Are we sitting comfortably?

I would not like to have me as a pupil in my class.

Day 1 of the course for those people who have been out of work for six months.

The course members are a group of men from very different backgrounds. It is interesting to speculate on the different reasons for our little group to be unemployed for so long. It was notable that the differences showed themselves most clearly in the attitudes to their situations that the men had. I obviously include myself here, though perhaps I should disqualify myself purely on the basis of completed application forms sent off for jobs. Everyone else had applied for between forty and sixty jobs. I had applied for none!

My requirements are, to put it mildly, niche. In fact, they are niche in niche. And rightly so!

I suppose that I am in a different position from most of the others because when my CRB arrives it will be but a step to unlimited casual wealth. Ho! Ho!

The anger of some of the members of the group is real and unsettling. They feel that so-called advisors have done nothing related to their title. I feel from listening to them that this course is the first time that anyone has really listened to them and been prepared to give good practical advice. This is not good. If these people have been out of work and have been more than prepared to move heaven and earth to get a job, then they must feel properly cheated!

I have sat as a member of a small group for a whole day and I have watched and analysed. The group leaders have been vigorously defensive, acutely aware that their audience is not there by choice. One of the course leaders blusters and is too often floundering around in the safety of her anecdotal experience masquerading as solid advice rather than following the course programme.

I always think it a bad sign when someone says about a printed page which the course members have in front of them and announces, “I’m not going to read it out,” and then does exactly that. We’ve all done it; it passes time and almost seems like real teaching – but it isn’t.

I suppose if you write off the first day as a ‘getting to know you’ experience then the course may well have worked – but day two will have to be extra intensive to make the first day worth it.

It will be interesting to see how it develops and how the characters show themselves.

We will see.