Being semi-retired, I now have time for some voluntary work. Helping with adult literacy is what I want to do, an interest which goes back almost 40 years to when, as a probation officer, I was shocked by the almost complete illiteracy of many of the offenders with whom I was dealing. How could they have spent a decade in school and not be able to read and write? Well, they could and they did. And it still happens.

I made my first move in early December, six months ago: dropping in at the Community and Voluntary Service (CVS) building in the city centre. It’s a big place, so it was surprising to be told there was no one who could see me. It was even more surprising to hear I couldn’t have an appointment for a couple of weeks. However, the receptionist suggested I enter my details on the Do-it website and said someone from CVS would contact me about a fortnight after that. It was disappointing to be turned away like this, but I consoled myself with the thought that maybe they were being overwhelmed with volunteers.

Back at home, I registered on the website, drafted a careful statement about my background and searched the pages of voluntary positions on offer. I spotted one that looked suitable and ticked the boxes that would send my information to CVS. I then waited for developments. The promised fortnight became six weeks of silence.

Another trawl of Do-it’s website unearthed a vacancy at a local college for an adult literacy volunteer to assist their tutors. Fine, let’s give them a ring. I couldn’t get through to the named person, so left a voicemail inviting him to call me back. Silence for several days, so I called again. Another voicemail. More silence. At the third attempt, I managed to speak to the person I wanted. It was a positive conversation – he seemed interested in what I was offering and indicated it should be possible to arrange something. At the end of the call he asked me to email him saying what I wanted to do. I’ve just told him, I said to myself. But he probably wanted something for the record, so OK.

A few hours later he replied to my email, asking me to complete the application form he was putting in the [surface] mail and to return it with a covering letter saying what I wanted to do. Once received, the college would authorise a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check on me, a process which should take about three weeks. The check didn’t worry me, but it was a surprise because I wasn’t seeking to work with children and the whole process was becoming far more formal and bureaucratic than I had envisaged.

When it came, ‘the form’ was actually a wodge including two forms which, together, required me to give a considerable amount of detail about myself and nominate two referees. This is getting silly, I thought. All I want to do is try to help a few adults to learn to read and write better. I’m a teacher with over 30 years experience – albeit in a different setting – and I’m offering a day a week of my time, for free. Nevertheless, I completed and returned the forms and waited. Three weeks later, about to go on holiday, I emailed my contact at the college to say I would be away. Maybe this triggered some action, because after about five more weeks I received from the CRB my copy of their report. Clear, as expected. Nothing from the college, though, to say whether they wanted to use me. Three more weeks of silence passed before I again took the initiative and called the college HR department. Yes, my CRB check was clear, so they would tell my contact. After a bit of fumbling around, I received a call asking me to get in touch with another member of staff. This I did and we arranged to meet at the college the following day. Progress – an appointment, five months after I had made my first move.

The meeting was fine, apart from the fact that the college rep hadn’t seen any paperwork relating to me. I gave a quick run-down and, after I pointed out my lack of experience in adult literacy, he suggested helping a tutor for the final six sessions of a weekly basic skills course being held in a shopping area close to my home. Following that, we could meet again to review the experience and plan the next steps. This sounded ideal, so I agreed. Turn up at a particular shop the following Monday at 9.30am, he said. Full of expectation, I did, to be told by the shop owner that the course sessions were at 2pm. It felt like a bad dream, the kind where there is always another obstacle ahead. But, undaunted and with no plans for that afternoon, I went back for 2pm. Bingo, I met the basic skills tutor! He didn’t know anything about me but, yes, I could help him for the remainder of the course. The snag was that there were only two sessions remaining, not the six I had been led to expect. Still, that was better than nothing, so I pitched in.

Those two Monday afternoons were fascinating, if humbling. I was working with two people with severe literacy problems, on tasks largely suggested by the tutor. On the one hand, this brief introduction confirmed my lack of specialist literacy skills and limited repertoire. On the other, I think it allowed me to demonstrate my patience and some communication skills; it definitely reinforced my motivation and determination to learn. His course completed, the tutor and I parted on good terms. I would have been pleased to continue trying to help him and his students. Unfortunately, he has no more teaching lined up at present.

So, back to the college and the person who had seen me, to discuss what next. He wasn’t available when I rang, so I left a voicemail. Three days later – after no response – I emailed him, reporting on the sessions and enquiring about further opportunities for voluntary work. Another week on, I’m still waiting.

It’s so frustrating. In six months where I have made all the running, I have managed to do just two half-days of voluntary work. At a time when politicians of all parties speak positively about volunteering and during a period when our new prime minister has been encouraging us to do our bit for his ‘big society’, I have gone through the proper channels, been drawn into malfunctioning bureaucracies and achieved almost nothing. Is this common, or even typical, I wonder?

Despite the hurdles, I haven’t given up on the college. I still hope we’ll be able to find a mutually satisfying use for my free labour. But it’s time to look elsewhere for people who might welcome my offer of helping them to read and write better.

As a seasoned traveller with an interest in history and science, I found the book every bit as enthralling second time as it was over twenty years ago. However, one passage caught my eye and triggered this post. In the conclusion, Darwin, having thoroughly enjoyed his almost five-year journey, advises other naturalists:

to take all chances, and to start, on travels by land if possible, if otherwise on a long voyage. He may feel assured he will meet with no difficulties or dangers (excepting in rare cases) nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipated. … Travelling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly goodnatured people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance.

Excellent advice, still valid  over 170  years later. My experience is that travel to new places is usually so enriching that the problems don’t matter much. This is even more true when going by basic means and being forced into close contact with local people. Predicted difficulties – bandits down the road, lack of accommodation or whatever – tend not to happen. Yes it’s wise to be wary, but foolish to suspect everyone. Most people, the world over, will help a traveller even if there’s nothing in it for them.

Here’s my latest, slightly surreal, example. Yesterday, wanting to return from Bridgetown to our hotel, we arrived at the bus station in the rush hour. There were no obvious signs as to where we should catch our bus. Solution: ask a local. He turned out to be drunk, but he knew which bus we should get and he was determined we should get it. He linked arms very firmly and almost dragged me to a bus which other people confirmed was the right one. Thanks very much, man.

The bus was ludicrously overcrowded, so much so that 99.9% of the windscreen was obscured by the wall of humanity in front of us. So we resorted to asking fellow passengers if they would let us know when we were there. And they did, bless them. Not a comfortable journey but far more memorable than a taxi ride costing ten times as much.

It wasn’t as intense as some patches I can remember, yet it was pretty tough. I’d been getting soft, especially in my use of time, so the return of days with a full diary and urgent deadlines was a shock. And it revived a bad habit – today should be a day off but I’ve already checked my work email several times.  Grr!

Work, recently? 8.5 out of 10. Retirement? 8.5 out of 10. Mustn’t grumble.

The first time waster was an hour and a half in the queue to drop off our bags. My wife and I aren’t sure why it took so long because there was no official information. Maybe the airline was doing extra checks because of the recent attempted plane bombing in Detroit. Maybe the baggage belt was faulty: it only moved in short, occasional bursts. Maybe the staff were incompetent. We don’t know, because travellers were being told nothing.

Security was the next ‘entertainment’. By the standards of American airports in recent years, this particular passage through the security checks was normal: lots of shouting from blue-uniformed, gloved-up officials, ordering the contaminated, suspected masses how to far to disrobe and what to present for inspection. I get tetchy about these rituals, not least because they are inconsistent: every airport has its own mix of humiliation to heap on the public. The inconsistency is a clue to proceedings being at least partly theatre – a ‘best practice’ approach should lead to every airport adopting the same methods of deterring and catching the bad guys. But anyway, these hurdles were routine.

Then the incompetence really started. Some passengers at our departure gate noticed that a TV tuned to CNN was reporting a breach of security in Terminal C at Newark. That was where we were! Ears strained: something about a man going the wrong way through a security exit. I was oblivious at the time, on a stroll to stretch my legs and ease the boredom. Feeling confident I knew what lay ahead, I had ‘zoned out’ of announcements over the loudspeakers. But I did notice rather more people than usual moving back in the direction we had come. Odd, that. As I casually returned to my wife, she told me there had been an instruction for everyone to leave the terminal. The message wasn’t repeated and the arrival/departure monitor screens didn’t reinforce it. But the word was that we had to get out.

Crowd leaving Newark Airport Terminal C

As quickly as we could (i.e. slowly), thousands of us moved back to the common areas of the airport. Along the way we were ordered by local staff, not announcements on the public address,  to move to any space we could find – up a level, down a level, anywhere. There was no attempt to keep together people on the same flight, so we became thoroughly scrambled up.

Then followed four hours of no information at all about our situation. We were, however, subjected to trivial broadcasts such as the fact that a driver was waiting for passenger X at Desk Y. Eventually, we heard that the multitude would be admitted to the security system (for the second time) in batches of twenty-five. How long would that take, for goodness sake? People weren’t called forward in their order of scheduled departure and they were closely scrutinised as they shuffled through the checks again. The inevitable result was that all flights were further delayed because they had to wait for checked-in passengers to trickle randomly back. When we arrived again at the departure gate, our flight had disappeared from the monitors. So when were we likely to leave? Not a clue. There was, though, a little more detail from CNN: the man who had gone the wrong way through a security door had been chased by staff but not caught. Therefore we were slightly wiser as to what was going on, but that was pretty much it. Officialdom continued to say nothing.

As evening became early morning, the impression strengthened that the airport authorities had no proper plan. They appeared to be bumbling along. No one in a senior position communicated with the crowds, leaving us to speculate and, perhaps, worry. The decision to clear the terminal seems to have been born of a ‘no risk’ philosophy, when a ‘managed’ approach to risk would probably have produced a better outcome overall. A more sophisticated airport manager would have weighed the likely consequences of not finding the rule-breaker against the social and economic costs of disrupting the lives of thousands of people. They do have other checks to stop bombers getting on planes, don’t they?

Newark was a fiasco: systems failed and managers appeared incompetent. If we had been given more information, I might accept what happened. However, speaking as a mushroom – kept in the dark and having unpleasant stuff dumped on me – I’m even more resentful and cynical than previously about ‘security’ checks and officials’ incompetence. Anti-terrorism measures intrude ever further into our lives and cost us billions. They don’t inspire confidence and they feel like poor value.

A bit of detective work showed I’d been successful with the last puzzle in September and the organisers were running behind with sending out the prizes. I often look in the paper for the winners’ names but hadn’t seen mine because we’d been out of the country at the time.

The advertised prize has long seemed odd for a cryptic crossword competition: most successful solvers will already be well equipped. But I’m not complaining – I didn’t have that particular dictionary, and winning justifies another 20 years of wasting my time.

However, it’s not particularly user-friendly and, compared with current setups elsewhere, our blog is rather clunky. Added to which, the blog host has switched focus to other activities. I’m no longer charged for the service and the host now kindly runs it for free. But because we would be sad to lose the blog, it would be unwise to depend on this generosity continuing. Also, if we had a system that was easier to use, the less tech-savvy members of the family might contribute more. So there is a clear argument in favour of us moving, provided we can still have easy access to the old stuff. Options have been discussed, online and offline, and we’ve decided to switch.

We’ve gone for a private installation of WordPress in web space rented by one of the family. Setting up the new blog to receive fresh material hasn’t been hard and, from the many templates on offer, I’ve chosen one which is both functional and, I think, attractive. We aren’t properly open for ‘business’ yet, but we’re pretty much ready to go. I can add the users anytime and then we’ll be writing, sharing pictures, listening to stories read by grandad and performances by the family rocker in his mid-life crisis, plus doing whatever else we want with the many available plugins.

Not so fast. What about the old stuff? And what about Schofield’s First Law? Jack Schofield, computer editor of The Guardian, has written about this many times, for example here and here. His ‘law’ is simple and clear: Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out.

Frankly, I ignored Schofield’s First Law in 2005; I just wanted to get us blogging. But since then the software has been overtaken by systems that operate in different and more sophisticated ways. Recent enquiries with the old provider and trawls of WordPress documentation and forums suggested it was possible to export the contents of the old blog and then import some (but maybe not all) of the old material into the new system. Less positively, several sources pointed to potential hurdles and a great deal of manual intervention rather than automation. They weren’t wrong! With help, we’re making progress but it ain’t easy and I’m still not sure what the end result will be.

Wiser now, I’m worried about Schofield’s First Law and the new blog: how will we get data out of it if – no, when – we need to at some point in the future? In the world of technology nothing lasts for ever and, as with our original blog, the new setup is likely to be outmoded in a few years, and the provider may no longer provide. The WordPress arrangement seems transparent; I think we can get stuff out easily when we want to. But will it be in a format that can be imported smoothly into something else? I’m hopeful yet ultimately, I guess, we’ll have to put our trust in tomorrow’s programmers.

Thanks, Jack, for unsettling me.

At one end of the range, customers have to pay in advance for goods and services –  evidence of an underlying attitude that people can’t be trusted. More commonly, shop customers receive goods at the moment they pay. Less insulting perhaps, but it can still be obvious the public isn’t trusted: banknotes and cards may be checked and security guards may be there to deter or catch thieves.

Less often, customers obtain goods and services and receive the bill later. The company that peps up our lawn operates this way. So does our newsagent who is happy to be paid for delivery up to three months in arrears. These traders keep tabs on me, yet I feel positive about them. That’s not because the money stays longer in my bank account, but because they trust me to pay what I owe.

Rarely, a business relies on an ‘honesty box’: it takes our word for it. We tell them what we’ve had and we pay the appropriate amount. Personal examples are few, but there’s one each April when I buy loose grass seed at the local hardware store. Two types of seed are on offer, one more expensive than the other. Customers weigh what they want into bags that they take to the till. The cashier has no scale to check the weight and doesn’t look in the bags. The shop trusts me. I like that.

More rarely still, a bar relies on customers to say what they’ve consumed. Indeed it’s so rare that I can’t remember it happening in any of the (many) bars I’ve visited in the last forty-five years. Until a couple of nights ago, in Denmark.

Several of us went for a meal and, quite late in the evening, we moved on to a bar. We ordered drinks, which the waiter brought. No bill. We asked for another round of drinks, which duly arrived. Again no bill. Drinks drunk, it was time to go. Still no bill. We wondered inconclusively about the payment system. We went and enquired. There, each of us was asked what we’d had. The bartender accepted our word and everyone paid the individual figure he mentioned. The transactions seemed routine; the trust appeared total. Amazing. Another reason to like Denmark!

People watcher

The second unscheduled halt was in daylight, deep in the Scottish countryside. With limited options, I found myself gazing out of the window. But the observation wasn’t all one way. I and my fellow passengers were being watched by the local wildlife, including a magnificent pheasant. What did it make of us, I wondered? For once, a big, long machine was still and quiet. Through the windows the pheasant could, no doubt, see other animals not doing very much. They weren’t obviously carrying shotguns, so it probably felt safe to hang around. After a while, curiosity satisfied and getting hungry perhaps, the beautiful bird used its freedom and flew off. At that moment I would gladly have traded places and taken my chances.

Hmm. How about making the beach more accessible by redesigning the sea wall so it consists of continuous steps? That way, folks will be able to walk ‘downstairs’ anywhere. And while we’re at it, why not add interest by introducing some curves? A few nice smooth ins and outs would  be eye-catching.

They clearly caught the eye of the funders because a multi-stage, multi-million-pound project has been under way for several years. I went to see it yesterday while visiting my roots in the Fylde, north-west England. The heavy engineering continues but the curvy section is finished and now fends for itself.

Sea wall, exposed foundations

Look what’s happening. In some places the sand has already been scoured away by the sea, exposing the foundations. In others, stones have been dumped high on the steps. Salt water on steel is bad news; the rusting can only get worse.

Sea wall, piled-up stones

Geographers would probably have predicted the scouring and dumping. The coast here is straight, hence the straight ‘prom’. The prevailing wind hits it at an angle and tends to wear it away. This phenomenon is ‘longshore drift‘. It’s been happening, and understood, for a long time. Decades ago the remains of a Saxon village were discovered offshore. A century ago engineers tried to prevent the erosion by building breakwaters / groynes perpendicular to the coast. But the relentless sea has gradually overwhelmed or destroyed their work.

Given the fact that, as Wikipedia says, “constant erosion on the coast works with longshore drift to straighten the overall shape of the beach”, building a short, curvy stretch of sea wall is flying in the face of nature. However, designers can be influential, as well as ignorant of history and geography. And 21st-century engineers tend to be confident they can solve almost any problem.

The sea is formidable. We might think we can impose our wishes, but eventually it will do its own thing. We should be less arrogant and more humble. Go with the flow seems an appropriate motto here. If that means stones, sand, mud, brown water, a straight coast and gradual retreat, so be it.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, 2009

Look where I’ve been. Yes, the International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lasting nine days each October, it’s an amazing spectacle. This time there were claimed to be 550 balloons from 37 US states and several other countries. Last Saturday my wife and I went with local friends to the ‘Mass Ascension’. This is the Fiesta’s big attraction, timed just after dawn for the best atmospherics. The intention is to launch quickly as many balloons as possible within the bounds of safety. Luckily, the weather was ideal: cold and clear, with only a gentle breeze.

Jostling for attention

The balloon fiesta is said to be the world’s most photographed event, a bit of hype I’m willing to believe. It’s attended by hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are snap-happy with their digital cameras because there are just so many attractive photo opportunities. Not usually a busy photographer, I was swept along by the excitement, taking 160 shots in two hours.

There’s a huge variety of balloons in a fascinating range of shapes, not just the traditional ‘tear drop’. They can be amusing, endearing or even spooky.

The Cow

It’s great value: $10 buys admission plus a return trip from a park-and-ride site. And the huge fleets of school buses, which begin running at 4.30am, are extremely well organised.

The launching is well coordinated too – marshals (‘zebras’ because of their black-and-white striped uniforms) line balloons up before signalling them to ascend in waves.

On the other hand, much of the fiesta is delightfully informal. The crowds are free to go where they please and it’s left to people’s good sense to get out of the way when necessary. Basket occupants seem remarkably relaxed about safety – I don’t recall anyone wearing a helmet or being strapped in. The mood is cheerful and friendly.

The Bees

Could such a spectacular happen in any other country? I doubt it, for at least three reasons. First, it requires a lot of people with the wealth and leisure to design, build, buy, operate and support large numbers of what are, after all, expensive toys. In other words, it needs a big, rich society. Second, the fiesta benefits enormously from the US tradition of voluntarism – the zebras and support crews are volunteers, as, probably, are many other staff. Third, the authorities are content to stay low profile and allow the crowds to manage themselves. I can’t think of any other country where these conditions would hold.

Darth Vader

The label ‘only in America’ is often applied cynically, to criticise or poke fun. But sometimes – as with the Albuquerque balloon fiesta – it can be used positively, to illustrate America at its unique best.