Teacher moans.Or not.

One thing that I don't blog much about is teaching. Ever other day there is a story about teachers quitting or a crisis in recruitment. The inter-web world is full of blogs of teachers moaning and I don't think I have much to add to that. And not because there isn't plenty to moan about: 

I've just had another Saturday where I've spent at least half the day planning and marking - and I'll do a few more hours tomorrow. As a latecomer to this game I can remember when weekends were a time when you didn't work - although I think I've forgotten what I used to do with the time. And don't start me on the money. After a few years in, I am working my way up the pay-scale (fortunately I am not at an academy), and for the moment at least I have some extra  responsibility - and still my pay is about half of what it was when I was working in the print. To add insult to injury I am also now repaying a student loan having had to pay for the training to get me into this over-worked and under-valued profession.

But notwithstanding this I am still not really moaning. Life is good and I am probably happier now in my middle age than I ever was. However I do acknowledge that amongst my colleagues this is probably unusual.  Although I am not sure if the fact that I feel this way is because I am more naive about teaching than they,  or maybe because I am more bitter and twisted about the shitty nature of the world outside the classroom ...

Playing at artisans

Amongst the bundle of Saturday papers on the breakfast table this morning there is a supplement from the Guardian this morning called  'Do Something'.

It is a series of articles of things people can try out  over a weekend - write a short story, do archery, or be a silversmith - or a printer. Obviously the last one got my attention.

Am I alone in finding it slightly nauseating that middle class people can now play at things that working class people used to be paid for ?

The same middle class people who in their own working lives as corporate managers and marketing parasites have overseen de-skilling and off-shoring of these activities as jobs that ordinary people can actually make a living from. The same middle class people who would never dream of their own children pursuing one of these trades rather than go to university. 

I know my response is  emotional and irrational. It's good to some extent that these skills are being kept alive in some way. But I do resent the belittling and disrespectful implication that the skills and values that took a time-served tradesman four or even seven years to develop are now reduced to a leisure activity to amuse people with too much time on their hands. 

Much as I also find it disrespectful when uber Tory-toff Kirsty Allsop presents a TV series encouraging yuppies homeowners to create a 'Homemade Home' by showing how in truth there is nothing to all those skilled trades and services that the middle class once paid the working classes to perform for them.

The undeserving great unwashed

This week I seem to have turned into one of those sad 'concerned residents' with too much time on their hands who writes letters to the council. I am engaged in a largely pointless (but entertaining) email duel with some jobs-worth from the council (or more precisely their privatised 'contacted service provider') about bin collection: 

To incentivise us all to re-cycle we now have our re-cycle bins emptied weekly and our non-recycling waste bins emptied fortnightly. Which means of course that by the end of the fortnight everyone's  non-recycle bins are smelly , overflowing, surrounded by flies and the bin bags ripped open by urban foxes. This makes  our typical inner city environment - crowded, busy,  dirty and  generally fairly grotty - just that little bit more unpleasant at best, and at worst a threat to public health. 

My complaints to the council were met with a patronising letter explaining the council policy and effectively telling me that people should suck it up and just re-cycle more. 

Setting aside the arrogance of those in authority - if we are all too stupid to re-cycle then we deserve to pay the price of rubbish on the streets - this also ignores the fact that the re-cycle bins are actually also regularly overflowing. 

In other words, we are re-cycling but the service is just not adequate for the area. It seems like a no brainer that an urban area with a denser population - multi-occupier dwellings and mixed business and residential use, simply needs more frequent services than a dormitory suburb. Yet in Tottenham our rubbish is collected as frequently as it is leafy Highgate. 

This isn't about NIMBYism or 'localism' - nor is it petty. It is exactly what is happening at every level of this recession. Again and again the people who have to put up with the worst of its effects are told that it is our own fault. 

Historically it was always so. It was much the same in Victorian times when our inner cities first developed. The feckless and insanitary masses - literally the great unwashed - were blamed for their own appalling living conditions. And we seen the same old arrogance today - with a bit of added green sanctimony thrown in just to rub salt in the wound.

History of our own

I am happy to be working in a school at the moment that promotes the kind of History that would get Mr Grove foaming at the mouth. No kings, queens, Isambard Kingdom Brunel or David Livingston. 

The student population is largely Black and the school makes no apology for featuring Black history heavily in the curriculum. And not just the usual GCSE focus on 1960s Civil Rights but Black British History - pre-colonial Africa, slavery in the Caribbean, decolonisation and post-war immigration. It shouldn't really be a surprise then  that as a result, History is popular at the school, and the kids are actually keen to take part in the lessons.

This attempt to connect what is being taught to student's own experiences and the world today is not restricted to Black History. Yesterday we were discussing the possibility of  a school trip to a viewing of Ken Loach's new film 'Spirit of 45'. And this weekend I was interviewing my Dad to use a source for his memories of hearing Aneurin Bevan speak at a public meeting at that time.

This teacher-training business is probably the most all-consuming and draining thing I've ever done -  but it certainly beats the crap out of what I used to put up with in my previous life ...

Everything has a price tag

None of this is a surprise and bemoaning it is hardly original - even so it has struck me personally this week: 

For the first time for many weeks I am actually earning some money. I've been 'consulting' - a poncey name for casual labour - in my old industry of print and graphics. I've also been applying - without any success yet - for Teaching Assistant posts as a prelude to getting on to some sort of teaching training.

Of course I knew it all along - but it's a hell of a wake-up call to realise that this consulting pays something like five times the wages of a lowly teaching assistant.  And I'm only talking about doing a bit of freelance selling for a small printing buisness on a shitty industrial estate - I'm hardly some corporate reptile at McKinsey & Co.

I bloged some years ago about the value of viewing work through a child's eyes. To a child a teacher - and those who work alongside them - are the most important people in their world. Even in this celebrity fixated age - it's difficult for them to imagine anyone else more deserving of status. My own kids are reasonably aware of how things work these days - but even they struggle to see how a teacher can be rewarded less than a plodding junior manager or administrator. And they're quite right.

As a 'consultant' am I better academically qualified than a Teaching Assistant ? No at all; Am I more skilled ? Not really - only in the art of bullshit; Is the work harder ? Certainly not; Is it more socially useful ? You've got to be kidding.

I predict ...

'Tis the season for looking back to the old year and forward to the new.

I'll leave the celebration of the Arab Spring and the return of class politics in 2011 -  and anticipation of an inspiring year of struggle in 2012 -  to my comrades. 

As the ghost at the feast I'll predict a year of nauseating nationalist flag-waving. We have all the ingredients: 

• The gloom of recession that needs warming with an excuse for a street party

• London hosting the Olympics

• The queen's diamond jubilee or whatever the fuck it is

• The long anticipated death of Thatcher and her funeral

• Ditto the Duke Of Edingburgh

Of course it doesn't have to be this way ...

Day trip to Chelsea

With time to kill and an eye for free stuff - I took myself down to Chelsea to see the Warhorse exhibition at the National Army Museum. We went with the kids to see the play at the National Theatre and I thought it was great - but the exhibition was a disappointment.

I say free but I  picked up TWO parking tickets with a face value of £260 - apparently in Chelsea you need a permit to park a motorcycle in a motorcycle bay. The two tickets I hope are an error as they were issued within two minutes of each other- but who knows. So possibly my verdict of the exhibition is retrospectively prejudiced, but then again I was already pissed off after riding around the ridiculously  smug moneyed  backstreets of Chelsea. If we could spare Warrs Harley Davidson off the Kings Road, there would be a strong case for nuking the whole fucking borough and all the hoorays who live there.

But I digress: The exhibition managed to be  both a not-quite-the-history of the British cavalry - and an attempt to convey the horrors of the Great War by anthropomorphising a horse and its sufferings. I wasn't too comfortable about this -  I can well imagine that many of the officer class 1914-18  being more upset at the loss of their favourite hunter than a few working class oiks...

Actually the exhibition came across primarily as a lure to bring kids into the National Army Museum - much like the exhibition of the history of Commando war comics going on at the same time on the upper floor.  

The museum itself is a strange one: full of the traditional glass cases of uniforms, weapons, dioramas and the history of military campaigns - which I have to confess I'm a sucker for - but also an underlying  message of 'join the army-it's great'. A message told with a poorly concealed subliminal attempt to be inclusive and politically correct.

So we have mannequins portraying a soldier at Waterloo from the West Indies (factual but hardly representative) and a lot of coverage of empire troops in the Second World War. But no explanation of why the British army was fighting a succession of campaigns in Africa, India, Burma etc - although these are grouped in a gallery titled with unconscious irony 'Changing The  World'. We are also treated to another gallery singing the praises of post-war national service which seems to have been a bit like a lads' holiday with camping and paint-balling thrown in. And  another gallery about life in the modern British Army - apparently it's all about 'the army family'.

There's a gift shop on the way out with a mixture of fairly esoteric military history books and a range of kid's versions of modern camo-clothing and equipment. The eleven year old me would have signed up on the spot and I didn't even visit the 'kids zone in the basement' ....

A bit inspired. A lot frustrated.

I've just finished a week spent in a secondary school as preparation for applying to teacher training. It's been a strange week - after all I haven't even really been in a school since I was at school - maybe thirty years ago. I suppose the good news is that the experience hasn't put me off - in fact I want to get some more time under my belt -  but it has made me much more frustrated about how I can now change direction.

Contrary to all those ads - and the articles about bankers seeing the error of their ways and turning to something more worthwhile -  nobody  is  falling over themselves to lure people  into teaching with incentives to change careers.

Certainly not if - like me - you're thinking about teaching something as 'un-useful' as History. Maybe I might stand more chance if I'd elected for Business Studies - god knows I've had more than enough experience in that area, but I've also had enough of that shit and I just don't think it belongs in schools. 

It gets worse: Forget about any golden handshakes - even those 'earn while you learn on the job' GTP schemes just don't seem to  be available for 'non-shortage' subjects either.  If I  get a place on a PGCE course for the next academic year  I will have to face the prospect of living on not much more than fresh air for a year whilst at college. And only then after several years of working my way up to get something like an average wage. But first of course I've got to find something to keep me going for before I can start in Autumn 2012 -  and whilst I'm fully resigned to never again earning as much as I did in my previous over-paid existence -  I'm still wrestling with the implications of inflicting that on my family.

And that's all assuming I can even get on a course  -  the laws of supply and demand mean that applications for teacher training are up 40%  this year - as a result of redundancies and mid-life crisis - or in my case both simultaneously. There's  a catch-22 too of having to demonstrate in your application that you have spent time  in schools (inevitably unpaid) - which is a hard thing to do when you've also trying to find a paying job to keep you going and puts the 'mature' career-changer with responsibilities at a big disadvantage against the recent graduate in their 20's who can afford to take a gap year volunteering. 

Perhaps I should make a case for age discrimination.

The free and the unfree.

A nice angle over at The Bad Old Days Will End on the 'travellers and slavery' story. Or possibly non-story.

The discovery of a group of slave labourers at Leyton Buzzard  site in the run up to the eviction of the travllers' community at Dale Farm is both convenient and suspicious.

Ray is quite right in his post to also  raise the danger of us freedom-loving types instinctively  siding with the outsider who lives on the edges of society. Up close such communities can reflect exactly the same shit we see in the mainstream. In my own world I confess that sometimes I find myself romanticizing the outlaw MCs. But in reality, whatever the nobility of much of their ethos,   they often just act as predatory bullies. And  ironically those worst affected are often a group only slightly less on the periphery -  although indistinguishable in the eyes of Jo Public - the wider biking fraternity.

But specifically regarding the slavery angle in this story I do wonder about the police's motivation: Working in Soho I know that only a few yards away from my studio there is an open doorway to a staircase with a crudely hand-written sign advertising 'lovely new eastern European girl in town'. And its a sign that gets updated with a disturbing frequency.

I realise that the workings of the sex industry is  more complex and nuanced than simply human trafficking. But I also suspect that for every story of a Belle-de-Jour making an informed and voluntary career choice there is a parallel story about the exploitation of the vulnerable. Whilst I'm usually  loathe to suggest conspiracies of corruption, I can't help but notice that coppers must walk past these  doorways every half hour, often passing the respectable and be-suited punters on their way out. It seems like modern slavery doesn't raise too many eyebrows when it's an established part of the status quo. Like Woody Guthrie said:

Well, as through the world I've rambled, I've seen lots of funny men
Some rob you with a sixgun, some with a fountain pen
As through this world you ramble, as through this world you roam
You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from its home.

What is being done to our kids ?

It's decision day today for thousands of school-kids who get their GCSE results. And this year my eldest is one of them. 

This comes in the same week that Tony Blair has admitted (kind of) that a generation of kids have been fucked over, and it was announced that the number of "NEETS' has risen to 18%.  'NEETS' being  taken as equating to the index for 'disposable teens' who make up the pool necessary to ensure that a large chunk of the remaining 72% are kept in Mc Jobs. 

And as we are constantly told that GCSEs, A levels, and university entrance are getting progressively easier every year - so the pressure on our kids to excel in order to just get by is becoming ever more intense. 

The two fold effect of this is that at one end of the spectrum there is a joyless approach to education which has little to do with real learning, and at the other, an inevitable sense that if you fall at the first hurdle then you're going to be left on the scrapheap for the rest of your life. Either way it's a recipe for teenage depression or - and this isn't melodramatic - riots on our streets. 

I am so thankful that I grew up in the 80's  when there was still a chance for a smart-arsed slacker like myself to scape through into the hallowed halls of higher education.

I'm also thankful that my daughter did pretty well today - but it does trouble me that she is going to face so many more hurdles to achieve the same. Along the way she is going to face more spoon-feeding, more bullshit, and a greater sense of every little thing mattering than ever I did. But at the same time the actual quality of her education will unquestionably be inferior.

It makes me sad for the kids as individuals, and it makes me angry for society as a whole - every year we are becoming more qualified, and yet also somehow rather less educated.

Legal but dishonourable

It's not often I find myself agreeing with Diane Abbot but here goes:

These days I'm a boss (kind of). I have to say that despite the stress this brings it's quite  nice being a boss. It's not really  about the money- in a business like ours there's quite a few people 'under' me who are considerably better paid than I am. In my case I simply  never really liked having anyone 'over' me so being a boss - albeit one who does his best not to act like an arsehole -  is definitely a preferable option. But one thing about being a boss is that the buck stops with you - for better or worse. 

Sometimes - despite your best efforts to be decent and honest - you soak up undeserved glory rightly accruing to people under you - and sometimes you shoulder the burden when they fuck up. Those are the breaks and if you can't hack it - don't do the job, whether it's being the managing director, the captain of the darts team - or the head of children's services at a local council earning £150k a year. 

That's a fucking lot more than I earn by the way - but if you were going to justify it at all you could say that when my team fucks up maybe a typo gets printed and we lose a client - whilst when a social services team fucks up a child dies.

I've no doubt that Sharon Shoesmith was hung out to dry and scapegoated by Haringey Council and most of all by cowardly Ed Balls in response to a lynch mob reaction to the death of Baby P. I'm also sure that the legal decision was well founded in employment law - and I hope that it ruins what little political career Ed Balls may have left. 

But on a personal ethical basis - for Sharon 'I don't do blame' Shoesmith to pocket any compensation for her dismissal is simply dishonourable (sorry I can't think of a better less old-fashioned word) - inappropriate is probably the PC jargon but that doesn't cut it.Granted she probably won't now be able to get another senior exec's job in the public sector and  she has lost a decent pension - but there's nothing to stop her just  keeping her head down and quietly earn a modest living doing some thing a bit more mundane. In the circumstances, whatever injustice she may feel she has suffered, that would seem like an honourable course of action.  

Of course if she was only seeking the courts' decision to highlight the government's and council's scapegoating - maybe now she has achieved this she could  donate the settlement to a campaign to defend public sector jobs and services - or at the very least to a kids' charity. But I wouldn't hold your breath ...

Running on empty at the moment

Recently posts may have been a bit slow and uninspired - I’ve been fretting over posting something as personal as this. But given some of the inconsequential crap that has often been the basis for my posts, not writing something here about a subject so important seems somehow dishonest and disrespectful - apologies if it is uncomfortable to read:

My Easter bank holiday was – and I can’t think of any other way of putting this – a fucking nightmare. My mum, in her 80’s, housebound with chronic arthritis for the past 18months and cared for by my dad,  rapidly developed some mental problems over the course of a couple of weeks.  So I went over to see them  - and made a decision that my dad simply couldn’t cope anymore. We called an ambulance and she was carried out screaming  - possibly the last time she will ever leave her home. After a weekend spent in the observation ward attached to the A&E department – during which various doctors argued about whose responsibility she was – she was finally admitted to a specialist geriatric psych unit.  

That was getting on for three weeks ago and she is still there for assessment – we haven’t been told yet if it is depression, delirium or dementia or what we can expect to happen. But I have experienced an insidious shift towards acceptance of a situation that a month ago was unthinkable. Occasionally this is interrupted by hope I can ‘get her back’ - but more often by guilt that I have come to terms with the fact that I won’t.

When I see her she is by turns subdued, angry, frightened, depressed, delusional and aggressive. Whatever she is – she is not is the person that I knew:  The mother and wife. The woman with a passion for life and fun and an intense sense of justice,  - strong-willed and independent.  A career woman before her time, she left school at 16 to work as a lab technician in wartime and went on to train as a school teacher in the pioneering days of comprehensive schools and special needs (or remedial as it was then) education … and I’m already writing this as an obituary because it’s hard to believe that that person is still there.  

As an unswerving atheist I often find that the writings of Marcus Aurelius are a source of humanist comfort and wisdom. Not so when I remember how he identified the ‘self’:  ‘A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself’… and by implication when that has gone, what is left?

Clerkenwell crafts - nostalgia and melancholy

A really nice glimpse into a world of craftsmanship in Clerkenwell  today over at one of my favourite blogs.

My first job 'in the print' was in Clerkenwell. When I describe it to people now I am conscious that it sounds like something from the 1500's - in fact it was only the late '80s. I was  a production junior in pre press - having done a short course at the then London College of Printing - it was a backdoor route into the trade and the possession of that precious union card at a time when four year appenticeships were the norm and graduates virtually unheard of.

The first couple of years I spent in a small trade house was a fantastic education. My duties were general dogs-bodying around the studio and no small part of this was being a runner dropping off and collecting work around the small concentrated area of tenement-style buildings behind the Clerkenwell Road . These buildings were a warren of small businesses often with only half a dozen guys occupying  a single room and  engaged in  some very specific operation in the spectrum of arcane crafts that made up the 'print'. We were a lithographic planning/plate-making house - and that was all we did - so  a typical project would require me to scuttle back and forth from  the scanning house around the corner, the cromalin company next door, the wet proofers in the basement and the typesetters at the end of the street.

Thinking about it now I have no idea of how costs were recorded or even who was working for who - the client / supplier relationship would oscillate between different projects - often several times a day. It wasn't really clear either who was the management - most of the businesses were owned by one or two working managers who themselves were hands-on or 'on the bench'. Everybody seemed to have worked with - or for - everyone else at some point. And everyone of course was in 'the union'. In fact the union acted as part HR department and part recruitment agency - the officials were usually of the same generation as the working owners and they colluded in  placing their old mates in the best jobs. This was the age of the 'green list' and 'white card' when vacancies in other houses were only advertised by the union, from which you had to get a permission slip in order to go for an interview - to be presented to the Father Of Chapel before you spoke to  a prospective employer.

I'm almost getting dewy-eyed as I type all this - but of course the reality was a far cry from some sort of workers-controlled halcyon age. The system was rife was nepotism and corruption and a self-perpetuated  clique that kept out outsiders - particularly women and minorities - and a culture of bullying apprentices / juniors was almost institutionalised. But for centuries it created a layer of affluent skilled workers who took immense pride in what they did and didn't take too much shit from anyone. I feel privileged to have been a small part of that world for the last decade of its existence. By the mid '90s Thatcher, Murdoch and the Apple Mac had effectively killed it off. Some of us are still going having reinvented ourselves several times over in a digital age and shrouded ourselves in the bullshit of the 'creative industries'.

I suppose we are still a privileged little world - as working environments go it is probably better than most and a damn site better than the service industries and soulless white-collar jobs that nowadays  are the norm. But I can't helping thinking that nearly all those things that first drew me to it are now a part of history. And whilst there might be a whole lot of  renewal currently going on in  Clerkenwell, I did notice the other week  that the workshop where my first company was is now a gastro-bar packed with media-lovies...

Young bullshit detectors

Owing no doubt to the large number of evangelical churches in my neck of the woods I have come  to accept the sight of people wandering around the streets clutching bibles like security blankets. 

Stepping back for a moment this is actually quite bizarre. I mean  they can't all be on their way to and from church and I can't imagine many real life scenarios in North London which require instant access to the surreal guidance of a holy book. To be fair though may be I underestimate the practicality of some of the seemingly crazy-shit advice such as this gem from Deuteronomy: 'If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity'.

It says something about my reaction to my own religious background that -  in a house groaning under the weight of books - until last week we didn't have a copy of the bible. 

Unlike myself, my kids have been brought up as freethinkers (and I use that old-fashioned term intentionally). So when my eldest asked if she could have a bible I didn't feel too concerned or threatened - she is of that age now when some of her friends are 'finding' religion and was just intrigued to check out what the attraction was.  Ironically through her friends she was probably better informed about Islam than she was about Christianity. So last time I visited my parents I borrowed on her behalf one of their several bibles (approved Catholic versions of course). 

A week later  I'm very happy to report that her independent findings are that from a historical, logical and ethical point of view the bible is every bit as nonsensical as I concluded myself at a similar age. In fact whilst I may have attuned my expectations to my environment she is stunned and outraged that so much dangerous and reactionary rubbish is treated with so much respect.

The revelation that 'religion is nonsense' is hardly an original topic for a blog post - but these days as a parent I set great store in trying to view things through the eyes of a young mind untainted by forty years of 'experience'. Sometimes it opens your eyes and makes you question some long held assumptions  - and just occasionally it reassures you of some fundamental truths that are worth be reminded of.

One man and his shed .

News from the domestic front:

After a particularly pointless tantrum I had to have my garage door replaced. Not quite sure how I managed it but in throwing it open with an angry flourish I managed to fuck up the 'up and over' doorsbeyond redemption so I've replaced it with the old-fashioned kind - which is much more in keeping with my workshop which was built long before 'garages' were considered a household necessity.

Apart from the outlay for the new doors I also had the floor levelled - and this spurred me to have a thorough clear out. It took me most of the day on Saturday. And then - because I now have a proper workshop that is comfortable,  clean and tidy - I spent a far bit of Sunday buggering about with my bike.

In most aspects of my life I don't consider myself  a hoarder by nature in fact - unless it comes to books and CDs  - I actually get a perverse kick out of throwing things out. Or so I thought. But apart from the inevitable generations of kid's discarded toys - the garage seemed to have collected a ridiculous number of bike parts. 

I made a point of throwing away all the broken bits of bikes that I don't own any more - including some I haven't owned for over ten years. Even so I seem to have an alarming quantity of parts for my current Sportsters - including five exhausts, four seats, three  sets of bars, three carbs and air cleaners, and two trays of miscellaneous spares.

I blame the addictive power of ebay...

Aspirational journeys

For a long while one of the main indices of social mobility was how many young people went to university from families where previous generations hadn't done so.  For many post-war working class grammar school kids it was probably the index of mobility.  

I've written before about my own experience of this and how social mobility isn't the same thing as social justice - by a long chalk. But it says something of a society that education - and at the very least a veneer of meritocracy -  is held up as  vehicle for mobility.  So the irony hasn't escaped me that in the same weeks as that  social ladder is being kicked away from a generation of school-leavers , we have the phenomenon of 'The Apprentice'.  It's a telling reflection of our times that brown-nosing, back-stabbing and bullshitting are now the preferred routes to 'betterment'.

This year and as in previous years, the winner was someone -  like Lord SirAlunSugar himself - who was self-made and had experienced a heart-warming 'journey' to get into the corporate world. I've got nothing against winner Stella English. I've been to Thamesmead a couple of times on anti-fascist activities - and can confirm that the estate she is from is every bit as desolate and downright scary as it is portrayed: Fair play to anyone who has managed to get out of it. 

But surely after all that  there are more worthwhile things to aspire to than a middle-management position at Sugar's IT-to-the-public-sector business Viglen Limited ? 

Justice for cider drinkers

In a hysterical tide of witch-hunting and scape-goating a minority group is being singled out and persecuted. The budget announced a 10% above inflation increase in duty on cider.

The increase on ciders above 7.5% is going to be even greater. Possibly this is fair enough - it's hard to believe that  these 'white ciders' have ever seen an apple. They only really  exist to get you pissed in the most time and cost efficient manner possible - good only for binge drinking if the anti-freeze has run out.

It might also be fair enough to whack an increase on any cider served over ice. This has practically become the signature drink of the trendinestas of North London. In much the way that sticking a slice of lime in a bottle of insipid beer transformed it into an aspirational talisman for  80's yuppies. Hitting that demographic where it hurts is fine by me.

But cider in all its forms, from West Country scrumpy in earthenware jugs to Champagne-like Normandy cider is a wonder to behold with a fine and honourable tradition.

This isn't just about cider - its another example of the phenomenon of the madness of crowds - the same small-minded, smug, knee-jerk, need-to-be-seen-to-be-doing-something  reaction that blames the evils of  broken society on teenage mothers, hoodies, owners of pit-bulls , shoot 'em up gamers or whoever is the next folk-devil of the day. You could be next ...

Training ?

The kwoon has been shut for a fortnight and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms.I've been to the gym most days but that just isn't the same. It's not that I feel a need to sweat and exercise per se. Of course the gym provides this although - despite having done so for years now - pushing weights bores me and the sauna and steam room are definitely the best bits . I find the gym no more than a necessary evil for fitness and strength maintenance and more generally a corrective for sitting on my arse for a living (if I had a more active job I'd probably just concentrate on the martial arts). In otherwords it's 'training' rather than fun.

I had a conversation about this with an old friend who is a serious distance runner. He's has some injuries which meant an enforced lay-off. We both said that we were missing 'training'. But then we came to talk about it more we wondered if training wasn't a misnomer.

In my case, I'm not training for anything. I don't compete - there's no big fight I'm preparing for. Some people talk about 'training for the street' but that is just macho bollocks - life is too short and if you look you for that kind of trouble you will almost certainly find it. You could say that I train to get better - but at the risk of sounding too zen - it's when you consciously try to improve that you usually end up worse. My running friend does compete, and at quite a high level, but equally much of the time he runs only for the sake of running - without a stopwatch and without much idea of where he's going to end up.

Truth is martial arts isn't really training at all. It's fun, or at least it should be - done simply for the sheer hell of it. Why else would you choose to make it a lifelong pastime? Or anything else for that matter ?

You'd get less time for murder ...

Bit of a personal milestone for me today and one that's not very usual these days - 20 years with the same company. Fucking hell !!!

I never wanted a career, just a job - more or less. Armed with a degree from a prestigious university which was of no practical use at all as I didn't fancy a 'profession', academia, or an accelerated promotion scheme in big business - I got myself a trade. So I did a vocational course, got the then all-important union card and unintentionally maintained the family tradition of being 'in the print'. And here I am.

I've been lucky I guess - the firm (so far) has survived a couple of 'new technology' revolutions and I've had the chance to do three or four different jobs over the years. We're still a (large-ish) small business, and as tends to happen in such organisations, I slipped into senior management just by sticking around and getting involved.

This hasn't come from any great ambition on my part - basically I'm just a compulsive picture straightener who in any given situation can't help trying to make things 'right'. (Or at least I have enough cockiness to think that's what I'm doing).

Most of the time though I feel like a fraud who is over-paid for doing a job that brings nobody any practical benefit at all. Sometimes that depress me and I think I'm wasting myself. More often though I'm just looking over my shoulder waiting to be found out ...

Misplaced sentimentality

My first ever pair of trainers were ‘Winfields’ – Woolworths’ own brand – and at primary school I think I was decked out in ‘Ladybird’ clothing. Some of the first LP’s I brought also came from Woolies.

But I do not share the emotional outpourings over the demise of the high street chain this week, just as it was about to approach it’s centenary.

From all the sentimental shit being spoken at the moment you would think we were mourning a cherished institution that had enriched our lives – something along the lines of the NHS. But when FW Woolworth imported his stores to this country from the US he had no more noble a mission than that of selling cheap crap for the masses. Doubtless in the process many independent family corner shops were driven out of business.

Sounds familiar ?

It’s like our grandchildren getting upset about the collapse of Tesco, McDonalds, Starbucks or whatever other corporate empire eventually bites the dust in the future. And one of them inevitably will – such is the capitalist circle of life.