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“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly;
“’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
Mary Howitt (1799-1888)
“’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
Mary Howitt (1799-1888)
Part One - Doctor X makes a decision
"The Story You Are About To Read Is True.
The Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent"
Chapter 1 – Doctor X is moving on up.
The first of March 2011 was the first day of the rest of my life. I was refusing to be a slave, a wage slave. A meeting with my departmental director was booked. Plymouth University had sucked twelve years of my life away, and I wanted to be considered for voluntary redundancy. Her decision would shape the rest of my life. After the discussion I thought I was in with a chance. After all, two years before, they had tried to make me redundant but had fucked it up royally.
I was shocked to the core to be told my job was being made redundant. After all, ten years previously, the job had been created just for me by the then Vice Chancellor. After that soul destroying meeting with HR, I was knocked for six –what was I going to do? I was fifty-five - the wrong age to be looking for new positions.
The following Friday I was called into my line managers’ office to be told ‘Oh by the way, HR made a mistake, your job is safe.’ - What the fuck? - Now I am told, off hand, it was all a fucking mistake?
Over the next two years those words – ‘Your job is safe’ - came back to haunt me as I was put under increasing pressure by my line managers to train other people the ins and outs of my job. I’m not stupid; I could see the game they were playing. I refused every request on the basis I had spent years learning the techniques I used, it wasn’t something I could teach in one afternoon. Then my workload dropped off. They were trying to bore me out of my job.
I was made of sterner stuff. I pretty much put myself on a part-time basis - nobody noticed. I’d wander in around ten, and by three thirty I’d be off home to pick up the dog to get her down to Plymouth Hoe for her daily swim in the sea.
By March 2011 I had had enough of the bullshit. I’d been a student there, and had worked at the university for over twenty years. I was invested in the place but in that current climate of financial cutbacks in HE complete with a new round of redundancies, I was probably in the firing line once again anyway. I put my hand up.
Doctor X makes his first steps towards China
While I awaited the outcome of my discussion with my Director I moved ahead with my plans. I had decided to teach English in China. It was something I had thought about doing many years before, but I had a Darling Daughter who lived with her mum. Soon she was going to be thirteen so I thought she was now old enough to understand why her daddy had to go abroad to work.
Since my twenties I had always travelled. In fact the twelve years in the university was the longest I had ever worked in one place. When I was just twenty-one, after completing an engineering apprenticeship, I had emigrated to South Africa – it was a toss up between an ISCOR steel mill in Vanderbijlpark, Transvaal, all expenses paid, and an apartment supplied - or a hostel, and finding my own job in Queensland, Australia. In South Africa I bought a Land Rover, and travelled to Lesotho, and Swaziland. I drove to Harare (then Salisbury) in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in a rental car, drove a three-ton Army truck through the deserts of Botswana to the border of Zambia where I was promptly denied entry returning to Johannesburg eventually to return to the UK. (Daaaad, can you buy me a ticket?) This was the mid 1970’s, most of that region was a war zone, but with the naïvety of youth I just kept going – I was young, I was going to live forever.
On returning to the UK I briefly joined the British Army, The Royal Engineers, but I didn’t like the idea of killing people, so I left. Then I spent three years working engineering contracts in the Netherlands. Back in the UK I did a TOPS course to become a carpenter working on many a freezing building site doing the second fixing. The only thing I ever got from Margret Thatcher was a box of wood working tools.
But I still had a bad case of the itchy feet syndrome. All my spare money was spent on travel. Who needs a new settee every year, a big screen TV, and a new car – all the trappings of a ‘successful’ lifestyle when you can jump on a plane, and be somewhere else in a few hours? The idea of going to China had intrigued me for years..
Even when I was a mature university student (I graduated in my mid thirties) I had looked enviously at the adverts for ESL jobs around the world in the education supplements of the national newspapers. But I was married. I had commitments; I needed to finish my degree. Then I was busy with my PhD, my marriage collapsed, I had my Darling Daughter with another woman. I was firmly anchored into a more static lifestyle, although I did still manage to travel – often alone, to places like the U.S., Orkney Islands, Senegal, Gambia, Portugal, Greece, the Canary Islands, couch surfing around Latvia, Estonia and Finland. I drove my Citroen to the Black Sea – visiting the port of Sevastopol. I needed to feed my travel bug on a regular basis.
With my job disappearing, and my age restricting my job opportunities I knew it was time to have some adventure before retirement, and the grim reaper came knocking on the door. Those of us in our late fifties realise we live in the ‘death zone’ I didn’t want to go out feet up, sitting in front of the TV – I wanted to continue to live a life.
One of the first things I did was to have my house valued. It really was a millstone around my neck. I bought it at the height of the housing boom but the market had crashed. The house was in negative equity, and I was also one of the lucky punters who had been convinced by Northern Rock to take full advantage of their, as I now know to my cost, spurious lending plans. Oh, how I laughed when the robbing estate agents ‘valued’ my property. Each one quoting a lower and lower figure as no one was buying - but they still needed to sell.
I already had lodgers. I took them in once the wife had left to become ex-wife number three. I decided I wouldn’t sell. I thought the lodgers could look after my home until I came back.
I started researching what was possible in China. I spoke to some of the agencies that place English teachers in China, and it soon became apparent I couldn’t blag a position on the basis of my PhD. While it was possible to get work by simply having a degree, I was told most of the time this was done illegally on tourist visas.
To get a bona fide work visa to teach English in China I needed a 120-hour TEFL certificate. I sourced a course online, registered and paid the fee, it cost around three hundred pounds. I studied this in my office hours at work, because I was making the bastards pay for trying to bore me to death. However, hours after registering for the course, I realised that I, myself, was crap at English, despite having a decent degree and a PhD.
Doctor X at school
I went to a Secondary Modern school in the late 1960's. It was called Walliscote Secondary Modern School for Boys in Weston-Super-Mare. In the 1960's, in Secondary Modern Schools, grammar wasn’t taught. At least I cannot remember it being taught, in fact I know very little about English grammar. Secondary Modern schools were there to churn out workers. Fodder for the factories. I entered a factory at fifteen as an apprentice machinist.
I had little conception about what a verb, noun, adjective was. No idea what a 'past participle' was, and had only just found out there was something called a 'gerund' (or 'A traditional grammatical term for a verbal that ends in –ing, and functions as a noun.) (I'm still confused)
Even though I was a bit scared of the English, and being a student of English grammar, it was still exciting. I had ninety days to do the course, before, I supposed, in a quasi-Mission Impossible way, the Internet course would self-destructed.
The online course came with some course materials that were all accessed online but as I had never formally studied grammar at school I found it hard going. I was much more comfortable writing about classroom techniques than I was about learning what the present continuous was. Even now, as I write, I am still confused about English grammar.
I quickly learnt I had to be creative if I was to have any chance at passing this course. I purchased the Grammar for Dummies book which was a great help and Googled. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of the answers to the harder questions online, which I blithely copied. I carry no guilt for my plagiarism, something I had many times impressed upon my university students as a definite bad thing to do. I needed that piece of paper to start my new life as an ESL teacher, as I supposed, they needed their degree certificates to start their new lives.
I continued discussing my old life, and the prospects of taking voluntary redundancy with my director. I was amused that the day after I had my first chat with her she called me into her office to tell me HR were prepared to discuss the conditions of my redundancy. I know I had raised the issue, wondering what the response would be, but I wasn't quite ready for them getting back to me quite so quickly.
Even quicker were the appearance of diary dates for the various meetings I had to attend with the HR managers, the financial advisor the university was obliged to provide for me, and the counselling sessions they also helpfully provided. It seemed that within two months I would be out. ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘they must have been really keen for me to go. ‘
I was good, everyday diligently getting my head down in my office to do my TEFL course. I hadn’t worked so hard in my office for years. I’d be a mug to wait until I was redundant wasting my own time and money. Yeah, I was giving it to the Man.
I still continued to carry out my normal duties. I had driven to Bristol to go into a school. En route home I had to go via Okehampton to pick up my Darling Daughter, and her grandmother to bring them back to Plymouth for an event.
I had mentioned to the head of science at the school I was at in Bristol my concern about my lack of formal grammar teaching. He told me he had had the same experience, as in the 1960's teaching grammar was out of fashion. He said it had driven his mum barmy, and she had been constantly on at his school about it.
I was recounting the story to grandma, mentioning I didn't know much about things like the past participle and the gerund. When out of the back of the car came. 'Daddy are you talking about a 'gerund?' at the same time correcting my pronunciation of the word. I said 'yes' in a surprised manner. Darling Daughter then goes on to explain to the amazed adults in the front of the car what a gerund was, and how it was used.
Darling Daughter was twelve.
Who says British education is crap?
"The Story You Are About To Read Is True.
The Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent"
Chapter 1 – Doctor X is moving on up.
The first of March 2011 was the first day of the rest of my life. I was refusing to be a slave, a wage slave. A meeting with my departmental director was booked. Plymouth University had sucked twelve years of my life away, and I wanted to be considered for voluntary redundancy. Her decision would shape the rest of my life. After the discussion I thought I was in with a chance. After all, two years before, they had tried to make me redundant but had fucked it up royally.
I was shocked to the core to be told my job was being made redundant. After all, ten years previously, the job had been created just for me by the then Vice Chancellor. After that soul destroying meeting with HR, I was knocked for six –what was I going to do? I was fifty-five - the wrong age to be looking for new positions.
The following Friday I was called into my line managers’ office to be told ‘Oh by the way, HR made a mistake, your job is safe.’ - What the fuck? - Now I am told, off hand, it was all a fucking mistake?
Over the next two years those words – ‘Your job is safe’ - came back to haunt me as I was put under increasing pressure by my line managers to train other people the ins and outs of my job. I’m not stupid; I could see the game they were playing. I refused every request on the basis I had spent years learning the techniques I used, it wasn’t something I could teach in one afternoon. Then my workload dropped off. They were trying to bore me out of my job.
I was made of sterner stuff. I pretty much put myself on a part-time basis - nobody noticed. I’d wander in around ten, and by three thirty I’d be off home to pick up the dog to get her down to Plymouth Hoe for her daily swim in the sea.
By March 2011 I had had enough of the bullshit. I’d been a student there, and had worked at the university for over twenty years. I was invested in the place but in that current climate of financial cutbacks in HE complete with a new round of redundancies, I was probably in the firing line once again anyway. I put my hand up.
Doctor X makes his first steps towards China
While I awaited the outcome of my discussion with my Director I moved ahead with my plans. I had decided to teach English in China. It was something I had thought about doing many years before, but I had a Darling Daughter who lived with her mum. Soon she was going to be thirteen so I thought she was now old enough to understand why her daddy had to go abroad to work.
Since my twenties I had always travelled. In fact the twelve years in the university was the longest I had ever worked in one place. When I was just twenty-one, after completing an engineering apprenticeship, I had emigrated to South Africa – it was a toss up between an ISCOR steel mill in Vanderbijlpark, Transvaal, all expenses paid, and an apartment supplied - or a hostel, and finding my own job in Queensland, Australia. In South Africa I bought a Land Rover, and travelled to Lesotho, and Swaziland. I drove to Harare (then Salisbury) in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in a rental car, drove a three-ton Army truck through the deserts of Botswana to the border of Zambia where I was promptly denied entry returning to Johannesburg eventually to return to the UK. (Daaaad, can you buy me a ticket?) This was the mid 1970’s, most of that region was a war zone, but with the naïvety of youth I just kept going – I was young, I was going to live forever.
On returning to the UK I briefly joined the British Army, The Royal Engineers, but I didn’t like the idea of killing people, so I left. Then I spent three years working engineering contracts in the Netherlands. Back in the UK I did a TOPS course to become a carpenter working on many a freezing building site doing the second fixing. The only thing I ever got from Margret Thatcher was a box of wood working tools.
But I still had a bad case of the itchy feet syndrome. All my spare money was spent on travel. Who needs a new settee every year, a big screen TV, and a new car – all the trappings of a ‘successful’ lifestyle when you can jump on a plane, and be somewhere else in a few hours? The idea of going to China had intrigued me for years..
Even when I was a mature university student (I graduated in my mid thirties) I had looked enviously at the adverts for ESL jobs around the world in the education supplements of the national newspapers. But I was married. I had commitments; I needed to finish my degree. Then I was busy with my PhD, my marriage collapsed, I had my Darling Daughter with another woman. I was firmly anchored into a more static lifestyle, although I did still manage to travel – often alone, to places like the U.S., Orkney Islands, Senegal, Gambia, Portugal, Greece, the Canary Islands, couch surfing around Latvia, Estonia and Finland. I drove my Citroen to the Black Sea – visiting the port of Sevastopol. I needed to feed my travel bug on a regular basis.
With my job disappearing, and my age restricting my job opportunities I knew it was time to have some adventure before retirement, and the grim reaper came knocking on the door. Those of us in our late fifties realise we live in the ‘death zone’ I didn’t want to go out feet up, sitting in front of the TV – I wanted to continue to live a life.
One of the first things I did was to have my house valued. It really was a millstone around my neck. I bought it at the height of the housing boom but the market had crashed. The house was in negative equity, and I was also one of the lucky punters who had been convinced by Northern Rock to take full advantage of their, as I now know to my cost, spurious lending plans. Oh, how I laughed when the robbing estate agents ‘valued’ my property. Each one quoting a lower and lower figure as no one was buying - but they still needed to sell.
I already had lodgers. I took them in once the wife had left to become ex-wife number three. I decided I wouldn’t sell. I thought the lodgers could look after my home until I came back.
I started researching what was possible in China. I spoke to some of the agencies that place English teachers in China, and it soon became apparent I couldn’t blag a position on the basis of my PhD. While it was possible to get work by simply having a degree, I was told most of the time this was done illegally on tourist visas.
To get a bona fide work visa to teach English in China I needed a 120-hour TEFL certificate. I sourced a course online, registered and paid the fee, it cost around three hundred pounds. I studied this in my office hours at work, because I was making the bastards pay for trying to bore me to death. However, hours after registering for the course, I realised that I, myself, was crap at English, despite having a decent degree and a PhD.
Doctor X at school
I went to a Secondary Modern school in the late 1960's. It was called Walliscote Secondary Modern School for Boys in Weston-Super-Mare. In the 1960's, in Secondary Modern Schools, grammar wasn’t taught. At least I cannot remember it being taught, in fact I know very little about English grammar. Secondary Modern schools were there to churn out workers. Fodder for the factories. I entered a factory at fifteen as an apprentice machinist.
I had little conception about what a verb, noun, adjective was. No idea what a 'past participle' was, and had only just found out there was something called a 'gerund' (or 'A traditional grammatical term for a verbal that ends in –ing, and functions as a noun.) (I'm still confused)
Even though I was a bit scared of the English, and being a student of English grammar, it was still exciting. I had ninety days to do the course, before, I supposed, in a quasi-Mission Impossible way, the Internet course would self-destructed.
The online course came with some course materials that were all accessed online but as I had never formally studied grammar at school I found it hard going. I was much more comfortable writing about classroom techniques than I was about learning what the present continuous was. Even now, as I write, I am still confused about English grammar.
I quickly learnt I had to be creative if I was to have any chance at passing this course. I purchased the Grammar for Dummies book which was a great help and Googled. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of the answers to the harder questions online, which I blithely copied. I carry no guilt for my plagiarism, something I had many times impressed upon my university students as a definite bad thing to do. I needed that piece of paper to start my new life as an ESL teacher, as I supposed, they needed their degree certificates to start their new lives.
I continued discussing my old life, and the prospects of taking voluntary redundancy with my director. I was amused that the day after I had my first chat with her she called me into her office to tell me HR were prepared to discuss the conditions of my redundancy. I know I had raised the issue, wondering what the response would be, but I wasn't quite ready for them getting back to me quite so quickly.
Even quicker were the appearance of diary dates for the various meetings I had to attend with the HR managers, the financial advisor the university was obliged to provide for me, and the counselling sessions they also helpfully provided. It seemed that within two months I would be out. ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘they must have been really keen for me to go. ‘
I was good, everyday diligently getting my head down in my office to do my TEFL course. I hadn’t worked so hard in my office for years. I’d be a mug to wait until I was redundant wasting my own time and money. Yeah, I was giving it to the Man.
I still continued to carry out my normal duties. I had driven to Bristol to go into a school. En route home I had to go via Okehampton to pick up my Darling Daughter, and her grandmother to bring them back to Plymouth for an event.
I had mentioned to the head of science at the school I was at in Bristol my concern about my lack of formal grammar teaching. He told me he had had the same experience, as in the 1960's teaching grammar was out of fashion. He said it had driven his mum barmy, and she had been constantly on at his school about it.
I was recounting the story to grandma, mentioning I didn't know much about things like the past participle and the gerund. When out of the back of the car came. 'Daddy are you talking about a 'gerund?' at the same time correcting my pronunciation of the word. I said 'yes' in a surprised manner. Darling Daughter then goes on to explain to the amazed adults in the front of the car what a gerund was, and how it was used.
Darling Daughter was twelve.
Who says British education is crap?