The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

The summer holidays are underway after what felt like a very long academic year. It was hugely challenging in numerous ways from staff changes to the ever pesky pandemic. Despite this I have found this academic year hugely fulfilling, enjoying working in a team that have really gelled together well and seeing the incredible progress our students have made. I feel quite proud to say that other than two days where we all had to isolate, I managed to be at work every single day of the academic year, through two lockdowns. I'd like to think that this is the last academic year of covid-related chaos but with the way things are, it seems likely we will have a third. Even so, after a rest I am looking forward to what the next academic year will bring. I mentioned a short period of isolation- this happened a couple of weeks back when our class had to close and both staff and students had to isolate whilst we waited for the result of a PCR test. I'd actually been quite up for a period o...

I've written fairly extensively about having dyspraxia here and the way it affects me in my adult life. I don't really think of dyspraxia that much on a day to day basis. I've come up with solutions to most challenges I face on a regular basis and have ways of going about things that work for me.  My colleagues found it amusing as I explained that I use the same space at every place I need to park at. I recognise that this is perhaps not normal practice and share some of the amusement but it works for me- I feel far more confident at parking and leaving the space if it's one I've practiced at and beside, this method means I always know where my car is. The flaw is of course that it relies on the space being empty and a wave of anxiety does wash over me if one some stranger has dared to park in the space I lay personal claim to.  Whilst I do have my own tactics for getting through everyday life every now and then a new challenge comes along. Usually these arrive comp...

Until this weekend I had a certain level of sympathy for Matt Hancock. Generally the UK's Health Secretary isn't really in the public eye in the same way as some of the other members of the cabinet but only a few months into his tenure and he had to deal with a global pandemic. There never seemed to be a moment when he looked like he knew what he was doing and he couldn't cope with being interviewed on camera at all, always appearing like his programming still had some serious bugs. There was the moment he attempted to cry on camera which was unconvincing to say the least and the bizarre moment he talked to a Sky News journalist and then suddenly jogged away down the street. Even Boris Johnson called him 'fucking hopeless'. As much as I was continually frustrated about the decisions the government made I'd felt that Hancock was just a decent man (or possibly android) attempting to do his best in a difficult situation.  But no, Hancock turned out to be a massive ...

Since moving to Bournemouth at the end of last year I've barely spent any time back in my hometown other than in my parent's house. Over the last couple of weeks though I've spent a bit more time there as my parents are away and I've stayed there for a few nights for security reasons and to feed the cat (not that she has noticed my presence).  I decide to go for a walk, retreading footpaths I've travelled along so many times for so many years, pretty much daily during the first lockdown. I find myself feeling oddly melancholic. I have very much enjoyed living in Bournemouth and on my own but all the same I will always have a huge affection towards my hometown.  I turn the corner at the end of the street and pass the playing field and memories of being forced into activities I didn't have the skill for quickly wash over me. When I was around eight or nine my father took me over there to practice my catching skills- he didn't posses a cricket ball at the time ...

Moving into my own flat and coming out of a pandemic (though we may not quite have heard the end of it yet) felt like an opportunity for self-improvement. It's a concept I had considered as my completion date approached that was sort of put on the backburner during lockdown but as restrictions eased it felt time to get on with keeping the promises to myself. I have discovered that the idea of self-improvement is not straightforward.  At the start of March I began to work on losing some weight. I've never really been very happy and confident about my body and having spent much of 2020 in the house I'd put on a bit more. For the first few weeks I went on a really strict diet and since then I've been relatively healthy with my diet and concentrating on exercising a bit more. I've stepped up with walking to work and despite get soaking wet on a number of occasions I've been able to walk at least four days a week lately. Sometimes it can quite hard forcing myself out...

A little while I was gifted a copy of the book 1000 Movies You Must See Before You Die . I occasionally used it to look things up but last autumn I had a crazy thought- what if I attempted to watch all thousand films, in chronological order of when they were released. It's a mammoth undertaking and last week I finally left the 1920s and moved into the strange new world of the 1930s.  Watching my way through 1920s cinema history has been fascinating. Fortunately the majority of films of this era are freely available on YouTube and most of the rest haven't been too difficult to get hold of either. The first sound film or 'talkie' wasn't released until 1927 and really until the turn of the decade most films were silent. Watching a silent film feels like a very different experience. It requires a level of concentration that we're not used as modern film and TV viewers. There's no way you can follow a silent film whilst scrolling on your phone- you have to watch ...

Let me take you back to the early 2010s. One evening my social group ended up going to Winchester's one and only nightclub, a rare occurrence when we were neither at the student union or one of the many local pubs. I don't think we ever returned to this club because the experience was awful. Drunken men, many more than twice the age of us, were constantly touching up and generally giving unwanted sexual attention. I remember being full of anger and doing everything I could to fend them off.  Bar a few other occasions, that's pretty much the limit of my experience in this area. One of the many privileges of being male is that on the whole you don't have to worry about being sexually harassed. My experiences may be limited but I have no doubt that pretty much all the women I know have been sexually harassed repeatedly during their lives- a recent survey found that 97% of young women in the UK have been sexually harassed.  This week allegations surfaced about the actor, wr...