FraserWords

HERE’S Frankly Fraser for the week beginning May 23^rd, 2011.

HOW nice to hear from so many people after this column made its debut as a website-only delight last week, shorn of the space it has occupied in the Cornish Guardian all these years. Old friends and colleagues, and new, took the trouble to comment or e-mail. Thanks.

I do hope you’ll all stick together and use the comment facility – the newspaper column’s strength was always that it was a forum for debate.

There was widespread sympathy with the fears for the future of small Cornish primary schools which I expressed here last week – and a mass of ideas to pursue. For example, down on the Lizard, a group of schools is exploring working together as a co-operative.

I mentioned that Cornwall Council had been laudably quick in preparing a response to Government proposals for a national funding formula which everybody agrees may be very dangerous to small schools. Cornwall has 118 schools with less than 120 pupils so these plans could change Cornwall’s community landscape.

This week, having read that response, let me temper the praise by suggesting Cornwall Council may better connect with its public if it avoids leaden phrases such as “the shared culture of the education community in Cornwall can act as a powerful influence to hold the educational offer as a coherent and cohesive one for children, young people and families…”

That criticism apart, Cornwall is making sure people prepare for change. Personally, I believe we should try and adapt to change without making decisions we’ll regret when our next political masters hand down dogma-driven directives about the education system for no other reason than their own narrow party political beliefs and ambitions.

For example, schools that decide to opt out of the established system and become academies will not only take money from non-academy-school children, but will also land themselves with massive responsibilities in law that may well haunt staff and governors for decades to come. Good luck with managing employment law on your own, chaps!

We have to plan for a future when the only definite thing is that there will be yet more change. I often wonder what sort of education system or health service we would have in this country if it hadn’t been for the endless, dogma-driven tinkering over the years, of which this will be merely the latest sorry chapter.

MAYBE ‘StentsRUs’ has the answer. A French exile, he thinks our education problems would be solved if the card game euchre was taught in Cornish primary schools. I’ve played against the fellow in question, and I’m in agreement – so long as it isn’t taught by him…

Euchre lessons would certainly emphasise our cultural difference: the game’s as Cornish as a pasty. I’ve seen web references to euchre being invented by German or Dutch settlers in Pennsyvlvania, but as all Cornish folk know, this is nonsense: the game has travelled around the world in the back pockets of the Cornish diaspora.

Some have brought it back – at our local we played a visiting group from Canada a few years ago in an impromptu international (we came second, tragically) and the game is popular wherever there are mines.

If you’re among the many who wonder what the heck is going on when anybody mentions euchre, can I recommend the St Austell League’s website, www.staustelleuchre.com for a concise description of the complex rules?

Further afield, there are any number of websites available if you want to play the game, download programmes or even download an app for your iPhone. There’s even a Facebook page, Lord help us.

I HEARD from Switzerland after last week and was enormously gratified to be described as a ‘Robin Hood’ – possibly the nicest compliment I’ve ever had on the column.

But our correspondent raised at least two interesting talking points.

One, what is the correct etiquette for the end of the world, which came and went on Saturday evening. These days, should one e-mail? Text with a frowny-face symbol? Post a goodbye on Facebook?

And second, the use of language that infuriates. “I feel good” rather than “I feel well” jars with our correspondent. I detest the phrase “meeting with”.

Over to you.

AND finally, an old colleague from way down west took my Tony Hazzard and Tom McGuinness rock star anecdote and raised me a Chuck Berry: “I was present at the St Erth Festival in the 80s (headliner Meatloaf – yes really). I was in a phone box on St Erth Station talking to my wife when I saw a short, wizened, undistinguished black man in an overcoat get off a train holding a guitar-case. ‘Just a moment,’ I said to her, ‘but I think I’ve just seen Chuck Berry getting off at St Erth.’ Twas indeed he.”