So this is my
53rd and final blog... well, at least for the time being!
I’ve had great fun writing over the past 10
months and have genuinely appreciated every single one of the thousands of
views. Thank you all, whoever you may be, for reading in part or full, the
ramblings I've spouted!
Why to end
it? Well, why not?
HOW to end it
is the trickiest question…
So I've been banging on
about this for ages now.
It’s my own little mantra that I TRY to live by - though not
always successfully I might add, as life isn’t always so easy as to consistently carry on with
perfectionist and utopian standards. Nonetheless I constantly strive to retain
hope in the words.
I blogged a bit about this
at Christmas, as I like linking the theory to a child’s wonderment of that
event, but I thought it would be nice to leave you with it today:
Belief
Throughout your life, you will often need the capacity to believe in
yourself, and in your friends and your family, even when it’s incredibly hard to do
so.
Love
Love is the greatest power youwill ever know.
Love will light your life from the inside out, even during its darkest
hours when you are sad. Love will never burn out as somebody somewhere will
always love YOU.
Spirit
Spirit is genuinely real and enduring. The spirit of good and kind
people or acts should never be underestimated
So have Belief, Love and Spirit in abundance, and thanks again for
dropping by XxX
So Part 1 looked at the transition from Primary to Secondary School –
fast forward 5 years and 1992 brought to a close my compulsory education years.
Over those 5 years, as is the case for the vast majority of teenagers,
I’d built up some incredible friendships destined to last, with both
individuals and as a group alike. So much so that during our last year, we’d
extended not only to simply meeting at the park or sleepovers, but to also going out for full blown meals in
Brighton. How very grown up! The irony is that now I can't actually afford to go out as often as we used to back then!
I recall one night going for a birthday meal at the Marina for one of the girls and
during the course of the evening it significantly snowed. I say significantly,
it was about an inch (a man's inch), but at the time it had been years since the last
snowfall, so some of us ended up walking back towards Brighton throwing
snowballs from the beach, which seemed a bit surreal at the time!
Fish Dandruff
The last few months at school were fine, though for me absolutely carried
a sense of impending endings – which I found a bit confusing as to how I ought
to feel about it. Would I be friends with these people forever? Would I ever
see them again? Did they even want to keep in touch with me anyway!?
All these considerations were set against a backdrop of imminent GCSE
exams. Shamefully, I barely revised at all – mainly as no matter how hard I tried to
revise, it seemed that the more I read (and re-read) my books and notes, the
less confident I became. I did alright in the end though, with my best result
being attaining the highest grade in German that a male had achieved to date at
the school. Wunderbar! I'm sure it’sbeen smashed since...
May 8th 1992 - Our last day before taking exam leave ! It was quite emotional for some, and we
all dressed up for the occasion but by and large looked pretty terrible – such
was early 1990’s fashion.
Many girls (and probably some boys) were seen to cry – seemingly in the misplaced belief that they would never see any of their friends ever again. Whilst the final
assembly party was in swing, I joined a few of my best mates on a final tour
around the deserted school to say goodbye to the ghosts. Albeit this was a little bit daft, as I was coming back to same school the following September to the
in-house Sixth Form!
However that day really did feel like the definitive end of my
schooling. Like my time at Primary School, I had mostly enjoyed Secondary
School too. I had made the best friends and enjoyed some fantastic laughs along
the way, and barring one or two notable exceptions, most of the teachers were
pretty good too.
And, certainly initially, the end of school didn’t totally mean the end all
friendships. Primarily with my male friends, we were together virtually every
day of that prolonged summer (due to exam leave etc) – I didn’t own a bike, but I borrowed one belonging to my friend’s brother, and we cycled all over the place
at all hours of the day and night just talking about everything and nothing,
girls and football, school and music, starting a band, drinking, Winona Ryder etc.
I really don't care that she was once a shoplifter!
It was
a hot summer and it was one of the only times in my life that I got anything like a decent tan! Rather belatedly I also finally grew a
bit taller – earlier in the year I had been a stunted five feet three, but by
the time I started Sixth Form, I’d towered to all of five feet nine!
It’s fair to say though that many friendships through school association
did in fact disintegrate from this time, and I guess that’s the way it is meant
to be. You don’t live with your parents forever as you eventually outgrow most of what
they can provide for you, and it’s the same for your school mates. By the time
you get to 16, there’s less and less you have in common with them apart from
the fact that you have to be in the same building as them up to that point.
My step daughter recently passed up the idea of having a big 16th
birthday party (not my fault!!) on the basis that she is very focussed and
particular as to who her friends are and likes the fact that it’s a smallish
group. I think that’s probably a realistic and sensible approach.
I’m in my 40th year now, and although I don’t still have any
kind of regular contact with ALL those who were in our school group of about 9 close friends, I
happily communicate with those who want to still be part of my life, and know
that with one or two of them, we often resume our friendship as if we’d only
been at school yesterday, which is a nice state to be in.
Musical interlude time again: I've gone with the Number One for the week
in May I technically left secondary school (for exam leave)
Two years later, and it really was the last year at school! I had been
quite looking forward to my Sixth Form years, as I had this illusion that it
would be a great last hurrah for my school days.
Lower School, turned Sixth Form, turned entirely new school now
It wasn't!
The last few months at Sixth Form were a drag and I was sadly pleased when it had all finished. I’d enjoyed some of it, and had bonded in some new friendships
with people I had not known so well before, but from very early on it felt like
my heart simply wasn’t in it. I had genuinely enjoyed 99% of my school years,
but during the last year I just felt I’d had enough. I got bored with the work
and coupled with the fatigue I was feeling all the time (I had Glandular fever
and Anaemia), I was in no right mind to want to go to university. I’m sure it
probably showed in my work as towards the end of my final year, one teacher
absolutely (and unnecessarily) ridiculed me in front of my classmates, which
totally wiped out any confidence and drive I had left. After that humiliation, I had
classmates that I didn’t really know that well come and offer sympathies
because of her attack. Given that I train and teach people for a living now, as
my teacher for several spells between 1987-1994 she really ought to have known how to get the best out
of me a lot better than how she attempted. It’s unfair to say that she alone
ruined my lasting memory of school for me, but she didn’t help bring the
curtain down on a happy note that’s for sure.
I pushed on through though until the exams were done, and pointedly I set
up the Alice Cooper classic ‘School’s Out’
to play on my walkman as I left the school and walked down Portslade High
Street for the last time following my final exam.
A fairly pivotal few months
lie ahead for two of my children. My son is making the step up from Middle to
High School (or in old money, Primary to Secondary), and my step daughter is
imminently about to embark on GCSEs and the move to College / Sixth Form.
I can’t help cast my mind back
to when I experienced the same events myself, back when every summer seemed to
be a long and hot one, and my biggest concerns had absolutely nothing to do
with money!
I left Primary School on July
22nd 1987, and I doubt I could have enjoyed my time there any more if I tried.
The teachers were 99% tip top and the same went for my classmates. On the last
day of school, my favourite teacher gave her goodbyes and put it to us that we
should come back and visit the school in the future – not necessarily the next
term, or even the next year, but in years to come. And I did so in 1999, 2007
and 2009, and I actually found it quite an overwhelming experience (in a good
way!)
Primary School - clearly NOT in July 1987
Here's another photo I took earlier...
And as is my wont, I have to include an obligatory music gesture! For this blog it comes in the
shape of the song that was Number 1 the week I left Primary School:
Whilst it was sad to leave, I didn't sense any particular feeling of loss, as every member of my class was
going to the same Secondary School anyway. So come the third of September 1987,
we all moved up the ladder.
Told you I had blond hair!
I personally found the step up to be immense. I think that coming
from a relatively small village primary school with barely 150 students in the
entire school, I was now amongst more than 150 students in just one school year. I’d gone from being the
fifth oldest in my last school year, to being about the twentieth oldest in
this new place. I recall getting horrendous 'flu just a few weeks into the first school term. In fact I actually felt a bit voiceless, having drifted into the mass of numbers
somewhat, not that I'm an attention seeker! Much. *cough* No-one believes me that I'm actually painfully shy!
Looks appealing doesn't it!?
I also had a bit of a rough start as I was selected in a class with not
one of my male friends from primary school, and just one female. I got on
really well with her, but being rather shy (seriously!) I needed a bit more of
a comfort blanket than that. Most of the class seemed to know each other and were
on the whole friendly enough, though one or two were crueller than they needed
to be. Thankfully I found a couple of people who went out of their way to be
incredibly friendly and helpful to me. They put in so much effort to get to
know me during those early days which I was incredibly grateful for. I've never
forgotten that and to this day I am pleased they are still amongst my circle of
friends.
In spite of their great efforts though, both me and my female friend
(with all due respect to each other) were still unhappy and craved friends that we were more familiar with. With the aid of a phone call from my
Dad, a meeting was instigated with our terrific head of year, and he went
through all the student class lists to see what arrangements he could make to
help us. Thankfully there was a supremely easy swap which suited us both. My
new tutor group was great from the get-go, and some of the children I met over
those early weeks became lifelong friends, although there was one guy who
seemed determined to exercise his height advantage by starting to bully the children
of a smaller stature – namely me. He just gave me so much grief for the first
month or so, such as literally shoving me out of the way for no reason and
physically trying to intimidate me at every opportunity. It came to a head when
I had just had enough of it all. I challenged him to meet me on a Saturday at a
local park to ‘sort it out’. I managed to get the support of many of my new
classmates, as they too had got fed up with his antics.
As it happened, I didn't go to the park. Maybe it was fear and I just
bottled it, but I just thought that he wouldn't show up either. Come the
following Monday though I walked straight up to him in front of his mates and bluffed:
“Where were you then!?”... He countered with the same. Both of us claimed to
have been there, smiled to each other and left it at that, and he never gave me
any aggro again!
So all in all, once the minor issues had resolved themselves, it was a
relatively easy transition, and one that I reckon my son will cope with well
enough. Mainly as he’s far more confident than I ever was!
In Part 2, I’ll have a look at leaving Secondary School, which is a
slightly different ballpark!
When I first started writing blogs (September 2014) I couldn’t really
have guessed just how they would be received. Would anyone read them? Would they get some lip service? Would they be
genuinely liked? Who knew?
One particular earlyish effort was merely blogged because I was looking
forwards to the return of the Sky 1 programme ‘Trollied’ – mainly because I
used to work at a supermarket and found it was very close to the mark in its
observations! I didn’t for a second thinkthat it would ultimately become the most popular blog I've written to date!
So on the back of that ‘Getting Trollied Again’ blog, I thought I’d give a further insight into those glorious retail
years:
As previous readers will know, I spent the formative years of my
employment working in a supermarket. My first couple of years were enjoyed as a
student on the Produce section and checkouts, before moving to working on the
Delicatessen counter, initially as a student, but then as a full time member of
staff once I’d left Sixth Form and was undecided about what I wanted to do with
my life. So many people fall into this route, and I actually really enjoyed it
for a long time before finding something outside of retail when I was in my
early mid twenties.
A picture of a Deli Counter. Not mine though - I had some staff behind mine
After learning the Deli role inside out for a couple of years, I was
fortunate enough to get a promotion to become the new Delicatessen Manager at a
store in Brighton, starting just three days after my 21st birthday.
It’s fair to say that up till that point of my retail career, I’d seen a
few things that had opened my naïve innocent young eyes a little, but nothing
prepared me for the response I received on my first day in that new role, and
indeed the first couple of months.
What could be so wrong?
Well specifically it was three things about me that made some of my new
staff not that keen on me at all:
1.I was introduced to them on the first day as God.
2.I was young.
3.I was male.
Being introduced as The Almighty was horrendously embarrassing. I have
no idea why my introducer opted to say that, but I think maybe because he had been
looking after the counter in the absence of a manager and wanted them to think
I was there to ‘save’ them. I REALLY had to underplay that title in the first
few weeks to stave off fears of being called arrogant. Talk about a stitch up.
As for ‘being young and male’ – well they both sound ridiculously
ancient don’t they!? But it was a genuine issue as Delicatessen counters traditionally (although not exclusively) had been
a rather female dominated environment, and here I was, this boy, taking over the
running of their baby and many of them were not at all comfortable with it. To them, I was the Anti Milky-Bar Kid in more ways than one. Had
I not been their manager, and just been joining as an assistant, I doubt it
would have irked them so much, but it took a ton of effort to win certain staff
over and prove I was worthy.
For example, during that first week I remember cleaning out the bins. I
wanted to muck in and do everything and not be some aloof ‘suit’, so I thought
this might help somewhat. Nope. The opposite in fact, as this action extremely
upset one of the senior ladies as she’d done the bins for the last twelve years,
and boy had I now stepped on her toes! Whilst she was being comforted and
consoled by another elder stateswoman (because she WAS in tears), my confidence
wasn’t helped by the deliberately loud comment ‘I told them we should have been given a woman manager’
This would take some skill to turn them!
Altogether I had 17 staff initially, which included two male students,
three female students, and the rest were females old enough to be my mother or
grandmother. It would be wrong though to say that ALL the elder females didn’t
want me there. One Scottish lady in particular took to me quite early on and
stated that she felt I’d been a bit stitched up, and that even before I’d
arrived I was on a hiding to nothing as a colleague of mine at my previous
branch had popped in the week before to ‘advise’ them about me. Her assessment
being:
‘He’s a nice guy, but he’s not up to
being a manager’
...which was ironic given that less than 12 months earlier, I’d had to
cover her sorry ass over a Christmas period when she couldn’t cope when acting
up as a deputy manager herself. It was a shame to be knifed in the back before
I’d even started, but she’d always been a touch bitter, having felt mistreated
by the firm over her own career path over the years. I felt sorry for her but
why try and hurt me?
All this made me think that perhaps the dislike of me from these people
who I felt didn’t know me from Adam, might actually be a bit misplaced through
gossip, so I tried not to fret too much about it.
Rather soon, I lost my senior assistant to another department. She had
also applied for the Deli Manager’s job and failed to get it, and she wanted
some more responsibility. She was fair to me in that she knew it wasn’t my
fault, but she wanted to be appreciated and after she helped settle me in, I
was happy to help her get a promotion to another role in the store.
Perhaps I didn’t help improve my standing with the others though as when
appointing her replacement, I (fairly) opted for the best person, following
interviews. As it happened, another male!
The furore that kicked off simply because I’d given the job to a male
was unbelievable. It took intervention from the Personnel Manager to sort out
the ridiculous complaints (sexism, ageism, experience-ism!) that arose because
of it.
After a few weeks had passed, they started speaking to me again...
Time heals, and ultimately as a team, we all contributed to making our
Deli the best performing counter in the district, and second best in the
region. Given we were bottom of that list before I’d arrived, I was very proud
of the work we’d all done.
My reward was to be appointed as the Delicatessen District Trainer for
our area, which in turn made our counter the jewel in the area that other Deli
Managers came from afar to admire and seek advice from, which thankfully, my
lovely staff took immense satisfaction out of and ultimately meant I had earned
their respect.
Fair play to some of the stronger critics, as when I reluctantly moved
on from the store, they apologised for their preconception of me and offered
that I’d actually been a pretty good manager when all was said and done! Praise
from them was more important than praise from above, and the best compliment I
could pay them back in return was that the two years I spent at that branch
were two of the best years of my working life.
Looks like a prison hospital doesn't it!?
Leaving was a huge wrench. A destructive one too, as within a week of
working at my new store, I knew I wouldn't be staying long. That was October
1998, and I left the company in May 1999.
Those 8 months were as bad as the previously 24 had been good.
I’d gained promotion on the basis that I completed a pilot assessment
centre training course for Managers seeking advancement. I had furthermore been
promised to be fast tracked through the full management course as specifically I
had management experience under my belt already.. Ideally it wouldn't take
anymore than 6 months to get fully qualified and trained up before I’d be given
a proper large department of my own to manage.
But literally the week I moved to my new placement, they changed it. Who
they were, I’m still not sure, but I
got thrown in with a dozen or so university graduates on a post-graduate scheme
and no such real opportunity arose for an actual promotion. Essentially,
despite 8 years with the company, starting from joining in 1991 and working 10
hours a week as a school boy to what I’d recently achieved, I now had to complete a mandatory full year of
training – literally I was told I had to relearn how to stock shelves!
Just to rub salt into the wounds, the university grads went straight on
to a starting salary that was nearly £6000 higher than me! If it wasn’t for real
it would've been hilarious.
I should say that at no time did I blame the grads – It wasn’t their
fault at all. Indeed they had a huge amount of sympathy for me being entrapped
in this time wasting slavery scheme, and two of them were placed at the same
store I was. They were two of the nicest girls I could have hoped to be paired
with and they at least made my time at the store much more bearable.
When I resigned, the District Manager offered apologies and said I’d
been earmarked to have been a ‘40 yearer’ with the company – the store manager added
that in his opinion, the company had failed me ‘criminally’.
It was a sad end to my time in retail really, and prior to October 1998,
I couldn’t have envisaged my departing so soon. But all in all the 8 years were
mostly pretty good, and watching Trollied on Sky 1 brings back some fab and
funny memories.
Would I want to go back to retail though? Well never say never.
In these present days of
Teaching Assistants galore, classrooms are nicely awash with support for
children, but it wasn’t so long ago that only having your regular teacher in
class was the norm.
That said though, a sprinkling
of substitute, cover or student teachers occasionally dipped in to the mix
which usually meant absolute chaos would ensue within seconds of them entering
the classroom.
They were often an odd sort weren't they? Horrendous dress sense, totally incapable of maintaining any kind
of decent control over the class, and seemingly prepared to accept all kinds of
personal abuse from those who fancied their chances against them.
"Yes, Barry Manilow DOES know..."
In fact, none of those who
taught classes I was in seemed to exude any skills of note. Perhaps they should
have watched what Sidney Poitier did in To Sir With Love?
My memory is usually pretty
good, but it has failed me a little for this one, as there are quite a few such
specimens that I can remember by appearance, but not by name! So out of
fairness, and to promote anonymity, I've opted to revert to nicknames for all
of the candidates below:
Alan
Let’s start by
clarifying that Alan was actually a female, and was only known to us as ‘Alan’
as she looked like the brother of one of my best mates – who was called Alan!
Alan was a
student teacher assigned to teach us French in Year 11 (5th year)
during the LAST TERM before we left to take our GCSE exams. The LAST TERM!
Whoever made that decision wants their head examined… at a time when we needed
that final push and support before leaving school, it’s no wonder so many
people got low pass marks. On the whole, she was a very forgettable teacher,
but bless her she was memorable for trying
to express ‘pain’ in French, by running around the classroom feigning tummy
illness – for 20 minutes.
At least I think
she was faking it…
Denny
So named because
I think this chap was Danish. I could've gone with other food related links to Denmark, but
was advised caution against being ignorantly racist!
Poor Denny
seemed to lose the class before he'd even started. Another student teacher, he
was brought in to teach German and miraculously managed to survive just about
one term before moving on. Bright and breezy in his introduction, some of my
more ruthless classmates started tearing him a new one almost immediately. The
lessons immediately crumbled into a torrent of abuse towards him, his accent,
his beard, his dress wear, his lack of authority etc. No amount of him shouting
and literally screaming could stop the barrage of mocking coming his way.
Towards the end
of his tenure, our class was split into two, in order to help him attempt to
manage / teach a smaller group – which clearly didn't help our education.
During these split sessions, one of the heads of year asked me to tell her what
we'd learnt, so I honestly and openly told her ‘not much’ and that it would
take a miracle for the majority of the students to ever turn and warm to him.
Coming towards
the end of term, we were ‘lucky’ enough to have him cover a Design Technology
lesson for us. During which some students wound him up so much that he literally
threw a desk at a girl who had dared to laugh at him! He then sent her in to
another room and about a minute later all we could hear was screaming. Evidently
he had held her in an attempt to calm her down apparently, and she had retorted
with 'get your hands off of me you b******!’
before running out and home.
And to cement
the growing list of incidents, shortly after the above incident he had the tyres
slashed on his Citroen 2CV Dolly by a 1st year student.
Unsurprisingly
he didn't return in September, and we had a brand new female teacher in his
place. She was a breath of fresh air, instantly liked by all, and didn’t
receive one dot of abuse.
A footnote to
this story though, is that she actually knew her predecessor rather well. She ended
up being one of the best teachers I ever had, but to be fair, whoever his
replacement was would have been almost angelic in comparison. Long after his departure,
she told me how amazed she was at the series of events as she found him to be
such a nice chap!
Trusting her
assessment of him, I'm sure he was probably a nice guy – he just didn't get off
to a good start for whatever reason and it got diabolically worse from there on
in.
Hagar – But Not
Horrible
“I used to teach
in London.”
A fact he often
reminded us about. Possibly it was coding for ‘don’t screw with me’, but he was generally alright in the way he
handled the classes. He basically used to give as good as he got, and to that
end he had a fair good rapport with most students. What we ever learnt was debatable though.
He opened
himself up to abuse by declaring he was a Crystal Palace fan, which was a
burden for one of my Crystal Palace supporting mates (coincidentally the
brother of Alan above), as every time Hagar appeared before us, he’d make a
beeline for him to discuss how the football was going.
Oh and
apparently he also taught John Barnes. Just in case we’d forgotten from the
last 50 times he’d told us.
'Digger' Barnes - not yesterday
I think he also
used to lift share with another cover teacher who I think was nicknamed Charley
Farley, or Farley’s Rusks or something similar? The name Rudolph rings a bell
though, but that might be due to a red nose I recall him having. It distracted
from the tweed suit.
The Twins: Cunning
Linguist & Watoo Watoo
And finally, a
brief mention for these two student teachers who popped up at Primary School.
The Cunning
Linguist wasn’t popular amongst fellow teachers and children alike. This was
compounded when I heard other teachers slagging him off just after he left. The
nickname is because he often used to mispronounce the name of our lovely
headmaster Mr.Cunliffe (RIP) to Mr.Cunnicliffe – which as a child I found
funny, and as an adult I find mildly disturbing!
And finally,
Watoo Watoo was just a friendly play on the family name of the preceding nice
young student teacher who at least came back and visited us again.
Think
how much our children are missing out on these delights!
