Tendring Topics (on line)
Where has all the Leisure gone?
At the end of the 1960s, Clacton Council authorised my attendance, for two years, at a training course for 'Further Education Teachers' culminating in the City and Guilds of London qualifying examination. It was held at the Further Education Centre, then at Green Lodge in Clacton's Old Road, and it involved my attendance there for half a day a week during term time.
It was thought that it would help me with the Environmental Health Education work and, in particular, the food hygiene education of local food handlers, in which as a public health inspector I had become increasingly involved.
I was one male among 30 ladies – most of whom were aspiring teachers of such skills as dress-making, keep-fit, home cooking, lace making, conversational French and the like. Only a handful, of which I was one, stayed the course and passed the exam in the end.
The late 1960s, early 1970s, marked the dawning of the electronic age. I remember so well our earnest young tutor lecturing us about how important our jobs in further education were going to become in the coming years. He enthused about the new technology that allowed robotic machines to manufacture cars and other complex items without the aid of human hands; the wonderful computers in the course of development that would eliminate hours of laborious accounting and clerical work and, of course, the teaching aids – video and audio tape recorders, closed circuit tv and so on – that would lighten the burden of the teacher. All of this, he confidently forecast, would hasten the speedy arrival of a new age of leisure, in which no-one would have to work more than two or three hours a day for perhaps a four-day week!
We teachers of further education would, he said, have the challenging but rewarding task of teaching our fellow men and women how to use all that unaccustomed leisure time pleasurably and profitably. There could, he assured us, be no more important job in the new electronic age.
Well – the new electronic age arrived all right, complete with developments that I don't think even our starry-eyed young tutor had thought of. What there isn't any sign of though, is all that promised leisure!
It's quite the reverse, in fact. Sundays are no longer the almost universal day of rest that they once were. Early closing days – introduced to ensure that shop assistants had at least one afternoon off per week – are no more. In many workplaces the leisurely 'lunch hour' has disappeared. It is not unusual, I'm told, for staff to snatch a hurried sandwich lunch – with coffee from a machine – while sitting in front of the very computer that was supposed to release them from drudgery!
Everybody nowadays takes it for granted that, at least until the first child arrives, both husbands and wives will remain in full-time employment. When that child does arrive, the young mother anxiously seeks out child care arrangements so that she can resume employment as soon as possible.
The government threatens the disabled with loss of their disability pay unless they actively seek out such work as they are capable of doing. Those who happen to live in Council accommodation are now threatened with the additional penalty of loss of their tenancy if they fail to do this. I wouldn't have thought that that was legally possible – but there, politicians make the laws and I suppose that politicians can change them.
What has happened to all that promised leisure? I suppose that one factor is that our aspirations have changed. Every household nowadays, if it's to 'keep up with the Joneses' needs at least one car (preferably two) standing in the driveway, at least one overseas holiday a year, a tv, dvd player and a music centre, freezer, refrigerator, micro-wave cooker, automatic washing machine and dishwasher, the latest vacuum cleaner and possibly floor polisher. Gadgetry that it had been thought would release the housewife from domestic drudgery merely makes it possible for her to be enlisted as a wage-slave! Then all members of the family will expect to have their own mobile phone and digital camera, plus very likely, their own laptop and, for the kids, a tv set in each bedroom!
Other factors have been the rocketing inflation of house prices and the perceived need of every young couple, and young man or woman living alone, to 'get onto the house ownership ladder', plus, of course, the fact that many of us are deeply in taken-for-granted debt on a scale that would have been unthinkable back in the early '70s.
That young tutor was fifteen or twenty years younger than me. He may well have recently retired. I wonder if he is now seeking a part-time job to supplement his pension?
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Candlemas
On Saturday morning, 2nd February, BBCtv's 'Breakfast' programme transported viewers across the Atlantic to tell us about a piece of New England folk lore. Today, we were told, was Ground Hog Day. This is the day on which the 'ground hog' (American for badger, I think) emerges from hibernation, creeps out of his burrow, and looks around.
New England is generally snow-covered at this time of the year. If the ground hog can see his shadow on the snow (in other words if he notes that the sun is shining) he knows that winter isn't over. He creeps back into his burrow and resumes his hibernation. If, on the other hand he can't see his shadow, I assume that he yawns, stretches and begins to snuffle around.
There was really no need to transport us quite so far, even if it was only in cyberspace, for a long range weather forecast of this kind.
In 'old England' 2nd February has long been known as Candlemas. Before the Reformation it was the day on which the parish priest would bless all the candles that were to be used in the church throughout the coming year. He would seize the opportunity to remind his flock that Jesus Christ was the 'true light' who enlightens everyone in the world and that he was 'made flesh and dwelt among us' some fifteen hundred years (or whatever) earlier. Nowadays on that date the Church remembers the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem. As in New England it is also a day on which it is possible to know if the long winter is coming to an end.
Our folklore proclaims: 'If Candlemas be clear and bright, winter will have another flight; If Candlemas be dull with rain, winter has passed and will not come again'. It is surprising how often this prophecy is fulfilled.
Probably the accelerating progress of global warming will have upset whatever weather cycle produced this piece of folk wisdom.
However – this year you may remember Saturday 2nd February as having been bitterly cold but, at least here in sunny Clacton-on-Sea, with wall to wall sunshine throughout most of the hours of daylight. I don't think that I shall be putting my winter overcoat away just yet!
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