The Commercialisation of Universities

New Month Old Post: First Posted 29th November 2018

Two items in the recent press about Higher Education:

1. Universities are awarding too many first class degrees. The think-tank Reform argues that universities risk losing their credibility due to “rocketing grade inflation”. Apparently, 26% of U.K. students now get first-class degrees and one university awards them to over 40% of students. Similarly the proportion of 2:1 degrees, nationally, is now nearly 50%. The think-tank suggests the number of first-class degrees should be capped at 10%, 2:1 and 2:2 degrees at 40% each, with the lowest 10% getting a third. (Guardian; BBC).

2. Universities are making too many unconditional offers. Ucas reports that a third of 18-year-old university applicants received some form of unconditional offer last year, made up of true unconditional offers, and conditional offers which became unconditional when an applicant makes that university a firm choice. Some institutions are also offering students four-figure bursaries. (Guardian).

The reports highlight massive increases in the numbers: a doubling of high grades over ten years, and an almost thirty-fold increase in unconditional offers over five years. 

Well, when I graduated in 1980, out of the 70 people who started the course, just 2 got firsts, less than 3%, and that was an exceptional year. Some years there weren’t any. And it was completely unknown for universities to make unconditional offers to 18-year-olds yet to take their ‘A’ levels; it might not even have been allowed.

Isn’t it simply a case of commercial organisations providing the service their customers want? In almost any other sector it would be singled out for praise. Perhaps if universities had not been turned into competing businesses in the first place, these things would not be happening.

Peter Hitchens

I am always interested to read what Peter Hitchens has to say in the Mail On Sunday each week. It is supposed to be a pay-to-read column, but because of having to read using text-to-speech, I came upon a way to see it online for free by chance. 

He tends to be seen as someone with views very much to the political right, but actually he is more of a contrarian. Certainly, he is no supporter of the Labour Party, but he is no fan of the Conservatives either, because, he says, they are not conservative. They do not conserve anything and have not done so for 45 years. Indeed, he blames Margaret Thatcher for much of the deterioration in modern Britain as we know it today. 

Thatcher, for example, had the idea of privatising the railways and water companies, both terrible disasters, although carried out later. She removed the sensible old pub licencing laws, creating the drunkenness and violence that blights every city centre every weekend, with bouncers on every pub door for the trouble they know is coming, and the mess and expense of cleaning it up. She allowed the licencing of no-win no-fee lawyers, creating exaggerated health and safety panics that shut down trains and parks, and cost us all dearly in enquiries and speculative legal actions. She failed to save the grammar schools which did so much for equality of opportunity, and tried to cut the navy, and would have been unable to defend the Falklands. These were not conservative acts. 

He has many opinions I disagree with, but at least unlike many of the moaning minions on Blogland, they are well informed and well argued. I think that essentially he liked the Britain he grew up in, and regrets the changes that have taken place. With a number of caveats, he is not alone in that. Unfortunately, he can come across as rather arrogant. 

He has two long standing causes I am completely persuaded by, that he has been writing repeatedly about for years. 

One is the harm caused by cannabis. It is fashionable to call for its legalisation, and argue that it is harmless, but, actually, it causes a great deal of damage to society and its users. Long term use reduces the ability to care about anything. It takes away motivation. 

Nearly all the so-called terrorist attacks and mass stabbings and shootings are extreme cases. The evidence is over whelming, but it is ignored. Only now may a few psychiatrists and police be beginning to wake up to the problems. The Nottingham and Southport murders, and the recent train attack in Huntington, all have the stink of cannabis. They were not the result of terrorism. They are the actions of drug crazed nutters.  

The second cause is that of Lucy Letby. She was found guilty of murdering very ill new-born babies in the hospital where she worked, and has been sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison, but increasing numbers of expert doctors and legal experts are beginning to believe that a massive miscarriage of justice has taken place. The evidence simply does not support her guilt. Indeed, there is no clear evidence that a crime of any kind has taken place at all. It seems that the police and the hospitals decided she was guilty and then looked for reasons to support it. It is beyond appalling that this could happen to someone under British justice today, where there is supposed to be the presumption of innocence unless proved guilty. It could be you or me. Calls for a retrial have so far been dismissed. 

AA Assistance

 

In writing about the Automobile Association Handbook last month, I said the more you think about such artefacts, and the more other commenters contribute, the more you remember about them. The AA Handbook it a good case in point. I began to think about childhood memories of the AA, and later needing their assistance. It may be of interest only to me. I think there will be a third post, too. 

I was aware of the AA from an early age. At that time, AA patrolmen still used motorbikes, with sidecars for their tools and equipment. One garaged and maintained his bright yellow bike in the back lane behind our primary school. As six year-olds we were fascinated. I am delighted to see the brick garage still there in the wall in the lane, now locked but recognisably the same. I thought about the children who walked with me to school, and what we talked about. How many still remember that 70 years ago an AA man lived there? 

Until the 1950s, AA members were issued with metal radiator grill badges, and patrolmen would salute motorists displaying a visible badge. I have an early memory of being in a car and being saluted, but when and where I have no idea. 

No salute meant a problem or hazard ahead. Apparently, this originated as a warning to members of police speed checks. Patrolmen could not be prosecuted for failing to salute. The practice would have ended in the late 1950s when motorcycles were superseded by small vans, which have gradually increased in size to the much larger vans now used. 

The main role of AA patrolmen was then, as now, to rescue motorists whose cars had broken down. Members were issued with keys for AA phone boxes to summon help. These all seem to have gone now, presumably because mobile phones made them obsolete, but my key remains on the key ring. 

I have needed help on three occasions. One was in the 1980s, on the A1 south from Scotland. The front end of the exhaust pipe broke loose from the engine, hacking and scraping along the road like an ancient tractor. The AA men tied it up and drove slowly ahead with me to Halfords. That Talbot Samba was new, my worst car ever. 

Another occasion, around the same time, was somewhere on the M1 south when the exhaust pipe of the car in front fell off and bounced under mine. A little later, there was a smell of petrol. The fuel supply pipe was fractured, and an AA man mended it with a length of plastic pipe. It stayed in place until I sold the car. 

But my first need was on Sunday, 1st September, 1974, on the M62 going home from Leeds, the day before I started a new job. It was also the day the new M62 opened from Whitley Bridge (J34) to Leeds. I was in my clapped-out blue Mini (the one in the blog banner), and after accelerating from the new slip road thinking how great it was, the engine cut out and would not restart. I coasted to an emergency telephone, but they were not yet operating. There was very little traffic, so I walked across to the other carriageway hoping to get a lift back to Whitley Bridge for help. Almost immediately, a police car came along. I thought I was going to be in real trouble, but actually the policemen were very helpful. They drove me back to the car and called the AA for me.

My most unusual experience with the AA was around 1972, again in the blue Mini, in Leeds. I stopped to give way at the junction of Royal Park Road and Queens Road in Headingley, and the front driver’s side wheel collapsed. At that time there was a scruffy garage across the road, run by the appropriately named Mr. Greasley (like a name out of Dickens), who took in my car with his trolley jack. Apparently, a wheel bearing had broken. Yes, he could mend it he said, and did. 

Unfortunately, it began to make a noise within weeks. My usual garage said that a wheel spacer was missing. They repaired it again, but Mr. Greasley refused to refund me for his shoddy work. He asked for the broken parts, “in order to test them”, and lost his temper when asked for a receipt. After weeks of argument, I asked AA Legal Services for help, who obtained a full refund. It was not a lot of money, but to me at that time it was. 

Our most recent encounter with the AA was my wife’s. She had an auxiliary steering wheel lock which broke at home in the locked position. As we had the Home Start service, we call the AA. It took the patrolman over an hour to remove it. It made you realise how effective these locks are. 

Self-Doubt, Imposter Syndrome and Hegemonic Masculinity

New Month Old Post: first posted 26th January 2018

A couple of weeks ago, the normally impeccable Hadley Freeman, writing about self-doubt in her Guardian column [in 2018], said:

 “I have yet to meet a man who has worried he’s not good enough for a job he’s been offered, whereas I have yet to meet a woman who hasn’t.”

Well, I don’t know what circles she moves in, but that is simply wrong, as many of the responses to the online article make clear. Imposter syndrome is not just a female thing.

She finds it impossible to imagine a woman who, like certain men she amusingly identifies, is “perennially mediocre, untouchably arrogant, and eternally gifted by opportunity and protection by the establishment”. You only have to look at some of the women in high political office to see the error in this.

As regards men who worry they are not up to jobs they have been offered, there are lots, myself included. When I got good grades at ‘A’ Levels the second time round in my mid-twenties, and then a good degree, I felt that almost anyone could do it, and still do. When that led to jobs in universities, it felt like unmerited good fortune. When I got research papers into academic journals, I wondered why no one had seen the gaping holes they contained.

This is, of course, both blowing and sucking my own trumpet at the same time, but I just want to say that even for those who invented the concept*, hegemonic masculinity was never assumed to be universal.

* Connell and Messerschmidt.
The cartoon is from startupbros.com - click to link to its source.
Here is another relevant article from The Guardian.

The AA Book

The Automobile Association Handbook, 1986-1987. I became a member when I bought my six-year-old blue mini in 1972. My dad joined around 1960. 

The Handbook was originally annual, then twice-yearly, and from the 1990s undated. I have seen later editions, but the date is only in the small print. Like others, I kept mine in the car and threw the old one away when a new one came out. This one found its way to the bookcase. 

It contained a wealth of useful information for motorists, such as tips on basic car maintenance, driving in winter, and road signs. It listed AA telephone numbers, recommended repairers, and hotels. It had road maps covering the whole country, and more detailed motorway maps showing all the junctions and service stations. You could get by pretty well without anything else unless you needed a larger-scale local map. I  used mine to navigate all over Scotland and elsewhere. 

It was always interesting to browse through the Gazetteer section, which gave details of every place in the country with a population above around 10,000. From this, we see that Goole in Yorkshire had a population of 17,127 (which would have excluded the local villages). Following Local Government reorganisation, it had moved from The West Riding of Yorkshire to become “the hub of Humberside”. It shows the telephone area dialling code as 0405 and the map grid reference. Markets were held on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and there was a cattle market on Mondays. Goole is 20 miles from Doncaster, 27 from Hull, 26 from Scunthorpe, and 23 from York. A very rare error shows London as only 18 miles away, when it probably should read 188. We can see that Goole had one AA recommended hotel, the Clifton, which is a 2* hotel, and that Glews Garage was an AA approved repairer, and also then a Vauxhall agent. I am sure that previous editions showed further information, such as early closing day which was Thursday, but this practice had probably been discontinued by 1986. 

AA approved hotels were rated from one to five stars according to quality and services offered. 5* hotels, such as the Queens in central Leeds, were the best and most expensive. 

For bigger places, the Gazetteer showed local maps, such as for Hull, which had a population of 268,302, three 3* hotels and one 2*. These city centre maps were good enough to find my way to meetings and interviews in Durham, Leicester, Nottingham, Huddersfield, Edinburgh, and even central Manchester. 

The Handbook also showed road maps for the whole country. The example is  East and West Yorkshire from Huddersfield to Hull  (right click and open in new window to enlarge). By 1986, there were also junction-by-junction motorway maps. The example shows the corresponding part of the M62. Before the 1970s, there were few motorways in this region. I remember driving across the Pennines on the Western M62 for the first time, around 1973, and being awestruck by the astonishing grandeur. 

Again, I think the Handbook once included details discontinued by 1986. I seem to remember lists of vehicle registration plates. For example, vehicles ending WW or WY would have first been registered in the eastern part of West Yorkshire. But one detail still included is the mileage chart, which is something else I loved to ponder. It gives the distance from Aberdeen to Hull by road as 361 miles, and from Inverness to Penzance as 723. 

There have been many changes since the handbook was published. Among them, many of the named hotels have gone, Goole does not hold cattle markets, and Glews Garage no longer stands proudly with its name in iconic huge letters on the roof beside the M62. Goole, traditionally in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and then moved to the ridiculous Humberside, is now in East Yorkshire, even though historically in the West Riding. However, the motorway goes no nearer to Hull, despite considerable road improvements since I started driving.

As with so many of these artefacts, they set off unexpected chains of thought not considered for years, but rather than create an overly-long post, I will save them for another.    

Pen And Ink

 

Prompted by these long-unused fountain pens in my desk, I tried to think back to when I last used pen and ink; not biro, felt tip, gel pen, or any of the other variations, but proper liquid ink. It must have been around 1987. 

At primary school we only used pencil. Every classroom had a large “industrial” sharpener fixed to a desk near the front, with pencils at the ready. I seem to remember pencil monitors responsible for sharpening the pencils. But, at some point during junior school, around the age of 10, we were allowed liquid ink: by then no longer nib pens dipped in inkwells, but fountain pens. I do still have my Dad’s old inkwell, though, glass and heavy, almost impossible to knock over, encrusted with decades of dried ink.  

We used mainly blue or boring blue-black ink, permanent or washable, Stephens or Quink. I liked Stephens Radiant Blue, and once had a bottle of red. Brilliant blue light shone through the bottles, like sunlight through a prism. It was as if you could touch, feel, taste, and hear it. 

We definitely had fountain pens by secondary school. All my school notes, work, year-end examinations, Ordinary and Advanced Levels, as well as personal letters and everything else, were in fountain pen. Biro was forbidden at school without saying: horrible, messy, blotchy things. Useful paraphernalia included blotting paper to ensure the ink was dry before turning the page. 

In accountancy in the 1970s, our working papers (the equivalent of hand-written spreadsheets), drafts for typing, year end ledgers, and so on, were still in fountain pen. We only used biro to tick (check) things off, usually in red and green in alternating years. Then, again, a few years later, taking Advanced Level examinations for a second time, my notes and exams were all in fountain pen. It continued through university: one clever chap, who got a First, fascinated us by the way he worked his fountain pen through exams, steadily without a break. For me, it was fountain pen again through my Masters course and early work as a university research assistant. I remember having to pay to have my dissertation typed. 

What changed is that biros gradually improved, and other types of pens became available. From about 1983, I became an early user of electronic text. We had a BBC Micro Computer with a WordWise chip, and a dot matrix printer. Dot matrix was low quality, but the software enabled you to write straight into a computer. Then, two years later, I got a job in a computing department with a good quality printer. You printed into the system from your office, then walked down the corridor to collect the output.  

I bought a decent printer to use at home. The regulations for my thesis stated that it must be typed, but I used my home printer anyway, and got away with it. By then, it was near impossible to tell the difference. I believe I continued to write personal letters in pen and ink until I lost touch with Brendan in Tanzania, mentioned in previous posts, and that would have been it. I probably used biro after that. 

Most of us as school had Platignum fountain pens, not the more expensive Parker, who still emphasise quality (“a free Parker Pen when you take out our life insurance policy”), but I tend to press so hard I wear them out just as quick as any other. I must have worn through 30 fountain pens in my time. 

The earliest had a small lever on the side, which you opened, dipped the nib in ink, and closed again to suck up ink. The later ones pictured are all filled by unscrewing the barrel. The yellow one is squeezed by hand. It was the last of four cheap ones from the stationer W. H. Smith’s I wore out while re-sitting my ‘A’ Levels, and being the kind of obsessive I am, I wrote the date of March, 1977, inside. That cheerful shade of yellow must have been worth at least an extra 5%, and the radiant blue another 5%. 

The silver one is a Parker Pen that works the same way, but better quality. It may have been my dad’s. The red one is a Sheaffer cartridge pen. These were refilled by replacing a disposable plastic ink cartridge, which was more expensive but much less messy. They were available from maybe 1970, and most of my last pens were of that kind. 

I imagine most followers will remember fountain pens well, but those under 50 might find them as strange and archaic as quill pens and inkwells. My daughter was not really sure what a fountain pen is. Things have changed very quickly.

Record Box - 6, Female Singer-Songwriters

Yet another look at my old vinyl records before passing them on.

In 1974, I fell in love with female singer-songwriters. I suppose the truth is that I fancied them all for their insights and emotions. This music touched me deeply. It was the start of a turbulent few years, and more than any others, these records bring back what those times and places felt like in the most intense way imaginable. Some are now too painful to listen to. 

Carly Simon started it we that immortal line: “You’re so vain. I bet you think this song is about you.” I spotted her LP “No Secrets” in the wonderful Leeds Record Library, and tape-recorded it. It was sensational: her pitch-perfect, crystal-clear voice; the arrangements, the brilliance of the musicians, and her knack of putting a perfect melody and emotion to any lyric. Who else could write such a tune and verse about childhood friendship as: 

“The Carter family lived next door for almost 14 years

With Gwen and I inseparable from rag dolls through brassieres

Then Gwen began to bore me with her giggles and her fears

The day the Carters moved away, I had to fake my tears

I told new friends Gwen Carter had become a silly pest

And then I found I missed her more than I’d ever have guessed” 

Oh, and then it had that cover photograph! My copy is from a second-hand shop sometime later. 

I went straight back to that section in the library, and Carole King’s “No Secrets” was soon on my tape. She had of course been writing a string of hit records for other performers since the late nineteen-fifties, but this was her first solo LP. The arrangements were simpler than “No Secrets”, mainly King and piano, but the quality of the songs was just as impressive. How do you dream up songs like these, I wondered? I had no chance. 

Joni Mitchell really bowled me over. Again, she had been writing hits since the nineteen-seventies with the likes of “Both Sides Now” (Clouds) and “Big Yellow Taxi”, but her LP “Court and Spark” was a level above. It had a kind of loose-structured melody and lyrics, and unusual arrangements. 

Around that time, I had read Victor Pritchett’s “Midnight Oil” about his determination to become a full-time writer in Paris after the First World War. What would it be like to chuck your job and do that? Joni Mitchell’s song “Free Man in Paris”, said to be about the media promoter David Geffen, went round my head for weeks: “I was a free man in Paris, I felt unfettered and alive ...”. I bought “Court and Spark”, and further LPs followed over the following years.

Back in the record library, Laura Nyro’s “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” drew my eye. I taped that and several others by her, and later bought two LPs, and recently others on CD. 

She was incredibly talented. She had been writing songs since the late nineteen-sixties, but was not well known, being little interested in fame. Important musicians such as Elton John cite her as a major influence. I knew some of her songs such as “Wedding Bell Blues” which had been a success for The 5th Dimension. There was something unusual about the melody. 

I also envied the way she multi-tracked her songs, building layer upon layer, singing all the harmonies, and playing all the instruments, which was something I would have loved to have been able to do. The title song “Eli’s Coming” is a great example. I wanted multi-track recording kit like this. The sound mixer on my Akai 4000DS tape deck was so limited. 

Her songs were like no one else’s. Her tunes, chord sequences, and tempo changes went in completely unexpected directions. She had a powerful 3-octave vocal range that could convey every emotion from pure joy to deep mental pain. It could sometimes be overpowering, but also subtle and delicate, as in the beautiful “Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp”. Sadly, she lived only to 49. 

It was as if she understood my own unstable emotions at that time. These were particularly formative years, weighing up other careers, uncertain whether a change was sensible. I bounded from elation to despair: the excitement of imagining the possibilities, talking things over with those who could help, then realising some things were not for me. Could I be a registered mental nurse, or a probation officer, or work in sales or advertising, or be a writer in Paris? Was it realistic to believe I could get into university? 

I did get in and very happily changed careers, but can no longer bear to listen to Suzanne Vega. She came a decade later during another emotionally turbulent period. I saw her on stage and was drawn to the wide jangly chords of her guitarist, and her ability to write a good tune. Again, her sombre and depressing songs reflected my mood at that time. 

I had been through an unpleasant, abusive relationship. You do not see them coming, and before you know, you have been taken over completely and blame yourself for all that feels wrong. I escaped to a job in Scotland, which was a good career move that later opened doors, but my mother died just as I started. My dad found it almost impossible to bear. I was now at least eight hours away and felt responsible. He visited me, and I hardly recognised the disorientated, shrunken old man stumbling lost along the railway platform. Yet he was only 65. On top of that, I found I was working for a self-absorbed, manipulative pillock of a professor who liked to micro-manage everyone: a jump from one kind of toxic situation to another. 

Eventually, I escaped again to a job with a Midlands software company. However, I had little in common with others there. Most were younger for one thing, and unlike the intelligent, educated, university types I had been with, and their wide interests. They laughed loudly at the owner’s offensive sexist and racist jokes in staff meetings, and seemed interested mainly in cars and late-night drinking. “Nice place Bristol”, one said. “Lots of lovely wine bars down by the docks.”

The offices were on the eighth floor of a building with an unprotected, full-height, rear stairwell, where the toilets were. I used to cling to the wall fearing what I might do. 

Things gradually improved, especially socially, and I felt more positive. A happy marriage and children came along rather late in life. The job paid well and did wonders for my confidence. But there was a lot of hassle and increasing foreign travel. When the time seemed right, I was glad to return to a university job, albeit for a lower salary. 

As I said, this music brings these years back intensely. I would not want Susanne Vega’s songs about solitude and domestic violence to do that. If allowed only one of these records, I would ask Laura Nyro to take me back to the best years. I think she was the most original and talented of all, yes, even more original and talented than Joni Mitchell. Her songs were rarely a simple verse and middle eight, and you could never predict where they might go. I think you hear her influence in both Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. 

I came across this video that tells Laura Nyro’s story and explains her originality (although you have to put up with some rather long and annoying ad breaks). Her story would make a memorable film. 

Signal Boxes

Another of my railway books. It would be hard to out-nerd me on this one: Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Traffic Control Maps, Volume 3 Yorkshire 1895, by T. T. Sutcliffe. It is a book of sketch maps and other details about signal boxes on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. 

It is mainly maps and tables. One of the simplest maps is of our local line between Shepley and Penistone. To the North, it continues to Huddersfield, and in the opposite direction from Penistone, after initially turning West, it continues South and East to Sheffield Victoria or Barnsley. 

At Penistone we can also see the junction to the Woodhead Tunnel route to Manchester, which closed to passengers in 1970, and completely in 1981. The Yorkshire section is now a cycle path, and trains between Penistone and Sheffield are diverted through Barnsley, increasing the journey time from about 15 minutes to an hour. Sheffield Victoria railway station is also now no more. 

The map also shows the branch to Clayton West which as well as passengers, also carried coal. Building a tunnel on the line involved shattering large quantities of slate at Skelmanthorpe, which is still known locally as Shat. The branch line closed in 1983, and the track bed is now used by the volunteer-run narrow-gauge Kirklees Light Railway, a tourist attraction. 

The book contains few photographs, and the few there are make the book even more esoteric because they are all of signal box architecture. One shows the Clayton West Junction box which is close to the top of the sketch map. According to the text, this box is of interest because of the unusual design of the eaves. The Note 8 referred to, gives details of the original designer. I told you it was nerdy. To find images of wider interest you have to look on the internet. 

As well as the maps, the book lists all signal boxes (or cabins as the author prefers to call them) in the region, together with statistics such as their sizes and the number of levers they contain. The map symbols mark bridges, tunnels, level crossings, water troughs, and other features. Signal boxes are named and shown as a circled cross. 

The book also covers other lines I know well: such as around Huddersfield and Leeds, and the journey I used to make regularly between Goole and Leeds through Rawcliffe, Snaith, Knottingly, and Methley Junction when I first started work. Some maps are much more complicated, such as Wakefield. Mainly for my own interest, here is the Goole page. 

But instead of more signal box maps and images, I would rather show this enormous and incredible mural (widely available on the internet) at Manchester Victoria station, which shows the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway network from Liverpool to Hull. It is thought to date from 1904. How’s that for a Monday mural, Andrew in Melbourne (High Riser)? Enlarged (open in new tab), the whole network can be made out clearly.  

I also like the lists of shipping destinations, especially from Goole. The railway company had its own fleet of Lancashire and Yorkshire steamers, nicknamed the “Lanky Boats”. Goole was once around the tenth busiest port in the country (by tonnage), and a small crowd used to assemble each tide time on the Lock Hill to see the ships coming up and going away. 

This is Volume 3 of 4, Yorkshire 1895. Volumes 1 and 2 are Lancashire 1895 and 1922, and Volume 4 is Yorkshire 1922.They were published in the early 1980s. It must truly have been a labour of love, and I can only admire the creator of something so focused and detailed.  

Class Journey

When I describe myself as working class, it irritates my wife and family no end. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” they say. “You had professional jobs in accountancy, computing, and universities. Your father employed fifteen people, and owned a four-bedroomed detached house with a double garage and garden in a nice part of town. He had a good car. You had books and music at home. How can that be working class?” 

I protest that much of that came later, but they won’t have it and excited voices are raised. They don’t like the idea that if I am working class, it might make them working class too. 

“I would not have married you if you had been working class,” my wife once said. 

No, we are not working class now. The kids were embarrassed at school to be called “posh” because they did not have particularly strong local accents. But I grew up working class. 

Like many of my age and background, especially from the North of England, I have been on a kind of class journey, and changed. It was not a deliberate or conscious change, but without it, I would not have been able to do the things I did. Class was, and to a large extent remains, a big influence on opportunity in England today. We make scores of micro-judgements about each other’s backgrounds all the time, and treat each other accordingly. It influences whether or not we are offered a particular job or promotion, or who we select as friends or partners. 

The street where we lived until I was 6, although it seemed shabbier then

It is largely the circumstances of your childhood that define you: how you lived and the friends you had. We lived in a rented two-bedroomed terraced house until I was six, and then moved up in the world to a three-bedroomed semi. My dad worked as part shot assistant, and part salesman travelling around the local villages three days a week. Some days he was not home until seven or eight. On Thursday mornings (half-day closing) he went to work in a boiler suit to clean and maintain the firm’s four vehicles, which took a lot of time in the forties and fifties. He worked on Saturdays and had only two week’s holiday a year. 

Like many ‘housewives’, my mother did not work. Ordinary jobs paid enough to bring up a family quite comfortably on one income in those days. Work was social, without the intensity it can now have. 

We then lived in one of the semi-detached houses on the left until I was 18

It might be more accurate to say we were well-brought-up working class. We did not rent a council house, and my dad was not a manual worker. He took over the business when I was 12, but we did not move to the larger house until a few months before I left school. I never really lived there. I moved on to shared houses in Leeds with ordinary lads from ordinary parts of Wakefield and Manchester. 

Let me list how the fathers of my schoolday friends earned their livings: dock worker, railway labourer, engine driver, joiner, council lorry driver, gas meter reader, clothing factory worker, scaffolder, stone mason. They were the children I mixed and played with, and was influenced by. Many lived in council or rented housing. A little above were a butcher with his own shop, a chiropodist, an electricity board clerk, and a man who selected ships’ crew, but it was a working class area in a northern working class town. We used local pronunciations such as “watter” (water), “owt” and “mowt” (anything and nothing), “whee-ere” and “thee-ere” (where and there), and “moo-ere” (more). I knew the difference, but did not mix with any children from professional families except, in my late teens, one whose parents were teachers. Some years later, I felt perfectly at home working in a canning factory. 

A few years ago, I came across an old cassette tape recorded at a friend’s house when I was around 17. We switched on the recorder and let it run: five of us I think. The accents, the bad language, how we spoke about girls at school: you would be in no doubt that we were uncouth working class. It made me so uncomfortable I threw the tape away. 

We moved to a large house in this (then) leafy part of town when I was 18

Although I soon moved to shared houses in Leeds.
The first was a wrong-way-round house, with entrance at what was built as the rear.
The front entrance was only on foot.

But I am speaking about the economic working class. There are other indicators. Culturally, we were not typical. My dad had educated interests. He read a lot, listened to the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4), and liked poetry. He was a churchgoer, and followed up the monthly Bible Readings they sent. We had encyclopaedias and books, and my dad talked to me about them, and I read them. He involved me in his Thursday jobs around the house, such as maintaining bicycles and cleaning boots, and interested me in things around town such as ships in the docks, the railways, and the shipyard. I had hobbies and used the public library a lot. I had good general knowledge. 

Mum also read a lot, and was in a drama group. Although she was clever, and could have gone to the Grammar School, she chose to stay at her village school and left at fourteen. She helped in her mother’s grocery shop until she married, where they provided tea (i.e. an evening meal) for my father’s travellers out late on their rounds. 

I think this background helped get me into the Grammar School where I had a good education and intelligent friends. The Grammar Schools were created to supply the country’s need for educated professionals: social engineering on a grand scale. It took me into the accountancy profession, and contact with privately educated colleagues and business owners. We had to get on with everyone from office and factory workers to the rich. My accent began to shift, my language became more elaborate, and I began to understand how the world worked. 

Going late to university and working in higher education around the country brought further sophistications. My accent still reveals my Yorkshire roots, and some even detect which part of Yorkshire, but it is unsettling to encounter those who never moved away, and realise just how different I am now. They often sound uneducated. 

Do genetics influence class? How did my great-grandfather lift himself from a background of agricultural labourers to become a ship’s master after running away to sea? And my grandfather successfully started his own business, and employed others. Another great-grandfather was active in the Methodist church, with wide religious knowledge. My mother’s father worked in a paper mill, but his family had (and still has) an almost innate understanding of all things mechanicals. They can mend almost anything. These things run through families for generations, although the genetic elements no doubt interact with other factors in complex ways. 

Perhaps class differences are no longer what they were, but they are still there in the background. It shows in what you do, your interests, how you spend your time, your friends, the language you use, how much wealth you have, and many other things. The private education sector perpetuates class differences by handing more opportunities to those whose families have paid the enormous fees. I don’t want to make “chip-on-the-shoulder” excuses, but my culturally rich family background is nothing compared to the advantages some have. 

I did all right in the end, and it has been mainly down to merit. Some academic achievements cannot be bought. I hope that is not being smug. Although selection was not entirely unbiased, I regret the abolition of the state Grammar Schools and the social mobility they gave to so many from ordinary backgrounds like mine. 

Record Box - 5, Jethro Tull

Continuing to examine my old vinyl records before passing them on.

For many years, Jethro Tull was my favourite band by far, as shown by the 18 LPs (albums) in my record box. I was initially attracted in 1969 by the unusual sound of their single ‘Living In The Past’, which I now know was due to the 5/4 (five beats to the bar) time signature, which was and still is unusual in popular music. I went out and bought their LP ‘This Was’ straight away. It did not sound much like the single, having been released a year earlier. 

‘This Was’ had a strong rhythm and blues element, due to the influence of Mick Abrahams who left the band after its release, leaving Ian Anderson as the main creative force. But I liked it enough to buy the second LP, ‘Stand Up’. This was more like the single, with prominent bass, unusual tunes, arrangements and rhythms, and more of an ‘underground’ progressive rock feel. I was also entertained by the band’s unconventional subversive element, and their seventeenth-century rustic appearance (we had learnt at school about the inventor of the seed drill, whose name the band has adopted). One newspaper described them as a mixture of “pop, jazz, and jokery.”

The third LP, ‘Benefit’, hooked me completely. On first hearing the track ‘Play In Time’, I interpreted it as beginning on the beat instead of the up-beat, until it slowly and magically shifted into its correct position. The effect was sensational, but once heard correctly, it was never possible to experience the magic again. 

In Leeds, Roger the PhD student, one of the house sharers, claimed to like only classical music and considered pop and rock to be trivial rubbish. One day in 1972, he came in just as I started to listen to the fifth LP, ‘Thick as A Brick’. He sat down and quietly listened all through, fascinated by the complexities, musical sophistication, variety of themes, time signatures and tempo changes. He declared it to be at last popular music worth listening to. It validated my musical choices because a number of other friends did not like Jethro Tull at all, and thought I had lost my senses. “Ian Anderson sounds like a sheep”, one said. Another friend saw them live and thought ‘Thick as A Brick’ was brilliant, but too difficult for the band to play.  There was a lot in the press about how original they were, but popular classical conductor André Previn dismissed it on a television chat show as nothing not done before. Nowadays ‘Thick as A Brick’ is considered a progressive rock classic. 

Ian Anderson’s lyrics were also clever and original. The BBC radio presenter Alan Freeman was an admirer. I remember him drawing attention to the song ‘Weathercock’ on his Sunday afternoon programme in 1978 when the folk-rock LP ‘Heavy Horses’ came out. Does the weather cock reflect or determine the weather?  

        Good morning weathercock, how’d you fare last night?
        Did the cold wind bite you, did you face up to the fright?
        When the leaves spin from October and whip around your tail
        Did you shake from the blast and did you shiver through the gale?

        And give us direction, the best of goodwill
        Put us in touch with your fair winds
        Sing to us softly, hum evening’s song
        Tell us what the blacksmith has done for you

        Do you simply reflect changes in the patterns of the sky?
        Or is it true to say the weather heeds the twinkle in your eye?
        Do you fight the rush of winter? Do you hold snowflakes at bay?
        Do you lift the dawn sun from the fields and help him on his way?

        Good morning weathercock, make this day bright
        Put us in touch with your fair winds
        Sing to us softly, hum evening’s song
        Point the way to better days, we can share with you

In this YouTube video of a live performance in 2005, Anderson’s flute, the musicianship of the other band members at that time, the way the track builds to the instrumental section at the end, and the overall arrangement, remind us just how good they were. 

I bought just about every vinyl LP for twenty years, and then one on cassette tape. I saw them play live in Berlin in early 1982 when they played new tracks from ‘The Broadsword and the Beast’. I wondered what the Anglo-Saxon runes were on the cover, and spent ages painstakingly decoding them, guided by letter frequency. They spell out the verse of the title song, “I see a dark sail on the horizon, set under a black cloud that hides the sun. Bring me my broadsword and clear understanding. Bring me my cross of gold as a talisman.”

A few years later, around 1990, tied up by work and family, I stopped buying or listening much to music at all. More recently, I bought two DVDs of Jethro Tull performances, and interviews with Ian Anderson and other band members. It dismayed me how Ian Anderson’s subversive humour had been replaced by an entitled pompousness. Perhaps it had already started by 1985 when he recorded the LP ‘A Classic Case’ in which the band played their music with the London Symphony Orchestra. It must be difficult not to let all that success go to your head. 

As well as the LPs, I have the 1971 EP, ‘Life Is A Long Song’, (“But the tune ends too soon for us all”). So true. A funeral tune, perhaps.  

It would be difficult to choose a favourite track, but the title track ‘Heavy Horses’ would be a good contender. I love this nostalgically sentimental video with (after 70 seconds) its images of the beautiful animals that used to work our lands. I also like the less well-known but in some ways similar title track ‘Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die’. As for Living In The Past, well I suppose that is what I do most of the time in this blog. 

Fixing A Hole

New Month Old Post: first posted 7th February, 2015. A rather contrived piece about how the Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ accompanied my DIY jobs through the years. This piece was published in The Guardian newspaper (second item on the page linked here).

Fixing a Hole by the Beatles 

“I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in /
And stops my mind from wandering / 
Where it will go”

1968: A-level examinations year. We moved house and I was allowed to decorate my new bedroom as I wanted, and listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on my reel-to-reel tape recorder I covered the flowery wallpaper a responsible dark blue and irresponsibly failed my A-levels. I’m not sure which my mum thought worse, the room colour or the exam results, but after I left for an office job in Leeds, the flowery wallpaper returned.

1970: “Painting the room in a colourful way.”
 
To the tape of Sgt. Pepper, I painted the walls of my rented room an adventurous orange and unadventurously stayed for seven years, ignoring my mum’s frequent hints about the dreadful colour.

1978: A mature student in Hull. With Sgt. Pepper loud in stereo through my Akai tape deck, Leak amplifier and massive Wharfedale speakers, I emulsioned the room an impulsive dark red and unimpulsively got a first, despite living with such a dismal colour my mum said.

1990: “Filling the cracks that ran through the door”

In a good career in Nottingham, I at last meet someone who appreciates my interior design skills. I moved in with my old stereo and tape of Sgt. Pepper and mended the doors and window frames. I like to think my mum would have been impressed too but sadly by then it was too late. We sold the house and moved back to Yorkshire.

1993: Sgt. Pepper is now on a cheap cassette player as we paper our bedroom ceiling using the two chairs relay method. Standing one behind the other, the person nearest the wall sticks one end of the pasted wallpaper to the ceiling and the person behind sticks the next bit. The first person then moves with chair behind the second, and sticks up some more, and so on, right across the room. We both end up slippery and sticky, with more paste on us than on the paper, which slowly detaches itself and drops down.

2015: “Taking my time for a number of things that weren’t important yesterday.”

I only hear music in the car these days. Sgt. Pepper comes on and reminds me that now the kids are grown up we need to re-paper the bedroom ceiling which has cracked under the weight of all their junk – and mine – up in the loft. I wonder if the tape deck, amplifier and speakers still work?

Akai 4000 DS Tape Deck, Leak 3200 Tuner Amplifier and Wharfedale Glendale Speakers

Wise Words

Words echo through the years. I hear and remember them as if it were today. The written word can be as memorable. Here are some that stayed with me, the ones that come first to mind, which probably say as much about me as their speakers or writers. Do any resonate with you, or do you remember others?   

You know very well John that men are afraid of living alone. 

(JB, English Literature Teacher on the evening class I took when retaking Advanced Level exams in my mid-twenties. After the course ended, John (another student) and I went with him for a drink, and he was complaining that creative output declines or ends after marriage, as had happened to him. John asked him why he had got married then.) 

It takes you ten years before you realise how crap you are. 

(Tim Keech, Hull guitar teacher. It applies to other skills as well, from computer programming to blogging. My own variation is: No matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better. I used to say this to the computing students. Another variation is: The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. Or as the friend I call Gilbert in this blog put it: You know fuck all Tasker. He was very astute.)

The motorcycle you are maintaining is yourself. 

(Slightly misquoted from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Again, it applies to almost anything in which you are so deeply immersed it becomes therapeutic and cuts out all other concerns. This was something else I used to tell computing students.)

If those countless millions began to see the possibilities he saw and were then frustrated, there might be hell to pay. And they have been frustrated. 

(Ted Simon in Jupiter’s Travels, an account of his journey round the world 1973-1977 on a motorbike, observing the different living standards between rich and poor countries. He was right.) 

You always fall on your feet, don’t you. 

(My mother after I scraped six Ordinary Level exam passes at school, allowing me to progress post-16 into the Sixth Form. She knew how little work I had done.)  

I’ve got more common sense in my little finger than you have in your whole body. 

(My mother during her final illness, as my impractical dad struggled to erect bean poles, a job she had always done but no longer could. He usually responded with Aren’t I lucky to have married such a practical wife! But I could have strangled him when he visited one day to find me with the floorboards up, channels cut in the walls, wiring neatly laid out, as I was installing some new spur sockets in the bedroom. Aren’t you lucky to have married such a practical wife! he said.)

Always make sure your driving wheels are on firm ground.

(My dad on driving on muddy ground, but it seems to have wider meaning. Another useful tip was: In ice and snow, drive in the highest gear possible so as not to spin the wheels.)

This is the life. 

(The friend I call Neville in this blog, sometimes laying on the ground in hot sum out in the countryside with his shirt off, but more often up a mountain sipping a cup of coffee from a thermos flask, hiding from driving rain and sleet behind an inadequate rock, exhausted. He is blessed with the gift of always remaining cheerful.)  

It’s a bugger, i’n’t it. 

(The family friend I call Uncle Jimmy in this blog, on serious illness. At the end, my Aunt said we had better get him into hospital. “All right,” he said, “but we’ll have a cig first. We’ll have one o’ yours.”

Age is like cricket. Some make a century while others are out for a duck. A score in the seventies is a useful innings. 

(Me in a draft too bleak to post.) 

There were many others, but I will stop with those. 

Grandad Dunham’s Flight Simulator

New Month Old Post: first posted 18th November, 2015

SGI Dogfight for the IRIS workstation

Like something from the future, it was the most amazing colour graphics workstation I had ever seen. I had got a job in a university where it was used to understand complex proteins by constructing and manipulating computer-generated images of the kind of ball and stick molecular models photographed with Watson and Crick in the nineteen-fifties. These models give insights into life at the sub-microscopic level, such as how molecules of oxygen displace molecules of carbon dioxide in haemoglobin. The details are so magically implausible you could come to believe in creationism. One researcher was moved to tears on seeing for the first time an image of part of the antibody she had been working on for three years.

It was the nineteen-eighties. The workstation came with a set of demonstration programs, among them a flight simulator. It was well in advance of anything any of us had seen before. The best you could have at home at that time, which replicated the dynamics of flight and motion with any reasonable accuracy, were black-and-white wire-frame simulations such as ‘Aviator’ and ‘Elite’ for the BBC Computer. The workstation simulator had coloured graphics and a choice of aircraft. You may now pause for a moment to speculate about the relative amounts of time we spent flying aeroplanes and modelling proteins.

At first, I was the only one who could land the Jumbo Jet without crashing. I had not wasted hundreds of hours flying under the ‘Aviator’ suspension bridge for nothing. I was one of the glorious few to have fought my way through to the secret code for my ‘Elite’ badge. What the others did not seem able to grasp – and some of them are now eminent professors – is that the pilot of a Jumbo-Jet sits the equivalent of three storeys high. You are still thirty feet up in the air as you touch down. If you try to land with your seat at ground level you will be too low, and smash into the runway with terrific force and die.

It all seemed terrifically futuristic. Yet my brother had a flight simulator twenty years earlier in the early nineteen-sixties. You might call it Grandad Dunham’s flight simulator. How could that be? Grandad Dunham was our great-grandfather who died in 1941. He spent the last two years of his life living with his daughter’s family. When he moved in, his son-in-law carried his chair through the streets of the town on his back.

I now have that very same chair, twice refurbished, and very comfortable it is too. On its back and covered with an eiderdown it makes a wonderful aeroplane cockpit. My brother played in it happily for hours. Sometimes he would let me be his co-pilot. He chalked some controls and instruments underneath the seat. They are still there after sixty years.

What makes it particularly poignant is that my brother died at thirty-six. The grandchildren he never saw are now about the same age he was when he drew those simple chalk marks. They can have all the latest tablets and smartphones, and simulators so realistic you forget they are only software. But one thing I do know. No matter how advanced the technology, it will never be one-half as much fun as Grandad Dunham’s eiderdown-covered chair with the chalk marks on its upturned seat.

Elite and Aviator for the BBC Computer

Record Box 2 - More Classical

A second look at my ancient vinyl LP records (Albums), and the stories they bring back, before I sell or pass them on. Following the post about the Beethoven Symphonies, this is about the other classical records I have, of which there are ten. It is incredible how an old record can remind you of things not thought about for decades, as happened much to my delight here. 

I had no interest in classical music until the age of 16 or 17. It was too highbrow and sophicticated for the likes of me. My family and friends listened mainly to popular music on the radio. 

My friend Neville was from one of the diminishing number of northern working-class families that still had a piano, and lessons had included one or two simple classical pieces. His elder brother has taken this further, and assembled a small collection of classical records. He went off to university leaving them unattended in their front room. I asked about them, and Neville told me more. I think it was Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik he played first. Attracted next by the sumptuous excitement of George Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’, I went through the rest of the collection. That was my introduction to classical music. I tape-recorded most of them. I don’t think Neville’s brother ever knew. Thanks Mike! 

Before long, I bought some of the records myself, exactly the same versions. There was the aforementioned Gershwin, and The Planets.  

Slowly, I acquired more. Peer Gynt was an early buy. The Walton symphony fascinated me when played on the radio, although I was not sure whether I really liked it. I bought it with money over from exchanging the Beethoven boxed sets as explained in Part 1. Walton took some getting used to. It is one of those pieces you (well, I) need to listen to two or three times before you get it, but is brilliant once you do.

After going late to university, I began to go to concerts with discounted student tickets. You could hear buses going round Hull City Hall, but they had some of the best national and international orchestras. I bought some of the music I particularly enjoyed. The Vaughan Williams I still would, but the others I am not so sure. 

One record puzzles me: La bohème. How did I come by it? I cannot imagine buying it because (sacrilege!) I don’t like Opera. Although it has a few good tunes and songs, basically, I don’t like the style of singing. Ballet is wonderful, the music and colour and lighting and movement, but opera does nothing for me. 

Many adore it. One chap who travelled around Europe for the computer company I was with, took the opportunity to attend every major opera house he could. Booking a seat was the first thing he did. La Scala, Vienna State, Palais Garnier, you name it, even the Bolshoi Opera, he had been to them all.  

The first time he went, to Covent Garden, was in his twenties. At the interval, he realised he was sitting next to the formidable feminist writer Germaine Greer, who was also on her own. He asked if that was who she was. “Yes,” she snapped back, looking irritated. “Who are you?” He told her, and feeling inadequate, thought he should say something else. The first thing that came into his head was: “The microphones are very good, aren’t they”. She recognised his awkwardness, and spent the rest of the interval patiently explaining that no, they do not use microphones, what you hear is their actual voices, and talking about the training they have and techniques they use. 

He was one of the most likeable and enthusiastic people I have ever worked with. I have not thought about him or that delightful story for maybe thirty-five years. It came back gradually. What it illustrates to me is how, if we allow space for our minds to work as they should, they can pleasantly surprise us. But if we are afraid to do that, and fill them with constant smartphone distractions, it does not happen. 

The last record I have, Brahms Symphony No.3, was bought as a present in 1987. After that, my wife came along with an extensive collection of classical and popular cassettes and CDs. I went over to CDs and still use them. I prefer to listen to music through and in the order intended, and like having sleeve notes to look at. I think this is why there is renewed interest in vinyl records. As well as what some regard as better sound quality, they are objects of interest and beauty. 

Template

This is my entry for the Weeping Horse award for the most boring blog post of the year. Another item stuffed in the back of the drawer of things I didn’t know what to do with.

We were told to buy one of these when I started my Computing Masters course in 1980. Except for the square and rectangular boxes, I never used it. 

What is it? I don’t really know, other than to say it is a template for drawing symbols used in computer flowcharting. I hardly gave it a second glance until now. It relates to an approach to programming that was becoming outdated before the course began. I think it was used for designing COBOL programs that took ages to run with no human input once started. I have no idea how to use the symbols. What is an auxiliary operation, a terminal interrupt, or a transmittal tape? And there were even more symbols on the packet it came in, on both sides. 

The packet it came in, and an example of how the symbols are used

The course taught us a different technique called Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) which was more suited to programs that interact with the user, as in most of today’s software. JSP defines programs as combinations of sequences, selections, and repetitions. It uses a notation consisting only of rectangles, plain for sequences, marked O for selections and * for repetitions. If you adhere to its rules for putting them together, you avoid the unintelligible, spaghetti-like tangle of code that defeats most novice programmers. I found it invaluable. 

Later, I used something called Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM). This employed a further set of techniques with names such as Data Flow Diagrams, Logical Data Structures, and Entity Life Histories. It organised data into the most flexible and efficient form, which was helpful in systems that handle complex information, such as customer orders, stock control, or bus timetables. This figure shows some of the notations. I could probably just about remember enough to explain them further, but it would be gobbledygook.  

Jackson Structured Programming example from my Masters Dissertation
SSADM Logical Data Structure and Data Flow Diagram

I know it is off the end of the autistic spectrum, but I enjoyed this kind of stuff and took great pride in it (and in what I was paid to do it). If the design is right, software works as intended without bugs that need fixing all the time. At the computer company I worked at, our large and complicated service management system did what it was supposed to do. It was used throughout Europe and elsewhere. The design was right. I would say that, today, companies like Amazon and Ebay largely have it right. So why don’t government systems such as for the DSS Carers Allowance? Why didn’t the Post Office? There used to be a saying based on the quality-time-cost triangle which was that you can have it good, you can have it quick, and you can have it cheap, but you can’t have it all three. 

To come back to the template, it was not used. Like with books, do not buy anything a university or college recommends until it is needed. It might not be. 

What to do with it? It takes up little space. It is back in the drawer with all the other useless rubbish.