Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
My role in DIY is to find screwdrivers, hammers or paintbrushes. It is also to hold things in place while other people are using the tools I have located! At no point is it to get involved with the project as a direct participant. For those of you of a certain vintage I wouldn’t quite be Frank Spencer but I wouldn’t be far off! In childhood, my lack of practical ability in the area of DIY had been the despair of pretty much everyone. My Dad was the most practical man I have ever met and he rebuilt parts of the house we lived in for my teenage years as well as installing the electrics. There was nothing he couldn’t do and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t measure accurately, I certainly couldn’t cut accurately and I was fully aware of my shortcomings. At school my dislike for DIY became more entrenched due to the bullying I was subjected to by the woodwork and metalwork teachers. The latter, in particular, was evil. That’s the only way to describe him. I never hated a teacher more because he delighted in drawing attention to my inability to draw a three dimensional figure or making fun of my dreadful efforts in front of a class of children who already delighted in bullying me. After three years of Mr Vokes I had had enough of anything practical.
As an adult I had the greatest of fortune in meeting and marrying Janet, an intensely practical person with a flair for DIY. She had been put into the position where she needed to do a lot of the practical work around the house as a child because her father was significantly older than most. She was able to check her car, paint and wallpaper rooms and make things out of wood. It was so good to watch her improve the places we lived in and she was quite happy that I could cook so well. Funnily enough I was saying the other day that I wished we could have had cookery lessons at school because of my hatred for woodwork and metalwork. She replied that she would have loved metalwork and woodwork lessons because she hated cookery lessons! It turned out that in terms of our skills we were the perfect dovetail joint, with each of us making the most of our expertise.
Our younger son has luckily followed in Janet’s footsteps and is very practical himself. Just last weekend he came round and put up two curtain rails in the bedrooms and made an excellent job of it. It means that we have two people who make up the DIY taskforce in our homes and I will be very happy to continue looking for tools and other items whilst not getting involved, knowing that if I did it would be disastrous!!
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
I would happily ban many words for many different reasons. They annoy me in their misuse or imprecise use or their desperation to sound more important than they are. I am referring, of course, to management speak.
The managers pretty much everywhere are worse than they were 40 plus years ago when I started work. They have, in the main, degrees, arrogance or at least a huge measure of self confidence, and absolutely no ability to communicate with the people they are supposed to lead. This is because they have, in the vast majority of cases, never done the same job themselves. In education and healthcare in particular, they only look at their pay and bonuses and as long as they come in at a good rate they shrug off problems for their staff as a price worth paying.
The worst examples of management speak are those that no actual human beings use. Words like synergy or phrases like circle back are nonsense that they lap up when talking to each other. What they don’t realise is that it makes them sound ridiculous to the non management staff, but as they earn much more money they don’t care. They sit in their offices and try to give off the energy of a CBBC presenter but ultimately achieve nothing. So, from all the rubbish they spout, which is the phrase that I would ban? Going Forward is like squeaky chalk on a blackboard to me as it’s a way of trying to get people to imagine that they are making progress when none is apparent. The phrase would be replaced by ‘in the future’.
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
This year I am in the process of changing in a number of ways. I am trying to improve my fitness, start volunteering for a couple of organisations and reducing my spending drastically to take into account my new status as a non earning member of society. The first one only started at the beginning of February following a January during which I was down with a constant series of colds. The second and third got under way at the start of the year. At present, all three appear to be on track, but you would expect that in the early part of the year. In six months, however, I have no idea how things may look. I know that life has a habit of throwing curve balls at me, so I am never complacent, but I appear to be much more nervous about things this year.
It is easily explained, I suppose, by the massive change in lifestyle that I have undergone and the urge to feel useful and relevant as I navigate a totally new way of being. However, at the moment there’s more to it than that, as I have my six month check up with the urologist in two days time as I write. I was referred after my PSA level spiked, but on retesting I was back to a much lower level. If I am lucky, that lower level will be maintained and I can get on with planning everything above and more. If not, it will throw a big spanner in the works, and I will have to reassess. There is nothing that is telling me that I could have a higher level and nothing to suggest that it is more likely than not. However, I have more time at home and alone with my thoughts, which seem to be more extensive and intrusive.
Maybe that’s why so many people, men in particular, seem to be uncomfortable in retirement, especially early on. I think you have to adapt physically, mentally, emotionally and existentially to the new normal and it’s not easy. I can imagine that if I let it take me down rabbit holes, which can be my natural habitats (!) it will mean I run the risk of letting my current early progress stall or even go into reverse. That’s why, whatever happens, whatever challenges I face, mentally or physically, I must keep my focus on progress. The better that focus is now, the better the years ahead can be.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
You are coming up for 16. You already know that school is a place to be endured not enjoyed. Let me tell you one thing about human nature that you haven’t quite worked out. It’s basically bad and it’s pretty much set in stone. This is particularly true of those pieces of work who bully you. Bullies never change because they are wired that way. Don’t listen to those who tell you to try and understand them. They are bad and will always remain so. However, your experiences now will shape the teacher you become later. You will be better able to help your students because you know what bad teaching delivered by bullies looks like.
Don’t stop writing even though no one at will encourage you. Writing will become the most amazing outlet for you in years to come. If you carry on writing now, even if it’s not particularly good, it will be of enormous benefit in the future.
I know you have been put in a single sex school, a dreadful idea for boys, but you will eventually get to know girls and you will find them far more to your liking than boys. I mean that in terms of friendships and emotional connections. Don’t be too quick to try to make more of it because you will end up spoiling things with friends you can ill afford to lose. By the way, while we are on the subject of friends, you will find out that friends will disappear throughout your life. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable in your life for a time, but you should accept that they will drift away and you shouldn’t waste energy trying to keep them.
Try to be more careful with money because it will cause you untold trouble until you marry and hand over the decisions to your wife!
Career wise you will be a work in progress for a good few years yet. Accept all the mistakes you make and the attempts you make to find something as a very important part of the journey. Skills you learn in insurance, RAF training and working for the civil service will teach you so much about yourself that you can bring to bear on your eventual career in teaching.
When you do settle on EAP and ESL it will take you all round the world. While we are on the subject then, keep up your enthusiasm languages, however badly the UK school system teaches them, because you are going to need them far more than you expect.
Finally, accept that life will never go smoothly. It’s going to be a very bumpy ride! That said, if you follow your path things will look a lot better than you can believe now.
What bores you?
Boredom is not just something we should expect, but something we should welcome. It is at the heart of creativity, at the heart of our ability to think beyond ourselves and at the heart of what it means to be human. Our phones and our lifestyles have robbed us of this essential part of ourselves and we are far less content because of it.
When I was younger there were huge periods of boredom when I was able to think and read and play and create. Even that didn’t chase away the boredom, but that wasn’t the point of it. On a Sunday when no shops were open and nothing of any interest was on television we were left to our own devices and reliant on what we had in our immediate vicinity. I was an only child so I grew up in a household where I was left to my own devices more often as the rest of the household was focused on grown up pastimes such as reading papers, gardening and going to the pub. As a result I had a very many occasions to read or to indulge my imagination. Even when we went out to visit relatives I often found myself left to my own devices while the adults talked. At the time I didn’t enjoy it but looking back I am genuinely glad that I didn’t have a phone to reduce my boredom. It allowed me to notice things in my environment and it made walks a much more interesting prospect as my Dad used to point out trees and other interesting parts of nature. Nowadays, if you do that the child would almost certainly either ignore you or would miss everything because of the phone in their hands. Come to think of it, I probably would, at least seven times out of ten!
If something bores you, put your phone away, be grateful and use it to expand your horizons and explore your inner and outer world with real focus.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 