Tag: work

In Another Lifetime I Could Have Been…(3)

On By Mick CanningIn choice, lifestyle, tramping29 Comments

…a tramp.

My wife often says I’m in touch with my inner vagabond. I’m taking that to mean that I enjoy walking, unless she’s referring to something else. My dress sense, for example. But yes, I love walking, especially long distance walking, but most of all I like to simply wander. There is a tremendous pleasure to be had by just setting off for a long walk without any particular destination in mind. Taking the more interesting-looking path as we go.

Of course, it’s not always possible to travel this way. We need to have some sort of destination in mind unless we’re prepared to just settle down to sleep wherever we find ourselves at nightfall. Usually we don’t have the time and the freedom to travel like this. Some people may also find it unnerving not to have board and lodging all planned in advance.

I’ve only done it occasionally, I must admit, but found it remarkably liberating when I did. There was no pressure to reach a particular destination by nightfall, I just had the freedom to wander along at my own pace until I felt I’d had enough for the day.

Even then, of course, some planning had to be done. Would I carry food or rely on reaching somewhere I could get a meal of some sorts? Would I carry shelter? Extra clothes?

But that is not exactly tramping, of course. It is just an exercise to be enjoyed (or otherwise) for a short period. It’s not a permanent lifestyle.

I’m sure that very few folk have deliberately chosen tramping as a lifestyle, but I’m aware there are some who have. This leads to the obvious question – why? I suppose all of us, at some time, wonder what is really important in life? Riches and property are, indeed, a burden in many ways, as well as conferring the obvious advantages in life. Some people just didn’t want that lifestyle. Some didn’t want the responsibilities of a settled life, with or without a family. There were always some folk who could just never settle anywhere for long. Most, though, would have ended up tramping through loss of employment and / or home.

Certainly I understand the difficulties of the tramping life, especially when one is no longer young. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be trying to survive as a homeless person in a city – rightly or wrongly, I think of tramping as a rural phenomenon. The whole point of it was to be on the move, rather than staying in one place. I doubt it would be possible today, with so many laws against that kind of lifestyle. There were, of course, laws against it in the past, too, but almost certainly much harder to enforce. I think, too, society is just ordered differently today. We think differently to how we did fifty or a hundred years ago. A tramp turning up at a farm today looking for a couple of hours work in return for a meal would get short shrift, and I can’t imagine any householder regarding one with anything other than hostility.

Again, I can’t imagine anyone choosing that lifestyle through the winter. But tramps used to learn of places they could settle for the winter, often carrying out odd jobs in return for permission to sleep in a shed or a barn and the odd meal. In this post I’m talking specifically about Britain, but I suspect it applies equally to hobos in America, swagmen in Australia, and possibly others I’m not aware of elsewhere.

And it would be unlikely to be a long life. But there were always some who chose it as a way of life rather than being forced into it by circumstances, and in another time I might possibly have been one of those.

Hey, That’s My Picture on Your Book!

On By Mick CanningIn copyright infringement, creative, intellectual property, theft19 Comments

Boy, are you in trouble!

005

But first, a disclaimer. I am not a legal expert, and if you are in any doubt about the subjects I’m talking about, you should consult an authoritative source.

In general, as most writers are aware, the maker of an artistic work (e.g. painting, novel, photograph, concerto) automatically owns the copyright to said work. Selling the work does not constitute selling the copyright. This is an issue that occasionally confuses writers, for example, but it is worth remembering that even if a publisher agrees to publish your new novel, you retain the ownership and copyright to that novel, unless you specifically sign them away.

This means that the painter of a picture may sell the picture, but the new owner has no right to make any copy of this work for any purpose, and the artist retains the right to do so. Again, if the new owner is to have the right to make a copy of the picture and publish it, the artist must specifically assign the new owner the right to do so. After all, purchasing a novel or a music CD does not confer the right to copy and sell either of those.

But it’s not all as straightforward as that, and it’s more complicated if an artist has been specifically paid to create it for a purpose, or creates it as part of their duties for an employer. In this case, the employer / commissioner may hold the copyright.

As an example of this, my novel Making Friends with the Crocodile features an image from one of my paintings on the cover (see picture on the right). I sold the painting many years ago, but the image still belongs to me as I did not sign it away.

Therefore if you wish to use an image on the cover of your book that does not belong to you, you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder to do so. If so, then what you will almost certainly get / buy are reproduction rights and NOT the copyright. That would give you the right to use the image for certain purposes (e.g. book cover) but the artist retains the right to sell the reproduction rights to others, too.

Unless they are exclusive reproduction rights. See? I told you this could get complicated.

It is possible to take (another) artist’s work and sufficiently transform it so that it becomes a new work, but again the devil is in the detail (quite literally). There have been a number of cases where artists have taken others to court to argue the point – and the point is whether the new work is sufficient transformative to be considered a new work. As an example, a photograph downloaded from the internet and then either just being subject to colour changes, or having another image added to it, was considered to be infringing the original copyright.

But there have been other cases where the original image has been altered sufficiently to be considered a new work. If you are intending to go down this route, you would be wise to acquaint yourself with the ins and outs of this. To get a more detailed analysis, you might find this link useful: February 13th Creative

And if you have paid someone for an image for your cover? It might be someone you know, or it might be over the internet (perhaps one of these ‘get a service for five dollars’ sites), but the law doesn’t change. Ensure you have the appropriate permission, preferably signed, before pressing the ‘publish’ button with their image on your cover.

It could save you an awful lot of hassle.

The (Shy And) Retiring Type…

On By Mick CanningIn choice, lifestyle, retirement, work62 Comments

A few days ago, I made the decision to retire from my present job.

It is something I have been brooding over for some while, and having a little time and space to think while I walked on Dartmoor last week enabled me to finally accept a decision I had really come to some time before.

013a

For a long time I have instructed groups in an outdoor environment, in activities such as climbing, canoeing, navigation and team building. As I have got older, though, I have naturally found these activities both physically and mentally more demanding. After all, when you are responsible for people’s safety as well as teaching them skills, there is an added pressure on everything you do.

A number of other stresses in my life over the last year or so have not helped, especially as they are still ongoing.

004a

So as well as a sense of regret, there is certainly a great feeling of relief. Regret, because I have had a huge amount of both pleasure and satisfaction from this work, which has carried me through those times when I felt it was becoming all too much, but relief that now it is time to call it a day, as I have reached the point where I know I cannot carry on for much longer.

I love being in an outdoor environment. It is why I choose to go to hills and woods and mountains rather than towns and cities, and this was instrumental in my deciding to teach these activities in the first place. But the obverse of that coin is that so often I am unable to really enjoy being there, since I am entirely focused on my group and the activities – which is how it should be, of course.

029a

One thing I shall look forward to, then, is being able to enjoy that environment every time I am there, without constantly having to check everyone is safe, or ensuring the activities are taking place as they should be.

While I intend to bring a greater focus to my writing, and also to my painting, I will also have to find something to bring in a little money for the next couple of years until I reach the state retirement age. I’ve no idea what that will be, yet.

126a

Essentially, I just feel burnt out. It is a very intensive job, in the way that care work, for example, can be, and I know it is the right time to go. Otherwise, there is the risk I will begin to run sessions that no one will want to take part in.

And that’s not the way I want it to finish. Far better that people should ask why I am going, than they should ask why I have not gone before now.

Sometimes I sits and thinks…

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, writing17 Comments

On Sunday mornings I work. But since there are no buses on Sunday at the time I have to leave, it means I have to walk all the way.

I don’t mind, though.

After a couple of uninteresting miles along streets of houses and shops, my route goes across common land and thence through farmland and woodland for another three or four miles.

As I walk, I inevitably find myself thinking about what I’m busy writing at the moment, and just as inevitably ideas come.

This always happens when I walk, but on Sundays my thoughts tend to be about poems. I’ve got into the habit of that, although I’ve no idea why.

But it means I usually have another page or two of notes in a notebook by the time I reach my workplace – a long outcrop of rock at the edge of woodland, since you ask.

After I finish work, I can get a bus part of the way home if I choose to, but only if I wait for over an hour and a half. If I do, then I can spend a while in the pub by the bus stop and have a beer and contemplate life, or something like that.

Sometimes I does and sometimes I doesn’t.

Yesterday, the clocks went back, to officially tell us that summer is over and winter is well on the way. Inevitably, then, yesterday turned into a perfect autumn day. So I decided to walk home. After I had been walking for half an hour, I stopped and sat in a small drift of dry leaves, my back against a tree, eating my sandwiches.

064

Overhead, a pair of buzzards were circling high up and calling to each other. The sun was out, and in my small area of beech woodland the leaves were turning orange and yellow. The sky was blue, and in the sunshine it was still warm. It was perfect, and I sat with my back against the tree for some while after I had finished eating, just thinking and enjoying life.

Soon, it will get much colder. There will be rain.

But yesterday was just as perfect as it could have been.

The Enduring Lie of A Golden Age

On By Mick CanningIn comment, Golden Age, history, opinion, society32 Comments

It seems that huge numbers of people have an impression that there was a ‘Golden Age’ at some previous point of their, or some other, society.

They may not define it in those words, or even acknowledge it as such, but it seems to be very common for people to yearn for another time. Sometimes, this is nostalgia – for the days of their youth – but frequently it is for some far-off time that they feel to be somehow better than the time they live in.

Untitled-Grayscale-01

Fantasy books frequently encourage this sort of thinking. Regardless of the actual storyline, the heroes and villains and cast of other odd characters tend to run around and fight and go on quests and sit around in quaint thatched inns quaffing head-splitting alcoholic drinks and everyone is jolly and no one ever dies of dysentery or bubonic plague in misery and agony and squalor.

The Lord of the Rings is a fine example of this. It is a favourite of mine, but it is very noticeable how no one dies of disease, but mostly lives to an exceedingly old age unless chopped into pieces by Orcs.

Hollywood, too, plays its part in this. To take a film at (almost) random, an old version of ‘Robin Hood’ (set in medieval England, remember) depicts a group of merry men dressed in very strange attire living in the depths of a forest and merrily ambushing the Bad King’s men, merrily dining at long tables out beneath the spreading branches of merry oak trees under starry skies and everyone looks clean and clean shaven and everyone is merry, and it never rains.

Pah!

This is meant to be medieval England. Life expectancy at the time was around 30 years. Huge numbers of people died of dysentery, mainly because there was no concept of hygiene. Occasional plagues carried off massive numbers of people, emptying entire towns and villages. There were no antibiotics or anaesthetics. Disease was sent by God and the only way to cure it was considered to be prayer. Or witchcraft. Women routinely died in childbirth, in great pain. The majority of children never reached their teens. Every peasant in every village was effectively a slave under the command of the local lord, who held the power of life and death over them, and might exercise this on a whim at any moment. The threat of famine was ever present.

Pain and misery was a given.

The majority of people lived, too, in a very real terror of the Devil and the threat of eternal damnation.

The list of horrors is almost endless. The phrase ‘life was nasty, brutish and short’ is an apt description of those times. Certainly, I would not wish to live under those conditions.

There are plenty of other ‘Golden Ages’, of course. Almost any time in history can exercise a fascination on us, if certain aspects of it appeal to us and there are things we dislike about the society we live in. And it is natural to yearn for something better; something more than we have.

And this is not to suggest that every age was a living hell for everyone in that society, but that life in most of these times was reasonably decent for the very few on top of the pile, and pretty miserable for the rest. In fact, the measure of how ‘Golden’ an age was, tends to be the conditions of the upper echelons of that society, and perhaps those of a middle class, if such existed.

There is much wrong with our world today. But the huge advances seen over the last hundred years or so, especially in medicine, have meant that our lives have been improved out of all recognition. No longer does surgery equate to filling the patient with a quart of whisky and then sawing off a leg or an arm. No longer do those patients routinely die of infections after surgery, thanks to antibiotics. High blood pressure is controlled, rather than routinely killing. Children usually survive all the diseases of childhood, rather than being most likely to die. Women rarely die in childbirth, and the pain can be somewhat controlled.

Women and children are no longer the legal chattels of men.

Work conditions are hugely improved. Children do not go down mines or work at dangerous looms 14 hours a day. Instead, most receive a proper education. Adults, too, work fewer hours and under far better conditions than previously. When they are too old or frail to work, the state provides a certain amount of dignified support. People do not as a rule die these days of starvation. We do not execute children for stealing sixpence, or poaching rabbits on the Lord’s estate.

In most cases, for most people, today is the Golden Age.

Attention! Fantastic News!

On By Mick CanningIn comment, humour, satire, time30 Comments

Now, this is good news.

Really good news.

Like so many people, I’ve always complained that there are just not enough hours in the day for me to get everything done that I want to do.

Heck, I don’t even have enough hours to do those things that I need to do.

This didn’t used to be the case, though. I can remember when my day used to glide past nice and smoothly; when I would have time to get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat and do whatever I needed to do, then maybe go out in the evening, come home again, and that was it! Job done! Time for everything!

001

As I became older, though, there did seem to be less time available. Jobs lined up waiting to be done; I seemed to be busier and busier, and the days just seemed…shorter.

I began to wonder where the time was going. I looked in all the usual places; down the back of the sofa, under the bed, behind the stacks of baked beans in the bottom of the corner cupboard beside the sink, but no luck.

But I’ve been looking at it completely the wrong way.

So, the good news? Well, it took a lot of doing, but I have managed to fit a whole hour into just forty minutes.

Now, the consequences of this are pretty devastating, really.

I now have thirty six hours in my day instead of just twenty four.

There is just so much more I can do, now!

I can go to work for eight hours and still have twenty eight left over for other things.

Twenty eight!

Hell, that’s more than I used to have in a whole day, anyway!

I can even get have twelve hours sleep of a night, and then get a full days work in the next day.

And have sixteen hours left for other purposes. I guess I am now time-rich, to use one of these ridiculous modern phrases.

But…it’s odd, though. Despite all this extra time at my disposal, I seem to have more trouble than usual fitting a couple of simple tasks into an hour. Jobs that used to take me an hour, now seem to take an hour and a half to do. It is, as I say, rather odd.

And another downside of this, I suppose, is that I will no longer have an excuse to go offline for a while ‘just to catch up with things’.

Perhaps I’ll stick with the sixty minute hours for the moment, and keep the others in reserve for when I’m really busy.

‘Mick…’

‘Not now, Bob, I’m busy. I’ll get back to you later. You know, there just aren’t enough days in the week…’

Time, Gentlemen, Please!

On By Mick CanningIn leisure, phones, time, work55 Comments

When I go out, I will frequently leave my phone at home. If I have no particular reason to take it with me, such as for work or awaiting an urgent call, then it is a real pleasure to be able to leave it behind.

I feel a release, not being in constant contact with everyone. I also rely upon it for the time, not possessing a wristwatch, so again, without it, I am freed from this small tyranny. Interestingly, I often know the time if I am asked, as long as I reply spontaneously, without thinking, but then, if I give it more thought, the gift disappears. I wonder if this is an instinct that we have largely lost. If so, and I ponder this train of thought, how did older, ancient peoples view the time? Presumably not as ‘nine’ or ‘three o’clock’ – morning, noon and afternoon? A time of waxing and waning light? Those more sedentary no doubt were as much tied to the sundial as we are to the clock.

IMGP2641

At court, or in monasteries, or other relatively affluent places, they relied on candles, marked with hours, to tell the time, but the common people would have had no such thing. Here in England, the church might have possessed a clock that chimed the hour, so that those who lived near enough might have an idea of the time, but apparently these could be notoriously inaccurate, sometimes being wrong by perhaps several hours or more.

But this probably did not matter, for the rural worker would not need to know the time. The farm labourers would rise at dawn, eat something for breakfast, then make their way to the fields. Around noon they would eat lunch, and at dusk they would return home.

They had no need of timekeeping any more accurate than that.

Contrast that to today, when it almost seems necessary to justify every minute of the day. I think this is one of the attractions of taking a holiday; it seems such a treat to spend each day doing as much or as little as is desired, and not to have to justify it to anyone. And, by extension, perhaps it is vitally important that we take holidays now. Hundreds of years ago in those semi-mythical non time-dominated days, workers did not get holidays. They just had Sundays off. It is easy to suggest that we are softer now, but I think the fixation of time has contributed to lives vastly more dominated by stress, and overwork, and that holidays are essential for us all.

I know I damn well need one!

Stereotypes and Misunderstandings

On By Mick CanningIn holidays, misunderstandings, Stereotypes, travel41 Comments

In countries such as India, there is frequently an impression that Western visitors and therefore, by extension, all Westerners, own vast wealth and have massive amounts of leisure time at their disposal.

After all, they arrive on holiday, perhaps for a month or more, and they go around staying in places that are far beyond the means of the average Indian, spend the equivalent of several month’s wages on souvenirs, often hop on an aircraft to take a journey that would be one hundredth of the price by rail, flaunting expensive cameras and watches and phones and designer clothes. So who wouldn’t think that?

011a

This is not helped by the impressions given by many Western films and programs, where work seldom seems to get in the way of whatever action the film is depicting.

This often affects how local people interact with visitors, and their feelings about them.

I suspect it even drives a certain amount of international migration, too.

And so I think it very important to highlight a few facts;

Basically, the differences in exchange rates of different currencies give the impression of great wealth which is not, in fact, true.

A few numbers:

The average annual wage in the UK is currently £28,000, or $34,400. This sounds a lot (even to me!) but that hides a huge variation, of course.

It is quite hard to find figures that agree about the average annual Indian wage, with estimates varying from around $600, up to around $3500, although this may well reflect the massive difference between the rural worker and a worker in, for example, the IT industry. For sake of argument, I’m going to use the figure of $2000, which could still be slightly on the high side, looking at some of the sites I’ve gone to.

This would give the average UK worker a wage 17 times higher than the Indian. Sounds good for us, but the average cost of a house in the UK is now some £300,000 – that’s $369,000, and it is now almost impossible for young people to buy their own house unless they are helped by well-off parents, and they have very well-paid jobs. The average rent, otherwise, is around $12,300 per year. About a third of the average wage.

To find an average cost to rent in India is also difficult (for me!). I scoured a lot of sites, and seemed to come up with a figure of somewhere around $1,200 a year, although there were massive variations, both between cities and within them. If I have got these figures correct, that is around a half of the average wage.

The prices of basic commodities such as foodstuffs or power vary a lot between India and UK, too. Whereas I have bought street food in India for a rupee or two, making a lunch for perhaps 15 or 20 cents, it would cost me at least $2.50 to $3 in UK for the equivalent.

This isn’t to draw up an accurate comparison between the two – it would be quite a study to do that – but to try to make the point that the average person in the UK is better off (materially) than the average person in India, but not by nearly as much as many might think.

India has more of a problem with poverty, but the West has quite a bit, too. And whilst the poor in the West are emphatically not as badly off as their cousins in India, they still endure considerable hardship. Even with the existence of the supposed safety net of Social Security. There is homelessness. There is malnourishment.

Incidentally, and I pose this as a question to my Indian friends, I frequently read articles that focus on aid and development in poor (especially rural) areas of India, highlighting the fact that a large percentage of the population have to survive on around two dollars a day.

In the light of the above, I wonder whether this isn’t a little disingenuous, since that figure may not be as far below the average wage as many in the West believe, and wonder what you think?

I think it matters, because I believe this might distract attention from where work is needed more, such as improving sanitation, work conditions and medical care.

Time to dust down the parchment and take up my quill, again.

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, break, travel, writing34 Comments

Oh, that was nice.

003a

I just had to get some time away – from the computer, from people, from work and noise and just about everything else that makes up my complicated twenty first century life.

I promised myself a few days away to work on my book, uninterrupted by anything else, and that then turned into a short holiday for the two of us, in a small quiet town in Shropshire, close to the Welsh Borders, in a small self-catering apartment. It was perfect. We went for a few walks together, and at other times I wrote and thought over parts of the book, whilst my wife went off and walked and mooched on her own.

From a writing point of view, it was a most successful trip; I developed a few of the main characters in a satisfactory way, I developed my primary and secondary plot lines, and I wrote a goodly amount of pieces to work together at various points in the book. The ideal, naturally, would have been a trip to the Indian Himalaya, since that is the location of the story, but failing that, then a hilly location with a lot of wooded parts and old houses and a feel of times past, is certainly the next best thing.

And it was a great break for us both. Just to have a break from day to day life, of course, is priceless, but in a quiet, peaceful small town is even better.

Naturally, back to normal life means dealing with stuff that wasn’t dealt with over the last week, amongst other things. So, online to sort out a bill payment, and…I notice by looking in my diary that I have passwords for forty seven separate sites. Is this unusual? Probably not. But, conventional wisdom says you should never write down passwords. So, who could possibly remember forty seven of the wretched things? And even I know that using the same password for different sites is foolishness beyond forgiveness.

More ruddy hassle. All of this is meant to make life easier, isn’t it? Yet my idea of making life easier is to make it simpler and less complicated. This just doesn’t seem to happen, though.

Ah, this is a bit of a diversion that I hadn’t planned for this post to take. It reminds me, though, that I must write a post on anxiety, at some time.

What I was intending to write, was that I now have plenty of material for the book, and so, as time permits, it’s Full Steam Ahead!

Now, then, back to these tasks…

Pause for thought…

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, break38 Comments

I think that a bit of an apology is in order here, sort of in advance.

negative 031

August looks like being a ridiculously busy time for me, in various ways, so I suspect that I will be a bit tardy in posting blogs, and even tardier in following everyone else’s.

I have a couple of projects that I must finish, quite a lot of work, and a few people to visit and entertain.

I shall do my best to catch up with them all, but for all those bloggers who I regularly visit and who I might now and again not get around to visiting in the next few weeks, my sincerest apologies. I will turn up now and again, unexpectedly, and then nip off again after sprinkling a few random likes and comments here and there. Well, not random; that’s not my style.

Sporadic.

Yes, sporadic.

But don’t write me off, I’LL BE BACK!