"The Conscience of an Editor is Purely Decorative"

What a week! Exhausted with being out every night except one and that night was spent preparing for a meeting the following night. I've run an admin course for new managers and secretaries for the local football league; been out with friends to see psychic medium Colin Fry at the Grimsby Auditorium (good performance) and my works social meal.

Phew, time to relax at last having just come in from having a nice meal in the good company of a few work colleagues at a local hostelry. Being on a diet I was very good (honest) and only had two pints of Guinness shandy with a dash of orange in the top.

There has been a small family milestone today: my youngest son has just had his last 'A' level exam and can now sit and relax having worked damned hard after disappointing 'AS' level results this time last year. Hopefully, his results will be good enough for him to get into Liverpool University to study archaeology and classics.

I am really proud of his achievements and proud of my other two lads for what they have achieved: my eldest found work after not wanting to finish his 'A' levels and has a full time permanent job in a health centre; my middle son has just finished his three year BA Honours degree at Nottingham University and all this from kids created by parents who were not academically minded at all at their age and with few formal qualifications (I had one O' Level - the equivalent of today's GCSE.) Although my wife and I have done well with our professional qualifications since, I am so pleased that our kids have taken the opportunities that exist today that never existed for me. The word 'university' was never mentioned to me at school and I can only remember a handful of very clever boys and girls who went to university.

I loved school and rarely missed a day and participated in all sorts of activities: sport, drama, after school clubs, art, but I never really had the technique to understand how exams were passed. I didn't class myself as a dimwit, just not clever. I have matured (I hope) as life has moved on and today have a position in a multi million pound organisation (unless the political parties decide to slash public spending as they are certain to do then I might be looking for another job - all because the Government, private sector and banks made a total f*ck up of the economy - not exactly my fault is it Mr Arse right wing Newspaper Editor?)

"An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to."
Gene Fowler, journalist, author and dramatist

What the experience of my kids has taught me is that they don't get 'owt for nowt.' Both my youngest and middle lads have had to graft hard and not without sweat and tears to achieve academically and these arse newspaper editors who witter and whine that kids sail through exams without doing any work and exams are too easy need to go back to the home for the eternally bewildered because they are not in the real world of kids (of all social classes) from state schools working often through adversity to try and better their chances through the exams system and frankly end up doing okay.

"An editor is a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."
Elbert Hubbard, writer and publisher

Anyway - off my soap box because the weekend is upon us and we have lots of domestic jobs planned - going to the tip, shopping, washing the conservatory roof with the power washer and watching the newly released DVD of Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise and a host of other great actors. Have a good one.

Chat Soon

Ta-ra
(Today's title is a quotation by Oscar Wilde)