vendredi 20 septembre 2013

Great Expectations

The Generation Gap
A good friend of mine, Barry Knight, once said to me that we were the golden generation, in England at least. We hadn't had to fight a war, jobs were plentiful and the vast majority of us had a standard of living that was relatively comfortable and secure, if very modest. All of that was certainly untrue of the generation that had lived their youth in the 1920s and 1930s rather than the 1950s and 1960s.

It hardly needs saying that things are very different for the youth of today. In fact, almost the reverse is true. But I think there is another important difference which I realised only when it was pointed out to me by friend Rineke at the pizza evening this week. I also think that, in a slightly perverse way, this was another advantage for my generation.

When we started out on life, most of us had little or nothing. Only under 4% of us had a university education. Some had a few O or A level passes to their credit and some had apprenticeships or a secretarial qualification but the vast majority were essentially unqualified. However, most largish organisations had induction and training schemes (because they needed them) and casual work was plentiful. I personally had a miserable university grant (but a grant nonetheless) which I could easily supplement with casual work in the summer and winter holidays. It was “grunt” work, as the Americans call it (you give it only to grunts) and very poorly paid but it was a bonus to my circumstances.

As regards standard of life, few of us went hungry but televisions, even telephones, washing machines, tumble-driers, cars and central heating were something of a rarity. I well remember the temperature differences in even modest-sized rooms, trying to get into a position in front of a fire between burning shins and a freezing bum.

What Rineke pointed out to me is that it is not just the work situation that has changed dramatically but also the personal expectations and many aspects of the standard of life. We started with nothing but the current generation mostly start with quite a lot, including lots of (fairly meaningless) qualifications. All of the appliances mentioned above, cars and central heating are now the norm rather than the exception, plus of course PCs, mobile phones and broadband connections. These now tend to be expectations rather than luxuries to be earned. Compared to our young lives, theirs are often quite comfortable. But what they do not have is a zero starting point and the fear of unemployment and insecurity that the experience of our parents passed on to us. The current generation has a higher starting point and higher expectations to go along with their much more plentiful qualifications. So it is not only facing much harsher times but is also in many ways much less well equipped to deal with them.

Self-confidence
Rineke and I also got to discussing self-confidence and the times when we had had it or lacked it. It reminded me of an experience when I was teaching at Summerhill school.

I was teaching a lad of ten some elementary maths. Having explained the sums, I took him through several examples saying just “how do you start” and “what do you do next” and so on. With just that prompting he was perfectly able to do them. When I left him to do more of the same on his own, however, he could do nothing. I'm not sure how the thought came to me but I thought it must be a question of self- confidence. The lad was quite athletic and, as I played football with the kids, I encouraged him at football. As he grew more confident at football so he did at maths. A few years later, when I returned to the school for a get-together, he came leaping out, jumped on me to give me a hug and said: “You'll never guess what; I just passed O level maths”. That didn't make him a great mathematician but it did do great things for his self-confidence and gave him a platform to build on.

Ever since I have thought it should be a criminal offence to attempt to undermine anyone's self-confidence.

Autumn

Autumn is definitely here now. Leaves aren't turning yet but there is a definite nip in the air in the mornings. After I get up I usually make coffee and take a cup up to my front room, open the door onto the balcony and look at the news on my PC. Now I'm finding I close the door again before long. Last Monday it was still quite comfortable to sit outside for the pizzas until quite late but I suspect that that may be one of the last pizza evenings outside this year. And the grapes I'm trying to sun-dry on my balcony are taking a long time to dry into raisons. I've just bought what will probably be the last two melons of this year but, in compensation, figs are around in the markets and shops; neighbour Liz kindly brought me a bag full.

samedi 7 septembre 2013

More Words

More Words
American friends Hallie and Mary arrived back in Mollans recently and came round for aperitifs the other evening. I was commenting on the lime trees in front of my house and Mary interjected that her dictionary gave the “tilleuls” as linden trees, not lime trees. Had I been getting it wrong all this time? So.........I duly searched on the Internet. What I found was that linden and lime are apparently interchangeable names for the same genus of trees, known botanically as “tilia” (from which the French “tilleuls” can easily be derived).. So maybe it was a question of species. I searched that and found that the number of species is indeterminate, lime/linden trees apparently being pretty promiscuous and creating new species at the drop of a hat (or speck of pollen). I left my search there. I have no great desire to know whether the species in front of my house, by comparison of leaves, bark, flowers or fruit, are of a known species or of an as yet unclassified one. I'll continue to call them lime trees but am now better informed on the subject, should.anyone ask.

Miraculous
I commented in my last posting about the problem with “un bébé miraculeux”, duly changed to “un bébé inespéré”. I recounted this to some French friends while playing boules and they said an alternative would have been “un bébé miraculé”. Both “miraculeux” and “miraculé” translate as miraculous, so what's in the difference? It appears that “miraculeux” has to apply to an event, whilst “miraculé” applies to a person. I'm sure there are instances of the same kind of distinction in English but have struggled to think of any. All I could think of was tall rather than high applying to a person but there must be better examples.

Incidentally, in the same last posting I mentioned the mental struggle to come up with fire-proof. My son emailed me to suggest incombustible. Now why couldn't I think of that?

A book?
I'm contemplating writing a book. Why? Believe it or not, it's not so much ego as thinking what to do over the coming winter, to keep me off the streets, hitting old ladies over the head, smashing shop windows, etc. It occurred to me that, having written this blog for 3-4 years, I probably had a third or maybe a half of the material needed for a book of 50-60,000 word-space, adequate if not generous. It could be titled A House In Provence or A House In The Baronnies or some such. For previous books I have written the publishers came to me with proposals, which made it easy; this time I was going to have to find a potential publisher.

If I'm going to take this further than an idle thought, I am resigned to having to write a synopsis, chapter breakdown, target reader spec, brief bio and maybe three sample chapters. No way will I write a whole book on the off chance of finding a publisher. Anyway, I searched on publishers and submissions. My results so far have been disappointing, with failed links and opacity predominant. New submissions are clearly, and understandably, one of publishers' minor concerns. What caught my attention dramatically, though, was the number of publishers that require hard copy (with return postage prepaid). This last I can understand as I know publishers to be very cost-conscious. But hard copy? I mean HARD copy, on paper that is. Haven't the advent of ebooks and Kindle really sunk in or is this just a way to make submissions more difficult? You can bet that final copy will be required in electronic form.


I knew from a period of my career when I was busy creating new magazines, taking chunks out of the big publishers' markets and selling it back to them at a profit, that the big publishers were generally dozy, complacent and marketing neanderthals. Nonetheless the hard copy requirement took me by surprise. Caxton lives on, probably even longer than he thought he would. Ah well, if any publisher reads this it's probably the end of my book project.