This year more than any other my relaxation from this work has been cricket. T20 cricket may not be to everyones taste, but it provides entertainment and relaxation after a working day. With two games to go Surrey can still qualify for the quarter finals and possibly acquire home advantage. So Kent on Thursday and a visit to Hove on Friday awaits.
The last weeks news has been dominated by the phone hacking scandal initially at the News of the World and now gradually spreading across the whole News International empire. I think its too early to draw any immediate conclusions, but there is a sense that the world of print journalism will never be the same, after these revelations.
I was dismayed to read that many commentators described the end of the NOTW as the death of a British institution. Now I gave up reading it when I was a boy and as I began to appreciate that there was more to life than vicars, call girls and choirboys. What's more their predictions for football transfers invariably never came true. A few years later I came to understand, that there was a more important political purpose behind such papers with their dumbing down of real news and their drip feeding of an unpleasant political agenda to the readership. Now I'm left to ponder the relationship between the owner,journalists and readership. Why do 4 million people want to read tittle tattle regarding the private lives of footballers,TV celebrities and the occasional politician ?
As the week moves on I'm aware that I have less than two weeks before my retirement, the curtain is being drawn on my teaching career. Its a strange feeling, and one that hangs over me rather at unexpected moments. Put simply its a large portion of life ticked off, but something tells me that its more complex. We are defined by our work, its what people ask you when you first meet. "What do you do ?", is the opening question, I've often hoped that someone would ask "What do you believe in ?". It would be so much more interesting.
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