The British volunteer
Three posts so far and readers (the few – two to date outside the family) might wonder why ‘reward in heaven’. It’s all to do with expectations – blessed are they that expect nothing and all that.
One of the things that happens when you retire is that you find out what your other half has been up to while you were out at work. You might also discover aspects of her character (it is mostly her for my generation) that you never suspected or didn’t realise were being put to use.
My wife (aka M or SWMBO) is beautiful, intelligent and the best cook in the Three Counties. I have basked in my friends’ envy of these qualities for nearly forty years. I only now find out that she is organised, efficient and ruthless in the conduct of the other interest she took up some years ago, when the boys grew out of needing full time TLC. She became a volunteer with a global, and very worthy, charity I shall call Cuddle Our World. Cash COW it could be called, seeming as it does to absorb a hefty part of my pension in petrol, phone calls and donations to every event it organises. She says she gets the petrol and phone calls back as expenses, which is true, but quietly forgets that the payments go out from my account and the expenses back into hers. Meanwhile the house is full of collecting tins and buckets and of stuff on its way from the public to the COW shop. The charity shop is a feature of the British high street nowadays, almost outnumbering estate agents. Since they pay much reduced business rates I assume the deficit has to be retrieved from somewhere and it doesn’t take many guesses to home in on the overburdened middle class homeowner as the likely sucker who unknowingly obliges. Yet another flaw in that particular system, of which more another time no doubt.
M works in the shop an afternoon a week and has many ideas about improving its effectiveness. Some are adopted (she’s not actually in charge), some ignored and some go through an apparently weekly cycle of adoption, cancellation by one of the regulars working on a different day and reintroduction on M’s next watch. It must be a hive of intrigue, with the window being redressed while someone is taking the money to the bank or the goods being repriced while the miscreant who put the designer-label cardigan out on the rack at £1.50 is occupied at the till, only to have it all reversed when the shift changes.
But the shop is really a hobby compared with the serious work - the politics of the organisation. As with BT, Tesco or Barclays Bank there are departments, sections, areas and regions and of course managers to go with them. Many of these posts are held by paid COW employees. These are reportedly, and unsurprisingly, subject to all the normal human traits, weaknesses and sins of omission and commission that you would expect to find in the managers of BT, Tesco or Barclays Bank. But with a charity it’s worse. A charity has to keep its costs down, its ratio of income to expenses being both a measure of its performance and its defence against criticism for paying anyone. It also needs a widespread network of people to keep plugging the message, staff the shops and collect the five pound notes and small denomination foreign coins in the tins and buckets outside the supermarkets. This mostly unskilled work is unloaded onto volunteers, organised by a smaller band of still volunteer organisers and leaders. These have some characteristics (cheerfulness, persistence, persuasiveness, dedication or high boredom threshold according to which way you look at it) in common with the Gentils Organisateurs of Club Med but are mostly about thirty years older and all fully dressed. These in turn work through the paid district or area managers appointed by the COW hierarchy. Because the volunteer organisers are mostly competent and organised (they would be on the fast track to the funny farm if they weren’t) while the employed ones are subject to the usual operation of the Peter Principle, clashes of ideas, policy and personality are inevitable. M has this taped. When a district manager failed to perform to her standards recently she filled in one of my blank P45s and sent it to the offender’s boss. The boss was not amused but had no redress against a volunteer and could not afford to lose one who was doing good skilled work in a different area. The new district manager is much better. It is such ruthlessness that now dictates my life. A Christmas present of an A4 filofax a few years ago (lots of room for recipes I thought) has backfired into the schedule that rules my life. COW commitments go straight in, in ink, usually well in advance. The affairs of my relatively casual, disorganised and impromptu life mostly have to be fitted around them, with severe penalties in marital discord if she has to resort to the correcting fluid. I now understand the angst of the suburban housewife, confined to the house to answer the phone (mostly from COW), pay the window cleaner and fend off people wanting to resurface our drive, while the dog paws at the study window demanding to be exercised.
I have to confess here that I’m not immune to this volunteering lark myself, having been heavily involved over a decade or so in the affairs of a national sport association, a not for profit organisation, ruled though not run by volunteers (the difference is critical and can be fatal to the organisation) that I have discovered has many parallels with a charity. I’ll have to come back to this one but it disturbs me that each of us has got ourself into a variation of the same fundamental situation: work disguised as play, for no material reward and precious little of the other sort this side of the pearly gates.
Monday, August 30, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Goodbye, thankyou and RIP
An example of the law of unforeseen consequences. On Saturday I called our newsagent to change our order from The Times to The Daily Telegraph. I am starting to find The Times bland, in particular its wishy-washy offend-nobody editorials and the letters below the fold, as if the ones higher up weren’t bad enough. The best bits are ex-editor Simon Jenkins’s column and the Thunderer, appropriately using the paper’s old nickname for some of the more forthright comment. I hope The Telegraph will at least have an opinion. To my mild surprise SWMBO concurred with the change.
The same day Bernard Levin died. Perhaps, for the first time, he missed a deadline (sorry) and was too late (sorry again) for the early editions of the Sundays but I knew nothing of it. On Monday and again on Tuesday our newsagent failed to make the change in our order and so it was in The Times, for which he wrote for over 25 years, that I read both the announcement and his obituary. I bought The Telegraph at the garage and read theirs too.
Levin has long been one of my heroes – for his clarity, his variety, his choice of targets and most of all for his craftsmanship with the English language. I didn’t know he invented the phrase ‘the nanny state’ but it does not surprise me. When he left the Daily Mail in 1971, perhaps because his 600 word ration was too confining, he had to choose between offers from the Guardian and Times. He had once before worked for the then Manchester Guardian but chose the Times because he preferred to write slightly ‘against the grain’ of his paper. I cancelled my Mail and took up the Times. Levin made the right choice and it is hard to imagine now that someone of his originality, independence and libertarian principles could possibly have had his insistence on his copy never being altered without his express permission accepted by the paper the Guardian has become. He was to acknowledge this himself some years later. If only we had him today, perhaps to update his piece on the futility of euphemisms, in which he took British Rail to task for replacing second class with standard class and thus announcing to the world that henceforth it would operate to second class standards. He demolished both the Walrus and the Carpenter in his time. Teflon Tony would surely have succumbed too.
But I think his best work was his history of Britain in the sixties, The Pendulum Years. In four consecutive chapters, O say have you heard?, A moral issue [sic], Standing room only, and Thoroughly filthy fellow, he gives us the best, most lucid, most comprehensive and most entertaining account you will find anywhere of the Profumo scandal, its origins, unfolding, climax and postscripts from the first naked frolicking of Christine Keeler in the Cliveden swimming pool to the trial and suicide of Stephen Ward. Someone too young to have been around at the time could read it and think how lucky we were to have such a delicious folly unfolding day by day for the price of a newspaper. True, but there is renewed and new delight in Levin’s summary, highlights and analysis, like watching the taped replay of a particularly good sporting event, when knowing the result adds to the pleasure of seeing and reliving the way it all worked out. Another chapter, Wives and servants, does much the same for the Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill trials. He covers domestic and foreign politics, the arts, popular music, crime, the strange phenomenon of Malcolm Muggeridge and many other topics, ending with a moving account of Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral. Only sport, no surprise this to his fans, is ignored. If you think you remember the sixties, read it and see what you missed.
Someone once expressed surprise when I remarked that I often re-read a book. Why not? At least you know you will enjoy it. I shall rediscover The Pendulum Years.
An example of the law of unforeseen consequences. On Saturday I called our newsagent to change our order from The Times to The Daily Telegraph. I am starting to find The Times bland, in particular its wishy-washy offend-nobody editorials and the letters below the fold, as if the ones higher up weren’t bad enough. The best bits are ex-editor Simon Jenkins’s column and the Thunderer, appropriately using the paper’s old nickname for some of the more forthright comment. I hope The Telegraph will at least have an opinion. To my mild surprise SWMBO concurred with the change.
The same day Bernard Levin died. Perhaps, for the first time, he missed a deadline (sorry) and was too late (sorry again) for the early editions of the Sundays but I knew nothing of it. On Monday and again on Tuesday our newsagent failed to make the change in our order and so it was in The Times, for which he wrote for over 25 years, that I read both the announcement and his obituary. I bought The Telegraph at the garage and read theirs too.
Levin has long been one of my heroes – for his clarity, his variety, his choice of targets and most of all for his craftsmanship with the English language. I didn’t know he invented the phrase ‘the nanny state’ but it does not surprise me. When he left the Daily Mail in 1971, perhaps because his 600 word ration was too confining, he had to choose between offers from the Guardian and Times. He had once before worked for the then Manchester Guardian but chose the Times because he preferred to write slightly ‘against the grain’ of his paper. I cancelled my Mail and took up the Times. Levin made the right choice and it is hard to imagine now that someone of his originality, independence and libertarian principles could possibly have had his insistence on his copy never being altered without his express permission accepted by the paper the Guardian has become. He was to acknowledge this himself some years later. If only we had him today, perhaps to update his piece on the futility of euphemisms, in which he took British Rail to task for replacing second class with standard class and thus announcing to the world that henceforth it would operate to second class standards. He demolished both the Walrus and the Carpenter in his time. Teflon Tony would surely have succumbed too.
But I think his best work was his history of Britain in the sixties, The Pendulum Years. In four consecutive chapters, O say have you heard?, A moral issue [sic], Standing room only, and Thoroughly filthy fellow, he gives us the best, most lucid, most comprehensive and most entertaining account you will find anywhere of the Profumo scandal, its origins, unfolding, climax and postscripts from the first naked frolicking of Christine Keeler in the Cliveden swimming pool to the trial and suicide of Stephen Ward. Someone too young to have been around at the time could read it and think how lucky we were to have such a delicious folly unfolding day by day for the price of a newspaper. True, but there is renewed and new delight in Levin’s summary, highlights and analysis, like watching the taped replay of a particularly good sporting event, when knowing the result adds to the pleasure of seeing and reliving the way it all worked out. Another chapter, Wives and servants, does much the same for the Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill trials. He covers domestic and foreign politics, the arts, popular music, crime, the strange phenomenon of Malcolm Muggeridge and many other topics, ending with a moving account of Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral. Only sport, no surprise this to his fans, is ignored. If you think you remember the sixties, read it and see what you missed.
Someone once expressed surprise when I remarked that I often re-read a book. Why not? At least you know you will enjoy it. I shall rediscover The Pendulum Years.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
If you know a better hole . . .
Off to ZA to see son one and family. Depressed at way England has become uncouth. Will consider emigrating, but where to? New homeland would have to be couth (strictly personal and subjective definition, variable with time and mood), warm and meet basic tests of being civilised – see remarks on couth. Limited choice as all dictatorships, one party states and ones with a state-backed religion ineligible. This makes UK ineligible on grounds of being cold (in winter) and a one party state for foreseeable future. Also object to craven attitude to anything bearing remotest possible risk of injury, mishap or causing offence to innumerable ethnic, religious or cultural minorities. Only people it’s safe to insult are poor, unemployed, undereducated whites (no CRE to defend them); to satirise, just the native, middle class white and educated. Pros: decent beer available, thanks to Camra, cricket still widely played at true amateur level, including on our village green, can still fly (privately that is) with reasonable lack of restrictions, can still laugh at ourselves, great cheeses as even my French friends admit, general decency and sense of humour of vast majority of people, healthy distrust of government. Cons: in fact few, but multiplying under current government (distrusting them does nothing to change their ways) and its policy of simultaneously pushing on with ill thought through, basically Tory policies and pandering to left and fringe groups over e.g. hunting, wind farms, protection of slugs. Mused through a few possibilities.
France. Obvious first choice as a) near, b) I speak the language. This close to essential as anathema to be part of uncouth Brit ex-pat enclave on e.g. Costa Plonka. Pros: civilised attitude to food and language, low population density cf. most of UK, good climate and scenery. Cons: part of EU (though attitude to it is a pro), beer poor, driving standards poor (though again sympathise with attitude). Couth Index, out of five, probably 4 except in Paris.
Belgium. Just to get it out of the way. Close to ineligible on account of being fount of all EU nonsense and therefore nearly a sort of pan-national dictatorship. Couth index 2 urban, higher in the south-east they say. Cons: beer overrated, driving standards abysmal, two languages. Pros: easily bypassed. . .
Netherlands. Pros: civilised attitude to drugs, prostitution, pornography, also to speed cameras. Good trains, endurable airport. Cons: much bureaucracy I’m told, despite pros, impenetrable language, crowded, at risk from global warming as mostly below sea level, rubber cheese. Couth Index 4+ for the good guys.
Germany. Pros: best lager in Europe and therefore by definition in the world, trains run on time one assumes. Cons: language with three genders, not always readily apparent which applies, and strange word order. EU main player with France. Love of bureaucracy.
Ireland. Civilised attitude to food, drink, conversation, rush. Climate better than reputation. Cons: inflation, competition for EU grants increasing, signs of losing sight of principles, e.g. allowing golf course on Old Head of Kinsale. Pros: food, drink, company, generous to pensioners. CI currently 4++, fear on the wane.
Norway. Pros: one of two European countries not in EU and therefore civilised by definition (but see Switzerland), people friendly, girls beautiful and friendly. Don’t panic like UK when it snows. Cons: food, liquor laws, too cold and dark in winter.
Sweden. Much as Norway except is in EU. Betrayed us many years ago when they switched to driving on the right. Switching over at border crossings was a small price to pay and think of the advantage it would bring now as excuse to stop and search every vehicle. CI probably has distinct seasonal variation with relaxation in long summer days but generally good, as exemplified by Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Switzerland. OK, not in EU but outdoes it for petty regulations, e.g. no loo flushing at night, switch off engine at red lights. Even currency not what it used to be. As once described by a friend who lives there, it’s a police state because the inhabitants want it that way. CI unknown, unobservable, like the far side of the moon.
Italy. All that culture and they seem to take it in their stride. Pros: food, wine, scenery, hospitality, art, architecture, climate. Cons: Venice overrated, corruption. Couth index 4+, at least in the North.
Spain. Different from all of above in that I’ve never been there but let that not be a barrier to having strong views about it. Information mainly from one of the brightest clients I worked with, who married a Spanish woman. After he had endured traditional ritual of assessment by her five brothers, mother, grandmother etc., he was accepted and loves it. Pros: climate, food, wine, strength of family unit, general idea that life is to enjoy unhurriedly, that super bridge in Seville. Cons: attitude to animal welfare still a bit dodgy, too many Brits, lack of extradition treaty, or have they sorted that out now? I’m with them on Gibraltar though. Couth index probably close to 5 so long as you are talking about Espana, not Spain as an extension of Essex.
Off to ZA to see son one and family. Depressed at way England has become uncouth. Will consider emigrating, but where to? New homeland would have to be couth (strictly personal and subjective definition, variable with time and mood), warm and meet basic tests of being civilised – see remarks on couth. Limited choice as all dictatorships, one party states and ones with a state-backed religion ineligible. This makes UK ineligible on grounds of being cold (in winter) and a one party state for foreseeable future. Also object to craven attitude to anything bearing remotest possible risk of injury, mishap or causing offence to innumerable ethnic, religious or cultural minorities. Only people it’s safe to insult are poor, unemployed, undereducated whites (no CRE to defend them); to satirise, just the native, middle class white and educated. Pros: decent beer available, thanks to Camra, cricket still widely played at true amateur level, including on our village green, can still fly (privately that is) with reasonable lack of restrictions, can still laugh at ourselves, great cheeses as even my French friends admit, general decency and sense of humour of vast majority of people, healthy distrust of government. Cons: in fact few, but multiplying under current government (distrusting them does nothing to change their ways) and its policy of simultaneously pushing on with ill thought through, basically Tory policies and pandering to left and fringe groups over e.g. hunting, wind farms, protection of slugs. Mused through a few possibilities.
France. Obvious first choice as a) near, b) I speak the language. This close to essential as anathema to be part of uncouth Brit ex-pat enclave on e.g. Costa Plonka. Pros: civilised attitude to food and language, low population density cf. most of UK, good climate and scenery. Cons: part of EU (though attitude to it is a pro), beer poor, driving standards poor (though again sympathise with attitude). Couth Index, out of five, probably 4 except in Paris.
Belgium. Just to get it out of the way. Close to ineligible on account of being fount of all EU nonsense and therefore nearly a sort of pan-national dictatorship. Couth index 2 urban, higher in the south-east they say. Cons: beer overrated, driving standards abysmal, two languages. Pros: easily bypassed. . .
Netherlands. Pros: civilised attitude to drugs, prostitution, pornography, also to speed cameras. Good trains, endurable airport. Cons: much bureaucracy I’m told, despite pros, impenetrable language, crowded, at risk from global warming as mostly below sea level, rubber cheese. Couth Index 4+ for the good guys.
Germany. Pros: best lager in Europe and therefore by definition in the world, trains run on time one assumes. Cons: language with three genders, not always readily apparent which applies, and strange word order. EU main player with France. Love of bureaucracy.
Ireland. Civilised attitude to food, drink, conversation, rush. Climate better than reputation. Cons: inflation, competition for EU grants increasing, signs of losing sight of principles, e.g. allowing golf course on Old Head of Kinsale. Pros: food, drink, company, generous to pensioners. CI currently 4++, fear on the wane.
Norway. Pros: one of two European countries not in EU and therefore civilised by definition (but see Switzerland), people friendly, girls beautiful and friendly. Don’t panic like UK when it snows. Cons: food, liquor laws, too cold and dark in winter.
Sweden. Much as Norway except is in EU. Betrayed us many years ago when they switched to driving on the right. Switching over at border crossings was a small price to pay and think of the advantage it would bring now as excuse to stop and search every vehicle. CI probably has distinct seasonal variation with relaxation in long summer days but generally good, as exemplified by Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Switzerland. OK, not in EU but outdoes it for petty regulations, e.g. no loo flushing at night, switch off engine at red lights. Even currency not what it used to be. As once described by a friend who lives there, it’s a police state because the inhabitants want it that way. CI unknown, unobservable, like the far side of the moon.
Italy. All that culture and they seem to take it in their stride. Pros: food, wine, scenery, hospitality, art, architecture, climate. Cons: Venice overrated, corruption. Couth index 4+, at least in the North.
Spain. Different from all of above in that I’ve never been there but let that not be a barrier to having strong views about it. Information mainly from one of the brightest clients I worked with, who married a Spanish woman. After he had endured traditional ritual of assessment by her five brothers, mother, grandmother etc., he was accepted and loves it. Pros: climate, food, wine, strength of family unit, general idea that life is to enjoy unhurriedly, that super bridge in Seville. Cons: attitude to animal welfare still a bit dodgy, too many Brits, lack of extradition treaty, or have they sorted that out now? I’m with them on Gibraltar though. Couth index probably close to 5 so long as you are talking about Espana, not Spain as an extension of Essex.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
The longest journey starts with a single step . . .
Have decided to start a blog as an antidote to boredom in retirement. Retirement is the third great watershed in one’s life. The first is graduation (no more sponging off the state), the second is having children (no more disposable income) and then retirement (no more company car). Time to reflect on furrows ploughed and those still fallow. Time to do all those things one never had enough time for, and then find one is too old and supposedly frail for some of them, like bungee jumping, in a world ruled by fear of litigation and craven allegiance to health and safety rules. Don’t they realise the main incentive for staying healthy and sound in wind and limb is the probability of picking up something worse via a visit to the hospital?
I reflect on the watersheds.
Graduation – top university, bottom degree. At the actual ceremony I was the only one in the line whose new BA gown had to be removed before it could be adjusted to the correct setting.
Fatherhood – an improvement. Brought up two sons (my wife did most of the work of course) who are good husbands and fathers, not a burden on the state, treat all people on merit and don’t drink and drive. This should be the prime responsibility of any parent. They will do better than I did through having had the sense to make better choices in early manhood. The only good ones I made were my wife and a small number of true friends. Career a triumph of improvisation over aptitude. Retirement not so much earned as reached, as a river reaches the sea.
Retirement – my true metier. I observe the world, read the papers, watch the TV news (Channel 4 only, the BBC used to do it better on John Craven’s Newsround) and sign up in the army of grumpy old men. I’m worth brigadier at least.
Have decided to start a blog as an antidote to boredom in retirement. Retirement is the third great watershed in one’s life. The first is graduation (no more sponging off the state), the second is having children (no more disposable income) and then retirement (no more company car). Time to reflect on furrows ploughed and those still fallow. Time to do all those things one never had enough time for, and then find one is too old and supposedly frail for some of them, like bungee jumping, in a world ruled by fear of litigation and craven allegiance to health and safety rules. Don’t they realise the main incentive for staying healthy and sound in wind and limb is the probability of picking up something worse via a visit to the hospital?
I reflect on the watersheds.
Graduation – top university, bottom degree. At the actual ceremony I was the only one in the line whose new BA gown had to be removed before it could be adjusted to the correct setting.
Fatherhood – an improvement. Brought up two sons (my wife did most of the work of course) who are good husbands and fathers, not a burden on the state, treat all people on merit and don’t drink and drive. This should be the prime responsibility of any parent. They will do better than I did through having had the sense to make better choices in early manhood. The only good ones I made were my wife and a small number of true friends. Career a triumph of improvisation over aptitude. Retirement not so much earned as reached, as a river reaches the sea.
Retirement – my true metier. I observe the world, read the papers, watch the TV news (Channel 4 only, the BBC used to do it better on John Craven’s Newsround) and sign up in the army of grumpy old men. I’m worth brigadier at least.
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