Dear Karren,*
I have just had a conversation with Nick Mugglestone in which we discussed the forthcoming trip with Peter Govan. I would like to briefly outline a few of the issues raised by this conversation and surrounding the trip.
Both Nick and myself feel that this has been a difficult half term from which we need and deserve a break. We have, as you know, been involved with countless incidents, as well as carrying students let down by what must, surely, be termed a persistent problem of absenteeism. I understand, of course, that people inevitably succumb to illness but feel nonetheless, with certain notable exceptions, that too often this Glasshouse MRSI is nothing other than what I would term cirrhosis of the work ethic: I am no stranger to long-term illness, as I will relate, but despite this I have worked every day since the beginning of term, going to great lengths to look after myself physically and mentally, and I have been at work numerous times when the inherent difficulties of my work were compounded by the effects of the re-introduction phase of a dietician-supervised exclusion diet. I feel what I consider to be a well-justified pride in my work but, regretably, feel both that this is seldom recognised, and that little provision is made for us to take time out from the cumulative stresses of the job. (On a handful of occasions a member of Support & Attendance has succumbed to the stresses of his job and been out for a day, but I do think certain people would come to see our work very differently were we to prove quite as vulnerable to our strain of MRSI as other departments.)
But surely, they cry, a self-respecting member of Support & Attendance needs little more than a few bottles of Magners and a football match to wind down. There’s a pub in Shell Island! The spirit of the vomitarium has been known to visit even latterday Bath! What’s the problem?
The problem is that I hate pubs, hate football. I wind down by taking time out to write, and, by and large, by spending time with myself. I will explain.
In the summer, being asked to go on two trips, I felt under great pressure and compelled to write to Billy Thomas, my then line manager. You may or not have since that time become privy to the information I outlined to him. I’ll set it out again.
At certain points in my life I have fulfilled all of the diagnostic spectrum for ADD and Asperger’s Disorder, as well as a bipolar mood disorder. (Note that I by no means accept the prevailing categorisation of mental disorders as propagated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IVb or whatever it now is, and recommend as a deconstruction of this paradigm Richard P. Benthall’s Excellent book, Madness Explained) Though I have ameliorated these disorders to a large extent through nutrition, writing and, perhaps more intermittently, exercise, to the extent that many people do not notice that I am ‘impaired,’ I nonetheless continue to have special needs. First among these is writing, since those times I have insufficient time to write at least something, I am impossible to be around. An extension of this is time to myself since just as the Hearing Voices Network counsel ‘sufferers’ to give time to their voices, I find I need to give space to the intrusive day dreams that are perhaps the principle feature of the inattentive form of ADD. Time in the day, time in the week, time away from all other demands on my attention and energy (if you speak to someone with ADD and see them wince as if you were an insufferable overgrown bluebottle, it is as likely as not that they have not dedicated sufficient time to these reveries). The second special need is my diet. I spend countless hours and rather more money than I would like to think about on the food that I eat, finding as I do that a gluten-free, casein-free diet, a low/no sugar diet and a low/no alcohol diet are essential for optimum mental function. Invariably both of these needs suffer considerably when I go on holiday with students.
It is no coincidence that I was last caught talking to myself on a History of Art trip to Italy when I had for several days been treated to some of the best gluten and dairy in the world and the constant company of a number of colleagues and students. This was, of course, a conversation with an ADD reverie (such as tend, for me, to consist of tangents from my experience much as dreams might) rather than some psychotic episode but suffice to say that it takes at the very least several days to recover from such an onslaught. Indeed, perhaps from the food (less has been written on the effects of gluten and casein on bipolar disorder but if scientific research monies were allocated more on the strength of a case and less on utilitarian grounds I believe we would soon start to see some papers written: the correlation of oats, dairy and yeast with depression is one of the stronger, if surprising, results of my exclusion diet so far), perhaps because I returned from Sunny Italy to several weeks of dismal weather, or perhaps also from relatively unrelated reasons such as that I experienced something of an upheaval in my thinking around a novel I’m working around at the moment and the contrast on returning home to the social fabric I had witnessed in Italy, I returned from Florence with a bout of depression that made it, for a while, hard to do my job and would have seen most of my colleagues sat up watching Jeremy sodding Kyle.
Call me Aspergic but I found it difficult a few weeks ago to take a couple of hours out on a Saturday afternoon to have one of the briefest medicals in the world with Anton. This brings me on to my second topic, renumeration, which I hope (vainly) to deal with rather more concision than the above. I agree with Nick that the current formula for calculating the rate of pay for holidays bears no relation whatsoever to the work, responsibility and commitment involved. (In communicating his point of view to me, Nick was in no way inciting any action on my part nor asking me to back him up, rather he was being open with me, as we have always tended to be in Support & Attendance. Acting as part of a team, he did not feel that it would be right for his work to be recognised more than my own.) In common with Nick I believe that we ought to be paid a sleepover for every night on the trip.
Unfortunately, this issue does not end in Cirencester since when a first year student last week could ask me if I am in the “12-24 thousand bracket” and be shocked at my response that I’m on, unlucky for some, thirteen k, it’s no wonder that I continue to feel undervalued. A first-class honours degree and nearing thirty with a very good grasp of my subject, I’m earning much the same as a Tesco trolley monkey! My girlfriend, who came over last year from the Czech Republic, is a care worker and since we have been living together we are barely scraping by. At my last Staff Appraisal, which was wholly positive, Billy Thomas put in for a pay rise for me and expressed surprise that I was still being paid this derisory amount. Now I could almost be prevailed upon to consider whether or not I deserve more money as a side issue as against the fact of hearing nothing to the contrary, nor indeed anything about this officially sanctioned and endorsed request for a pay rise but since there are numerous routes by which I could expect to hear of bad practice I will suppose that, broadly, Billy’s assessment of my work is accurate. Since in the last few weeks I have taken the place of a drama tutor, a narrowboat tutor, and taken students cycling, helped out in harvesting beetroot on the farm and putting up a roundhouse, given a good deal of nutritional advice, done some photography with the students and taught a little guitar (not to mention being Van Halen to Danny Boyle’s David Lee Roth), I am not only one of the most dependable of staff but also certainly one of the more versatile. I love my job, but the status quo leads to quite unnecessarily low levels of morale and is unsustainable. Recognised or not Support & Attendance work well as a team and any changes might lead to a real collapse in the functioning of what is, objectively at least, a critical department.
Another issue arose from my Staff Appraisal, and that is my interest in gluten and casein-free diets. I have been looking into this since my induction training week when Billy and Ken asked for a volunteer to look into gluten and Asperger’s. Billy encouraged me in this. Indeed, I also spoke with Domhnall on the Italy trip and he encouraged me, indeed, he instructed me, to speak with yourself and Paul about my experiences and knowledge in this regard. I have not yet found an opportunity but mid-way through an exclusion diet and having been observing certain students and their eating habits and helping Christie West this term with some students’ nutritional needs, I do feel I could make provide some valuable insights if you would be willing to give me some time.
Please forgive me if I am better able to communicate with the written word than verbally and if the opinions expressed here are rather strong. At this moment in time I can do little about either of these facts. I would recapitulate that Nick Mugglestone, though he may have expressed his thoughts on the rate of holiday pay, has nothing to do with the opinions expressed here.
Happy holidays,
MK
*This is a letter I wrote up on my laptop on the day before I left for a holiday with a student. Nick had rang me to say that he had had a conversation with some managers regarding the money we would be getting for the trips. He is getting paid a fair amount more than I am, something I have been getting increasingly frustrated with of late as I am probably the worst paid of all the staff here, and, as I write in the mail, one of the most dependable.
The letter was never sent as I had could not open it on the PCs here having written it on Mac Works, a program I have had a lot of problems with over the years. It frustrated me immensely that morning that I was unable to send it off - I had come in and went to some lengths to not be seen, attempting to make it to the computer room, send the mail and then head off. This was one of the letters I did actually manage to write though, and there are many I have not managed to finish at all which I hope to upload in the coming weeks.