No more night school!
The chore of having to go to the local language school and teach a small group of 11+ kids is at an end!
Having now acquired the social security number which makes you a real person in the eyes of the local and national government, I can discard this element of my professional life like (as Quentin Crisp so elegantly put it in quite another context) used Hershey Bar wrappers.
The rate of pay offered by this institution is so low that it pushes my mind back to those long gone days when I worked for Securicor. The rate of pay in that iniquitous organisation was five shillings. 25p. Believe me that was not much then, let alone now!
The sickest aspect of working at Securicor was the in-house magazine.
The quality of this organ is perhaps best summed up by the fact that Ray Gunter (there’s a name from Labour’s murky past!) wrote an article praising capitalism either directly or by implication. I have to admit that my memory is hazy on this issue because a red mist clouded my eyes as I read further into the mendacious rubbish that Gunter (ex Labour cabinet minister) wrote. He was, I think, part of the management of Securicor (if not the chair) which emphasised and gloried in the fact that it was a ‘mutual’ company.
To explain this adjective there was a little drawing looking like something that an earnest clergy man would draw to explain the complexities of the Trinity to a credulous child (autobiographical!) This was to reassure employees that everything was working together for their benefit in this best of all possible worlds. 25p an hour. I think that speaks for itself!
There were also photographs of impossibly heroic guards in Securicor uniforms who had fought off dastardly robbers who had dared attack the Securicor vans containing the canvas bags full of money that were being transported to various banks.
The caption to the photograph would detail all the horrific injuries that the guard had sustained and show a smiling member of management handing the bandaged guard a cheque for a pathetic twenty quid! Mutual company indeed! The only lesson I took from this magazine was ‘if attacked do nothing and, short of offering to load the money into the thieves' car, do anything they say.’
I was once given a truncheon when we went out to collect money and was told, ‘whatever happens don’t use it.’ Happy days!
I have been trying to work out the last time in my life that I worked for so little as the pittance offered by the language school and I think that I have to go back twenty years or so! Allowing for inflation I think I got more in Securicor than in present day Castelldefels!
Anyway, all of that was this morning; this is this evening.
A zoo out of season (and believe me, February makes the zoo the province of school parties not of real human beings) is a bleak sort of place.
For a start all the food outlets appeared to be closed – a tragic reality for a lazy teacher who has relied on easy access sustenance rather than the hard slog of a home packed lunch.
Secondly, the animals seem totally bored by the neophyte visitors. They are like seasoned old pros that are only prepared to work at 50% for an audience that doesn’t have sufficient clout!
My perpetual reservations about zoos surfaced when observing crocodile like reptiles in pools barely their length and certainly not their width/length – if you see what I mean. Lions, panthers and tigers pacing their allotted spaces with practised monotony all added to my unease.
But then there are the penguins.
Rather a motley crew in Barcelona Zoo, but still - penguins!
I do find them endlessly fascinating, but they also point up one of the flaws in the ‘but-zoos-are-there-to-help-endangered-species-survive’ philosophy.
Since when were penguins an endangered species? They are not in zoos because of their precarious situation in the world of non human animals; they are they because human animals find them so fetching. Well, this human certainly does!
Apart from the fact that zoos present me with concrete evidence to refute my passionately help conviction that giraffes do not exist. What is their function? Zoos that is?
Do you believe in giraffes? Hippos, crocodiles, chameleons and rhinos: I can take all of these unlikely creatures in my stride; but giraffes? No! A thousand times no!
Have you seen a giraffe gallop or glide or float or whatever the correct term for a running giraffe is? It is like a Dalí fuelled dream of an augmented Afghan Hound: it is impossible poetry in motion.
My case rests. Giraffes do not, have not, can never exist.
The chore of having to go to the local language school and teach a small group of 11+ kids is at an end!
Having now acquired the social security number which makes you a real person in the eyes of the local and national government, I can discard this element of my professional life like (as Quentin Crisp so elegantly put it in quite another context) used Hershey Bar wrappers.
The rate of pay offered by this institution is so low that it pushes my mind back to those long gone days when I worked for Securicor. The rate of pay in that iniquitous organisation was five shillings. 25p. Believe me that was not much then, let alone now!
The sickest aspect of working at Securicor was the in-house magazine.
The quality of this organ is perhaps best summed up by the fact that Ray Gunter (there’s a name from Labour’s murky past!) wrote an article praising capitalism either directly or by implication. I have to admit that my memory is hazy on this issue because a red mist clouded my eyes as I read further into the mendacious rubbish that Gunter (ex Labour cabinet minister) wrote. He was, I think, part of the management of Securicor (if not the chair) which emphasised and gloried in the fact that it was a ‘mutual’ company.
To explain this adjective there was a little drawing looking like something that an earnest clergy man would draw to explain the complexities of the Trinity to a credulous child (autobiographical!) This was to reassure employees that everything was working together for their benefit in this best of all possible worlds. 25p an hour. I think that speaks for itself!
There were also photographs of impossibly heroic guards in Securicor uniforms who had fought off dastardly robbers who had dared attack the Securicor vans containing the canvas bags full of money that were being transported to various banks.
The caption to the photograph would detail all the horrific injuries that the guard had sustained and show a smiling member of management handing the bandaged guard a cheque for a pathetic twenty quid! Mutual company indeed! The only lesson I took from this magazine was ‘if attacked do nothing and, short of offering to load the money into the thieves' car, do anything they say.’
I was once given a truncheon when we went out to collect money and was told, ‘whatever happens don’t use it.’ Happy days!
I have been trying to work out the last time in my life that I worked for so little as the pittance offered by the language school and I think that I have to go back twenty years or so! Allowing for inflation I think I got more in Securicor than in present day Castelldefels!
Anyway, all of that was this morning; this is this evening.
A zoo out of season (and believe me, February makes the zoo the province of school parties not of real human beings) is a bleak sort of place.
For a start all the food outlets appeared to be closed – a tragic reality for a lazy teacher who has relied on easy access sustenance rather than the hard slog of a home packed lunch.
Secondly, the animals seem totally bored by the neophyte visitors. They are like seasoned old pros that are only prepared to work at 50% for an audience that doesn’t have sufficient clout!
My perpetual reservations about zoos surfaced when observing crocodile like reptiles in pools barely their length and certainly not their width/length – if you see what I mean. Lions, panthers and tigers pacing their allotted spaces with practised monotony all added to my unease.
But then there are the penguins.
Rather a motley crew in Barcelona Zoo, but still - penguins!
I do find them endlessly fascinating, but they also point up one of the flaws in the ‘but-zoos-are-there-to-help-endangered-species-survive’ philosophy.
Since when were penguins an endangered species? They are not in zoos because of their precarious situation in the world of non human animals; they are they because human animals find them so fetching. Well, this human certainly does!
Apart from the fact that zoos present me with concrete evidence to refute my passionately help conviction that giraffes do not exist. What is their function? Zoos that is?
Do you believe in giraffes? Hippos, crocodiles, chameleons and rhinos: I can take all of these unlikely creatures in my stride; but giraffes? No! A thousand times no!
Have you seen a giraffe gallop or glide or float or whatever the correct term for a running giraffe is? It is like a Dalí fuelled dream of an augmented Afghan Hound: it is impossible poetry in motion.
My case rests. Giraffes do not, have not, can never exist.
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