I received this certificate/award for my commitment to examining over the years, at GCSE and specifically, though not detailed here, for English Literature. It is a positive gesture of sorts, somewhat overdue – as annotated by me on the sheet – and smacking a little of that ‘corporate’ notion of reward and recognition that lacks the personal touch because it is automated by statistics held remotely somewhere: and in my case the wrong ones.

And I miffed? Apparently. I’m hard to please, I know, and easily riled when I should simply get on with more important things. Instead of writing a letter of complaint – my grumpy-old-man default position – I posted a picture of the certificate on Facebook as a means of demonstrating minor ire. I had two particularly clever responses: the first from one of my daughters suggesting I send it back for a ‘remark’ [that would have been very amusing], and another from a former student who suggested I ‘correct’ its error in red marker, which is what I have done and now share.

I know I’m just passing the time, and the catharsis is mildly pleasing. On a more serious note, I don’t think we are generally/nationally very good at recognising the long service of people in education, especially in schools – though there may be regional or specific examples of good practice here – and I would expand this to the public sector services more widely. The police force has a culture and system for acknowledging such, for example its Police Officer Long Service and Good Conduct Policy and Procedure which is/can be awarded at 20 years of service.

I want to be clear: I value the support and recognition from colleagues above all else in both teaching and examining experience, the former including that from students. As for examining, I have been doing so for at least 30 and probably more consecutive years. It is a professional commitment and doesn’t require a certificate of acknowledgement, but if I am going to get one, I should like it to accurately reflect more than just a third of that commitment.

Uncanny that in my transitory blog-turbining I have come across this current release Lease of Youth by coldwave/electronic artist Erskine Lynas – with this album cover:

I’m on this
most of every day –

emails, blogging,
social media,

fake and
real news,

where that next missile
will land,

the absurd words on
how to stop it all –

and I miss thirty odd
years ago:

queuing outside
for meat,

the butcher riding me
about teachers’ holidays,

queuing outside
for bread,

fresh smells sliding
along the long line,

bottled milk each day
at the front gate

and so seeing Bill – old
Luxton – at his shop

in town, tallying in a
note-book with a pencil,

adding up what’s owed
in real numbers.

A search
for her name

cannot find
the inflection,

even an otherwise
gift from god is not

acute enough for
the internet.

She is,
therefore,

a loanword
by appellation – so

special – but
I already knew that.

And what is in a designation?
Precisely.

This is the stuff
of looking for

something important to say,
when feeling

just doesn’t
seem enough.

I have been asked how
to spell her name

so many times.
Does it matter?

As often as it has
been requested,

and the accent will always
mean much to me,

I promise,
with a personal é.

Koi

Throw any
and everything

at it, the voice
in his head

says something
like this – but it

is more the
instinct of a

jerk by some
dumb animal,

not fish who
do consider and

learn [even the
bony-eared

assfish knows
this is wrong]

and a gunman
in Texas has

perhaps done
what he has

done on impulse –
no koi,

love and
affection,

in his knowing –
just a carping

on about hatred
to overfeed

it all in a
scattered falling.