it a like wherever you saw this posted and I may well write a volume 2 at some point.  Most Sunday mornings I can be found sitting in the McDonald's near the cinema I go to having a coffee and an egg McMuffin. It's usually fairly quiet at that time but there is a steady flow of people passing through. I like to watch what's going on and imagine the stories of these people. Over the last few months, I've been constructing little vignettes about the people I see... A couple in their 50s walks across the car park, a tangible tension between them. Kevin is trying to quash the guilt after spending yesterday afternoon in Natalie from work's bed rather than on the golf course as he had claimed. He must remember to text Paul to remind him to cover if Hannah asks. Hannah meanwhile is actual...

In which I discuss how dyspraxia affects my job... The 9th-14th of October is Dyspraxia Awareness Week and as I have for the last few years I'm sharing my own experiences as a way of spreading awareness. For quite a long time I worried that dyspraxia would be a barrier to me becoming a teacher but the past year has taught me that I can find ways to manage the difficulties it can bring. I didn't feel that it affected my qualification too much, other than a period where I had to learn how to write in cursive handwriting and write it on a whiteboard at a sensible speed that was also legible and big enough for students at the back of the class to be able to read. I have largely found that with small practical things like this the solution for me is just lots of practice. A neurotypical person could probably master this without a lot of effort but if you'd have wandered into that classroom of an evening for a couple of weeks you may well have found me randomly writing the alphab...

In which I reflect on why conspiracy theories are concerning... Perhaps the most worrying outcome of the pandemic has been the rise in the belief in conspiracy theories. Previously these were views held by a tiny minority of the population and mostly revolved around relatively silly ideas like pop stars secretly dying and being replaced with a lookalike. Now there is a concerning proportion of the population that believes that the government is trying to control people with vaccines and that there is a global ring of celebrities who are trafficking huge numbers of children, as well as various other insane ideas.  How has this happened? Several researchers and journalists have found a clear correlation between the wellness community and conspiracy theories. There seems to be a direct line from mainstream ideas like yoga and meditation through to things like crystal healing and then onto full-on conspiracy theories. These ideas are spread on social media; you watch one video about cr...

In which I wax lyrical about The Jungle Book ... For reasons that I may eventually discuss, I recently found myself watching Disney's 1967 animated classic The Jungle Book . It's a film that holds a very special place in my heart. This would be my go-to VHS for many years. As long as I can remember, The Jungle Book was there. Even now, I kind of want to be Mowgli.  The animation is superb. It's a really clever balance between managing to make the animals look very much like animals whilst being able to anthropomorphize them at the same time. The designs reflect the characters really effectively too- Baloo really looks friendly and laid-back. The animation of Mowgli is really good too, allowing him to be able to attempt to replicate the other animals and also giving him facial expressions which give him more personality- he's one of the most expressive central characters in Disney history.  The film also contains some of Disney's best voice work. Sterling Holloway, ...

In which I reflect on a year of being veggie... It's now been a year since I decided to become a vegetarian. It still feels like something of a novelty but I suppose that can be put down to the strange sensation of time passing ever more quickly as you get older.  It all began in last year's searingly hot summer when I realised meat consumption was probably the biggest part of my carbon footprint and therefore cutting it out would be a step I could make against climate change. This year's summer couldn't be more different with the UK experiencing slightly lower average temperatures and much higher amounts of rainfall than normal. This has been down to relatively local climate conditions and the world as a whole has had by far the hottest year in human history. Much of the world has been struggling with temperatures around 40 degrees C and the dramatic events that come with them such as devastating wildfires and tropical storms and hurricanes. I may not have personally b...

In which I have some success... I've been meaning to write this post for about a month but haven't got around to it. I'm not sure why. I think there's a part of me that thinks I've fallen into some unrealistic fantasy and at any minute I will wake up.  On an ordinary Tuesday morning, I opened up my emails and received the news. I am now a qualified teacher. I'll be honest, I had to go and have a moment alone because I was somewhat overcome with emotion. There may have been a tear or two.  It feels like a big personal victory to me. I started university in 2010 to gain this qualification but things went wrong in the dying months of the course and I left uni in 2014 without a teaching qualification and a degree that was no use for anything else. I was traumatized by a bad experience and my already low self-esteem hit rock bottom. I basically spent the next six years trying to recover and rebuild without really any direction in my life.  Covid uprooted all our live...

In which I discuss an absurd news story... If you are to look on the website of any right-leaning newspaper for education stories you will almost certainly find articles about schools where students are 'identifying as cats'. Yes, this is widely being reported in sources including The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun, LBC, Metro and many, many others. These articles say that parents of these children are demanding schools respect them, that these children are wearing ears and tails and occasionally are using litter trays in classrooms. Oh, and according to a handful of these sources some children are also identifying as horses and dinosaurs.  This week, the media was whipped into a frenzy. Because this has been reported in the media, year 8 pupils at a school in East Sussex had a discussion about whether a person can identify as a cat and one of them filmed part of the discussion and put it on TikTok. This went viral and the right-wing media jumped on it and politicians start...