Tony turned to me and asked why I was surprised … “You are not in a cultural wilderness you know.”

I didn’t think that we were … it was just that it was so unexpected … Opera is nowhere near traditional Kyrgyz Music which was all I had seen at that point and it seemed so incongruous at the time.  I learned that the classical edifice we were passing was the Theater of Opera and Ballet.  Tony pulled out a fife som banknote and showed the drawing on the back.  I turned the note over and saw the portrait of Bubusara – the Kyrgyz Ballerina.

The theatre is, in fact, a fine building.  One of my favourites in Bishkek.   Inside is a bit cavernous and can be cold – but it was renovated recently and the ceiling paintings depicting the Kyrgyz as part of the Commonwealth of nations that comprised the Soviet Union are fine examples of Soviet Art and well worth a visit.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I am no great fan of either Opera of Ballet. In my youth, my exposure to both had been extremely limited. As one of only three pupils taking C.S.E. music, I had “studied” one or two pieces and remember being taken to a performance of The Barber of Seville … which is classified as an “operetta”, but that was about it.

For some reason I preferred ballet to opera, especially modern ballet. I sometimes went to see the London Contemporary Dance Theater, and I once went to Covent Garden to see a performance of the Nutcracker.  Opera, on the other hand, was also associated with films of the 1630′s, 40′s and 50′s, with long incomprehensible arias sung by fat ladies who seemed to have little or no connection with the world in which I was growing up.  I could never understand why people would suddenly stop talking normally and burst into song.

Despite this, I wasn’t opposed to musicals per se.  At school we used to put on performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, (for example: The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore), and as a result I had a developed a liking for these comic operas, and for many years I could sing (or warble) the whole of the finale of the First Act of The Mikado … “With aspect stern and gloomy stride, we come to learn how you decide.  Don’t hesitate your choice to name, a dreadful fate you’ll suffer all the same … “.  I could do all the parts: the chorus, Nanki Poo, even that of the soprano Yum Yum.   It was my “party piece”.  These operettas, however, don’t come close to the real “high brow” stuff – not even the Yeoman of the Guard, which is probably the nearest that the pair got to writing a “real” opera.  Apparently, Sir Arthur Sullivan was a talented composer and taken quite seriously in his time, and he loathed the the works of his collaboration with William S. Gilbert, so it is ironic that he is known chiefly for them.  I have to admit that I have never really taken to his more “serious” compositions, but I have only ever heard one or two of his other works.

My brother also took part in a performance of West Side Story … playing one of the Puerto Ricans in the Sharks … and I found that I quite enjoyed it.  I also liked modern shows like Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Little Shop of Horrors, Return to the Forbidden Planet, and the range of musicals by the modern Gilbert and Sullivan, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber … Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita (I was surprised how much I enjoyed Madonna’s performance in the film) … even if they all seemed to so similar.  I also enjoyed Webber’s Cats, based on the poems of T. S. Elliot, and The Phantom of the Opera.

My favourite musical of all time, however, must be Les Miserables.  Several of my friends had been to see it in London and raved about it.  I was not impressed however, as I remembered reading an abridged version of it as a child and finding it very tough going.  A friend’s mother came down to London and I was persuaded to go along with them to see a performance.  I was “bowled over” by it and my copy of the tape of the Tenth Anniversary concert in the Albert Hall – with the finale where 17 Jean Valjeans from around the world perform, each singing a potion in their own languages – has almost worn out.

My general disinterest in Opera persisted until I came here.  I had a friend, Misha, who was the son of our interpreter, who would occasionally invite me to the theatre.  I would thank him for the invitation, but declined the offer.  As I explained to him, the performances would all be in Russian and at that time my Russian was not that good – and I think I might still have difficulty today.  If it had been a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet then perhaps it might be interesting to see it, because, at least, I would know the play and be able to “follow the action”.  On the other hand, most of the plays being performed were totally unknown to me and it would be more like hard work trying to follow the plot than entertainment – and I was bound to miss the finer points in the dialogue.

Then, one day, Misha invited me to the opera.  Without really thinking about it, I started my usual speech, thanking him for thinking of me and the invitation, but I was going to decline because … and then it struck me.  The opera wouldn’t necessarily be in Russian, it might well be in Italian, or French, or whatever, and the dialogue wasn’t as important as the music.  So, I accepted the invitation.  It was a great evening and I was really impressed.  For a small country, with a population of only five million, most of whom live in the countryside, in small villages, where opera and ballet don’t really form part of the traditional culture, I was quite surprised at how good the performances were.  I’m not saying that they would equate with something at the Paris Opera, or Milan, the Coliseum or Carnegie Hall, but it wasn’t bad and, I felt, something that could easily have been successfully staged in a regional theater in the UK.  Anyway, that was the start of something big.

For a year or so  went to almost every performance at the theatre.  Now, don’t misunderstand me … there weren’t that many performances to attend.  The season only lasts for a few months, and there are only two or three performances a week, usually at the weekend: Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Unlike back home, they usually start quite early – about five o’clock.   In fact, I once went to greet one of our first groups of tourists and one couple said that they would quite like to “grab a show” and asked about performances of an opera or ballet.  I had to point out that, I was sorry but: “no chance”.  It was already six o’clock, on a weekday at the height of summer – i.e. out of season.

To be perfectly honest, now that I have seen virtually the whole repertoire, it’s been some time since I’ve back.

A few weeks ago, however, I received a notice about a performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute … and, as I have never seen it, I agreed with a couple of other ex-pats to go along.  We turned up nice and early and had a drink in the bar, ordering another for the interval.  Then, as the bell rang, we made our way into the auditorium and found our seats.  As usual, the theater was not full, which is sad in some ways because the performers put so much effort into their work and clearly derive pleasure.  Because I have never seen it before, I didn’t know the story line and I hadn’t had time to look it beforehand.  Because it’s a fairly new addition to the company’s repertoire, there were no programmes, with a synopsis of the plot, on sale.  To make it worse, as it was all in Russian and I found it hard to follow, but I had to try and explain what was happening to my compatriots who don’t know much Russian.

Still, it was an enjoyable evening … followed by dinner, (and drinks), in a local hostellery.

Playing Rugby for the school

I wouldn’t say that I have been particularly sporting, however, I have “had a go” at many different games over the years.

Most of it my sporting experience was of the “knock-about” variety rather than organised sport.  The trouble with organised sport was that it required talent, skill, training and commitment.  Now I have a fairly compulsive personality and so commitment is not a great problem once I am interested in a subject, and I appreciate the value of training to bring out talent and develop skills … but these have to be present in the first place, and in my case, I am sorry to say, they are fairly limited.

Anyway, as a result of trying so many sports over the years I know the rules of many games and can turn my hand to almost any of them.  I quite enjoyed playing Squash and Volleyball when I was young, but they were never big sports – so there was not much opportunity to play them.    Perhaps that was why I liked them – nobody watching and so less chance of embarrassing myself in public … and not that much competition.  Another reason, looking back on it, why I liked Squash in particular, was that it was an individual sport … so there was less of a sense of letting other members of the team down by silly mistakes or a lack of talent … on the other hand, my hero, (Alistair Cooke), was a great fan of two “individual” sports – Golf and Tennis … I have never played golf and, as a schoolboy, I played one full match of tennis and lost: six-love, six-love, six-love … I never took up Tennis again.

Without much talent and without practice to develop whatever miniscule skills I might posses, I always joke that I was a natural choice for seventeenth man on the fourth team for the Rugby club.  For the record, the Rugby clubs I belonged to only ever turned out four teams … as a result the the fourth team had very few matches and played very irregularly … and, anyway, a Rugby team only fields fifteen players … so I was always the second reserve … the last choice.

When it came to Rugby, my interest in the sport came about almost by accident – like so much in my life.  A friend of mine talked me into volunteering for the school team when I was 14.  Now, ours was basically a soccer school and everyone played football.  There was plenty of talent, and no chance of my being picked for a team.  The Rugby team was different, however, more like a social club.  It was run a retired Army major and we all called him Major, or Sir.  He taught the Third and Fourth Boys Remove classes … basically boys who were never going to do well in examinations and were thought to be “a bit of a handful”.  His military style, hypnotic glare and barking voice probably stood him in very good stead – but he although he instilled fear in everyone who met him, he also managed to command great respect and affection from those who did get to know him.

From a public school and military background he and the Councillor (a similar character who also taught the Boys Remove) were naturals for coaching the school Cricket team.  The Major, however, ran the school’s three rugby teams on his own.   Even though he conscripted many of the his Remove classes into the teams, (those that didn’t play Soccer), there were never enough players.  I turned up for our first practice on Thursday and was told:  “There’s a match on Saturday, be here at nine o’clock and bring two shillings (10p now) for the bus.”  I thought I was going to watch the game and perhaps learn a little … but there were only eleven of us and I found myself in the three quarter line …wondering what on earth was going on.  We lost.  We lost nearly every match. Still, we had fun doing so.

There is a saying that “Soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, but Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.”  I don’t know if that is a fair reflection, especially in these days when the sport is more professional than it was in my day.  (At that time “professionalism” used to be a dirty word in the game.)  There is another maxim that Rugby has a place for all sorts of players … it doesn’t matter how big or small, tall or short, fat or slim you are … there’s a place for you in the team.  I am quite small and certainly not a typical “prop forward”, but that’s the position I played for most of my school career.  Over the years, I have played in virtually every position, except the crucial positions of scrum-half and fly-half.

One of things I learned to appreciate in those early days was the camaraderie of the team.   At first I wasn’t sure.  The Remove boys were renowned for being troublesome hooligans, and   OK, so they smoked … they swore … they fought … but  they turned out to be regular guys with a sense of humour and loyalty.  They were not half as frightening as I, in my timid way had thought of them beforehand.  In the Monday morning assemblies the results of the school’s soccer matches were reported simply: First Eleven versus Nunnery Wood, 1-0; Second Eleven versus Dyson Perrins, 2-3 … and so on.  The Rugby reports however, were full match reports prepared by the Major and read out by the Deputy Headmistress, complete with names and blow by blow accounts.  On one occasion she suggested that as so few people played the game, the results were usually so disappointing, and time was short, (I think the Major was also absent on that occasion), then she might give the report a miss … but everyone in the room, (or so it seemed), let out a groan and so she relented.  I hate to think what the atmosphere in the staff room would have been like if she hadn’t done so … the Major would not have been amused.  Those reports were really important to some of the characters involved … it was the only form of recognition and worth that some people ever received.

When I was fifteen I decided that I wanted to have my Saturdays to myself, and announced that I was leaving the team.  I still remember the look of betrayal on the Major’s face and the way I was ostracized by my former teammates.  As it happens, it didn’t last long … although I liked having my Saturday’s free I also missed the flow of adrenalin and sense of belonging … and I was soon back in the team.

The boys of the Remove classes left school as soon as compulsory schooling was over … so the school’s first team needed an influx of fresh blood from the sixth form, and every year there was a trawl to see who could be persuaded or drafted into the team.  As a result, we tended to have a young, less talented and less experienced team than many of the local schools, and this was often reflected in our results.  The Major never gave up, however, and neither did we.

The Major was a real character.  Rumour had it than in the second world war his jeep had driven over a landmine and he lost half a finger in the incident.  I don’t know how much truth there was in the rumour, but I well remember how he used to point at you with the stub of the finger and the fear it used to instill in even the hardest of characters.  He was feared by all and sundry and just knowing him and being able to talk to him was a source of kudos.  I was walking through the school one day and called me over: “Claytor, come here.”  I forget what he wanted but all of my friends, (“Cream Puffs” – he called them because they weren’t “man enough” to play Rugby … for that matter neither was I, technically, I was only in the team by default because there weren’t enough volunteers to play), stood by quaking in their boots.  When the Major and I laughed together at something, they almost went into apoplexy.

He and his wife took us to see the local first class team, (Gloucester), play a match against another of the country’s strongest teams, (Leicester).  It was the first time I had seen a mass of people engrossed in what was still, not only to us but generally at that time, very much a minority sport.  It was a really enlightening and invigorating experience and I have always enjoyed attending matches ever since, no matter who is playing.

My brother, having passed the dreaded eleven plus, went to a local selective grammar school where Rugby was the major sport and soccer was definitely looked down upon.  Everything he studied in school seemed to be different from what I studied … for example: he learned German whereas I struggled with French; he learned about the Georgians, Tories and Whigs, but my history seemed to stop with the Tudors and Stuarts; he studied weird subjects like economics which I wasn’t to encounter for years.  In Rugby, however, we had something in common.  He was a much better player than I was, and he taught me one very valuable lesson – one I am certain that the Major would have disapproved of: “Don’t worry too much about running across the field to get from one scrum to another … the action has a habit of coming back towards you, anyway.”

Together we joined the local Rugby club and I started playing for the fourths … never rising any further, but content with my weekly run around.  Training twice a week was actually harder than a game … and, in theory, I could have missed it because I was never in the running for a place in a more senior team, and the fourths were always a “scratch team”.

When I went to college I carried on playing, but suddenly I was in more demand as a referee.  Once again, that happened by accident.  The team arrived at a game and there wasn’t a referee and as someone had to do it … I was asked.  As a natural choice for seventeenth man, my skill on the team weren’t really missed and my refereeing meant that everyone else got a chance to play.  The next I was drafted in again, and so an unofficial career as a referee began.  I didn’t go through any of the training or examinations that are normally necessary for such a role – and it showed … but it was only a “scratch team”, a “knock about game” … and I got away with it … most of the time, at least.

When I started teaching the time came for me to pass on the enthusiasm that the Major had instilled in me.  I began simply watching games because the school fields were close to my home in North London, soon I was being asked to accompany a team to away matches and then I found that I was given my own team to coach.  Me.  Coach.  It seemed, and still seems, as if I was out of my league … but there was a need and I stepped into the role.  I was never a great success.  I couldn’t whip up the drive and enthusiasm as other coaches could, but over the years we had a reasonable record of success.

The school had an old boy’s club and I joined it.  So did some of the sixth form and it was really quite funny to running along carrying the ball and have some seventeen year old yelling at me “Pass it sir, pass it.”  We agreed that on the pitch he could call me Ian, but if he ever tried it in class he would be in trouble.  He was never in trouble.

My playing days ended quite suddenly.  I arrived early for a match one Saturday afternoon, to be greeted by cheers and was told to get in the car.  A little surprised, because I thought that the fourth’s were playing at home, I did what I was told.  We got to the ground and I started to get changed. I looked around and couldn’t see any of my regular teammates, but the penny only dropped when they gave me a shirt … it was a second team shirt.  Someone hadn’t turned up and I had been drafted in to take their place.  Once again I ended up in the three quarter line wondering what on earth was going on – just like in my first game.

This time, however, I was well and truly out of my depth.  This was a serious game with serious opposition.  The weather was beautiful.  The pitch was on field under and embankment carrying trains of the London Underground system.   That’s about all I remember.;  Apparently, at one point in the game, someone in the opposition had the ball and came running at me … I tackled him and, so I am told, it was a “cracking” tackle.  I am not sure if that means that it was a spectacularly good tackle, or they could hear the bones crack.  As it happens, I hadn’t broken any bones – but I did suffer concussion.  They were calling me all sorts of name, Peter, Paul, Mary … and I was answering to all of them as if it was my own.  They took me to hospital where the doctor diagnosed concussion and told me to rest, not to read or watch television.  Ok, no problem.  Monday I felt well and went to work – no problem.

Later my shoulder started to hurt and began to swell.  I went back to hospital and had more x-rays.  The consultant told me that one of my vertebrae had chipped and the chip of bone was “traveling” and it had trapped a nerve.  It would probably give me problems throughout my life – sometimes trapping a nerve and giving me pinching pains, but most of the time, I wouldn’t know a thing about it.  However, “it would be better” if I gave up playing Rugby.  So I did.

I continued coaching a school team, but perhaps without the same enthusiasm and conviction as before (and that was never very good anyway), but I still enjoyed going to and watching matches.  It is one of the things I miss a little, here in Kyrgyzstan.  There is a local Rugby Federation and they organize a festival every summer, but to my regret I have never managed to get there.  The Kazakhs have a fairly good team – not quite up to the standard of the Ukraine, but most of the Ukrainian national team play in Europe.  The police have a number of rugby teams – it is thought to promote fitness and character.  I do get to see the occasional Six Nations match, but these days I am limited mostly to reading reports of matches on the internet.

I once saw an advert on the internet for the National team shirt of the Kyrgyz Republic and I thought, “I must get that”, but the site was based in the US and they wouldn’t accept my credit card as my IP address was in Kyrgyzstan … crazy isn’t it … I’m in Kyrgyzstan but I can’t buy the Kyrgyz National Rugby shirt!

I wasn’t particularly good at maths in Primary School, in fact I tended to get “average” grades, but in my last years that I found a liking and (minor) talent for Mathematics … the crucial moment was when we started algebra … x times y equals xy, a times b equals ab … hey, I could that, no problem – even if I had no real idea at that time what was actually going on, it caught my imagination and I was no longer “afraid” of “sums”.  When I transferred to Secondary school I was frequently top of the class, if not top of the year in terms of Maths.

It came fairly easy to me because I was basically “easy going”.  Maths was a set of rules that had to be applied to give facts, most of them involving numbers.  numbers were still abstract things but the rules were fairly easy to learn and apply.  I made mistakes, of course, (we all do), and there were gaps in my knowledge … but the biggest criticism my teachers had seemed to be with my presentation.  (My handwriting has never been that good – and even today my presentation can be quite scrappy.)

I remember the sense of achievement when I was learning about integral calculus and “Solids of Revolution” and accidentally discovered the formula for volume of a sphere when solving a problem.  I already knew the formula, of course, but had simply learned it “rote fashion” and discovering it once more, demonstrating it for myself.

One of the things that I learned fairly late on was that the rules change depending upon the circumstances of the situation … In many ways, to me, as I was growing up, Maths was like a game … you had to know the rules and how to apply them.  If you worked within the rules, you got a result.  It was some time before I realised that, sometimes, in order to solve a problem you have to “think outside the box”, go beyond the rules, at least the rules as know and understand them at the time.  Go in search of new rules … which explain the situation better.  That’s what “the scientific method” is all about.

Think back to when you learned “sums” … maybe you remember learning something like: “five minus three equals two, but three minus five you cannot do”.   I did, and I was surprised a little while later to learn that in some circumstances it was possible that: “three minus five equals minus two”.  Later I learned that it was possible to multiple these “negative numbers” … “a plus times a plus is a plus – a plus times a minus is a minus and a minus times a minus is a plus”.  Ok, so far no big problem … but then we learned about square roots … the square root of 4 is two … actually “plus or minus two” … it could be the result of “plus two times plus two” or “minus two times minus two” … but “you can’t get a square root of a negative number” like minus four.  Imagine my surprise when I came across the “imaginary number” i, (the square root of minus one), and the whole new realm of complex numbers and Argand Diagrams, and ….  Well, I think you probably get the point.  Even in the Queen of the Sciences, Mathematics, just when you thought you “knew” something, you discover that, in fact, you don’t …

Statistics was worse … just when you thought you had learnt a body of knowledge, say about the Normal Distribution, levels of significance and Confidence intervals, you went on to discover that it wasn’t much good at dealing with small populations, so you had to learn a whole new set of theory associated with Student’s t-test … Both of these tend to works with certain types of data but for others you needed different tools such as the Chi-squared test … and when I was studying Psychology I learned a whole new set of statistical tools.

When I enrolled on an Open University Statistics course, I was quite frustrated and annoyed because they insisted on applying what I considered to be an illogical rule for rounding-off.  I had been taught that when rounding figures then anything over 5 was rounded up and anything less than 5 was rounded down.  So 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 would become 3 and 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 would become 4.  Five cases would round up and five would round down … each would go to the nearest value.  That seemed logical.  However, the tutors for this required that we round even numbers up and odd numbers down – so 3.1, 3.3, 3.5, 3.7 and 39 would round down to 3 while 3.2, 3.4, 3.6 and 3.8 would round up to 4.  As I say, to me this seemed illogical – and although it should have resulted in different in different answers to problems, but I have to take my hat off to the tutors, because some of the problems that they set us were constructed so that it didn’t matter which system you used to round off values – you got the same results.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I tend towards relativism in philosophical and ethical terms.

Anyway, I quite enjoyed the “game” of Mathematics.

Although I was thinking of entering the church, someone gave me some advice which seemed sensible.  Our Minister had retired and his replacement was a young man, with a young wife who didn’t really see herself as a wife of the Manse.  Most of the people in the church were a lot older than them and, to be fair, she, in particular, didn’t fit in.  I don’t think it was anyone’s fault – indeed, it might just have been a mismatch … if he had been assigned to an inner city church, then I think they would both felt much happier.  They would have felt that they were making a real difference rather than being tucked away in some backwater.  Eventually, he decided that perhaps he had made a mistake and decided to resign … not just from his post as our Minister, but from the Church as a whole.  It was a blow.  I was shocked, but it was pointed out to me that I was also young and who knows what the future might bring.   Instead of deciding to go to Theological College, perhaps I should think like an actor who always has a second string to his bow for when he is “resting” … that is – when he doesn’t have an acting job … a role to perform on stage.  I knew that this was good advice – as I have said elsewhere, I don’t believe in closing doors until you have to … so I looked around and chose teaching as a suitable “second” career.  As things turned out, it was to end up being my main vocation for most of my life – sometimes, I think, even today when I am running a tour business.

My choice of college was based on a number of things: it was not far from home; a Methodist college; and it offered me the chance to follow the two main interests at that time … Theology and Mathematics.  At that time my main interest was Theology, Mathematics was to be the “second string” to my bow.

In my first teaching job I was “Teacher in Charge of Religious Education” but I also taught a few classes of Maths.  It was when I moved to North London that I took up a post teaching just Maths.  This had some advantages, chiefly the fact that I had fewer groups to get to know, (as an Religious Studies teacher I saw about 300 pupils every week … and it was difficult to learn all their names, but now I was down to about half that, which was a lot easier), and I was teaching a subject which, even if it wasn’t popular with everyone, was thought to be useful and not just a “necessary chore”, a statutory obligation.

Even though Maths was thought of as a useful tool, not everyone was keen.  Some were clearly “Matheholcis” with a phobia for the subject.  To be fair, I thought, and still think that some of the topics we had to teach were esoteric and a I understood why some thought they were a waste of time.  I am not sure, for example, that I have ever used the Shimbell Index in real life – although it has helped me understand the concept of “remoteness” of settlements in high mountain areas.  I remember being castigated by one employer because our “graduates” could handle vulgar fractions … and I asked “why do they need to? … why is it important that they can add 11/16ths and 5/27ths?” … I understood that some branches of engineering still used eights, sixteenths, thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths … but this was clearly a minority and as metrication was being adopted as a norm, even they were becoming irrelevant.  Perhaps we were still supposed to teach the unitary fractions of Ancient Egypt?  As it happens, I could see reasons for teaching fractions … they are important for understanding a variety of techniques and concepts in higher mathematics, and they do help to teach and develop logical thought processes … but I could not see why they were considered so important for school leavers who going to work as shop assistants, policemen and the like.

I was reminded of this argument when, here in Kyrgyzstan, an acquaintance (he was studying tourism and he knew that I had been a Maths teacher) .asked me to help him with his homework.  At first I declined … “Ruslan, ” I said, “it will all be in Russian – I won’t understand”, to which he replied, “Ian, it’s Maths, it’s all numbers …”.  So I agreed to have a look.  Because he was studying tourism, I expected the exercise to be arithmetic, book-keeping, or statistics … something like that.  It turned out to be Thermo-dynamics.  Apart from the fact I knew virtually nothing about the subject, I couldn’t see for the life of me why he had to learn Thermo-dynamics.  If there was a problem with the central heating, wouldn’t they call for an engineer to sort it all out?

I got on well with most classes – although there ups and downs.  I tried to make lessons “fun” if I could – with jokes and stories, competitions, puzzles and quizzes, (with Mars Bar prizes for correct answers).  There were times when my sense of humour served me well, defusing potentially difficult situations and potentially problematic students.

I was fortunate in that I that there was a Statistics class that needed a teacher … now Statistics was my applied option, (not Mechanics) … so I was asked to take it.  A short while later I was asked by the local technical college to teach Statistics to an adult education evening class.  I wouldn’t say that I was in “seventh heaven” but I was beginning to feel that I had “landed on my feet”.

One of my “hobbies” was scouring bookshops for copies of old Mathematics textbooks.  It was fascinating to see the various topics and how they were handled over the years … I often used examples in lessons.  It was an odd “hobby” and I never met anyone else who had such a collection, although I am sure there must have been some.  When I eventually left to come to Kyrgyzstan, I had to dispose of many, many possessions and that included a large part of my library … although I had little difficulty in finding takers for some books (e.g. the Kinsey Reports) nobody was interested in the maths textbooks … and I am afraid that they were lost to the tip.  I did bring a few books with me – a “Dictionary of Numbers”, a History of Mathematics, and “A mathematician Reads the Newspapers”.  I still occasionally dip into them.

The Chase High School

I wasn’t a particularly good student at school. In fact I still have my school report where one of my teachers commented: “Ian works well when he can’t avoid it” … and I still wonder why he couldn’t have stuck with the traditionally tried and tested: “Could do better”, but it was at least original and showed that I wasn’t just “one of the crowd”.

During my Primary school years (from age five to eleven for those who don’t know the English educational system) I went to the Malvern Link County Primary School which was a ten minute walk from home. It might not have been very far, but when you are that age, those ten minutes can seem like an age and I am always amazed whenever I return to see how close it really was to home. It was in my last years at that school that I found a liking and (minor) talent for Mathematics … the crucial moment was when we started algebra … x times y equals xy, a times b equals ab … hey, I could that, no problem – even if I had no real idea at that time what was actually going on, it caught my imagination and I was no longer “afraid” of “sums”.

The School Badge

At the time when I was growing up the secondary education system in England, (following the principles laid down after the Second World War and based on what we now know as the flawed researches of Sir Edward Birt), divided youngsters at the age of eleven into “Grammar School” or “Secondary Modern”. I “failed” the dreaded eleven-plus examination and ended up going to the “non-selective” Chase Secondary Modern, (which was later renamed the Chase High School – allegedly because some posh school in the North of the county didn’t want to lose it’s “High School” name – and is known as The Chase Technology College). The school is still there and going strong according to the reports I read on the internet. It is one of the largest schools in Worcestershire with 1700 pupils and a staff of 200.

I still think that failing that examination was an important turning point which helped to shape the course of the rest of my life. Indeed, if I am feeling a little mischievous, sometimes when I get asked: “Why did you end up in Kyrgyzstan?”, I answer: “because I failed the eleven plus.” Seriously though, it limited the options available to me later in life – and this is something which has always rankled and, as a result, I always try to make sure now that I leave as many options open and available for as long as possible … Another of my mottos: “don’t close doors until you have to”.

Let me explain.

The Chase was a good school, with a good catchment area and got good results. Although not an outstanding student, I was a relatively good student – and frequently came out top of the year in Maths. True to the school motto, (“First, or with the first”), we were one of the few Secondary Modern schools at that time to offer A-Levels, (needed for university entrance). But … that was mainly in the Arts and Humanities – there were no sciences offered at this level – indeed the school didn’t even offer, (and I have never studied), Chemistry. I was the third person in the school’s history to sit A-Level Maths, and the first to pass. Things were changing, however, and the following yeargroup were given the options of studying Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Although I had done O-Level Physics in my final year of compulsory education, (O-level was the equivalent of the School Leaving Certificate or Diploma), it wasn’t available to me at A-level and so my other subjects were Geography and Religious Education. If I hadn’t been able to study Maths then I would have liked to have done History – another subject I find fascinating – but for some reason I got bumped out of the class a few months before the examinations at the end of my final year of compulsory education. Although I wasn’t an outstanding student, I was, (even if I say so myself), better than mediocre, so why was I bumped off the course? I think it was just that they thought I wasn’t pulling my weight and would struggle to cope with eight examination subjects. Maybe they were right, but I decided to go back and try again the following year … and came out with a top grade – I like to think “that showed them!”

It’s a pity that Physics wasn’t available … because Maths and Physics tend to go together. There’s a strong relationship between Mechanics, a branch of Physics and Applied Mathematics. Usually the two subjects supplement and help each other. I didn’t have that option available and so Maths Teacher decided that it would be better for me to learn Statistics … and I am very grateful for that because it has turned out to be a great boon as things turned out in subsequent years. One thing it has taught me is to always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS question statistics – especially when they are thrown around with great abandon … because they always seem to raise more questions than they answer.

One of the great things about studying A-Level Maths, was that I was the only student in the class. Now, in some ways, that was great … lots of individual attention … but in other ways it was terrible … lots of pressure and no-one to share or discuss the difficult bits with. I always remembered this when I later became a teacher in my own turn and had classes of just one student.

One of the great lessons I learnt at school was not on the formal curriculum – delegation. There was no syllabus, no coursework or final examination, it was just something that was part of the ethos of the place. In a hangover from Public Schools, the teachers gave responsibility to senior students. It wasn’t just a case of being “board monitor” – although some teachers did appoint those. The school operated a Prefect system – and apparently still does. In my last year of compulsory schooling, (the Fifth year), I was made a prefect and given jobs to do including supervising younger kids during break times. The following year, what was then called the Lower Sixth, I became a House Captain, responsible for organizing events and sports teams … we never did that well, but it was good training for later life. In my final year, the Upper Sixth, I reached the pinnacle and was made Head Boy. I remember being told by one of the teachers that: “We can’t be everywhere, we can’t do everything … that’s why we have prefects.” Another useful lesson which I have carried with me throughout the rest of my life.

Let’s start with the simple and the obvious … my name is Ian Claytor. I am British and was born on 8th March, 1953, in Malvern, Worcestershire.

Ian is a Scottish name, (it’s the Scottish equivalent of John, or “God’s Gift”), although there is nothing Scottish about the family. There aren’t that many Claytors around … and it seems that the Malvern branch of the family originally came from Nottinghamshire. There’s a family legend that tells that we are descended originally from a family called Clayton, who were local squires and landowners, but there was a scandal involving a gypsy girl and a curse placed on the “seventh son of the seventh son” … they seem to have gone in for big families in those days … and in an attempt to overcome the curse one of my ancestors changed his name by replacing the final letter, an “n”, with an an “r”. (An attempt to create an “alpha effect” with an “omega change”, as Arthur C. Clarke put it in one of his short stories.) I am not sure I believe the account, but it makes for a good story.

Actually, Ian is what it says on my Birth Certificate and in my passport – so it is my official name – but according to Canon Law, (Church Law, that is), it’s not my name at all. When I was born my mother had Tuberculosis – it cost her a lung and my father once told me that they “pulled the curtains”, (meaning that they thought that she was about to die), not just once but twice during this period. Anyway, when I finally made my appearance, they were so concerned that I might not survive that the doctor christened me then and there. Apparently he named me Royston and, as I said, according to Canon Law, once you are christened, then you have been given a name and that is your name. Full Stop! So, how come I am now Ian Claytor and not Royston Claytor. My mother explained it me like this: my older brother, Tony, had trouble saying my name – even in the short version, Roy. Apparently, he kept calling me “Boy”. “No son of mine is going to go through life being called “Boy”", she decided, and so when it came time to officially register the birth with the authorities, she changed it to Ian.

She thought she had solved the problem because no-one could shorten the name … but she was thwarted by Richard, my best friend at primary school, who would insist on calling me “Ee”. I think that, at times, she felt that she could have throttled him.

In answer to one of the questions that I am most often asked here, I have to report that I am single and have never been married and so, no, I am not divorced and no, I have no children – although I do have a number of cats. You can read more about them here.

As I said, I have an older brother, Tony, who is married to Christine and they have two teenage sons, Dominic and Lawrie and live in Hertfordshire.

For the first two and half years of my life when my mother was ill with TB, I had been passed from relative to relative eventually ending up in a children’s home in Stourbridge in North Worcestershire. One of earliest memories is of playing on the swings at the home. Another is of sitting in the backseat of the car my parents had borrowed when they came to fetch me and, looking out of the back window seeing a big bright “Midland Red” bus turn the corner behind us.

Malvern, where I grew and went to school, was a small town of about 30,000 but it was originally a number of villages, (Great Malvern, Malvern Link, North Malvern, West Malvern, Little Malvern, Malvern Wells and a number with names that don’t contain the name Malvern), which grew up around the Malvern Hills.

My father was a postman for all his life, except for the war years when he served as a tank driver, driving a Churchill tank in North Africa and up through Italy. He was also a Trade Union official, serving for many years as the local branch secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers), an example I was to follow later on in life. My mother was a housewife for most of her life, but did spend some time working a shorthand typist and secretary. She was very fond of handicrafts and I think she would have found the traditional crafts of the Kyrgyz very interesting and would have enjoyed making Shyrdaks, Ala Kiyiz, Kurak and Saima embroidery.

I wasn’t a particularly good student at school. In fact I still have my school report where one of my teachers commented: “Ian works well when he can’t avoid it” … and I still wonder why he couldn’t have stuck with the traditionally tried and tested: “Could do better”, but it was at least original and showed that I wasn’t just “one of the crowd”. My schooldays, of course, did much to shape my future career, but there’s more about that here. Anyway, I must have done reasonably well because I ended up with three A-Levels and a place at Teacher Training college and the backdoor into Oxford University and an Oxford degree, and there’s more about that here.

Oxford was an adventure. Up until then I hadn’t traveled much and my horizons were very much limited to Malvern where I had grown up. I had been to the seaside at Weston-Super-Mare, (or Weston-Super-Mud as we called it because when the tide went out, the sea retreated so far that there seemed to be nothing but miles and miles of wet sand), and to Cornwall with the family of my best friend … they later moved there and he still lives there and now runs a number of hotels in the area – so we’re colleagues. Oxford, however, was different … it wasn’t a holiday, just a week or two … I was on my own, and I made the most of it.

I made some good friends in college, and we kept in touch for a while after we finished our course. When it came time for everyone to leave and go make their own way in the world, one of my friends, took my address but said: “I don’t promise to keep in touch … maybe I will, but think how many friends you had at school that you’ve lost touch with – and that was only three or four years ago … people move on, and I don’t like making promises I don’t know if I can keep.” It’s sad, but she was right – and I have always remembered that … especially the bit promises – after all, an Englishman’s word is supposed to be his bond!

After college it was a question of finding a job … and I got thrown in at the deep end. I became the Teacher in Charge of Religious Education in a large school in Thame in rural Oxfordshire. OK … “teacher in charge” … the only teacher of Religious Education, as it happened. Being the only one, however, I couldn’t take every class and there were a couple of people to help me … but basically I was left on my own devices.

It was in Thame that I started to follow my father’s footsteps and joined a union. It wasn’t exactly what you would think of as a Trade Union … or at least what I thought of at that time as a Trade Union. Teaching isn’t exactly a “blue collar”, working class, profession, and the union that I chose was not militant by any means. Some people referred to us conservative, or even “right wing”, but that wasn’t really true. We preferred to call ourselves the “moderate” teachers’ union. Normally, I “don’t do things by halves” and guided by the principles that although “membership has its privileges” it also has its responsibilities, so I found myself taking an active role in Association affairs. After the move to London, this grew year by year and before I know it I was branch secretary, and in the course of the next seventeen years I also took on the roles (at different times) of Branch Treasurer and Chairman as well as a conference delegate and Branch representative, negotiating with employers, local authorities and, on one occasion, a Minister of the Crown. As it happens, this experience taught me an awful lot and helped me a great deal when I came to Kyrgyzstan and I found myself attending meetings (and sometimes arguing) with government officials, Ministers and even Prime Ministers and Presidents and two British princes of the realm. (Yes, two … strange isn’t it, I traveled half way around the world to meet two members of my own Royal Family!)

The Headteacher in Thame had a basic rule of thumb … the first year a teacher worked in the school, especially if they were a probationary teacher like me, (that is they were newly qualified and new to teaching), then they were basically “taking” from the school – gaining experience and additional “on the job training”. Everything is a new experience. During the Second year its a case of “fifty-fifty” … they are still learning, but they are also putting into practice that they learned in the first year. By the time they get to the third year, they are “giving back” to the school. Now, it seemed to me, (and still does), that that’s a bit crude, but there is a lot of truth in it and it makes a lot sense in a school situation where there is a clear annual cycle. Anyway, I did my three years and and then started looking around for the next step in my career.

I applied for a job in London … returning to my “first love”, Mathematics. In fact, I didn’t get it … at the interview we were told that someone else had been appointed, but “it was a close decision and thanks for applying”. So, I got quite a surprise a few days later when I got a phone call saying that the successful applicant had to withdraw and asking if I was still interested in the job. Yes, I was, and so I made another of the big decisions in my life and moved to London.

Having been, nominally at least, my own boss as “Teacher in charge of Religious Education”, I now joined the rank and file as ordinary classroom teacher. I had fewer groups to get to know and was teaching a subject which, even if it wasn’t popular with everyone, was thought to be useful and not just a “necessary chore”, a statutory obligation. I got on well with the classes – although, yes, there were “ups and downs”. I was there for seventeen years. That’s a long time, but although it was seventeen years in one school, I actually had several different jobs during that time. After a few years as a classroom Maths teacher, I took on classes in Statistics and then Computing, IT and vocational courses as well as taking on various administrative roles within the school. There’s more about that here.

I also took on a role as an examiner, (in both Maths and Computing). My first experience of working in the examination system was as a student when I got a holiday job as a “checker” for one of the exam boards. It surprised me how many so-called “intelligent” people couldn’t add up the marks they had awarded a candidate – and as a result this was something I paid great attention to when I eventually became an examiner. Later as a with the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), which was the equivalent of a school leaving certificate, and the system involved using class teachers as markers and examiners. When my career moved into computing I applied for several jobs as a assistant examiner in Computing, (without any expectation of success – hey, my degree was in Theology, not computing or any other related subject), and to my surprise and amazement I was accepted – for all of them! Every year, from May until August, I spent many long hours marking scripts and coursework projects, and attending meetings. It was a hard job, carrying great responsibility but it was a great experience which helped me immensely in many different ways. I would strongly recommend it to any teacher as being both rewarding and worthwhile. (There’s more about my experiences here.)

As I said before, I didn’t travel very much when I was young. Now, during those seventeen years I really got the travel bug. I traveled to various places around Britain, visited France two or three times every year and also lots of other places in Europe, (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Monaco, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Yugoslavia, …). I went to the States four times, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Pakistan, Thailand, China (Hong Kong) and several of the Caribbean islands. I even visited Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan … but little did I know at the time that I would end up living here! I regret that I never made it to Africa or South America (… ever since I studied South America as part A-Level Geography, I have wanted to go to Brazil – especially the Amazon). I always enjoyed visiting new places, seeing the sights and being able to point to something and say to myself, “I remember learning about that in Geography, or History, or … whatever, and now I am seeing it in real life”; meeting new people; trying new food; learning about different cultures. One thing I didn’t really like was sitting on a beach, sunbathing. I was prepared to do it occasionally if my friends on holiday wanted to do so, provided we split the holiday and did some “”exploring” as well. I felt that it was wasting too much valuable time. As the Beatles put it: “Life is very short and there’s no time for …”, well they said (sang) “fussing and fighting, my friend”, but as far as I was concerned it should have been “sitting around idle”. I suppose it was the “Protestant work ethic” which had been instilled in me by this time.

In fact, I like being busy and I kept (keep) myself busy in many ways. I also have an obsessive personality and tend “not to do things by halves”

As well as teaching, examining and my work with the union, another way was my involvement in Rugby. Although I have tried my hand at many sports I have never been a great sportsman. In my schooldays, however, I played Rugby for the school team and the local club. I was never very good at it … I joke that my position was seventeenth man (for those that don’t know – a rugby team consists of fifteen players!). Even when I stopped playing as the result of an injury, I continued to coach one of the school teams and to referee some matches … although I can’t say that I really enjoyed either.

Another thing I undertook was “in-service” training. I am a great believer that education is a lifelong activity. We are always meeting new experiences, and the world is constantly changing with new facts being discovered and new technologies being developed and so we need to prepare ourselves for the challenges of tomorrow … and not rely on what we learned in the dim and distant past. When I went on my first “First Aid” course, for example, we were taught that the way to deal with a nose bleed was to pinch the bridge of the nose and put the patients head back with the nose in the air, but a couple of years later at the refresher course we were told to pinch the bridge of the nose and bend the patient forward with the nose down. As it was explained to us, if the head is back then there is a chance for the blood to flow through the nasal cavity into the mouth and then into the throat … causing all sorts of complications. It wasn’t, however, just a case of keeping up-to-date. I’m a bit like a sponge in learning new things. I loved playing Trivial Pursuits! I once included an obscure fact in a history essay at school and the teacher circled it in red and added a comment “Where did this come from?” I took great pleasure in telling him it was a book that he had told us we all ought to buy. I had done so, and showed him the reference. There was nothing he could say in reply apart from: “You remember the strangest things!” As a result I also took a number of courses which had nothing to do with work and my favourite was “Looking at Paintings” from the Open University. I don’t know if they still offer it … but it was very enlightening in many different respects. Attending courses is something I miss here … but the internet is a great tool and I feel very fortunate in being able to research almost any topic.

The next big decision in my life involved the move to Kyrgyzstan. In fact it wasn’t one decision, it was a series of at least three during the course of just over a year: to come here; to stay and what to do once I had decided to stay.

Tony, a friend whom I had known since my days in Oxford, worked as a lawyer for a large international firm based in London. His first visit to Kyrgyzstan was in the early 1990′s as part of his work – and he fell in love with the country and the people. On his suggestion I came here on holiday in 1994 and although I liked the place I never really thought that much more about it until he told me that he had landed a job here, wanted to open his law firm and needed help to set up the office. Would I come and help him? Yes, OK. I originally came for one year, but things never quite go according to plan and as the year was coming to an end there was still lots to do, so I stayed on to finish the job. I could have gone back home. I had a job waiting for me and staying here meant saying goodbye to that and a career that I had been developing for twenty years. To be honest, however, I was ready for a change and I looked forward to meeting the challenges of starting something new.

Once I decided to stay, and the office was up and running it was a case of “what do I do now?”. We looked at several options and eventually decided that the most perspicacious was Tourism … and so, together with another friend from the UK, we started the Celestial Mountains Tour Company, and two hotels. We would have liked to open more, but, (as I keep saying), things don’t always go according to plan.

As before, I keep myself busy. There’s never a dull moment. If ever I seem to stop and be idle, it’s not because I have nothing to do … it’s because I have so much to do that I don’t know where to start. I am involved in a number of projects here in Kyrgyzstan. I am an active member of the International Business Council (IBC) and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators (KATO) – in fact I am the president of the Association, which always raises an eyebrow – an Englishman as the President of a Kyrgyz Association … but then some people say (jokingly) that, after fourteen years here, I am almost half Kyrgyz anyway. (I have actually taken out official “Residence” status but, no, I am not looking to take out Kyrgyz citizenship – to do that I would have to give up my British passport, and I am not keen to do that.) Some people even say I am more enthusiastic about all things Kyrgyz than most of the locals. I have even been thanked by locals for telling them things about Kyrgyzstan that they didn’t know … or for showing them a part of Kyrgyzstan that they haven’t seen before.

So, that’s my story … or, at least, part of my story. There’s obviously a lot of details missing but it should help to give you a feel of who I am, where I am coming from and why I say some of the things I do in these postcards.

Thanks for reading this far …