Professional demands

I do not want to be called "professional."

Some of my friends and most of my colleagues think this is odd.  After all, the word "professional" is a term of praise - isn't it?  

But if you go back a little bit, you can find other uses of the term.  There are many theological attacks on those who are called "mere professors of religion."  They are seen as people whose entire concern is with formalities and outward show rather than real belief and action.  Within my lifetime the term "professional woman" signified a prostitute.  And the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary offers a sense in which "professional" is uncomplimentary, giving examples of people who treat themselves as commodities.  One of the examples is the old term "professional beauty."   


It may seem rather strange to go back to earlier meanings of the word.  We all know that language develops and words change their meaning.  But in an important sense, those older meanings of the words cling around the term "professional".  


I'm not so worried about the idea that people are paid.  I like my job - well, most of it - but I do it for money and I don't need to be coy about the fact.  If I weren't paid I couldn't do it.  But jobs - particularly those jobs that are labelled "professional" - can take more than the energy and dedication with which most employees perform their primary work.  They can, by degrees, sap the integrity of those who work.

Behaving in a "professional manner" often means acquiring a veneer of false confidence which creates a distance between the "professional" and any member of the public.  This isn't something that I would always criticize.  When I go to see my doctor, for instance, I accept that she will adopt a confident and reassuring manner, even if she's just had a bad weekend and is personally feeling a little unsure of herself.  I don't mind the distance either.  She really can't ask all her patients to be her personal friends.  But I hope her determination to appear confident never gets the better of her honesty.  If one day she can't work out what is wrong with me, she'd do best tell me so and send me for tests elsewhere. 

While professionalism distances professionals from the public, it also draws professionals together in their workplace and can begin to separate them from the world in which others live.  Here it can be closely related to the kind of corporate loyalty which leads employees to forget to question what they are doing and why.  An inside account from an unnamed bank suggests how easily a number of professionals forgot about the ethics of banking practice and their responsibility to the wider society.  Instead they showed their loyalty to the well-being - primarily the financial well-being - of their employer and, as a group of professionals, broke the law.  Manipulating the Libor rate had an effect on the wider economy and on numerous individuals but some of the professional employees of the banks involved put the banks' interests first.  They placed the good of a corporation and the good opinion of their colleagues above the good of individuals.  They may also have broken the law, though that isn't yet clear. 
 
Almost all employers have a rule somewhere that employees must not damage the reputation of the company or institution for which they work.  It's a vague rule which employees have come to accept - not that they have much choice.   But what does that rule really mean?  


I take for granted the idea that I shouldn't tell lies about my employer and that I should behave in a reasonable way and work hard at my job.  I worry that the reputation rule may give my employer the right to police my private life or my public life away from work.  Suppose I, acting in a private capacity, go on a demonstration against the government or the arms trade, and am recognized by someone who knows me through my job.  Would this be regarded as bringing my employer into disrepute?  If my employer were dependent on government funds and good will, or if my employer wanted to make money by hosting a reception for arms traders, I might find myself in a difficult position.  I hope the clause doesn't extend so far.  If it does, it gives government and global corporations a very easy way of stifling dissent.  And it means that an employer can control my free time as well as my working hours.

But what if I wanted to tell the truth about my employer?  There are circumstances in which honesty would be seen as "unprofessional."  So would whistle-blowing, although society as a whole owes a great deal to whistle-blowers who have seen where their wider loyalty lies. 


The best employers I have worked for have encouraged open discussion and haven't been afraid of criticism.  They create an atmosphere in which the workers do their best but know that they aren't perfect.  Anyone who needs help or advice can ask for it.  If a worker sees that something isn't working, that worker is free to say so.  The aim is not to hide behind the mask of professionalism but to do the work as well as possible.

These days, however, the market is more firmly and forcefully present.  Everything seems to be for sale: sport, arts, education, health.  Every public good is forced into competition and instructed to sell itself and explain its value in solely economic terms.  Organisations concerned with sport, arts, education and health are told that their primary aim is to acquire customers, and that the approval of those customers is the means to acquire and retain sponsorship.  Every school and GP's surgery is busy competing with others and every sports team and art gallery spends days and weeks writing funding bids, surveying customer opinion and producing the kind of jargon that will enable them to keep going. 

No-one tells employees to lie but the rhetoric everywhere is about "marketing," "branding," "presentation" and "networking."  Apparently these are key elements of professionalism.  In these panicked times they make employees look inward, focus their attention on the survival of their own jobs, and discourage them from looking at any question larger than the immediate good of their own company or institution.  When the competition is so fierce, there's a danger that the competition will focus only on the first impressions of the "customer," whether a patient, a parent, a pupil, an enthusiast for museums or the local football team.  There's no time to consider the longer term or the good of the "customer" in five or ten years. 

But humans have a tendency to ask questions and make ethical judgements.  I can't stop questioning what my work is for and what its value is, and should be, in society.  These are difficult questions and may produce answers that go against my personal interests and the interests of my employer.  It's a dangerous path.  If I think too much, I may find myself saying something my employer doesn't like.  I could even be accused of damaging my employer's reputation.  Yet I believe in freedom of speech and I believe in speaking the truth.  It's a matter of integrity - and, next to integrity, professionalism looks pretty hollow.


 I hope my employer agrees.

Myths of work and money

I can't recall exactly where in our flat the saying was. I think there was a paperweight – perhaps in a multi-sided geometrical shape – with a number of catch-phrases and sayings. When I first read it, I was too young to work out what it meant. I spent ages puzzling over the words: “Work is the curse of the drinking class.” Apparently it was a joke that I couldn't understand.

I suppose the joke played on too many assumptions: that work is a good thing, that the working class are seen (especially by the rich) as idlers, that drunkenness is a working-class problem and that the working class live feckless lives dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. If someone had explained all that to me then, I'd have been politely incredulous. I could see that my parents worked hard and that they put the interests of others (including their children) first. They didn't even drink. My mother was fearful of pubs and drinkers and, although my father enjoyed beer, he gave it up for years for my mother's sake and, even now, finds a single can of lager turns a meal or an evening into a special occasion.

But there's one way in which the group of assumptions did chime with my parents' attitudes. They worked hard at their jobs and often found them rewarding. But they hadn't fallen for the idea so ingrained into many middle-class minds: that work is what gives meaning to people's lives. My parents put other things first: family, friends, neighbours, duty, social responsibility – and pleasure. They handed those values on to me.

Quite a lot came under that heading of “pleasure.” It could be a walk in Richmond Park, a trip to the theatre, a jazz concert, a TV programme, drawing, a maths puzzle, a cryptic crossword, a visit to a museum or a good book. We didn't make the usual distinction between high-brow and low-brow. I watched the London Transport Players perform Ivor Novello or Rogers & Hammerstein in a “proper” theatre and amateur Shakespeare in the London parks. I picked up whatever reading material was lying around: Tit-Bits magazine with its intriguing advertisements for Joan the Wad, poetry anthologies, Plato in translation. I learnt by watching that the aim of work was to live a good and enjoyable life.

My parents encouraged us to work hard at school but they didn't pretend that the aim of education was a career. Education was a means of expanding opportunities for pleasure – and might give us the chance to choose a job that was more enjoyable than those our parents did. I could see the point of that. In my early years my mum was a cleaner and a kitchen assistant. I didn't think I'd be much good at either and, given my incompetence in tidying my room, I didn't think I'd be much good at being a cleaner. I liked reading books and learning poems and plays by heart but I wasn't sure that many jobs would draw upon those skills. And I realised that I might want money so that I could buy books, travel to museums, go to the theatre and so on.

There's nothing in my parents' approach that seems wrong. The idea of devoting a life to work for its own sake seems ungenerous and mean-spirited. I'm lucky enough to enjoy much of my work – but not the bits involving form-filling, managerial jargon, the distress of others, or tidying my office. It's a good job but does it really shock you to learn that I do it for the money? After I've paid for the usual necessities of life, I spend that money on family, friends, duty, responsibility and – of course – on pleasure.

Coffee at the Grand

Every so often, I like a taste of luxury. It was years since I'd last hidden in the Grand Hotel but I wanted a morning away from the office. Sometimes that's the only way to get things done. At the same time, I needed to keep in touch. The Grand wasn't far off my route. I checked the sign in the window: "free wi-fi." It would do.

Coffee at the Grand is good but expensive, even by the standards of frothy coffee bars. I usually make my own coffee or head for a small, independently-run coffee bar. There's an Italian coffee stall in Nottingham's Victoria Centre market which may just offer the best coffee in the East Midlands - and I can practise my Italian too. But I can't linger too long in an independent coffee shop - I know the manager needs my table and the profits from a continuous line of customers. The Grand Hotel is big and wealthy enough not to disturb me. It also has the benefits of comfortable sofas and piped music that is quiet enough not to disturb. The loos are luxurious too. And the woman who brings my cafetiere is quietly welcoming.

I used to be afraid of grand hotels. I thought they were meant only for the rich, that they had strange dress-codes and obscure rituals I wouldn't understand. I thought the well-dressed porters and waitresses would laugh, refuse to serve me and throw me out. Luckily, in my late teens, I encountered fellow teenagers who thought nothing of ordering coffee in a posh hotel - and it would have been more embarrassing to confess my fears than to join them.

I wouldn't want coffee at the Grand to be a regular experience. I like my luxuries to seem special. Perhaps I've already been too over-indulgent lately. As well as coffee in the Grand, I experienced another quiet luxury - first class rail travel.

I was booking on-line for a journey to see my parents. I was fairly flexible about times and looking for the best deal - a complex process that probably merits a higher-level GCSE. Then I saw that the cheapest single price on one train - the best deal going! - was the same for first or standard class. I booked it at once and then found a first class ticket back at only £5 more than the cheapest journey. It seemed worthwhile - even with a seat booked in advance, I've found myself standing for part of the journey lately and first class would surely guarantee a seat.

I was startled by the quiet spaciousness of first class travel. I think the thick carpets help. On the way back the carriage was full so there were the usual interruptions of mobile phone-calls and eager children. Neither were more interesting than fellow travellers in standard class and I didn't manage any more work or reading than usual. Instead I spent my time marvelling at the way the carriage seemed to soak up the sound and wondering whether the views were just slightly different from first class carriage windows. I didn't reach a conclusion. I was simply grateful for the quiet and the chance to rest my back. I think I could have gone to the buffet and collected a free coffee too, just by showing my ticket. But I fear that railway coffee doesn't reach the high standards achieved by the Grand Hotel. I did without.

Going slow

“Productivity” is one of the ways in which our work and lives are measured. It's an idea from time-and-motion studies and is allied to another word: “output.” Lately they've been linked to other words, like “targets” and “league tables.” Underlying these is the notion that speed and quantity are always valuable.

Speed and quantity have their uses. Nobody would suggest putting out a fire slowly or labouring for a week to produce the single, perfect baked bean. But somewhere in the rush to achieve meet targets and achieve maximum productivity, important qualities are lost.

I began thinking about this when I heard Will Self talking on the radio about the experience of walking to the airport. I was mostly concentrating on making coffee but, in my usual quest for maximum productivity, I was listening to the radio as well. The coffee was fine but I caught only a few sentences from Will Self. He pointed out that, in people's haste to reach an exotic destination, they neglected the places in between. Huge suburbs were diminished to places which are crossed as quickly as possible by travellers who want to be somewhere else. Walking to an airport might be one way of regaining an older, more leisurely experience of travel.

I liked this idea of slow travel. I've been toying with the idea of a walking holiday. Perhaps my inspiration was the opening of Dorothy L. Sayers' Have His Carcase, though I don't expect to meet Lord Peter Wimsey and could do without the discovery of a corpse. But I think women – even women of my age – are less inclined to solitary walking than they were in the 1930s and, even if I could handle the necessary luggage, I've a feeling my conduct would seem eccentric. Still, I'd love a slow holiday – slow, at least, by modern standards – taking trains, boats and buses as well as strolling by rivers and lounging in bars and cafés. I've been glancing at holiday brochures and they all seem rather intense.

Going slow shouldn't just be a treat for holiday times. There are moments when work is better for going slow. Not all tasks are best done at speed. I prefer the carpenter who works carefully to the hasty worker with an eye on the clock. I think workers who pause occasionally to talk to one another may find they enjoy their work more than those who are harried into silent, urgent speed. The shop assistant who asks after the health of an elderly woman customer may hold up the queue for half a minute, but she's doing a good job.

Teachers have to account for every minute of classroom time under national strategies. They don't have enough time to listen to pupils, go over ideas or even meander slightly from the point, seeing where a thought or a new idea might take them. Children are educated to make every minute “productive” until they're afraid of the kind of day-dreaming in which genuine inspiration strikes. No wonder so many young people see leisure as a time for binge-drinking. An approach to leisure governed by productivity and target-setting is bound to ask “how much can you drink in the time?” and “how quickly can you achieve drunkenness?”

This focus on productivity doesn't seem to have much to do with the way humans deal well with one another. It comes from business. Schools and public services are still being told to model themselves on business, as though no business could ever fail. It comes from the desire to compete and make maximum profits. The demand for high productivity can be found in a number of industries where firms compete with one another for work. Robert Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists describes the house-painters' unwillingness to skimp work in a competitive system which drives down prices and therefore wages. It was heightened by mass-production, in which people serve machines.

The Ford factories of the 1920s and 1930s moved from the craft of car-making, in which workers served an apprenticeship and learnt to make a car as a whole, to machine-tenders who did one simple, easily-learnt task. Initially, the machine-tenders were well paid, although they could easily be laid off or replaced. High productivity lowered prices. This made goods and leisure more widely available in a hugely unequal society. Perhaps it also reduced the demand for greater equality and a fairer distribution of wealth.

I have a taste for things that are produced slowly and with care. I like the idea that someone took trouble and that an item suits me rather than my “demographic.” I like wine, beer, bread and cheeses that are made by people who aim at the best taste they can rather than a neatly-packaged and predictable uniformity. I enjoy books that are a pleasure to touch as well as to read, with elegant type and clear design. I like ideas that have taken years to mature, ideas that are still being made, thought through and tested – ideas too lengthy to be one of five points on a small card and far too rich and complex ever to be shrunk into the neatness of a soundbite.

What did you get?

Each workplace has its ritual conversations. There are the standard grumbles: “Seems like a long day,” “Feels like Friday,” “Wish I’d stayed in bed.” – even, “I think I’ll throw a sickie tomorrow.” They don’t mean quite what they say. The colleague who speaks most fiercely of gloom will smile encouragingly as soon as the first problem of the day arises. The colleague who threatens to “throw a sickie” never fakes illness and struggles in, a few days later, taking paracetemol to quell a burning head and aching limbs.

Most workplace conversations are like talking to neighbours about the weather. They imply that, however bad things get – and all workplaces are bad from time to time – we’re in it together and can sympathise with one another’s experiences.

Other conversations are less pleasant. Fellow workers jockey for superiority, find ways to imply “I’m more important than you.” The workers who play these games are usually those who never question their employer’s changing values – or, if they do, keep their doubts to the privacy of home. I suppose this lack of thought and adventure will increase as the recession continues – and that workplaces will be filled with a new competitive passivity as workers insist on their importance to the employer. In the new fear, anger and fear will burst out as strikes, usually on the wrong issues and expressing grievances in ways that the – public – especially the fearful and newly-unemployed public - won’t understand.

Not all workplace conversations are about work. There’s “Did you do anything nice at the weekend?”, “Got any plans?” – the conversations that look back and forward to times of leisure if not of liberty. Too often the answer is: “The house needed work,” “The children were ill,” or, simply, “I caught up on sleep.” But they're a chance to remember that work does not define us - we are more than that.

In the past few years, a new question has crept in after fetes and festivals. I was quite shocked when first I heard it, one year after Chrsitmas. A colleague turned to me and said, "What did you get?", following it up with, "Did you get anything nice?"

"It's childish," I thought, recalling on that urge to fierce for possession and experience that adults learn to quell. And it seemed so materialistic - not "did you have a nice time?" but "what did you get?" as though life was no more than a competition about who owned the flashiest possessions. It didn't help that the question came from a colleague who I didn't expect to view the world in that way.

Now it seems as though that was the first time I noticed a change in how people viewed the world. I've got used to the question. I hear them everywhere: at work, on the train, from friends and acquaintances: "What did you get for Christmas?", "for your birthday?", "for Valentine's Day?", "for Mother's Day?" It's a horror. What do people say when the answer is "nothing"? When did intimate family festivals turn into a public parade of acquisition and consumption? I never thought money or posessions a fair measure of value - or love.

Sometimes I think I'll feel more comfortable in an economic downturn.

Station approaches

I'm never quite sure if I like Derby. Of the triangle of East Midlands cities, it's the one I know least. I'm more often there to change trains than to visit. But on impulse I decided to catch the train. There was a film I wanted to see at the Quad - the recent French film, The Army of Crime - and, after five weeks of overwork combined with a succession of viruses, it seemed splendid to be heading out for a treat on a Friday afternoon.

I found to my delight that I was once more able to run for the train - it was a very last-minute decision - and, once on the train, reflected that my life was suddenly becoming quite self-indulgent. I'd been to a bonfire, firework and pizza party the night before and now I was off to the cinema. By the time I arrived in Derby, I'd decided I liked the city. Perhaps I could even move there, one day. I considered the advantages: good train services, easier access to the Peak District, the Joseph Wright paintings in the museum, the Victorian market hall. Above all, it would be a new place and I would feel as though I were starting life again. I started to think about small, manageable houses without gardens and in good repair. I tried not to think about the horror of moving or getting a house in sufficiently good order to be shown to buyers.

I can never remember the quickest way from Derby station to the city centre. I took a slightly complicated route, past small modern factories and the huge Westfield shopping centre. It all seemed slightly dull in the November drizzle but I reminded myself that this was my afternoon out and determined to enjoy myself.

I'd never been in the Quad before and this wasn't a good start. I'd just got my money out when I saw the sign "An Army of Crime - cancelled, replaced by Casablanca." I asked what had happened but didn't exactly follow the answer: something about the equipment failing to "ingest" the film. "Is it digital?" I asked, in an attempt to understand. I didn't understand at all. Apparently digital films have to be ingested at least two hours before the screening. However a new copy was on its way. I bought a ticket, with cash, for the early evening screening and headed out in the rain to explore Derby.

I must have spent two and a half hours wandering, mainly gazing in shop windows in the hope that I'd feel inspired about birthday and Christmas presents. Then I thought I'd return to check that the replacement copy of the film had arrived and was being ingested safely.

The courier, due at two, hadn't arrived and it was nearly four. I decided to wait in the faint hope that the film would arrive and sat in the foyer, leafing through the film programme. The woman running the box office was suddenly concerned about my wasted afternoon and offered me a complimentary drink from the bar. I asked for a pot of chai so I was at least warmer when the news came that the film had been cancelled. The box office woman gave me my money back and offered me a complimentary ticket for any film in November. I accepted, though I'm not sure I'll make it to Derby again. But the kindness began to make up for my disappointment. I finished my tea and headed along the damp, dreary route past the overhang of the Westfield centre and bleak garages toward the railway station.

This time I managed the quick route and noticed the attractive railwaymen's cottages close the station. There were a couple of promising pubs too and an excellent chip shop. I began to fantasise about moving into one of the railwaymen's cottages. I thought I'd like being near the station. I always enjoy the possibility of easy escape. And I liked the idea of living in a railwayman's cottage. My dad was a railwayman - he worked as a fitter on the London Underground for 39 years and still takes an interest in trains.

I was unexpectedly tired when I reached home. I should have picked up some work but felt unable. I went to bed with a couple of books and decided I'd have a lie in on Saturday. But in the morning I felt the after-effects of the Derby drizzle. I had a bad cold and was aching too much to go anywhere. I coughed, spluttered and slept.

I have stopped dreaming of a move to Derby.

Back to the blog

It wasn't swine flu. I didn't have the cough or the sudden high temperature. It was just the usual sort of autumn virus.

For a week or so, everyone except me seemed to have a virus so it wasn't surprising that I succumbed. It wasn't a good time. Taking time off work would have placed an impossible strain on colleagues, who were also working while ill. And adrenalin got me through the last week and a half, though not as successfully as I would have liked. Last Saturday involved six hours of non-stop talking, which became croaking and finally a hoarse whisper. At home everyday tasks like loading the washing machine or putting out the wheelie bin required sustained concentration. Away from work, I didn't go out or blog. Instead I huddled pathetically in an ill-made bed, grateful when the cat purred on the pillow beside me.

Every so often I noticed a subject for a blog. "I must write that down," I thought, but didn't. It seems a little late for my thoughts on the forthcoming government by the Bullingdon boys. I'd have liked to discuss the background to the postal strike and the need for a national, well-managed mail service but an article appeared with more knowledge and thought than I could provide. Others have written well on the recent political impact of Twitter. I managed a couple of tweets myself, mentioning Berlusconi, Blair and Jean Sarkozy. I felt old.

Meanwhile, I noticed reports on the economy. Some people said the crisis was over. Others predicted a steep rise in unemployment. Goldman-Sachs, which took public money, gave a lot of it to its employees in bonuses and was startled that anyone should object. Politicians competed in the savagery of the cuts they promised, assuming that voters would elect the candidate who threatened most jobs and the swiftest sell-off of public assets and resources. And every so often I met someone I knew who was threatened with redundancy or had lost a job.

Commentators assume there's a sharp line dividing those with jobs from those without. They assume the employed will spend until the economy surfaces from recession. I doubt that's the case. People live in families and circles of friends. Surely we'll help families and friends to purchase necessities before we head out on the extravagant spending binge urged by economists? That's enough to bring down a society built on debt and the sale of services and luxury goods.

Perhaps it's time to tear up the old model and start again. But where do we go from here? Can we really progress through co-operation when hatred and bitter competition have grown so strong?

Loving Paris

Arriving at the Gare du Nord, I was equipped with the carnet ticket that would take me to Montreuil. I like to keep fresh carnet tickets in my purse, telling myself that I have the tickets ready and therefore I must be back in Paris soon. I keep old tickets and use them as bookmarks so that every so often, when I pause in my reading, I'm reminded of journeys in the city I love.

This time I was over-confident. I didn't read the sign telling travellers to push their cases ahead of them. Instead I walked through the automatic gates pulling my suitcase behind me. They closed sharply and my case was trapped.

I was, of course, embarrassed. But a fellow-traveller, seeing my hopeless efforts to tug my case free, came to assist and quickly solved the problem. "You need a navigo," she told me (in French) and started asking other travellers whether they could help me by loaning one. Within a couple of minutes a young man realised what would work and laid his navigo on the panel that would recognize him as a legal traveller. The gates sprang open to admit him, the woman pushed my case through and went on when I'd hardly finishe stuttering my thanks.

It's hard to manage on the metro with a heavy case. The lines must have been built separately so the connections between them involve long tunnels, steep staircases and only occasional escalators or lifts. Sometimes I struggled alone but quite often people came to my help - smartly-dressed young people insisted on helping and so did one of the vendors of cheap toys and fluorescent Eiffel towers who left his pitch in the tunnel to run up a flight of stairs and help with my case.

Even with the help, my feet ached from the journey. Somehow they acquired small cuts and blisters which made walking difficult for the first part of the week. Perhaps the pain in my feet combined with my distaste for Versailles to make me less sympathetic than usual to the momuments to the French Republic.

I can't love the Panthéon. It's fine from the outside and when I stook in rue Soufflot under a dark grey sky with thunder crashing and lightning streaking across the sky the building came into its own. But the vast interior with its huge sculptural representation of the Convention doesn't grip me as much as the colourful Gothic delights of the much smaller Sainte Chapelle. Nor do I enjoy the collection of great men in the crypt (one woman is honoured there - Marie Curie was added in 1995). There are aspects to enjoy. I was amused by notices explaining how several people initially honoured at the Panthéon had later been demoted and buried elsewhere - even in death, it seems, the great men and their supporters were jostling for distinction. But it was good to see a memorial to Toussaint l'Ouverture and I could remember watching part of the ceremony in which the elder Alexandre Dumas was finally moved there in 2002. But it's part of the assertion of national greatness on a monumental scale which fails to touch me. In the same way, when I look at the Arc du Triomphe, so vast on its traffic island that it diminishes its visitors into insignificance, I feel regret rather than admiration.

Among all this neo-classical monumentalism, the Eiffel Tower is striking because it's so plainly linked to a people's Paris. It's a work of craft as well as art - whenever I see it I think of the skill with which it was designed and the hard work which created it. I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower only once, when my son urged me to conquer my fear of heights. (That fear left me a year or so later but I faced my fear and got to the top - I still have the ticket to remind me.) But there's nothing intimidating about the Tower - it doesn't celebrate great men or the power of kings or state but human achievement in a city.

My favourite places aren't the great Haussmann boulevards, so convenient for crowds or armies and tanks. I like the small streets like the rue Mouffetard where people wander and work and shop and worry. I like places where the workers of Paris sit and talk at café tables the moment there's the faintest gleam of sun. I enjoy the everyday life of the city which can be rough as any city but which also has space for casual kindness. I'll remember all the sightseeing from my visit - and there's much I haven't mentioned here. But I'll also remember a comfortable basement cinema where the staff made viewers welcome, a hospitable African shop in Montreuil which serves - for 1 euro - the best espresso I've experienced in Paris, and a friendly Belgian pub near the Panthéon where happy hour starts at 4.00 p.m. so that draught Leffe arrives in double quantities.

Odd jobs

I hope the owner of this toolbox doesn't mind that I've borrowed the picture. It comes from a page of pictures of a garage workshop - and I love workshops like this. They remind me of my dad, who is not just intelligent but skilled at all kinds of craft. Even in the flat where I grew up, he assembled a range of tools, with small items like nuts and drillbits kept carefully in Golden Virginia tobacco tins.

I wish I had the practical skills of my parents - or that my school had taught me useful things like woodworking. But these were seen as boys' skills. The idea was that we girls would marry. We would sew and cook for husbands and children but husbands would do the repairs. The boys' school included woodwork and metalwork on the curriculum; my brother produced a poker and toasting fork, which were things of beauty but of little use in our centrally-heated flat.

When the cat-flap shattered in a fierce wind, I realised I had to do something about it. I may know that the first reference to a catflap comes in Chaucer (the Miller's Tale) but I had no idea how to fit one. At first I worried. Then I asked my son to choose a new one of about the same size. It arrived with incomprehensible illustrations that were suppsoed to indicate how to fit it. I gave up looking and began to piece the catflap parts together for myself. After a while it seemed clear. I went to the shed to look for the drill and discovered I no longer had one. Fortunately a neighbour lent me a drill, a crewdriver and a pair of pliers. It was a fine, hand-held drill - like the one my Dad has. I cracked, peeled and unscrewed the wreckage of the old catflap and my son and I went to work.

Together we marked the places where the new screws would go and took turns at the drilling. It wasn't easy - the holes had to be very close to the edge of the gap and it's hard to drill at the bottom of a door. I was glad that my son did most of the work but felt quite pleased that I was also playing a useful part. I've never fitted a catflap before.

Gradually we got it in place - not particularly skilfully as one of the screws is crooked. But fitting it at all seemed like an achievement - and a great improvement on the hole in the back door. Joe didn't approve, however. He had thought the hole much better than a catflap - easier to manage. He looked at the new contraption unconvincedly and tried to persuade us to open the door instead.

It's not a great catflap but it has three advantages: it's transparent, it has a magnet which stops it from flapping in the wind, and it can be sealed with a small plastic sheet that holds it shut. I'm not sure Joe sees these as advantages.

Odd jobs proliferate. The washing-line snapped under the weight of sodden sheets which I hung up just before a downpour. We need a new backdoor - and the garden is in a desperate state. Unfortunately work is busier than ever and after 11-hour days I find it hard to summon the energy for anything else, except fencing, which seems to have a brief energising effect. Yesterday my Chinese horoscope urged me to do sport or "relaxing activities like odd jobs." The odd jobs didn't seem particularly relaxing. I chose fencing. They didn't teach that at my school either.

Saying au revoir

It's a week since I saw my daughter off to university and I still haven't got used to her absence.

She, of course, is having a lovely time. The first week is full of socialising and she seems to have settled in straight away. But here the house seems a bit empty at times.

These days, children grow up late. My mum started full-time work in a glove factory (five and a half days a week, cutting thumb-pieces) when she was still thirteen. In the 1930s most children left school at the end of the term before their fourteenth birthdays. This began to change with the war, when children were evacuated from the towns and cities. Later, the 1944 Education Act came into force, and 15 became the school leaving age.

My scholarship to boarding school took me away from home at 9 so at 19 I was eager for the freedom of university. I had a grant (my parents paid a little towards it - as much as they could afford) and knew that my fees were paid by the state. I felt independent but of course there were college rules. There were college servants too - an alarming concept but the people who worked as porters, scouts and kitchen staff were comfortingly familiar in many ways. My mother and many of her friends had been cleaners at the local college. In Oxford people doing the same sort of job called me "Miss" which disturbed me.

I had no problem that people served me meals in the college dining hall. I found it very helpful indeed that someone cleaned my room. But when cooks and cleaners called me "Miss", I found it hard to thank them as equals. I was relieved to notice that "Miss" or "Sir" could, on occasion, be said with a sneer. The college servants were not servile. Their thoughts and opinions of us weren't far below their surface deference.

These days students need lifts to university to transport all their luggage. These days most accommodation is self-catering and lists of "items required" include saucepans and crockery. Students are expected to provide duvets as well as sheets - plus books, stationery, computer, clothes - while the boot and shoe collection seems to require a whole suitcase to itself. The car was crammed but somehow my daughter fitted herself into the passenger seat. I stood on the pavement and waved goodbye.

That is, I suppose, what being a parent is all about. Years ago a terrific English teacher called Kathleen Betterton brought a poem by C. Day Lewis into our class. It was called "Walking Away" and, at the time, it wasn't the poem that made an impact on me but Mrs Betterton's feelings for the poem. She talked particularly about the final lines and I realise now that it talked of something she - and all our parents - had experienced. I was too young to get it.

C. Day Lewis wrote the poem about his son Sean's first day at school. It details the child's hesitancy from the point of view of the watching adult and ends with the lines:

"... selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go."

Box 45

There wasn't a crisp in sight.

There wasn't a football player either.

I'd hoped I'd get to watch the team practise but there were just two men with lawn mowers moving up and down, trimming the grass of the pitch into neat, broad stripes.

It was a meeting for work - an all-day meeting - and we were booked into Box 45 at the nearby football stadium. I don't know whose idea it was but it was the first time I've ever visited this ground. Football used to be cheap, I believe, but these days it's more expensive than opera.

I've only been to two proper matches and both were at the City Ground where, confusingly, Notts County plays. I went with my son because there were newspaper vouchers for cheap tickets for primary-age children and their parents. I loved it all - the occasional skill of the players (these days County isn't a great team), the sudden switches between mild boredom and intense excitement, the partisan cheers and witty comments when the ref's decision caused surprise.

Our seats were in the family stand, which is supposed to be the safe area, but neither match seemed dangerous. At one, County fans were rather depressed because the team was in immediate danger of relegation. Fortunately they weren't relegated that week though they did go down at the end of the season. The other was, I suspect, rather routine. But I wanted to join in the shouts and chants. I even wanted to express my disapproval of the ref after one bemussing decision, but my son found that too embarrassing. I couldn't follow the match as clearly as I could on television but it had a quality of rough immediacy. I felt I almost belonged.

After my son lost interest in football, I haven't been back. I don't think I want to see a Premiership match - there's not much opportunity of that, so it's just as well. But the less perfect playing of a lower division suits me well.

The Walkers Stadium, where Leicester play, is big, clean and glossy. There's even a restaurant called "Fusions". We moved along carpeted corridors, decorated with big, shiny photographs of teams and audiences in years past. Some of the recent photos seems style without content. "Look, he can do photoshop," one colleague commented. But the photos of teams of the 1930s and '40s looked like real football with serious, grown-up football players instead of the glamour stars of today. (I know that's a superficial judgment. I like the players in the older photos because they remind me of my dad.)

We were in Box 45 - the one box, so far as I could see, that give access to the outside. We watched the pitch and the mowers through huge picture windows. We weren't discussing football but something else entirely.

All day the mowers moved up and down, working, making sure the bright green pitch was clean and neat.

In the queue

I allowed plenty of time. I had forty minutes between arriving at the station and my appointment with the optician so I reckoned there would be no problem in strolling to the Post Office and sending a parcel to my mum and dad. It wasn't an urgent parcel - just a small holiday souvenir and a book about the tenor James Johnston. Dad heard James Johnston sing in his amateur days and only recently learnt of his subsequent fame. And at least the Post Office was still in its grand Edwardian building and not crammed into a W.H. Smith's basement. And late afternoon is usually a good time to avoid queues - at least in my local Post Office.

I'd forgotten the effect of Post Office closures. There must have been forty people in the queue when I arrived: some elderly, one on crutches, some parents with small, hot, hungry children. There were five counters open. Evidently the Post Office is economising by cutting back of staff - miserable for them and miserable for their customers.

After fifteen minutes of standing in line, I began to wonder if I should give up and go away. I looked at the resigned patience of the people ahead. Some must have been in pain from standing so long. A small child was crying in the exhausted, hungry way that made me aware of my own helplessness as a new parent. No-one spoke. We stood and waited. Behind me, the queue lengthened. I stayed.

Twenty-five minutes after I arrived, I reached the counter. I remarked on this to the woman who sold me stamps and took my parcel. "It's always like this," she said, glancing tiredly at the queue.

I did the sums. Forty people waiting twenty-five minutes. Isn't that 1,000 minutes in total? That's 16 hours and 40 minute of people's time lost in queuing every during the twenty-five minutes I stood in line. How much is lost in a day? in a week? How many people with disabilities suffer pain? How many working people lose time they need? How many parents and children endure the discomfort of the queue?

And what will it be like at a busy time? I wonder how early I can post for Christmas.

Punishing the poor

It's depressing to read the message boards and comment columns. So many people blame all the country's ills on "scroungers" and the unemployed. The current financial crisis has nothing to do with unemployment. As economists point out, current problems, such as the rising price of oil, are causing unemployment.

There are other causes too. Ending student grants forces poorer students into debt or work - often debt and work. Nearly half of students work during term-time, averaging just under 20 hours a week - and they work in vacations too. That's a huge pool of cheap labour ripe for exploitation - often working for mimimum wages (or less) at unsocial hours and too desperate for cash to complain about working conditions. Many schoolchildren are working too and, while they're under 18, they don't get the minimum wage.

When I was unemployed, I told myself I'd remember how it felt. It's hard to recapture the hopeless depression that takes over after just a few weeks or the tiredness caused by a trek from shop to shop, hunting for reductions on bread, rice and lentils. I recall the desperation of wanting to afford a tiny luxury - a postcard or a small Christmas decoration - and the pride I felt in not letting friends and family know that I could afford so little.

I can still remember the mixture of suspicion and contempt from one member of benefits staff, who thought me both too clever and too lazy. I was six months pregnant at the time and she managed to imply that pregnancy was another example of my fecklessness, telling me that my intention to breast-feed when the baby was born showed my lack of commitment to the world of work. I was summoned back for a detailed interview about my circumstances, which culminated in a long argument about my travel expenses. I got the expenses and benefits in the end, at the cost of a great deal of self-confidence. Only the knowledge that I needed money for the baby kept me going in the gap between temp. work and maternity pay.

The Labour Party used to stand up for the unemployed. I chanced on a web-library of Scottish Labour election leaflets - appropriate for this week with the Glasgow East by-election set for Thursday. I found the election address of Agnes Dollan, who was standing for Glasgow Springburn ward in a Glasgow City by-election of 1921. One of the key paragraphs is headed "Our Workless Brethren" and reads:

The condition of the unemployed in the city must be our first concern. Over 70,000 men and women are unable to obtain work, and their homes are shadowed by sorrow and poverty. Thousands could be employed in the building of houses, and on other schemes of civic welfare, if the State would give grants to finance these schemes. If the Government could afford £30,000,000 for warships, it can afford to finance work for the unemployed. The State must accept full responsibility for unemployment so that occupation or maintenance can be provided for the workless.

The election address goes on to guarantee that the unemployed of Glasgow will not be evicted and that the unemployed will be given the same moratorium on debt as was provided to bankers at the beginning of World War I.

Today, the New Labour government is talking about getting the unemployed into work, but the language is all about force, threats and punishment. The jobless will be ordered to work - first clearing litter and cleaning graffiti in community projects and then at unspecified full-time jobs. This will affect almost all the 4.6 million people who are unemployed and claiming benefits - only those with the most serious disabilities will be exempt. I suppose we'll get used to seeing gangs of the sick and dying peeling chewing-gum off city streets.

I don't know whose jobs will be given to the unemployed but I hope the government remembers its own minimum wage laws. Apparently the new rules will include an opportunity for private companies to profit.

It looks as though the new regime will be piloted in Glasgow - but there won't be an announcement until the by-election is over. I wonder what Agnes Dollan would have made of adviser, David Freud, "investment banker and government welfare adviser," who seems to be behind the new scheme.

Things to do

"Are you on holiday yet?" acquaintances ask.

Friends know better but even they assume that this is a quiet time of year for me. I wish it were. The "to do" list lengthens every day and any spare time must be spent on the house, if I can summon the energy.

Just getting on with jobs on the "to do" list would be good. Many of them would be enjoyable if I weren't so tired, and even housework might make enough of a difference for me to feel I'd achieved something after a few hours. But I'm continually held up by computer problems. I've been suffering from advice that doesn't always make sense. For instance, explaining problems with the screen of my borrowed laptop, I'm faced with the response that it must in some way be my fault.

"It's because you've dropped it," I'm told. I didn't drop it. Then, "You've downloaded Firefox. Why did you do that? Who said you could? You shouldn't download strange programmes. They always affect the computer. That's why the screen has gone black. Why didn't you stick with Explorer?"

I try to explain and, after a while, give up. Mostly the borrowed laptop works - every so often it stalls and takes yet more of my time. I begin to wonder if life was easier before computers.

Still, I know what I have to do this weekend. I have to spring-clean the house. Yes, I know it's past midsummer but spring was busy - and winter and autumn and all last year. And I'm giving a short talk at work which requires research - rather more than I anticipated. So I should reread the Bacchae of Euripides and, for the first time, the whole of Cervantes' Don Quixote. I've only read bits before. If I can do all that this weekend I'll be more or less on schedule.

I started Don Quixote on the train home - page 47 already. 800 or so pages to go. It's a lovely old Penguin edition with the price on the cover: 8/6.

I think I need a Sancho Panza to do the housework. I think I need more than a weekend.

In Marlowe's play of Doctor Faustus, Faustus quotes Ovid's Amores, begging that his last night will last longer: "O lente lente currite noctis equi!" (Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night). Time moves at its usual speed and the night comes to an end.

I expect the weekend will end before I've finished half the tasks I've intended.

cables, modems and other crises

I am writing this, in haste, in the pub.

No, I'm not having a beer but a double espresso - I ran out of coffee at home yesterday and was gasping for strong, delicious caffeine. But the real lure of the pub was the promise of free wi-fi.

My broadband internet connection is down at home. After several lengthy and irritable (on both sides) conversations with the Virgin Media call centre, they agreed to send out a technician without, as they threatened, charging me £75. I think the problem is with broadband because the "ready" light frequently flickers and goes out. This will be the second technician in a week despatched to help us.

Sometimes the call centre admits there is a signal problem. sometimes not. They suggest the problem is with the router but, even when I take the router out, the best connection I can get is a home page that takes five minutes to load. And then the connection dies.

At work, my computer decided to freeze half-way through the opening procedure. After a morning of anxiety, a technician tried a new cable, and it worked again. But I don't know if it will continue to work and nor does he. Meanwhile my trusty laptop (also the property of work) is waiting for someone to authorise repairs. I'm not allowed to do so. The technicians claim the problem could have been caused by dropping the laptop. I didn't drop it. It's suffering from overwork, perhaps. Some of the letters on the keyboard have worn away.

I don't know how many hours I've spent on internet and computer problems. They have stopped me blogging. I hope I'll be back soon.