Working then and now

Have you written your CV? Do you have a job? What is a job? If it's some action that you get paid for, then you probably count it as a job, rather than a chore.

I've worked since I was 16. As soon as I finished taking my GCE exams, I walked down Chorlton high street going in every garage, hairdresser and shop asking for a job until I got one in the local supermarket. The supermarket manager must have asked me about my background because someone got excited about me having taken (I hadn't yet got the results) maths 'O' level. Consequently, they put me on green groceries. This required weighing produce and then doing complicated arithmetical calculations in your head, like if apples are one and seven pence ha'penny a pound, and this customer wants six ounces of apples, then how much must you write on the brown paper bag?*
Maths is not arithmetic; maths is patterns and logic. I can do patterns and logic (though I didn't know it at sixteen). I cannot do mental arithmetic, and I particularly cannot do mental arithmetic when under stress. Can you?

I was rapidly taken off the green grocery counter and put on the tills instead. The tills were fairly amusing because you met lots of customers, usually women and you had a machine to add up all the purchases, even the extra carrier bag that they asked for after you'd totalled. The first day, I used to put the total back in the till again and then add the few pennies for the bag so I could be sure the sum was correctly calculated. Unfortunately, this meant that at the end of the day, the till was short of the money for all the extra times I'd used it as a calculating machine.

Despite these disasters, the manager kept me on for the next five weeks of the summer holiday, paying me five pounds a week; and he took me back for the next two years of sixth form employing me on Saturdays and school holidays. Thus, I earned my tiny fortune that I spent on my two guinea pigs, one rabbit and twenty pet mice, or on Sunday train fares to the peak district, to trek for my Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme efforts. My brother got jobs in university vacations when he worked on roads along with Irish navvies. He earned a fortune compared to me, but that always was the differential between male and female wages.

What 16 year old now can get a summer job so easily? Over ten years ago, I encouraged my teenagers to look for something, but they came home explaining that everywhere they went, they were told, "Come back with your CV". They didn't get paid work till they went to uni where they got part-time jobs as librarians, tutors or lab assistants. One of our kids spent a year between uni and her first professional job working in B&Q, coming home grubby and proud that she'd earned.
My grandmother started working in a china shop at 14, my mother started teaching in an inner city school at 19, and I was 21 when I started teaching. Yet none of our children started working until at least 22. Several took gap years. One did a foundation year before uni. All of them have done masters degrees. So they're all highly educated, and took years about it.

But it seems hard for them to find and keep jobs.  I suspect my fourteen year old grandmother needed some way of earning her keep, some job that would pay her for her efforts so her auntie didn't have to keep her (her father having died and her mother emigrated). My mother wanted a qualification so she could support herself whether or not she found a husband who could keep her. Similarly, girls of my generation were encouraged to work before marriage, expecting to do hairdressing, secretarial or clerical work, and if they were a bit brighter they could be nurses or teachers. Most of them were not expected to go to university and some were actively discouraged. I started by East End primary kids with the enthusiasm of a twenty year old that thought she was doing good. Then I found teaching English as a Foreign Language was fun because of the intellectual challenge of explaining my own language. (You tend to take it for granted, automatically knowing things like the difference between "I do" and "I'm doing" or "you must" and "you don't have to" or "I could have done" and "I was able to do). A a job was a means of earning a living, of paying the rent, eventually a mortgage and contributing to society.
You used to aim to find a job. And you didn't always have to submit a CV.

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*BTW, one shilling and seven pence ha'penny for a pound (twelve pence in a shilling and sixteen ounces in a pound) means that I probably should have written 7d on that paper bag. It'd be an easier sum at 1/4 (one and four) a pound because that would be 16d a pound or a penny an ounce.

May month

May was a busy month for

• work, which I enjoyed because it included a writing week with research colleagues in a Cotswold village. See some photos on Twitter or Facebook
• meeting old friends from decades ago when honorary degrees were awarded at the Royal Festival Hall 
• visiting aged auntie and getting her old carpet changed for new. No flying carpets, or magic lamps or genies sadly. 
• washing a hen. And losing an old one.
• Just a nice month - sunset near us

Amsterdam

We've been to Amsterdam for an academic conference held at the Vu University in the suburbs of the city. It's a city of wide flat streets and cycles, the main streets separated into several lanes for each category of user, s tarting from the outside,

• a path for pedestrians on each side, then
  
• a cycle track with cyclists (nearly) always on the right hand side of the road, so single direction, then
  
• a lane for vehicles, and
  
• in the centre perhaps two more lanes for trams.

Yet despite so much apparent traffic, few cyclists wear helmets, even when transporting one or two children in seats in front and behind them. Perhaps this is because each type of traffic is physically separated, and cyclists feel safer than amongst the aggressive, arrogant pompous road-owning drivers of the UK. But on the other hand, husband didn't know which way to look where when he cycled through Amsterdam.

On the trams, friendly Dutch people made eye contact, sometimes chatting briefly and smiling when I attempted to read Dutch, "Houd uw karte hier" meaning "hold your travel ticket here" so it can be checked as you get on and off the tram.
Dutch food had not held much to invite me, but I discovered two delicacies:

• karne milch
• haring

Karne milch is akin to a drinking yogurt, slightly source, very liquid and thirst quenching. I think it's a drink made with the rennet that we used to have in England until the 1970s when it disappeared with the marketing invasion of yogurt from Europe. We called it buttermilk.

Haring is herring and new herring arrives in Holland in early June. It's a soft fish to be eaten raw with plenty of finely chopped onion, the idea being that you pick it up by the tail and lower it into your upturned mouth. It is so revered and delicious that our conference host treated us to new herring one evening. Yum.

PhD viva done

Now what shall I do?

Six years ago as I applied for a PhD scholarship, the last of the children were on the point of leaving home, one going to university, another starting sixth form. I'd completed that job and had to relinquish it.

On Tuesday 17th May, I successfully defended my thesis against my examiners' questions to be awarded the PhD with minor corrections.

Today I have to do

• no PhD work
• no tutorial preparation or assignment marking
• no research for my new job
• no children to mind

In the next few months I shall tidy up a few ends, enjoy my temporary job and sort out further cancer treatment. I have to relinquish the research that has become my baby, and find a new project.

New job

I have a job, a new job, a job that starts on Thursday, a job I can do, a job that uses my research skills, my experience of teaching in Higher Education, and my computing skills. How's that!

It's a job that requires me to focus on communications and usability of a web-site, and to bring in more participants, specifically doctoral students as a pilot study round a particular part of the site. It's a part-time temporary job, partly because they're working on renewing the funding, partly because we don't yet know each other, partly because I'm still preparing for my viva, and don't know when that will be, and partly because I want some spare time in case I need extra treatment.

So how's that! I'm cancer-rid, and stitch free since yesterday and I have a job. Go me!

Trudging

My PhD research trudges on. Or I trudge. Slowly. It's time it were finished, and

"progress is slow"

so said my supervisor this week, so I'm abandoning everything (well almost everything) in order to submit by Christmas. I've just postponed this drama course I was going on in October, and am doing it in January instead. I will have have submitted by then.

Won't I?

Work!

Stepdaughter #3 has been offered a job locally, a proper job in engineering, a job that uses both her degrees, she tells me:

"I have received employment"
"if anyone needs me, I'll be in the having a job dome"
"lalala i win"

She's delighted to inform her landlord and all the utilities that she's "moving shacks".

She starts next month, and they'll put her up in a hotel during the week for a couple of months while the lease on their Loughborough house finishes. In the meantime, she and her partner are getting a place done up to live in, partner having a teaching job in a local school, starting September.

"productive, innit"

Thank you letters

At work, we're having coffee and comparing notes on Xmas experiences. One young man is whinging about having to send thank you notes to his girlfriend's mother. And somehow starts to complain about his mother. Young man gets little sympathy from the two mothers in the group. And our revered ex-director-of-studies advises him to do whatever his mother says, tells him to use only three words:

"Yes, mother dear!"

And always to use them, varying only to

"Yes, dearest mother!"

Revered ex-DoS says to do what his mother says, always, and be courteous, even though he's also muttering to himself,

"Mother, I'm an adult, I'm over 60 and drawing my pension soon."

My son has sent his thank you letters, and he's not whinged at all.

Working families

I don't support the recommendation that MPs' spouses don't work for them. It's normal and natural for families to work together, whether they be spouses or children. Watching the farmer's son helping on his market stall this week in the Aylesbury Farmers' market, the child was both learning, and contributing to his family's business, and to society in general. He could be proud of his contribution. I know that some MPs have abused the system, but bad cases make bad law, and this recommendation is one that ought to go, not be implemented. Let the spouses work.

Busy

I'm away for work, with little time even for lunch. But it's nice to have the break, especially with a view like this.