If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
I remember when I was chatting to someone at a pre-departure reception, prior to going to the JET Programme in Japan and they asked me about my career path. I told him that I didn’t have a career path, I had a career maze! Hence, my biography would be called Through the Maze!
My jobs in order have been Non Marine Policy Clerk at Lloyds Insurance, Admin Clerk in the RAF, a range of casual jobs via Parkinson Staff Bureau including administrative support for various building and construction firms, tea boy at British Gas for a couple of weeks, casual work at Leeds Castle, Admin at the Unemployment Benefit Office in Chatham, a term teaching Business Studies and Economics at a private school, venue support at Kidderminster Town Hall, the JET Programme in Japan, store assistant at Argos in Morecambe, Native English Teacher in Hong Kong, casual work at an EFL organisation in Sydney Australia, and finally various jobs in London as an EFL / EAP teacher with 6 months in Saudi Arabia nearly two decades ago fitted in to pay off our debts from my Masters.
So, I can definitely say that I have had a huge range of employment experiences and that every single one has benefitted me as a person. I have learnt something from every single one and done my best for every employer even if it wasn’t good enough.
One of my aims this year is to access my creative self. It hadn’t started well (!) but today, for the first time this year I settled down and wrote a short poem reflecting my current thoughts about my new self post full-time work. It’s probably not up to much but I thought I would share it and perhaps start a new strand of blog entries. See what you think
My Identity
Who am I now?
I ask myself often
No longer defined by what I do
Not sure who I want to be
Thinking in circles as I chase my new identity
I know who I was - a teacher
I know who I see now - a husband and father
I don't know myself as me
Did I ever know myself
Thinking in circles as I chase my new identity
Do I have to choose a role?
Can I function without one?
Who am I now?
I ask myself often
Thinking in circles as I chase my new identity
What were your parents doing at your age?
When I look back at myself when I was younger I realise that my approach to life was very much socially prescribed. For someone born in the mid 1960s, it was clear targets to hit, namely the house, the marriage, the children and the career. Alongside this a man was a regular pub goer while the woman was taken to the pub on a Sunday ‘for an airing’!! Had I followed that approach to life things would have been very different. However, it was the lifestyle that my wife and I aspired to in my twenties. At pretty much every stage of my journey through my teens and twenties I was subconsciously, and occasionally consciously, trying to follow my Dad who was successful in work, popular outside and seemingly set for a long and happy retirement, although the jury was out as to whether he actually would ever retire because he hated being idle. Sadly he never had a chance to find out as he died of cancer at the age of 60, the age I am now. He was diagnosed around his 60th birthday in January and died in July. Between those two events I was offered the chance to go to Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher. I left the UK on July 23 having said goodbye to him the previous day. He died on July 26 and I didn’t go back for the funeral because he told me not to. As he pointed out with his usual directness, me coming home for the funeral wasn’t going to do him any good and it wouldn’t do me any good! It was at that point that my life path and his completely diverged. Yes, I did end up with the marriage, 35 years and counting, the children, four of them with the oldest being 32 at the moment, the career, 30 years in EFL and EAP and counting, and the house, which we moved into 8 years ago. None of the landmarks were achieved in the order that my Dad would have recognised and none of them would have suited him, but he accepted that I was a very different person. The one thing he was most pleased about, and would be even more pleased about now, was my marriage to Janet who he thought was great. The differences is there very clearly but so are the similarities. Our aims were the same but our ways of getting there were very different and dictated by opportunity, personality and the very different times we lived in.
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
This is one of the most interesting and difficult prompts for quite a while. I had to decide whether to be light hearted or serious. That wasn’t easy, because I don’t want to turn my blog into a polemic but equally I want to talk about things that matter.
The law I would change would be to do with elections at all levels. I would ban donations to individuals or parties over £50,000 per annum. It would, at a stroke, remove a huge amount of power from vested interests like financial institutions, oil companies, media tycoons, tech companies and unions to control political decisions. I have included unions here not because I am antagonistic towards them, quite the opposite in fact, but because you cannot make an exception for anyone or any organisation no matter how much you agree with them. If, for example, David Attenborough wanted to donate £1 million to the Green Party, he should be prevented from doing so. He could, of course, set up a trust to donate £50,000 per annum for 20 years.
Huge donations have led to a huge level of corruption throughout the world. Look at the last decade or so in just about every country for proof. Hardly anyone believes in or trusts politicians to do the right thing because we know that they are, pretty much without exception, dependent on and corrupted by their paymasters. They are in politics for what they can get out of it not for what they can do for society. These huge donors are allowed to distort the political system and buy influence and until they are stopped the political system will get worse and worse worldwide and continue it’s current course towards cruelty affecting as many people as possible and power and influence for the few who can afford it.
Write about your dream home.
I have never really been hung up on what my home looks like. I would be useless on Place in the Sun because as long as it isn’t about to fall down and it has the basics, I’m not bothered about the cosmetic stuff. The idea of what a home actually is for me is based on who you share it with.
Over the course of nearly 40 years together, my wife and I have lived in a variety of houses, all but one rented, the first with no central heating, some that were damp, some that were smaller than perhaps we needed. The common factor until we had our own house was the fact that all of them were temporary and we had no idea how long we were going to be there. However, there was another common factor, the fact that we made each one a home to the best of our ability, initially as a couple and then as a family. For me each Christmas is when a house feels most like a home, because it is at that time that core memories are made for me most strongly. Our traditions developed, our family came together and our home was epitomised.
Some people really value their houses and that’s quite understandable but I think of something I read in Japan which reflects that with the person you love, a cave feels like a palace. I think that is so true.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 