When I was eighteen or so.

When I was eighteen or so I was an apprentice, training to become a telephone engineer in what was then the GPO later to become British Telecom. Yes, I worked for a nationalised industry, one of the biggest in the UK at the time employing some quarter of a million people.

On my first day I cycled to a specified depot to begin my first chunk of work experience with an overhead gang, whatever that was. I arrived dead on the dot of 7.30 as instructed, but was surprised to find no one else there. Gradually people began to trickle in and I was allocated to a particular gang. This gang’s main task was to erect telephone poles and string wires between them, but, as five of us set off in the big lorry, we headed instead to a particular cafe where puzzlingly we had breakfast. I had already eaten mine at home; I had a lot to learn.

The gang had a foreman whose main task, it seemed to me, was to ensure that we were always at least three miles away from the depot at lunch time. Why? Because then we could claim subsistence money! Tea breaks and lunch breaks were strictly adhered to. The gang members read their newspapers and I read the New Musical Express and the Melody Maker (I’m not sure why). There was little discussion and politics was rarely mentioned.

I experienced the various activities of the telephone company and, along the way, became a convinced public servant. We had an important role: the dependable working of the telephone system was vital to the country as a whole and we were the people who made it all work – no one else was allowed to do so. The fact that some engineers did ‘moonlighting’ using the skills taught them by the GPO and sometimes using the materials supplied by the GPO puzzled me. Why would they do that?

I progressed, even went to university to obtain a Master of Science degree and there became an ardent socialist, anti-apartheid protestor and so on. What did I know? I knew that apartheid was evil and still believe it to be so – though I did not understand the complexities of the issue at that time. I knew socialism was the answer and refused to let my zeal be dampened by regular news of its cruel imposition in the Soviet Union and China. That, I thought was not really socialism, those countries forced a certain belief system onto its people, my sort of socialism – for some reason that I never did figure out - would not do that.

What did I really know? Not a lot really. The sociology students really knew about politics and their answer was of course: socialism. Now, looking back, I wonder what any of us did know at that early age. At least I had experienced work and workers at work, though for all of that I still became an idealist. I knew that the council estates of Britain were not ripe for revolution, though many on the left at my university believed they were. The Angry Brigade was active there and they were all for taking up arms and leading the workers against the establishment. But, even then, I knew that people just wanted to get on with their lives, I just would not admit it. My idealistic fuel began to peter out in my early thirties as I too learned to get on with my life rather than attempting to alter that of others.

I hated Thatcher of course. Hated her for denationalising us and then taking away our monopoly. We public servants were doing our best, it was not our fault that it could take up to a year to supply a new telephone line, that’s just how it was. And what would happen to our beloved telephone system once the Johnny-cum-latelys started undercutting us? And what would happen to our jobs?

Actually, in the end, I lost mine. Cut off from the mothership at last by that so feared event –redundancy - I set up on my own and did quite well. This was the last stage in developing my political maturity, I then knew what it was like to be entirely dependent on my own efforts for the income to feed, clothe and bring up a maturing family. It was scary, but also exhilarating and educational. I had no holiday pay, sick leave, union representation, or personnel department – and I was acutely aware of the money being taken off me in personal and corporation tax, and not too keen on Gordon Brown giving my money to babies.

Perhaps young people of today are better educated and more politically aware than we were at their age, though that is not my experience. They are as prone as ever to idealism: many want an ideal to follow and are not too fussy about the creed or personalities that lead them. It is often argued that the young should be given a stronger voice in the big decisions that we face today because it is their future. That is a facile argument. Maturity does bring wisdom to most people, and experiencing the hard knocks of life does not make older people selfish: they are as concerned about the world that their off-spring will inhabit as they are about their own declining years. 

In my own constituency of Oxford there are something like 45,000 students, such a body of young people can materially and unreasonably affect the political leaning and character of our representatives in parliament, yet they themselves will not be in Oxford to experience that. They will be getting on with their lives elsewhere, and hopefully gaining the experience to understand that money does not grow on trees, that it has to come from somewhere. And perhaps also to appreciate the crude reality of the alternative lyrics to the socialist anthem, the Red Flag.

The working class can kiss my arse,

I’ve got the foreman’s job at last.

Good reasons to be a naked mole rat

If I were a bird, I think that I would like to be a great-crested grebe. Smart looking fellow and spends a good deal of time underwater as well as above it – which must be interesting. Recently, Margaret and I went on holiday from our base in Spain. I know what you are thinking, you’re thinking that we are on holiday whilst we are in Spain anyway, but that’s not true. There is work to do on the huerto and the house: crops to plant and weed, olive trees to trim and hoe, irrigation to sort out and things to mend about the house. Anyway, our holiday started in Daroka, Aragon a unique town nestling in a narrow valley the ridges of each side being capped with ancient walls interspersed with Mudejar towers and reminding me of the crests on the backs of certain lizards and Margaret of the Great Wall of China.

Next day we moved on to visit Gayocanta Laguna, an interior salt lake, in the hope of seeing water birds, maybe even a crested grebe. But, alas, the extensive salt lake was parched, it was in fact salt – so no water birds at all. We moved on spending the night in Utrillas, an old mining town, where we dined on yet another ‘menu del dia’: these are three course meals with bread wine and coffee for a fixed cost, in this case just sixteen Euros apiece. With beer before and wine during our subject range became extensive, even incorporating the vexed question of consciousness. Margaret argued strongly with me that consciousness could not simply be something that evolved by Darwinian survival, there must be something else - though she did not know what that might be.

For me that debate surfaced my usual question: do other animals have consciousness. I believe they do to some extent and that extent may well evolve with geological time. A dog, on whose face a disc has been painted will, it is claimed, try to remove it when passing a mirror. Cats train their owners to provide them with food in trade for rationed affection. Chimps like a good joke and grebes are very much aware that other grebes may steal their dinner. Naked mole rats meanwhile may have a group consciousness. These little chaps are certainly not smart looking fellows, but you might want to be one. Take longevity for example other animals of their size rarely survive for a year or so whereas the naked mole rat clocks up over thirty! Mole rats are rarely lonely: they live below ground in tribes of as many as two hundred in service to their queen; a bit like ants. It gets a bit crowded down there so the good old mole rat has developed a plant like ability to live without oxygen - for up to five hours! They are pretty much immune to pain and to cancer and have no worries about having their coats stolen to make into trousers or being asked difficult questions in referenda.

So there you have it: either a short life on and below the watery waves as a grebe or a long one in the warm - dark burrows of a naked mole rat nest. You have consciousness, make your choice.