James Proclaims!

My success in returning to a weekly blogging schedule, and avoiding my boom and bust (if I’m honest, mainly bust) approach to blogging of recent years has largely been predicated on writing a lot of posts during my week off work at the end of May; a week which was granted to me in honour of my professional status as a qualified teacher who is employed by a school (a period of time otherwise known as ‘half-term’).

School holidays have always been a major factor in my decision to continue in a profession, which yields few other benefits prior to what I’m led to believe is a fairly decent pension (should I survive long enough to enjoy retirement). There are some who believe that working in education is rewarding on a spiritual level, and I suppose it might be at times, but if I had my time again I might well choose a profession that is rewarding on a more financial level. However, irrespective of the other pros and cons of pursuing a career as a teacher, the holidays are definitely a plus.

Or they certainly were when I was a father of none.

These days much of my school holidays are taken up with spending ‘quality time’ with my daughters. Indeed much of my life outside of work, even during term time, is spent with my offspring, given that Mrs Proclaims is in the final stages of completing a PhD that has been going on since before our first child was born. It was originally meant to be completed by 2019, but, thanks to two bouts of maternity leave and a necessity to switch from being a full time student to a part time student in order to accommodate the existence of our children, it is now likely to be completed some time in 2025. When in 2025 we can’t be certain, but Mrs Proclaims assures me that it will be done before 2026 and at that point I might possibly have some time outside of work which is not entirely devoted to my children.

Whether I avail myself of this time, if and when it does become available is another matter entirely. I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with myself. Perhaps it’s because I love my daughters so much that the thought of not spending every second of my ‘leisure time’ with them is abhorrent to such a devoted father as I have become, or perhaps it’s that I’m now experiencing some kind of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

I suspect it’s the latter. Not that I don’t love clambering around the foamy apparatus at the soft play centre, but I do sometimes wonder if there might be more to life.

Anyway, the point is that currently I do spend most of the school holidays with two small and fairly demanding people, so my ‘free time’ isn’t quite the blogging nirvana that one might hope it to be. Nonetheless, as I write this it is May 31st and in the past week I have produced enough material to take me, on the basis of a sensible and pragmatic schedule of one post a week, into July. It has been quite an effort, in spite of my notional ‘week off’. Hopefully though, I am so far ahead now that I will be able to maintain a fairly regular output.

One obvious side effect of blogging so far in advance is that I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world at the time of publication. I am aware that at the time I plan for this post to hit the blogosphere, the UK will have entered the week of the general election. This is notionally quite a big deal and I am usually interested in politics. I have, in the past, even been quite opinionated about the government du jour on these pages. I still am fairly opinionated about them in real life, but it all seems to have descended into farce some time ago and there is little room for satire about an administration that seems to unintentionally self-satirise on a daily basis.

Indeed, although I am writing this some weeks in the past, it would have to take a campaign of significant ineptitude for the Labour party not to sweep into power on July 4th. The most effective election strategy for Sir Keir Starmer would surely be to say and do absolutely nothing and he should be a shoe-in for Prime Minister on the basis that he isn’t a Tory. One imagines that if he makes too much effort in raising his own profile, he might accidently lower his appeal on the basis that, in and of himself, he really isn’t all that interesting.

Rishi Sunak might still be holding out hope that he can remain the incumbent premier on the basis he isn’t Liz Truss or Boris Johnson, but I suspect that will not be enough. It is a contest of two very bland leaders of two political parties that have, at the time of writing, largely failed to capture the public imagination in a positive way. But the party in power have presided over some absolute cock-ups in recent times and it does seem very much like their time is up.

I expect, on the big day I’ll be very interested in the outcome of the election. At the time of writing I’m almost entirely indifferent. But I thought I should at least make an effort to make the post vaguely topical.

For most of the time I have been writing this, the weather has been as inclement as it has been for most of the week (aside from Wednesday 29th May, when it was glorious). However it does look as if the sun has put his hat on briefly, and my children have had slightly too long in front of the TV, so I’ll sign off on this post, which has been mainly written on my laptop and I’ll take the kids out in the garden and write next week’s post on my phone.

In which I will possibly offer some reaction to the outcome of the election or some other future event I can’t possibly know anything about.