I tripped over something yesterday that reminded me that last summer there was lots of media hype about the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. It was actually a whole series of battles that lasted from 1st July until mid-November. For anyone involved, it must have been exhausting ... unimaginable for anyone else, like us. But now, there seems to be silence; the whole arena of WW1 centenaries has dried up. I guess it was just one long grind, still going on, but nothing to shout about.
That's how this week has been for me. I'm sitting at my desk on a bright sunny Sunday morning, feeling exhausted at the end of a busy week, but wondering what I can write in a blog that purports to be an interesting reflection of the week just gone. To be honest, I'm scratching my head to see exactly what I've achieved.
Monday's activities were concentrated at the ends of the day as usual. The men's breakfast meeting took place amidst a store of unwanted sofas, these being parked in the room where we gather, while some decision is awaited about how to dispose of them without paying a heavy fee for 'commercial waste'.
Then, at the end of the day, came the bell-ringing practice. After a rousing address by the tower captain at last week's AGM, we concentrated on striking ... the art of controlling our ringing so that the bells sound evenly one after another, instead of big pauses followed by clattering as if some mighty hand had dropped huge pebbles among them. We also learned a new method - perhaps one that would have been good to start out with - called 'Original'.
Wednesday is shopping day ... it fits in nicely after the midweek Communion service. This week saw the collection of a big trolley-full of stuff, followed by my biggest ever pay-out for a week's groceries. I think everything was running low at the same time.
Friday was our church's day for 'prayer and fasting', with three half-hour gatherings in church at 7.0 am, 1.0 pm and 7.0 pm. This time we welcomed back our vicar, Simon, who has spent a couple of weeks teaching in Africa, and returned with stories of unseasonal weather there.
I'll end with another snippet from yesterday's delving. I unearthed a postcard, almost 110 years old, saying, "Dear Nephew, Just a line to say we are all well. We have got another son and P. is about again. I will write before long. Remember us to all at Home. Frederick S." It was written to my grandfather when he was 23 years old. The 'another son' was the third of what would become five children, four boys and a girl. The boys each had two Christian names; the girl just one. I always think there must be a sense of unfairness when one child has more or fewer names than a sibling, but for this difference to be so clearly gender-based is something I hadn't noticed previously.
Doesn't it seem so out of keeping with modern thinking!
Sunday 26 February 2017
Friday 17 February 2017
What's Half-term all About?
It all started the other evening, when I gave a lift to a friend. Conversation soon turned to the plans she had for keeping the children amused this week when there's no school ... and even more so during the long summer break that's only a few short months away. It's not until you - or someone you know - has to face this problem that you begin to realise just how important it is ... what a big impact it has upon otherwise 'normal' life.
School holidays, as we all know, began out of agricultural necessity combined with the observation of religious festivals. Why the terms separated by them needed further splitting is somewhat obscure ... at least at my level of research! I can only think that the poor teachers needed a breather, time to recover from the rigours of school life. If that were so when our present education system was in its infancy in the late nineteenth century, how much more is it a necessity today, with all the additional demands placed on teachers for all kinds of record-keeping in addition to their core role of imparting knowledge and wisdom to the young. I doubt many teachers actually stop work for a week at half-term.
Of course, it's not only home life that is disrupted. There is a noticeable impact on road travel, as I know only too well from my own recent working life. Journey times are significantly lower at holiday times especially in known congestion hot-spots. While that's beneficial, another effect is much the opposite: the increase in the cost of leisure travel. The airlines always raise their fares dramatically for these weeks, reverting to a lower level almost the day schools start again. One has to question the fairness of this, especially since many schools, if not all, have introduced a penalty system to virtually ban children being taken out of school for family holidays during term time.
I wonder how much it would take to persuade the majority of parents on middle incomes, i.e. those who would consider a holiday requiring air travel, to abandon that sort of holiday altogether, thus turning the tables on the airlines and penalising them for trying to take advantage of a supposedly captive market!
It has long been an annoyance to me that so much of life that is not overtly linked to the academic world follows this outdated holiday system. Many social groups and organisations, otherwise meeting on a weekly basis, will stop for a week at half-term, in addition to folding up completely in July and starting afresh in mid-September, the actual dates inevitably extended at both ends to allow for the differing holiday dates from one educational area to another.
I'm pleased that my greatest social activity, bell-ringing, doesn't observe this awful habit. Since our practice night is Monday, bank holidays are a threat but, instead of having a rule about these, we take each one on its merits and, if enough ringers are willing to turn up, then we have a practice as normal.
It has been suggested that in the manner of the rest of the business world - the world of commerce that the pupils and students aspire to join upon completion of their education - schools should operate the year round, leaving holiday arrangements to be sorted on an individual basis subject to certain restrictions around examinations and so on. Although consideration would need to be given to the need for teachers to have time for lesson planning and other 'background' tasks, there is much to be said for such a change.
However, like many a social 'battleship', I expect stopping it and turning it around could take another century and, until then, we shall have to live with this black-and-white distinction between academia and the real world. I leave the last word on the subject to one of the favourite authors of my own childhood. "Term time had gone as it if had been wiped out. Real life was beginning again." - Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post, chapter 2.
School holidays, as we all know, began out of agricultural necessity combined with the observation of religious festivals. Why the terms separated by them needed further splitting is somewhat obscure ... at least at my level of research! I can only think that the poor teachers needed a breather, time to recover from the rigours of school life. If that were so when our present education system was in its infancy in the late nineteenth century, how much more is it a necessity today, with all the additional demands placed on teachers for all kinds of record-keeping in addition to their core role of imparting knowledge and wisdom to the young. I doubt many teachers actually stop work for a week at half-term.
Of course, it's not only home life that is disrupted. There is a noticeable impact on road travel, as I know only too well from my own recent working life. Journey times are significantly lower at holiday times especially in known congestion hot-spots. While that's beneficial, another effect is much the opposite: the increase in the cost of leisure travel. The airlines always raise their fares dramatically for these weeks, reverting to a lower level almost the day schools start again. One has to question the fairness of this, especially since many schools, if not all, have introduced a penalty system to virtually ban children being taken out of school for family holidays during term time.
I wonder how much it would take to persuade the majority of parents on middle incomes, i.e. those who would consider a holiday requiring air travel, to abandon that sort of holiday altogether, thus turning the tables on the airlines and penalising them for trying to take advantage of a supposedly captive market!
It has long been an annoyance to me that so much of life that is not overtly linked to the academic world follows this outdated holiday system. Many social groups and organisations, otherwise meeting on a weekly basis, will stop for a week at half-term, in addition to folding up completely in July and starting afresh in mid-September, the actual dates inevitably extended at both ends to allow for the differing holiday dates from one educational area to another.
I'm pleased that my greatest social activity, bell-ringing, doesn't observe this awful habit. Since our practice night is Monday, bank holidays are a threat but, instead of having a rule about these, we take each one on its merits and, if enough ringers are willing to turn up, then we have a practice as normal.
It has been suggested that in the manner of the rest of the business world - the world of commerce that the pupils and students aspire to join upon completion of their education - schools should operate the year round, leaving holiday arrangements to be sorted on an individual basis subject to certain restrictions around examinations and so on. Although consideration would need to be given to the need for teachers to have time for lesson planning and other 'background' tasks, there is much to be said for such a change.
However, like many a social 'battleship', I expect stopping it and turning it around could take another century and, until then, we shall have to live with this black-and-white distinction between academia and the real world. I leave the last word on the subject to one of the favourite authors of my own childhood. "Term time had gone as it if had been wiped out. Real life was beginning again." - Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post, chapter 2.
Saturday 11 February 2017
What Difference does Retirement Make?
Someone asked me the other day, "How are you coping with retirement?" Although there were many references on this platform a couple of years ago to my plans for a 'phased retirement', once the phasing was over and the permanent condition kicked in, I gave it only the occasional thought, and my main focus was on simply 'getting on with reality'. So the question prompted me to take a mental step back and consider just how different the 'after' life is from that which went 'before'.
Of course, I have known two retirements in the last twenty years, the first being the cessation of office work when circumstances drew me into a second career as a courier driver. In that earlier era, one of my chief skills had been computer-based, using bespoke accounting software alongside countless spreadsheet applications. My spreadsheet experience began in the early 1980s, with an Apple PC, on which the program had to be loaded every time from a 5¼" floppy disk (when floppy disks really were floppy!). Once the program was loaded, a magnificent 32 kilobytes of 'user memory' were available for whatever application you chose to create and this number was displayed constantly in the corner of the screen to remind you how close you were getting to this tight and unrelenting limit.
One program followed another; there were SuperCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Symphony, and another whose name escapes me, which we used to estimate our weekly profit when I was working in the newspaper business (the managers never believed the results we came up with, but they were only estimates, after all!). Finally, the industry standard became Microsoft Excel, which I was brave enough to buy for my personal use long before I left the world of accountancy. Since that memorable transition, some fifteen years ago, my Excel skills have not just been maintained, but probably enhanced, as I've used it for many aspects of my personal life, from housekeeping accounts, to all the records of my courier work (which was self-employed, and so needed accounts and tax calculations as well as performance data), and latterly to monitor my SIPP pension investments, and extensively for my family history researches.
Then came the second retirement, when my sixth van gave up the ghost just hundreds short of that coveted achievement, a career million miles. Of course, as previously with the spreadsheets, retirement didn't mean I gave up driving, but it has led to my driving taking on a different style and purpose. Now driving for leisure only, I have had to get used to using just first, second and third gears to get me around the town, and on the occasions when I now venture further afield, I find it takes a few miles for me to regain those different habits, techniques and skills that apply to driving on the open road, especially on trunk roads and motorways. I enjoy the longer trips that I do make, for example regular visits to the local record office, or to my cousin in Nottinghamshire, and other occasional trips like a recent one to Heathrow Airport, or next week to a family history meeting near Uxbridge.
From time to time I recall - with a tinge of regret - many things that I realise I'm unlikely to see again: particular faces, particular company premises, in many cases whole cities and towns, for which there is now no reason to visit. There are also some situations and circumstances that I don't miss. My home is in what was once the industrial heart of this Garden City, and often I can look out of my window, and see commercial vehicles passing by. On dirty wet and cold winter afternoons I see delivery vehicles out there, and feel very glad to have retired. Those were the days when I would return to the office about 3.30, knowing that there were some hours left of the working day, hoping that I could simply wait for a job to start the next day, and that I wouldn't be asked to go out again that evening.
As with the destinations and the purposes, there are some aspects of the driving itself that I don't miss. Like countless thousands of other drivers, I abhor the miles upon miles of speed limits on our motorways. I accept that their purpose is safety while developments take place that will be greatly beneficial in the long term, but the frustration, delay, and in some cases almost fear generated by being boxed in on three - or worse four - sides by heavy lorries has to be experienced to be believed. It's one aspect of my working life of which I'm happy to be free for approximately 99% of the time!
Of course, I have known two retirements in the last twenty years, the first being the cessation of office work when circumstances drew me into a second career as a courier driver. In that earlier era, one of my chief skills had been computer-based, using bespoke accounting software alongside countless spreadsheet applications. My spreadsheet experience began in the early 1980s, with an Apple PC, on which the program had to be loaded every time from a 5¼" floppy disk (when floppy disks really were floppy!). Once the program was loaded, a magnificent 32 kilobytes of 'user memory' were available for whatever application you chose to create and this number was displayed constantly in the corner of the screen to remind you how close you were getting to this tight and unrelenting limit.
One program followed another; there were SuperCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Symphony, and another whose name escapes me, which we used to estimate our weekly profit when I was working in the newspaper business (the managers never believed the results we came up with, but they were only estimates, after all!). Finally, the industry standard became Microsoft Excel, which I was brave enough to buy for my personal use long before I left the world of accountancy. Since that memorable transition, some fifteen years ago, my Excel skills have not just been maintained, but probably enhanced, as I've used it for many aspects of my personal life, from housekeeping accounts, to all the records of my courier work (which was self-employed, and so needed accounts and tax calculations as well as performance data), and latterly to monitor my SIPP pension investments, and extensively for my family history researches.
Then came the second retirement, when my sixth van gave up the ghost just hundreds short of that coveted achievement, a career million miles. Of course, as previously with the spreadsheets, retirement didn't mean I gave up driving, but it has led to my driving taking on a different style and purpose. Now driving for leisure only, I have had to get used to using just first, second and third gears to get me around the town, and on the occasions when I now venture further afield, I find it takes a few miles for me to regain those different habits, techniques and skills that apply to driving on the open road, especially on trunk roads and motorways. I enjoy the longer trips that I do make, for example regular visits to the local record office, or to my cousin in Nottinghamshire, and other occasional trips like a recent one to Heathrow Airport, or next week to a family history meeting near Uxbridge.
From time to time I recall - with a tinge of regret - many things that I realise I'm unlikely to see again: particular faces, particular company premises, in many cases whole cities and towns, for which there is now no reason to visit. There are also some situations and circumstances that I don't miss. My home is in what was once the industrial heart of this Garden City, and often I can look out of my window, and see commercial vehicles passing by. On dirty wet and cold winter afternoons I see delivery vehicles out there, and feel very glad to have retired. Those were the days when I would return to the office about 3.30, knowing that there were some hours left of the working day, hoping that I could simply wait for a job to start the next day, and that I wouldn't be asked to go out again that evening.
As with the destinations and the purposes, there are some aspects of the driving itself that I don't miss. Like countless thousands of other drivers, I abhor the miles upon miles of speed limits on our motorways. I accept that their purpose is safety while developments take place that will be greatly beneficial in the long term, but the frustration, delay, and in some cases almost fear generated by being boxed in on three - or worse four - sides by heavy lorries has to be experienced to be believed. It's one aspect of my working life of which I'm happy to be free for approximately 99% of the time!
Friday 3 February 2017
A First with a Difference
I did something for the first time this week. But before I tell you about that, let me tease you with a question: why is a diary like a dictionary? Apart from the fact that one word is topped and tailed by bits of the other, not a lot, you might think. I will explain.
In the use of both, it can be claimed, you have to know the answer - or at least part of it - before you ask the question. If you look in the dictionary to see how to spell a word, you have to know at least the first couple of letters. It's no good looking for 'photography' under 'F', for example. So, if you use your diary to remind you to do something, you have to enter that fact in the diary, for the right day ... and then you have to look at the diary at the time.
Another facet of the same similarity is this. If you're sure you have spelled the word correctly, you don't consider looking in the dictionary; you only do that if you're in doubt. So, too, if you know your day is free, you don't bother to look in the diary. Better, however, is to get into the habit of looking at the diary every morning, or at the start of each week, to enable you to prepare for whatever you're committed to.
And so to that 'first'. As the church service progressed on Sunday morning we came to the point when someone goes to the front to read from the Bible. On this occasion, however, no one did. I said to the friend sitting next to me, "Someone's dropped a clanger. I don't think it's me." As I reflected on this in the succeeding minutes, I realised that I hadn't checked my diary for some days ... it could be me! And when I checked the rota immediately the service was ended, it proved to be so. To quote a well-worn expression, "That's never happened to me before!"
Aside from that bad beginning, it's been a good week. On Sunday, I learned that the friend I have often described as a 'quasi-daughter' had presented her parents with their second granddaughter - so unexpectedly early that no name had been finalised for the little darling! - but 'mother and child are doing well' (as the news bulletins proclaim).
The next day, I acted as chauffeur to a young lady from the church who needed to get to the airport. In an hour or so's close confinement in the car, we quickly graduated from acquaintances to friends. I hope she has a good break in the sun.
That apart, most of my week has been once more devoted to family history. As I struggle to meet my latest target, it seems to retreat before me, proving once again the eternal truth of this hobby, "It's never-ending; as soon as you turn one 'unknown' into a 'known', two more 'unknowns' appear!"
In the use of both, it can be claimed, you have to know the answer - or at least part of it - before you ask the question. If you look in the dictionary to see how to spell a word, you have to know at least the first couple of letters. It's no good looking for 'photography' under 'F', for example. So, if you use your diary to remind you to do something, you have to enter that fact in the diary, for the right day ... and then you have to look at the diary at the time.
Another facet of the same similarity is this. If you're sure you have spelled the word correctly, you don't consider looking in the dictionary; you only do that if you're in doubt. So, too, if you know your day is free, you don't bother to look in the diary. Better, however, is to get into the habit of looking at the diary every morning, or at the start of each week, to enable you to prepare for whatever you're committed to.
And so to that 'first'. As the church service progressed on Sunday morning we came to the point when someone goes to the front to read from the Bible. On this occasion, however, no one did. I said to the friend sitting next to me, "Someone's dropped a clanger. I don't think it's me." As I reflected on this in the succeeding minutes, I realised that I hadn't checked my diary for some days ... it could be me! And when I checked the rota immediately the service was ended, it proved to be so. To quote a well-worn expression, "That's never happened to me before!"
Aside from that bad beginning, it's been a good week. On Sunday, I learned that the friend I have often described as a 'quasi-daughter' had presented her parents with their second granddaughter - so unexpectedly early that no name had been finalised for the little darling! - but 'mother and child are doing well' (as the news bulletins proclaim).
The next day, I acted as chauffeur to a young lady from the church who needed to get to the airport. In an hour or so's close confinement in the car, we quickly graduated from acquaintances to friends. I hope she has a good break in the sun.
That apart, most of my week has been once more devoted to family history. As I struggle to meet my latest target, it seems to retreat before me, proving once again the eternal truth of this hobby, "It's never-ending; as soon as you turn one 'unknown' into a 'known', two more 'unknowns' appear!"
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