Sally's Planning for Retirement Blog

So what’s all this government flapdoodle?  I understand the legal requirements of the CEO position and funding regulations and goodness knows I’m no fan of Kevin Courtney but I’m truly flummoxed.  How can schools and colleges be safe environments if their opening leads to an increase in the R rate?  Safe for whom?  Pupils and older students may be asymptomatic if they test Covid positive but they take the virus home to their families.  Teachers and support staff who hold student facing roles may be issued with face masks but no other PPE and they are expected to remain within a limited space with significant numbers of young people for long periods of time.  They may be able to sustain a two metre distance but the new virus variant must mean the environment is compromising.  The government has not suggested that teachers will be treated as front line workers when it comes to the vaccination programme and I understand from Catherin Cole, Principal of Farnborough College, that support for student testing for the virus has been minimal.  Without a properly funded and supported testing programme and protection for school and college staff through early access to the vaccine, schools and colleges should remain closed this term and teaching and learning take place on line until the virus is brought under control and the national vaccine programme is significantly advanced.   

Gavin Williamson and his team should set up a task force to work on short and longer term plans for this year’s examination season and how to bridge the gaps in pupil learning and remedial support for those whose mental health has been affected by government flimflamming – and communicate these as soon as possible, by the end of January latest (I won’t ask why this hasn’t been done already!)

I retired as a Principal of a large Sixth Form College at the end of August and have first-hand knowledge of the decision making and communication challenges of the March to June school and college closures and partial reopening from June 2020.  Leadership in a time of such uncertainty was tricky but good leadership involves listening and thorough sense making. As a Principal this means students, parents, teachers and support staff and checking in regularly with governors.  The Senior Leadership Team is crucial as they have expertise and comprehend the detail of what college closure means for examinations and student progression, student well-being and the business wing of the college such as marketing events and the international student body.  Professional groups such as the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association, Association of School and College Leaders and other Principals are a considerable help not just through moral support but in sharing interpretations of government briefings, providing HR and legal webinars for example on furloughing staff and in practical ways too such as a forum for sharing risk assessments.  And once this sense making is done good leaders have a strategy, a direction of travel and a desired destination and of course a detailed action plan and risk assessment which takes account of the need to be flexible if required.  The strategy is firm and clear, well communicated and well resourced and starts strong so everyone knows what is required of them – everyone can feel secure and get on with their jobs or their education.

A government changing its mind about the strategy every five minutes, gearing up and then gearing down is poor leadership, helps no one and causes greater distress and for schools and colleges will lead in turn to a poorer educational experience.

It has been a year of sunshine and shadow.  Covid 19 has thrown us all into deep shade but there have been shafts of light and joy penetrating the gloom.  On 6^th January 2020 we moved to Vine Cottage and that has certainly been a joy – a new playground of experiences.  The cottage has entertained us with blocked drains, falling chimney bricks and crumbling mortar but we’ve met some talented and lovely craftspeople who find solutions to our problems.  Especially when fortified by cake.  In February while repairing rotten joists in the dining room, Steve our builder uncovered an 18^th century smokers’ pipe.  It has since been recorded as a near perfect example of its type by the Finds Officer based at Lewes Museum.  It has been suggested that it was customary for a builder to place a personal item in a newly built house as a symbol of good luck.  Newly built in 1727 in our case.  As I’m a lover of all things crumbling, chippy and faded, a cliched searcher out of chabby chic and vintage and frequenter of fairs brocante – our cottage is practically perfect in every way.

And then there’s our new/old garden.  Trees and shrubs looked smeared around the edge of a mossy lawn in February but then it was a weekly delight to see new blossom and shades of green lend the detail and bring it to life.  An oak swing was hung from the Bay tree on my birthday and apples collected and donated to neighbours throughout the summer.  And the sun shone and shone.

The children arrived following Boris’s March announcement that normal life was to be put on hold – our son from university and daughter from New Zealand and a truncated sabbatical of travels.  It was a challenge to give each other space at first with two of us on constant zoom calls and one taking end of year exams on line but we formed a companionable alliance during the day and met each evening for dinner.  Saturday evening was spent together on a family challenge – wine tasting, cocktail mixing, garden Olympics, pottery…I read somewhere that homecoming is arriving in a place to discover you’re fluent in the language with no memory of how you learned it and that’s how it was for us.

At the end of September we were on our own again, the children returning to their London and Durham nests for a while.  We busied ourselves with plans to extend the cottage, engaging architects and builders to talk about flint restoration, barn door fixing and floor levelling. There was no autumn holiday as had been planned but I was no longer working and so we had acres of time to decorate, renovate and walk the South Downs Way.  With the sea on our doorstep and a willing dog, we were only ever a few minutes’ walk from a mind clearing sea breeze and at last there has been time to write and read.  We were also able to forge new friendships – a particular joy – and catch up with older and geographically distant friends and family via social media perhaps more frequently than in ‘old normal’ days.

But it’s the absence of a crowd that I’ve felt most keenly.  Working in education full time for 35 years, I have been used to the buzz and excitement of large groups of people enjoying one another’s company.  When will we feel comfortable pressed shoulder to shoulder against a stranger in the theatre, on the tube or on the dance floor – sharing space and mixing breath?  Andrew Marr has called the requirement to remain in our bubbles and minimise social interaction as ‘the theft of mingling’ – so true.  In my last blog I wrote that I was looking forward to December’s whispered promise of seasonal gatherings and the diversity and intimacy of human company – a little mingling.  The Tier 4 thief stole into West Sussex on Boxing Day and took this from us. 

New Year’s Eve.  Where has 2020 left us and where will 2021 take us?  One thing 2020 has taught us all is to appreciate the day to day, pay attention, be awake to the small things because in the long years of a life well led they may turn out to be the big things.  Graham Norton  wrote in his novel ‘Home Stretch’ – ‘There are moments in any life that are to be treasured but only sometimes are they recognised as they happen.’  Cheers to recognising life’s treasures in 2021.  Happy New Year! 

And as if November isn’t bad enough, the absolute worst of bad months of the year, Boris and his cabinet and his scientific advisers decide to put us all in Lockdown II for its entirety.  Yes I know it is for the good of our health and for the longer term health – physical and economic – of the nation but it still stings like the worst of bad wasp stings.  

For our latest lockdown family challenge, we all had to decide on something we would like to fell with an Anthony Joshua knockout blow and confine in perpetuity to Room 101.  My suggestion was wasps. Now I know Chris Packham tried to share the love for wasps in a June edition of Spring Watch, stating they are fascinating, beautiful and essential to the local ecology but sorry not sorry Chris, I just don’t get it.  Wasps feed live meat to their young, are only incidental pollinators and they have a birch switch of a sting.  Luckily 8 out of 10 family members agreed with me, so into Room 101 they went. 

You may have detected a slight tension in the writing of this blog post.  Like most people I have been struggling with Lockdown II.  The last two months were the first two of my retirement after 35 years of pretty full-on full-time work and a centum weight of responsibility pressing down on my cervical vertebra.  The autumn months of 2020 should have been a period of relaxation and recuperation and stress-free, linen-clad wafting and gliding around galleries and the shaded squares and cafes of Europe with my lovely (also retired) husband.  But there has been no wafting and gliding and a great deal of Radio 4 news induced stomping and hurrumphing. And I’m not even going to go there with my feelings about Brexit.

J. California Cooper wrote Life is Short But Wide the premise of which is, you are never too old to chase and realise your dreams.  Cooper passed away in 2014 so I can’t inform her that life, though still short, has lost a great deal of its width! Andrew Marr has aptly called Lockdown II ‘The theft of mingling’ but December is whispering to us seductively with a promise of seasonal gatherings, feasting and song and if like me it’s the diversity and intimacy of human company you are missing, we may even enjoy a bit of a mingle. 

Many people associate themselves with a particular season or month of the year – a time when they feel they thrive, have a positive mood and their mojo is spinning and winning.  This retired calendar girl was looking forward to being more Mrs September than Miss June (my birthday month) and so it has proved.  September sunshine and warmth has been more mellow than the suffocating heat of early summer. September has a gentler, softer buzz, and the morning cool and earlier fading of evening light suits me.  I have been happily slipping downstream in my retirement skiff dreamily trailing fingers in cool water rather than ensuring they were in lots of pies.  The data analysis, self-assessment, report writing for governors, education authorities and funding bodies, establishing expectations and settling in and settling down is being done by others and they are doing a brilliant job of it. 

There are a few things that have been making me angsty.  Conkers for one.  Our beautiful Horse Chestnut, an absolute delight in spring, is now driving me bonkers as it litters the drive (and the drives of neighbours) twice daily.  Do you have memories of bruised knuckles and baking a vinegar soaked sure fire sixer whenever you see the shiny thing split its spiked casing?  And I have an empty nest again as my youngest returns to university.  For those of you experiencing this for the first time I feel for you.  Whatever you do don’t go into their bedroom for at least a week, unless you self-indulgently want to end up sobbing on their pillow and don’t smell an old jumper they’ve left behind just to conjure up their physical presence either.  Oh and remember to delete sugar puffs from your online shopping list.  It gets easier.

And then of course the virus is truly angst making.  I’ve decided not to name it or even give it the status of a proper noun, like Jacinda Ardern and the Christchurch terrorist.  I took this photograph of the Littlehampton emblem during a trip to the beach.  The martlett of West Sussex lies between two crosslets from the Howard family arms and an ancient ship beneath to represent Littlehampton’s maritime history.  The motto is ‘Progress’.  Are we making progress against the virus?  It may not feel like it but as progress doesn’t simply mean moving forward but developing, advancing and improving a current situation, I think we may be.  In a summer low lockdown mood I wasn’t able to rustle up a Scissor Sisters’ ‘soft shoed gentle sway’ but in September I’m with Walk the Moon – ‘Shut up and Dance with me!’

Algorithm (noun) ‘A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem solving operations, especially by a computer.’  

Algorithm (verb) ‘To blame a computer for the failure of those who set its parameters.’

Next time you want an algorithm to serve a particular political purpose Mr Williamson, ask a group of sixth form Maths, Computer Science, Sociology and Psychology students and they will explain to you why it can’t and shouldn’t be done.   

In the spring, teachers were given the task of producing Calculated Grades for their students based on previous performance and likely achievement, taking care not to over inflate grades while also taking account of possibility and potential.  And then students had to be rank ordered.   It was a sensitive and painstaking task.  No one would claim it was perfect but in the absence of external examinations it was a necessary step to allow young people to take their next steps.  A framework for the Awarding Bodies to shape formal and final grading if you like.  Then Ofqual published The Algorithm and statisticians were able to point out to politicians why there were so many confused students, angry and protective parents and nonplussed teachers trying to make sense of it all.  Several U turns later, precious university places lost, further delays to the publication of BTEC qualifications creating yet more stress, at the time of writing this column,  I am not so naïve that I believe satisfactory solutions for all will have been found.  Sociology and Psychology students know what politicians missed, that qualifications are more than passports to the next level of education or training, they are medals too – and the medals of 2020 have been tarnished rather than burnished by this debacle.  But caveat emptor – this is not a case of shuffling a pack of cards to see if you can get a better hand.  Qualifications are a serious business and confidence, faith and trust in the nation’s examination system needs to be restored swiftly before it is damaged, perhaps irrevocably.

As I write this column a very nice surveyor is carrying out a topographical survey on our cottage.  He said he has never surveyed anywhere so higgledy piggledy but hopefully his 3D scanning theodolite is supported by a decent algorithm which will calculate the severe lean of the dairy wall accurately! 

The end of the summer term has allowed me time to refocus on our new/old garden at the cottage. Old because it has been a garden for previous occupants since 1727 but new to us and so overgrown there is much for us to do. I am curious about the productive space it must have once been, with vegetables and medicinal and culinary herbs such as lemon balm and spearmint, fennel and sweet basil.  I did some research and discovered a book written in the same year as the cottage was built ‘The Practical Kitchen Gardener of 1727 by Steven Switzer, it’s full title ‘A new and entire system of directions for his employment in the melonry, kitchen garden and potagery, in the several seasons of the year’. Switzer is far from succinct and not as clear in his directions as Monty Don but it is interesting to learn that melons were popular in the 18^th century alongside cucumber, pumpkin and chard.  Cornflowers and Blackeyed Susan fought for space with tobacco – every garden grew tobacco for personal use or trade.

I haven’t yet followed Switzer’s instructions for a potager but I have managed Monty’s suggestion for leaving an area of lawn unmown and sown some wild flower seeds.  Everyone needs a square yard of wild-flower meadow – a space relaxed enough to see what pops up without constraint or structure.  A space that encourages curiosity and welcomes surprises.

Holidays should be like wild-flower meadows with little planning and time to take it slowly to see how the weather and our moods incline.  Last week we packed our walking boots and headed for North Devon to a small hotel and farm located in a lush valley a few miles from Barnstaple – our favourite for 20 years and more.  The hotel with only 8 rooms has acres of gardens scattered with sculptures which pop up and surprise.  I liked this curious little fellow which reminded me that the subtitle of my blog is ‘I can keep some chickens at last!’ I must put the potager on hold and start looking into chicken breeds.  Curiously in these curious times I have been following someone on Instagram who I would now class as a friend but who I haven’t yet met; she keeps chickens and has offered me advice. Rae, I shall be visiting soon to check out your Frizzles!

At the time of this column going to print, I will be making preparations to give my end of year speech to staff, normally delivered in competition with the smoke from a hog roast (vegetarian and vegan options available) and sipping a glass of something chilled.  We play the Swing Bebop of Ella and Blue-Eyed Soul of Dusty and allow ourselves to feel nostalgic.  We remind ourselves of the ebbs and flows of the academic year and our successes, the relationships we forged and the fun we had and we say farewell to staff leaving to travel, take promotions, have babies and retire.  And this time I’m on the list.  What to say when an international health pandemic landed in our laps in March and there is so much anxiety about a virus we know so little about?  Oh, and the hog roast is virtual – it’s get your BBQ out in your back garden.

 

I decide not to dwell too much on my early years of teaching as is the retirement speech fall-back position.  Most of our staff are under 40 and Generation X remembers Xerox but they’ve never heard of Banda or coped with spidery writing on chalk boards or suffered their teachers smoking while delivering catch up seminars and certainly not corporal punishment.  Thank goodness.  A retirement speech is something most people only make once in their life, so I’d better get it right.  My preference would be to disappear like Mary Poppins – job done, position filled, everyone go and fly a kite for the summer.

 

It was Wellbeing Day at Collyer’s on Monday of this week.  An annual event even more valuable this year as an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues only recently seen via a zoom line up.  A healthy mind and body is more likely to mean settled member of staff and settled student, better able to cope with work and study.  I decided to spend late afternoon until the sun set with some others flying kites.  A whimsical way to spend my wellbeing time but perhaps symbolic of the freedom of retirement.  Still firmly tethered to earthly reality, the kite flies high and is able to get a new perspective on the world while fluttering its tail flamboyantly.  There is nothing shy and retiring about a kite.

The government has given the go-ahead for the country to unlock itself and enjoy new freedoms but like the luxuriant locks of Rapunzel, perhaps we have been guilty of letting down our hair too much or too early. Photographs of beaches like Bournemouth are certainly more reminiscent of the Mediterranean in the 1970s and hopefully not the new normal. To extend the metaphor – thank goodness hairdressers and barbers are able to reopen from this weekend – although as a teenager in the 1970s I confess to a fondness for the more hirsute look. Perhaps Covid-19 will also have stimulated a new fashion for loose casual clothes ( in cheesecloth of course ) and less makeup and obsession with eyebrows.

In my first column I wrote about falling in love with the cottage and finally moving in with the first frosts of January. There is much to delight us such as a derelict dairy at the rear of the cottage which we’ve now cleared and many other renovation challenges that had to be put frustratingly on hold. As businesses are starting to get back on track, we are looking forward to bringing our 18^th century cottage into the 21^st century without compromising on the beauty of the natural aging process and all her cracks and crevices. We’re becoming arm-chair experts in lime plaster and paint and restorative brick processes and the differences in chimney pots.

Sitting in the garden with a glass of something chilled and clinking, watching the midges dance, we have also discovered we have bats! Eek! And we seem to have adopted a cat, or rather it has adopted us much to our boxer’s excitement. There’s no way she’ll let it in the house but we’ve been feeding it and making sure it has enough water and we think it has been sleeping in the barn. The local cat protection group has been notified and so hopefully it will be rescued and given a new home soon. We’ve played detective with the help of neighbours and Homeless Cat was from a rented flat nearby and its owners moved on leaving no forwarding address. The Homeless Cat is chipped but the contact details are no longer current. I thought we were supposed to be a nation of animal lovers. Abandoned pets really get me hot and bothered – far more than crowded beaches and careless litter. You can’t casually mislay a pet.

But we’re staying cool and calm. We’ve been out for a few jaunts in Doris our Morris Minor in the lazy summer haze of dwindling evening light. The weather has been so fine it’s a little cooler then and the roads less frenetic. Doris goes at a particular pace and there is no hurrying her which suits us fine.