So yesterday was one of those days where I quietly resume my ‘normal’ activities after the interesting interruption to my daily routines of my Yorkshire trip. I am quite glad that the month of August is behind me and that we can start to think of ‘back to normal’ as the schoolchildren are returning to school. For my daughter-in-law, these next few days must seem quite strange as her retirement will just have come into effect and instead of hours of frantic preparations for her school tasks, she can concentrate upon her own life-space as it were. Personally, I have always liked this time of the year and have always regarded it as almost the start of a new year. Apart from my very first job which started on 1st January, 1962, every job that I have had (other than temporary work in factories and the like) has started in September/October. So, my two jobs in the civil service before I went to university started at this time of year as evidently did my two university courses (first degree followed by a Master’s degree) so it is easy to associate this time of year with a fresh start to things. As well, we often have quite a burst of fine weather in September as the weather in August itself can be a very mixed bag. Whilst on the subject of new starts, I reflect upon the fact that I had worked for three and a half years before I went to university and was actually 20 years of age when I first went to university, not having attended a 6th form as did most of my generation. This, I think, did me no harm at all and I was reflecting upon the consequences of all of this with my niece who eventually went to university in her 20’s but with a marriage behind her and a child for whom to care. When Meg and I lived in Leicestershire, the teenage son of a lady who became our domestic help used to pop around to help me with a few gardening jobs and to restore an old bike of mine whilst I gave him some earned pocket money. This young man got a place at a university but worked for the whole of a sort of ‘gap’ year in a building society before taking up his university place. Having built up a little capital for himself, this young man only needed quite a small student loan compared with his contemporaries. As often happens (hints of Meg and myself) he met a nice Welsh girl on a cognate course and they decided to get married. Without a huge student loan hanging over him. he managed to secure a mortgage fairly easily and therefore although he spent a year earning before he went to University he actually pulled away ahead of his contemporaries in terms of housing and employment so going to university a year later was actually beneficial for him. In my own case, I was amazed to discover at the time that I was applying for university that I was classified as an independent student (i.e. independent of parents) and qualified for a full grant which was awarded to me by a body then called the ‘Inner London Education Authority’ or ILEA. Of course, they were different times but ILEA even presented a special ‘tea party’ for their award holders where we mingled with members of the education committee and even some members of the House of Lords. My year working in London before I went to university and during which I acquired my A-levels had a great impact on my life and taught me quite a lot about both work and life. Mind you, in those days, I was desperately short of money and used to lunch on ½lb of broken biscuits and sometimes, a warmed Cornish pasty and this cost me anything between 7½p and 1 shilling (12 pence) which was 3p-5p in today’s money. As a rule of thumb, one needs to multiply these figures by 26-30 times to translate into modern values.
In the morning, I made a trip to the Methodist Centre in Bromsgrove where normal activities are resuming after the summer break. I spoke with the young lady who was taking a ‘Music and Movement’ type class and asked her about the Tai Chi classes which I understood were held in the centre. It transpired that these classes are taken by her mother and there is a Thursday class at 9.45 in the morning so I will probably do my weekly shopping immediately afterwards. I suspect that the first class is probably free as a kind of taster course and thereafter I think the fee is about £5 for a 45 minute workout. On my way down into town, the ‘Support the Colours’ flag erecting brigade have been in action again and now I notice that some 18 Union Jacks were affixed to practically every lamp post down the Kidderminster Road. So now not only do we have St George’s flags all over the High Street but even the arterial roads such as Kidderminster Road are so adorned. The flags seem to have been affixed at a very high altitude and I suspect will only be removed with a cherry picker or something similar. I checked out the legal position and the powers of he police and discovered the following. The police’s ability and responsibility to stop the affixing of flags depend on the context and location, but generally, the Local Authority has primary responsibility for enforcing rules regarding flags affixed to public street furniture like lampposts, not the police. Police may only intervene if a flag poses a safety risk (e.g. an insecure load on a vehicle) or is associated with an offence, such as supporting a prescribed terrorist organization. So, in areas dominated by the Reform party (as we are in North Worcestershire), it is possible that these profusion of flags might fly for months and the Far Right in this country probably cannot believe in their good fortune that they managed to expropriate the national symbols for their own political purposes. In the afternoon, I watched ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ but it was rather a bitter-sweet experience because the last time I watched it, Meg and I watched it together and I think she was able to follow the story line and to enjoy it.