On Being A Public Servant - Part 1

La Mujer Libre writes an interesting Blog.  She has recently been posting on incidents from her time on a Prison Visiting Committee and mentioned Ken Murray.  

I commented that, having been part of The System, I have an enormous respect for those such as Ken Murray who have the courage to buck it when they have the conviction and ability and that one of the reasons that I retired at 50 was that government service had changed so dramatically that I no longer felt in tune with it.  I was one of the fortunate ones.   Having spent a couple of years working on one of the biggest public planning inquiries Scotland had seen (after Dounreay) I decided that I wanted to take early retirement after the Inquiry finished.   The Council was happy to get rid of expensive senior staff and so, soon after it finished, my application was granted and I retired on my full pension.

I was fortunate because my wife and I had a business which I could go into - a manufacturing pottery.  But more than that I wanted to leave a service that bore no relation to the service I had joined all those years previously. 

I joined Liverpool Corporation as a 16 year old junior clerk in the same job and sitting in the same chair at the same desk that Stanley Holmes (subsequently Sir Stanley and Chief Executive of Merseyside) had sat in when he started his career.

On my first day I was shown into the room of the then Principal Administrative Officer of the Town Clerk’s Department in which I was to forge my career.  (The Town Clerk's Department was the legal department and serviced the political machine ie the elected council.)  I can recall his words as if they had been uttered yesterday.  “You have joined The Town Clerk’s Department of Liverpool Corporation.  The Department will train you.  You will be sent to University.  You will receive promotions as befit your ability and application to the job.  You will have a job for life. In return you have to remember one thing and one thing only.  Your job is the same as the job of every one of the thirty thousand employees in the Corporation.   Your job is to serve the public.  Remember that above all else."  And he meant it.  Whatever else most people I worked with thought about their job most truly believed that they were serving the best interests of the public of Liverpool.

When I left local government many new appointments, particularly of senior staff, were being made on short term contracts.  For most staff there was no security of employment with cost cutting exercises taking place every year.  Services kept suffering as fewer people were there to do the jobs expected by the public.  Those that remained spent more and more time gathering statistics for government targets which were becoming harder and harder to achieve in the vicious circle.  The rest of the time they were ensuring that there was sufficient paperwork to protect themselves from the culture of blame and litigation sweeping in from the other side of the Atlantic. In short local government had ceased to be a place where all one had to remember was that one had to serve the public and get on with the job of doing that.  For many it had become a fight for survival.  It had become a place where one's first loyalty was to making sure that one could putting food into the mouths of one's family.

I believed that the public was worse off as a result.  It was not a place I wanted to be.

Why Don't I Have Photos?

A friend, Viv, stayed with me here in Eagleton just after I arrived back from New Zealand a few months ago.  Viv commented that I had no photos of Andrew on show in the house although I had photos of Gaz.  She wondered why.  The answer is actually quite simple.  We have very few contemporary photos of Andy.  The photo I used to have on the wall of him in his graduation robes was not a photo that he liked and was not one that I liked either.  So eventually I removed it.  Of course I have thousands (with no exaggeration) of him and of Gaz from their birth until they left the nest to go off into the big wide world.  Somehow every time I look at those photos I am overcome with a great sadness and I've never been able to  put them on display.  It doesn't stop me looking at them from time to time, though, as I have already scanned 2,500 photos (only another heaven knows how many tens of thousands still to sift through and scan).  

This evening as I sit in the Study watching the effect of the setting sun on the sea it is hard not to feel emotional and it occurs to me that it's about time I got a grip so here are a few photos of Andrew and of Andrew with Gareth.  Andrew is the elder (and taller!) of the two:

Emotional Uncertainty

I've been pondering again.  I'm in that sort of mood this evening.  I'm in need of an outlet for the emotions I feel but can't find a way of expressing.  In fact I have no idea what the emotions are that are churning around inside me.  It's a huge combination of frustration with things unachieved, of the great happiness at the times I've had this week with friends and with Gaz, at not being able to find the words for a friend in Vermont going through a difficult patch and who's family had bad news this week, of a friend (who was once significantly more than that) who is about to re-marry and whom I somehow feel is unhappy,  of a friend also waiting to know if she is to be made redundant, of a friend who's upset by the circumstances of a patient and the unpleasantness of people, of friends in turmoil, of a friend who is not happy.  And so the list goes on.

I am conscious of the fact that I have absolutely no reason personally to be anything other than exceptionally happy with my life.  So why do I feel as I do?  A rhetorical question, of course but one that I ask myself nonetheless.  

So I am taking advantage of the fact that I live in a relatively isolated detached house with very thick walls and with not much time to go before midnight am searching for that piece of music that might give my emotions relief and am giving thanks for the fact that I have very good and generous hi-fi speakers.  At the moment I'm playing Dame Janet Baker singing Elgar's Sea Pictures - an amazing, full and mellow voice singing songs of almost unparalleled emotion outside opera.  When the silence comes I know that my head will hold the music for what will seem like an age.  It becomes like a drug and it needs feeding in a way I find impossible to explain.

I said to a friend tonight that I envied her ability to play an instrument and discovered that she feels music as a deep emotion and not just an exercise is tonal creation.  There is so much to discover.  So much to explore.  So much to feel.  So much to experience.  And I thought I'd passed that stage.

Why, I wonder, do I feel that I have to explain that I haven't been drinking - unless a glass of red with dinner counts.  In fact I'm in one of my 'don't feel like it' phases which may also go some way to explaining things.

Don't worry, I'll be OK in the morning.  

Pride Cometh Before A Fall

I’ve been trying to work out why my enthusiasm for croquet waned so badly this season.  Ever since I came back to NZ last October I’ve played badly and had a pretty horrid time.  Last year I was looking at a handicap of 1 (in Golf Croquet) and recently I’ve been in danger of falling back to a 4.  I am currently 3.  OK I accept that that’s not a matter of great interest to anyone but me.  However it IS a matter of considerable interest to me.  At the start of this season I had about 8 pieces of silverware attesting to my play from last season together with several other odd tournament wins under my belt. 

Until yesterday I was looking at the possibility of a very lean season indeed.  In fact I still am although Jayne and I have a doubles win in Whakatane to our credit.  The visible reminders of the wins is not, however, what interests me.  Not even winning interests me for it’s own sake.  What interests me is the fact that they are a barometer of how I have performed.  And that matters to me.  With apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson  some would say that “ ‘Tis better to have played and lost than never to have played at all.”  But, in my books, that applies only if I have played well!!!!

So this year since my exceptionally poor performance at New Plymouth when I had just arrived back from Scotland I have been out of sorts with myself over croquet.  Consequently (perhaps?) I have been a bit out of sorts with myself in general.  Leastways I am now assuming that to be the reason.

It occurred to me on Sunday night that perhaps I had become too proud of my achievements over the last couple of years since I have been playing my new-found love.  Perhaps I had to learn that I was not so good after all.  Perhaps that is to be part of my karmic learning in this life.  So I came to terms with myself and accepted that if I was to become a 4 handicap then so be it.  I would cease to feel aggrieved with myself.  After all in the greater scheme of things it is a pretty unimportant matter.

So yesterday when I was asked to play an Association match with someone whom I dislike playing (because of the sort of defensive game she plays) I agreed notwithstanding my lack of preparedness for Association Croquet not having played a game for a while.

I set out to enjoy it whatever happened.  I played a defensive game too (well most of the time) which is alien to my way of playing.  I played well given my level of ability in that discipline.  After the first 20 minutes (the game was timed for three hours) I fell behind and remained behind until the last few minutes when I managed to creep two hoops in front to win the game.  What was significant was not the win but the fact that, instead of my usual feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction with myself as I fell behind, I was calm and accepting.  Perhaps that was why I played as well as I could possibly have wished to play in the circumstances.

Perhaps that is why when I played Golf Croquet this morning I played a relaxed and enjoyable and very good couple of games.  Perhaps that is why I am now looking forward to finishing the many club handicap games that I still have left to play in the 29 days I have left before I return to Scotland.

Perhaps that is why, today, I am happier with myself than I have been for quite a while.