TASHY DID - A LIFE
Hey kids, grand-kids, and any other nosey people who are reading these pages, this is for you to read now or sometime in the future. It may tell you a little
about how life was 60 or so years ago and rather more about me. Why am I doing it?
In the years after my father's death, way back in 1981, I kept thinking of things I wished I'd talked to him about. After my mother's death, just over
thirteen years later, there was less of a knowledge-vacuum because mother talked more about her past.
Just recently, my daughter and I unearthed my mother's diaries which went back to 1929, when she was just 13 years old. This reminded me of the 1998
incident with my 6 year old and I decided to put down here the story of my life so my children and grandchildren could, if they wished, read about what I had done. I would use my
memory and those diaries to build a picture from 1949 to the present day and add some personal observations.
So, here we go. Each week we will have a new year with preceding weeks being archived. In the first few years, as I will have less to say, probably, I will
add some info about your grandparents and their parents.
1984
You will have noticed, if you are mildly observant, that the 1980's seem to have been a non-visual decade. In other words there are few photos. I am sure someone must have some but not me or in mother's collection. I do have one of my kids who, this year, would be 10 and 7.
Work-wise the actual work job was little changed. I combined writing training programmes and resources with actual training although this became much less. The Essex part of the operation continued to grow and I remember we were asked to do some training for Yardley, the soap and perfume group. I went down to their factory in, if I remember correctly, Basildon. My brief was that they wanted ways to make work more attractive for staff and wanted to run courses to achieve this. I actually don't remember what happened, I certainly can't recall writing any courses but I was introduced to the ways of working there. Women stood in a long line along a conveyor belt and stuck labels on soap as it went past. I hope I haven't got this wrong but they did 50 minutes in every hour having a ten minute break. In a way I admired them but it was so noisy they couldn't really talk and it reminded me of Les Dawson and Cissie and Ada (look it up).
However I was beginning to become uncomfortable with my boss. She had never, to my knowledge, tutored, never written a resource but was the figurehead of the organisation in Essex. Her job was very much client liaison and administration. In the summer we were called to Cambridge to discuss ideas for assessing the trainees. In one way I was pleased that the old idea, as I had seen it, of taking young people off the dole, keeping them busy and give them a bit of experience and training was being replaced by something more structured. I thought the assessment idea, which was then called profiling, would give the young people an idea of what they were capable of doing. They could be assessed early and shown what they already knew, checked out again mid-course to see how they had progressed and then given a profile record when they left.
In the course of the journey from Colchester to Cambridge, my boss drove, we discussed ideas and when we stopped off for lunch I came up with something I thought would work. Imagine, if you will, my surprise when we sat down in the meeting and she presented the idea as hers. My romantic view of personal relationships extends to business ones too so sadly that was it; she no longer had my admiration.
Later in the year something else happened that further worsened our relationship. We had expanded quite a lot and taken on new tutors, some with my agreement and some I cautioned against. My then wife joined part-time in September, giving up the playgroup she had run for some 5 years and helped at for a few years longer, and one guy who joined was told to shadow me for a couple of sessions and take note as I had the reputation for not only getting the best from the trainees but also being able to control any excesses they might have. He saw that basically I treated them as adults not kids, that we had a sort of mutual admiration society going and I did not act outraged or shocked by their attempts to have fun. If they didn't, life, and these sessions, would have been boring for all of us. Comments from them like, “Richard can we improve our speaking skills with a debate, can we all join in, can it be a mass debate”, were greeted with the comment from me of “OK who'd like to have a hand in that”. When writing the adverts for the radio show for example condom companies and tampon makers featured very highly. I didn't mind, they still had to think and write.
When they would change the clock and put it forward fifteen minutes so they went home early I would leave it like that so next time they arrived they were fifteen minutes late and I suggested they should stay fifteen minutes longer that day. Much later in my career this happened to another tutor who came to me and said she wanted them all to receive a verbal warning for their behaviour. It was my job to deliver these. Next time they came in and I duly delivered the warning to the whole class, without the tutor being present. My warning said please check who you can have fun with next time. It's a lesson of life, they were told.
But back to this guy who, after watching me, spent the whole of his first day with them telling them stories about his time in the army in Germany and how he had driven a tank through a window etc. He assumed that this would make them like him. Wrong. Next time I saw them they complained saying they had learnt nothing and he hadn't wanted to listen to them. He was sacked on my recommendation. Start from the assumption that these young people wanted more knowledge because they wanted to be more employable and earn more money, add to this that they had just experienced 10 years of strict discipline and were looking for some fun and treat them as grown ups and you wouldn't go far wrong. Of course there would be some awkward ones. You either worked on them or gave up. If you were prepared to try to help them then you didn't give up. The give up was an instant, immediate decision.
I actually went off at a tangent here as I was going to tell you about the incident that worsened my relationship with my boss. One day I was in the office writing something and another tutor was in picking up notes and photocopying his material for next day. Our secretary was also in. Suddenly this guy had a fit. He collapsed, was foaming at the mouth and we had no idea what to do. We called an ambulance and phoned head office in Cambridge. From them we learnt that the guy was diabetic and had not eaten for a while; a simple bar of chocolate might have helped him. Our boss had decided not to tell anyone about this. Why, she couldn't explain but I was not a happy bunny. I think by then she was beginning to keep things from me so that she felt she still had power. Next year this would come back and bite her and ruin our relationship for good.
In the late summer of this year, the timing is according to my ex-wife, we were driving to my mother's house along country roads bordered my fields and she suddenly said “wouldn't it be nice to see more of our country”. I have no idea what she thought would happen after that comment but it ignited an idea in my little brain that had been sitting there, ungerminated, for a year or so. Ever since I had written this resource about a trip around Europe and then spent time planning a similar one round England, I had wished for it to become reality. That one comment did it for me.
Dreams became plans, plans became possibilities and possibility became reality. Next year it would happen.
You will have noticed, if you are mildly observant, that the 1980's seem to have been a non-visual decade. In other words there are few photos. I am sure someone must have some but not me or in mother's collection. I do have one of my kids who, this year, would be 10 and 7.
Work-wise the actual work job was little changed. I combined writing training programmes and resources with actual training although this became much less. The Essex part of the operation continued to grow and I remember we were asked to do some training for Yardley, the soap and perfume group. I went down to their factory in, if I remember correctly, Basildon. My brief was that they wanted ways to make work more attractive for staff and wanted to run courses to achieve this. I actually don't remember what happened, I certainly can't recall writing any courses but I was introduced to the ways of working there. Women stood in a long line along a conveyor belt and stuck labels on soap as it went past. I hope I haven't got this wrong but they did 50 minutes in every hour having a ten minute break. In a way I admired them but it was so noisy they couldn't really talk and it reminded me of Les Dawson and Cissie and Ada (look it up).
However I was beginning to become uncomfortable with my boss. She had never, to my knowledge, tutored, never written a resource but was the figurehead of the organisation in Essex. Her job was very much client liaison and administration. In the summer we were called to Cambridge to discuss ideas for assessing the trainees. In one way I was pleased that the old idea, as I had seen it, of taking young people off the dole, keeping them busy and give them a bit of experience and training was being replaced by something more structured. I thought the assessment idea, which was then called profiling, would give the young people an idea of what they were capable of doing. They could be assessed early and shown what they already knew, checked out again mid-course to see how they had progressed and then given a profile record when they left.
In the course of the journey from Colchester to Cambridge, my boss drove, we discussed ideas and when we stopped off for lunch I came up with something I thought would work. Imagine, if you will, my surprise when we sat down in the meeting and she presented the idea as hers. My romantic view of personal relationships extends to business ones too so sadly that was it; she no longer had my admiration.
Later in the year something else happened that further worsened our relationship. We had expanded quite a lot and taken on new tutors, some with my agreement and some I cautioned against. My then wife joined part-time in September, giving up the playgroup she had run for some 5 years and helped at for a few years longer, and one guy who joined was told to shadow me for a couple of sessions and take note as I had the reputation for not only getting the best from the trainees but also being able to control any excesses they might have. He saw that basically I treated them as adults not kids, that we had a sort of mutual admiration society going and I did not act outraged or shocked by their attempts to have fun. If they didn't, life, and these sessions, would have been boring for all of us. Comments from them like, “Richard can we improve our speaking skills with a debate, can we all join in, can it be a mass debate”, were greeted with the comment from me of “OK who'd like to have a hand in that”. When writing the adverts for the radio show for example condom companies and tampon makers featured very highly. I didn't mind, they still had to think and write.
When they would change the clock and put it forward fifteen minutes so they went home early I would leave it like that so next time they arrived they were fifteen minutes late and I suggested they should stay fifteen minutes longer that day. Much later in my career this happened to another tutor who came to me and said she wanted them all to receive a verbal warning for their behaviour. It was my job to deliver these. Next time they came in and I duly delivered the warning to the whole class, without the tutor being present. My warning said please check who you can have fun with next time. It's a lesson of life, they were told.
But back to this guy who, after watching me, spent the whole of his first day with them telling them stories about his time in the army in Germany and how he had driven a tank through a window etc. He assumed that this would make them like him. Wrong. Next time I saw them they complained saying they had learnt nothing and he hadn't wanted to listen to them. He was sacked on my recommendation. Start from the assumption that these young people wanted more knowledge because they wanted to be more employable and earn more money, add to this that they had just experienced 10 years of strict discipline and were looking for some fun and treat them as grown ups and you wouldn't go far wrong. Of course there would be some awkward ones. You either worked on them or gave up. If you were prepared to try to help them then you didn't give up. The give up was an instant, immediate decision.
I actually went off at a tangent here as I was going to tell you about the incident that worsened my relationship with my boss. One day I was in the office writing something and another tutor was in picking up notes and photocopying his material for next day. Our secretary was also in. Suddenly this guy had a fit. He collapsed, was foaming at the mouth and we had no idea what to do. We called an ambulance and phoned head office in Cambridge. From them we learnt that the guy was diabetic and had not eaten for a while; a simple bar of chocolate might have helped him. Our boss had decided not to tell anyone about this. Why, she couldn't explain but I was not a happy bunny. I think by then she was beginning to keep things from me so that she felt she still had power. Next year this would come back and bite her and ruin our relationship for good.
In the late summer of this year, the timing is according to my ex-wife, we were driving to my mother's house along country roads bordered my fields and she suddenly said “wouldn't it be nice to see more of our country”. I have no idea what she thought would happen after that comment but it ignited an idea in my little brain that had been sitting there, ungerminated, for a year or so. Ever since I had written this resource about a trip around Europe and then spent time planning a similar one round England, I had wished for it to become reality. That one comment did it for me.
Dreams became plans, plans became possibilities and possibility became reality. Next year it would happen.
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