Pedometer update!

So, I had a quick look at new pedometers and discovered that many now have a reset button on the front. Why? Why would you want to reset it? I have a feeling that mine would continually be resetting itself as it bumped around in my pocket.

Anyway, I got out my screwdrivers and dismantled my old pedometer and cleaned up the contacts and now, with a bit of fiddling, I've been able to set the time and other parameters and I'm all set to get recording.

As a matter of interest, I did a quick check. It was 2014/15 that I last did the challenge. I managed 183 consecutive before a calf injury ended the run. That was in March 2015 and for some reason I stopped recording the data too afterwards. I think it might be because I got my new Polar A360. That and the battery might have run out!

I think my plan will be the record the data over the next couple of weeks to see what's currently normal/typical and then plan to get out walking in September. I haven't yet decided whether I'll use tennis as part of the 10k or not. It would be interesting but possibly impractical to try and do 10k walking steps in addition to all the stuff I do on court. I will have to think about that carefully.

One solution would be to set a minimum walking target, say 6.5k steps. At a guess that's around 3 miles or 5Km and might be achievable even on heavy tennis days. I could work out a simple route that would hit that goal.

If I start on September 1st, 100 days takes me to December 9th, but I might be a bit later starting this year because of other commitments. Still, it would be nice to hit the target by Christmas. In 2014 I even did my 10k on Christmas Day.

Get up, get out, get moving!

It's never a bad time to take on a challenge to get a little more active. I'm probably the most active I've ever been, what with all the coaching I now do. But I still feel the need to "do something". Quite what that is, I don't know.

So it could be time to hit the walking challenge yet again. It's simple, 10,000 steps a day for 100 days. I've blogged about it each time I've done it, and somewhere on my computer are the spreadsheets with all the data of my previous cycles. I've even put a new battery in my old pedometer. Sadly it doesn't seem to want to allow me to set the time etc, but maybe it's just sulking a bit having not been used for 3 years!

If I'm really honest, the thought of doing this again does not fill me with excitement or anticipation. Instead I feel a certain about of something between doom and lethargy about the whole idea. But I know how good it is to set a challenge and actually hit the target. I also know that once I get started it's a lot easier to keep gong than it is to take the first step. 

If you decide to do something similar, you need to know upfront that there will be days when you don't feel like do anything. Days when you will literally have to drag yourself out of bed and out of the house. If you could get fitter just by sitting on the sofa, we'd all opt for that. But the other day I was chatting to someone at the gym and they asked how I felt when I did the challenge. I couldn't quantify my response, it's been 3 years, but I know that there was something special about the experience, even on the hard days. 

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's having done something that wasn't easy, maybe it was persevering when you really wanted to stop. So maybe I need a new challenge, or the same challenge but done in a new way. I don't imagine there are many days when I don't do the equivalent of 10k steps. I might need to think more in terms of simply making sure I do a certain amount of walking each day. Set a percentage of total steps to have to come from walking alone. I don't know. I think I'll need to experiment a bit to find out what an achievable target might be. 

I'll also plot a few routes. I found it really useful to know that if I wanted/needed to do a certain number of steps then this or that route would give me that number.

Well, time to stop thinking and time to start planning and more importantly time to start walking. September will soon be here, and that's a good month to start a new plan.

Time to update driver education for everyone

Last week there was another call for drivers over 70 to be compulsorily retested. While I understand the issue being raised and feel for the context in which it is raised (the loss of a family member to an older driver who 'loses control' of a car), it does seem to be something of a generalisation. Are all drivers over 70 more potentially dangerous than those under 70?

In these days of alternative facts, let me offer a few generalisations of my own.

I have never seen a driver over 70:

• Fumble around using a mobile 'phone
• Try to apply their make-up
• Overtake on a pedestrian crossing
• Use a right turn only lane to jump the queue
• Listening to music so loud it make my car vibrate and clearly indicates they can't hear anything else
• Do a seated version of a dance
• Eat a MacDonald's meal
• Carry a cup of coffee between their knees
• Answer their 'phone and write in their diary, steering with their knees

I'm also pretty convinced that the motorcyclists and drivers who clearly exceed the 30mph speed limit through the village outside my house are not over 70, and of the 3 or 4 significant accidents that have happened on our road, none have involved anyone over 70.

It would appear that it's not the over 70's who need to be reeducated and retested!

As an alternative to putting everyone under pressure to pass a test, and let's be honest everyone can pass or fail a test, why not look at ways to encourage continual education. Why should safer driving courses only be something you attend in order to avoid having points added to your licence? Having attended such a course, I actually found it really interesting and helpful. And yes, I did change the way I did some things.

Perhaps we ought also to look at the process learning to drive. Make it more modular, demonstrating key skills as you progress over a minimum timeframe of say 2 years. Teaching people defensive driving skills and developing better habits and understanding of why the rules of the road are there.

Retesting is not the answer.

Changing the way we approach failure and set backs

Having finished reading Black Box Thinking, it strikes me that there is a lot still to be learned about the way we deal with failures and set backs. Putting on the news this morning, the big talking point was the incident at Old Trafford. The response to the evacuation and abandonment of the game was full of the expected puns, Red faces at Old Trafford, and the language of instant blame. Apparently the local Police and Crime Commissioner has called it an "outrage" and there's going to be a full enquiry.

Well the enquiry is  clearly a good idea, but an outrage? Well I'm not so sure that's the right description, and what's more it immediately puts everyone in defensive mode. Why not start from lessons learned? Clearly the evacuation was handled pretty well, and the security obviously worked because they found the suspect package and death with it. Yes, a lot of people were very inconvenienced, but the system worked. Shouldn't we at least acknowledge that.

Somebody missed something after the training event. That much is obvious, but surely the way forward is to look at the protocols involved in accounting for the training devices and adjust them. Learn a lesson for the future, don't start getting outraged and look for someone to blame.

We've just got back from a holiday in Portugal. Yesterday was a long day of travelling, and while not in the league of an abandoned football match because of a suspicious package left by mistake, we had our fair share of frustrations along the way. It felt like we spent most of the day in a queue of some sort.

Faro airport is not the best equipped international airport I've ever travelled through, and it's not the worst, even of those I've experienced. Long delays getting people through passport control and security meant our flight home was delayed by almost an hour. There was quite a lot of British outrage at the "shambles" and "chaos" at the airport. We had issues when we arrived too, mainly with passport control again. Faro has about 5 of the new biometric passport readers on both inward and outward sides. Sadly only three were working, and one crashed. Anyway people got stuck at passport control and we missed our slot for take-off and had to wait for the delayed passengers and then for a new slot. I dare say there will be a few strongly worded letters and emails being written this mooring to the trail company complaint about all this and demanding compensation.

But who will be looking at the events and trying to learn lessons and then fix the problems? At Stansted there were 15 biometric gates and we still had to queue and there were still problems. While adding more terminals would clearly help, it's not the whole solution.

The interesting thing was that when we were on the aircraft waiting for the delayed passengers, the announcements made were very clearly blaming ground staff at the airport, just to make sure we understood who was to blame. It's nice to know it's always someone else's fault! Okay, so in this case the issue was with the airport, but I'd rather hope that the travel companies and airlines would look at how they can support the airport, perhaps with investment, to add more terminals, and to make sure they are working. Rather than blaming the people, look for a solution that will support the future use of the airport.

So Black Box Thinking is worth reading if it makes you change the way you see and deal with failure. If you are not willing to become a learner or if you're not interested in solutions that don't start with "who can I blame", then maybe you should seek out a book about how to complain instead.

Early thoughts on the European referendum

With the date of the in-out referendum announced I'm bracing myself for the long campaign and all the contradictory information that will assail us over the coming months. Already we've had Michael Gove saying Europe gets in the way of his being able to do his job day to day (some might suggest there are other reasons) and Michael Fallon saying it's not quite so.

Being part of a wider european community will undoubtedly have an impact on how we do things.  Any form of coalition does. Some have been positive some negative, often dependent upon your perspective. For example, most of our environmental legislation comes from Europe. If you're an organisation or company that would rather not have to contribute to clean air or water, then you might consider the regulations an interference. Similarly you might consider some of the regulations about working hours and conditions an unwelcome hurdle, blaming Europe for the red tape that you feel restricts your business.

The question we have to ask is whether we would have these regulations and rights, whether environmental or in other areas, were it not for our memberships of the European Union. Perhaps, as Stanley Johnson said on the news this morning, there will always be a price to pay for being part of a european community, but there is also great benefit too.

There's no doubt that the EU has morphed into something other than the free trade area that it was back in the 70's when we first joined and first had an in-out vote. There's also little doubt that there are many things about the present organisational structure of the community that need to be addressed and some questions about the overall destination of the process that need answers. Are we ultimately headed towards a United States of Europe? Is that what we want as Europeans not just as the UK?

I also wonder why there are not some simple principles about entitlements to things like benefits and health care that are either pan-european, i.e. a basic level of both applied across the community, or some structure that means your entitlement is based on your country of origin. Perhaps this already exists, perhaps these issues only actually exist in the minds of those who want us out. Perhaps the benefits and health questions are actually just red herrings in the debate.

I hope that over the next few months we get some real data and some real facts that make it possible to make a thoughtful decision rather than one based upon headlines and fear-driven speculations.

For the love of vegetables!

When I was about 4 years old I announced that I wasn't going to eat certain meats ever again. My memory of that day is that I'd had something very chewy, possibly a bit gristly, and that put me off. I don't ever remember liking the taste or texture of a lot of meat, so I made my announcement and became known as the picky eater in the family!

50+ years on I still don't eat a lot of meat, in fact I eat even less now than I did then. But I'm not  an out and out vegetarian, at least not yet. I say not yet because I keep thinking about it, not on moral grounds, but on health grounds. The book I've been reading (The China Study) presents a lot of data that points to a vegetarian diet as being the healthiest option for addressing many of the issues that arise from a modern Western diet. The data seems to be strongly in favour of a move to a more heavily plant based diet, but then the interpretation of the data may need to be questioned. That is a job for the scientific community to do, which I'm sure they have done but I have not.

Anyway, I like vegetables (with the exception of a few including the worst of them all-the brussel sprout!), so eating mainly veg is not an issue for either Anne or myself. Working out how to make it different and tasty is a bit more of a challenge, but there are lots of options, it just take a bit of time and effort. On the hand, the same could be said of anything you cook from scratch.

The other issue with a vegetarian diet is that there are very few plant based protein sources that are complete proteins (i.e. containing all the essential amino acids). That means you have to combine plant proteins in a meal in order to get the amino acids you need. It's fairly easy to do, you just combine foods from different groups that contain the missing proteins. Or, if all you re trying to do is to cut down the amount of animal protein in your diet, then you might choose to have chicken of fish just once a week and eat vegetarian the rest of the time. That would probably ensure you get what you need in your diet although it would be wise to give that a bit more thought and research.

And cooking vegetarian need not be hard or uninteresting. We made a really nice vegetable risotto using butternut squash, sweet potato, leek and yellow pepper. Add a bit of white wine, vegetable stock and sage, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and it was very tasty!

If The China Study is right, making a shift away from animal protein could help reduce the risk of many serious conditions. The current recommendation for a balanced diet is that you eat around 15% protein, most of which comes from meat in our western diet. But if you reduced that to around 5% from animal products (which would include diary as well as meat) and the rest from plant protein, then from my reading of the book you could see some positive benefits.

If you belong to that small group of people who profess not to like vegetables the perhaps you just haven't found the right combination or maybe you haven't discovered how best to cook them for your palette. Mind you, you might say the same thing to me about meat and even sprouts!

Healthy eating anyone?

In today’s food culture, many people seem to have acquired uncannily homogenous tastes. In 2010, two consumer scientists argued that the taste preferences of childhood provided a new way of thinking about the causes of obesity. They noted a “self-perpetuating cycle”: food companies push foods high in sugar, fat and salt, which means that children learn to like them, and so the companies invent ever more of these foods “that contribute to unhealthy eating habits”. The main influence on a child’s palate may no longer be a parent but a series of food manufacturers whose products – despite their illusion of infinite choice – deliver a monotonous flavour hit, quite unlike the more varied flavours of traditional cuisine.

So suggests an interesting article in the Guardian that appeared in my Facebook feed this morning. The article argues that our tastes are learnt. We are taught what to eat and so all the foods we consume are ones we have learnt to eat. There's no doubt that certain food types taste good to most people. There was an interesting TV programme last year that explored the relationship between fat and sugar in suppressing the feeling of being full amongst other things and how that affected the way we choose to eat. So it seems quite clear that even at a surface level our relationship with food is both simple-we eat what we like and avoid what we don't, but also more complex in the way "what we like" becomes normalised for us.

As a result, as the article points out, we may decide that we ought to be eating more fruit and vegetables, but we haven't actually learnt to enjoy eating them. It therefore becomes a chore. Maybe the same is true about freshly prepared food that takes time and effort to cook compared with the easy option of a ready meal or a visit to a fast food outlet.

Maybe the first decision we need to make then, when we decide it's time for a dietary change, is that rather than restricting what we can and can't eat, we are making a positive choice to explore new flavours, textures and foods. I bought a copy of a vegetarian food magazine before Christmas and finally got around to reading it yesterday while I sat having my lunch. I'm not a big fan of meat anyway, so vegetarian cooking has always been part of our diet, so it's not as if I was reading this out of curiosity or some sudden resolution to go vegetarian. The recipes certainly looked and sounded interesting, and we will definitely try some of them. The point is, rather than a chore or some desperate dive into a "healthy diet", exploring these recipes will be a bit of an adventure. Eating a meal without meat doesn't have to be torture and neither does eating a meal without a pudding or a glass of wine.

If the article is correct, then what you eat is your choice. As long as you understand the principles of nutrition, you're free to explore, to learn to enjoy new tastes and to experience healthy food rather than endure it. Perhaps we need to see losing weight as a by-product of choosing new eating and drinking habits rather than the sole purpose of shifting our diet away from large portions of high calorie food.

Making plans and achieving goals

Much to my surprise I discovered today that I'd actually achieved a few of the goals I set at the beginning of last year! I had a quick review of my journal and read my early January entry for 2015. It included the following goals:

• Get back to 14st
• Get to an 8.2 tennis rating
• Get a clinic up and running in a gym
• Grow the tennis side of things

Well, I hit 14st 3lbs, as far as I can remember I've won enough matches to get my 8.2 rating, I'm about to open a clinic at the gym and I passed my Level 2 coaching course and started coaching more tennis. So that's not bad.

Of course there were some things I didn't manage to achieve, and to be honest, I didn't really go out of my way to hit the targets I did make. They just sort of happened as I continued to work at those things. I guess had I been more intentional as they say, they might have happened sooner, but I'm not exactly chasing down these goals. However, it does make me think a little more about how I can stay focussed and maybe achieve a bit more this year. Improving my rating, for example, gets tougher now. Wins need to happen within a much shorter timescale to count and obviously have to come against better players. Put simply, you can only improve your rating by beating players at the same or a higher level. So it gets harder. You also have to have a positive win/loss percentage.

Fitness is also harder, mainly because I'm getting older and it doesn't get any easier! It's easier to get injured and fitness disappears faster the older you get. So maintaining a level of fitness is hard work, improving even harder. 

Work is very much a matter of word of mouth, but hopefully by opening the clinic that too will grow as will the tennis coaching. Which, by the way, is really good fun!

Business and fun are not just the only things for which I need a plan. I need some discipline in terms of CPD stuff and maintaining my knowledge base in the therapy world. I wish I had the kind of memory where stuff sticks, but I don't, so I need to get out my muscle cards and go through them all again. I'd like to do some work on nerve innervations, and I ought to get the research I did on entrapment of the Lateral Femoral Cutaneous Nerve put into some sort of order.

Add a few books to be read and some faith based goals too and there's quite a lot to be getting on with in 2016. I feel a list coming on!

Lesson plans and life!

Who writes lessons plans? Okay, so I know that there are plenty of teachers out there who probably do/have to write detailed plans. After all, you can't turn up in a classroom full of 8 year olds and just wing it! And I suspect that this holds true across education from Primary to Postgraduate. So why am I thinking about tit?

Well, firstly because it's part of my Level 2 coaching course. I have to produce lesson plans for the coaching sessions I do. This involves not only having to plan the theme and the delivery of the content, but also a health and safety risk assessment, equipment list and a few other things along the way. It's a useful discipline, even if a bit tedious. It makes you think about how you are going to teach some aspect of tennis and how you are going to get everyone developing their skills.

Of course the thing about coaching is that you can wing it to a certain extent, but a plan tells you where you are going. I've been thinking about how I would plan a beginners course for example. I've been trying to work out how many lessons I would run, what would I do each time, how would I build the programme so that we cover the basic skills and get the time to practice them in a game based setting. I started by trying to write down everything that I thought you would need to know in order to play tennis. That's not just the basic shots, but how you score, where to stand, making decisions about what shot to play, etc. I listed 7 basic shots, but there are least another 6 or 7 I could easily add to that list, 4 basic court positions, 6 tactical intentions and 6 basic elements of play!

Who'd have thought there was so much to think about. After all surely tennis is simply about hitting the ball over the net and in the court!

Tennis is not the only thing that needs a lesson plan. What about some of your personal goals? I had a quick look back at a list of goals I set myself a couple of years ago. Some have been done (I finally built the cupboard in the extension and the partition in the garage), some have not been done, some aren't that important.

Now I'm not suggesting that you should write out a lesson plan for each goal you would like to achieve, but you need a plan. One of my goals is to get my tennis rating down. I'd like to get to a 7.1, but that might be more than I can manage. It's not impossible, but it needs a plan. For example, the only way to achieve it is to win enough matches against players rated the same as me or higher. So I need a plan for taking part in tournaments and ratings events. I think that once you get to 8.1, the win/loss ratio might come into play, but I'm not too sure. Need to look that up. The point is there are some identifiable steps to the process of reaching the goal. Suddenly I'm reminded of David Allen's Getting Things Done, and his point that a task that takes more than one step to complete is a project.

Is the reason you and I aren't reaching some of our goals because they need to be seen as projects not tasks? To get things done David Allen talks about identifying the next physical step you need to take to move towards completing the project. Identify the wrong step, and you'll get stuck.

Setting aside tennis for a moment (it's hard, but I'll try), think about some of your unfulfilled goals. Pick one, turn it into a project and identify the next step. You can apply this to losing weight, getting fit, learning a new skill, developing your prayer life, anything at all. Rather than wishing for the end result, you can make a plan. Rather than listing all the obstacles you might just be able to tick off a single step and begin to make progress.

You will need to remember to apply all those little strategies you've come across in the past. Things like SMART targets and rewards. Remember too the stages for learning something new. I've seen this set out as:

• Unconsciously incompetent 
• Consciously incompetent 
• Consciously competent 
• Unconsciously competent

In other words, you go from not knowing what you can't do to knowing what you can't do, to being able to do it and not have to think about it. If your goal is "big" then break it down into smaller goals, make it a project with achievable steps along the way. I want to organise my study again, and the thing that stops me doing it is that there is just so much to sort out. Doing some sort of plan would definitely help get on top of that particular project.

So, whilst I get somewhat frustrated having to write out these lessons plans for my course, I'm reminded of how useful planning is and that when it's done reasonably well, it actually is more liberating than restraining. When it comes to tennis lessons, a plan gives more room for creativity, no plan pushes you back to default coaching mode and you do the same stuff over and over again because you haven't thought about what you're trying to achieve. 

The art of taking encouragement when it comes

I'm not the easiest person to encourage. I'll admit it. Sometimes it probably has a lot to do with setting the bar rather too high for myself. I've always felt a bit of an underachiever to be honest, someone who's never quite fulfilled their potential. There have been the odd glimpses of what might be, but never a prolonged period of recognisable success. At least not form where I stand.

So I have to work quite hard at taking encouragement. I have to hold back the desire the say, "Yes, but..." all the time, qualifying the encouragement with a list of things that could have been better or things that didn't really work. And of course the downside to struggling with receiving positive comments is that you tend to take criticism hard too.

Anyway, psychology apart, it's been a pretty good weekend for encouragement. For those theologically minded, and who share a faith based perspective, I need to tell you that on Friday I wrote a simple prayer in my journal that closed with a simple request: Lord, send a little encouragement my way. To be honest I promptly forgot all about it until I sat down to write in my journal this morning after a hectic weekend of training and a little bit of coaching. It was as I sat, journal open in front of me, that I read and remembered the prayer. So how was the weekend?

Well, rather good, as I said. It started well on Friday with a really positive tennis lesson with my coach, and then went well through Saturday and Sunday on my coaching course, culminating in a very positive assessment of my coaching lesson on the Sunday afternoon. A quick check of the 'phone and I've picked up a bit of coaching, covering for someone for a couple of weeks while they are away and the day ended with an hour or so of coaching a mother and son. And I get paid to do it!

Now lots of faith oriented friends will respond to this from a faith perspective and that's okay. I do too. But there's also a lesson about the simplicity of taking hold of encouragement and not seeing the negatives all the time. I really do struggle to do that. Ask Anne, she'll tell how hard it to encourage me! But I'm trying.

This weekend has been great because as a Christian I can see a direct answer to a simple prayer. But faith is far from simplistic, and I'm not about to reduce my faith to some slot-machine game of pray, believe, receive as if you're trying to get three cherries in a row.

Even if you don't consider yourself a person of faith, you can reflect on how you deal with the good and the bad that comes your way. Do you let the negative weigh you down all the time, or do you look for the positives?

I'll have bad days, bad weeks even. After all I'm in a tournament again soon! But today, I'm just going to remember the encouragement and feed on that for a while.

Another training course!

So today I started my Level 2 tennis coaching course. I sometimes wonder about my sanity! Every time I embark on a new course I wonder why I do it. I hear myself saying I'm too old, it's too stressful, I don't like having to role play or pretend I'm a personality type that I'm not. I find being assessed incredibly stressful. Put me on a court with a group of beginners and no-one looking over my shoulder and I'm okay. Even Anne was impressed with the way I get the moving and hitting balls. But put me on a court with an assessor looking over my shoulder and I melt!

And yet I still do it. I've done more courses with practical assessments in the last three years than I ever done in my life! First Aid, coaching, Personal Training, and of course the Sports and Remedial Massage qualification.

Each time I have to gear myself up to get through it all. The paperwork looks daunting and the assignments seem to be the best way to empty my mind of anything useful in double quick time.

Hopefully, in a month's time, I will have finished this course and got my level 2. But then you start thinking about the next level or the next skill. I'm not sure I will go beyond level 2, but I may need to in order to do what I want to do in building community tennis programmes. At least I have the argument that I've not reached a higher enough rating to qualify for level 3, but there's a way round that called the play test, so I may have no excuse!

So I better knuckle down and do my paperwork, sort out the appropriate answers and just get on with it. I've already learnt some useful things today, I just hope my brain is able to store and retrieve them over them next few weeks when I need them.

A Conversation about a Grinder!

Well, I decided to take the plunge and buy myself a wet stone grinder. I've been looking at them wistfully for a few years and could neither afford or justify the top end systems that are out there. But a simple bench grinder, while cheap, is not necessarily a good option. It's really easy to get too much heat into the metal of a tool and therefore render it useless unless you can anneal it again.

So a wet grinding system seemed a good idea and today I ordered the one I like the loo of and the reviews I've read about it. The later being more important than the former for me, but not apparently for some.

How do I know this? I know because of a conversation I had with the supplier this afternoon. Here's the grinder I've ordered.

Looks nice doesn't it. It comes with some jigs for different tools and I think there are other jigs you can buy. But back to the conversation. The 'phone rings and a very polite rep on the other end explains to me that the colour has changed. It is the same machine but now comes in orange. Orange! Oh no, I'll have to change the whole colour scheme of my workshop. Or at least that's what I said to the rep.

"You'd be surprised," he said, "some people cancel their order when the find out.

Really!

Are you actually telling me that the colour of a grinder is the most important thing to consider when buying one. No, I couldn't believe it either. Needless to say I haven't cancelled my order and I'm looking forward to the arrival of my orange grinder. I suspect the colour won't affect the performance unless it turns out to be a banana. (If you've never seen Red Dwarf, you won't get the reference, but don't worry you can probably watch the box set online somewhere!)

Value for money in education. A few thoughts from an eternal student!

I was reading the article on the BBC website about tuition fees and student responses to the question of value for money. It got me thinking, at least for a short time, about how you might actually measure value for money for a degree and whether students are actually best placed to make a judgement on the issue. That might sound a bit patronising, it isn't intended to be.

Years ago I read Jim Collin's book Good to Great, and the monograph that followed that focussed on non-profit organisations. I heard him speak a couple of times and was struck by by a number of things he said. From what I recall I think he would remind us that if we're going to measure value for money with respect to something that is non-profit then we will need to think very carefully about the measures we use. You can't equate a degree course with a new car or a holiday. Value for money in education is much more complex that a simple matter of money in and money out. Education is not a business, don't let anyone suggest otherwise.

That doesn't mean that good practice has no place in education, but I worry that some degree courses could disappear simply because there's little chance that they will lead to high paid job at the end. Anyway, back to the measures.

Interestingly students who studies humanities rated their courses lower in general that those who did engineering and science. I wonder why. Could it be that fresh from school or college, where they would have experienced very similar contact time with tutors across all subjects, they now face very different levels of contact depending on the type of subject they are studying. I have done a science degree, a humanities degree and a masters degree. I've also squeezed in a professional BTech programme and a few diplomas along the way.

My first degree was in science and a long time ago! We had practicals, maybe as much as 18 hours a week, and around 11 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials. That comes to around 30/32 hours contact time. I can't remember the schedule for my second degree in theology, but the contact time was less, maybe around 12/15 hours. By the time I did my masters it was down to three seminars a week, each one about 1.25 hours long, and these were mostly student lead. Of course there were opportunities to talk with tutors and discuss essays and dissertations, but I'm just thinking about scheduled contact time.

My point is simple, contact time varies from subject to subject and with level of qualification too. If you only use contact hours as a measure then a degree in English might seem less good value that a degree in Chemistry but that is almost certainly not the case. That would sit neatly with the general distribution of the analysis in the article (44% good value for humanities compared to 66% for science and engineering).

Then there's the issue of student expectations. How well prepared for individual study are they when they reach university or college? Perhaps, as part of the survey, they should be asked how much time they spent in the library on average a week and how much personal study time did they set aside? When I went to university in the 70's I read a short book about studying. I don't recall either the title or the author but I do remember one principle. The book suggested that you worked on a simple 40 hour week. Subtracting the number of direct contact hours, lectures, seminars, practical etc, that gave you the average amount of personal study time you would need to complete the course to a reasonable level. It quickly becomes obvious that a practical heavy subject therefore requires less personal study time than a subject that has only lectures and seminars. If you need to read books and articles, that by its nature is not a contact activity. When I did my MA I was reading the equivalent of a 250 page book a day, 5 days a week for almost a year. I wrote in excess of 50,000 words. It simply doesn't compare with the science I studied first time around.

So, perhaps there is a much better way to measure value for money by asking better questions to get to the heart of how well a course met or changed a student's expectations of the experience in higher education. Where is the measure of value added to a student's life? What have they learnt that has changed their view of the world and the contribution they could make? Or is all to be reduced to some economic assessment of future earnings? When you're looking for value in education, remember that education has an innate value that is hard to measure and isn't about earning potential.

Network down. Is life ending as we know it?

So one of our mobile communications networks suffered a few problems over the weekend and the network wasn't available to everyone for some part of a day. Calls for compensation and shouts of annoyance at the outrageous suggestion that turning one's mobile device off and on again might solve the problem were amongst the angst ridden cries of the mobile masses. Well at least some of them.

So how did we actually manage before we bought into the mobile culture? How did we get from one place to another, find an address, arrange to meet someone or communicate with out friends in the dark days before wireless communication became the norm? Well, we bought maps, asked for directions, prearranged times and made the effort to turn up on time.

Of course mobile 'phones are great. They enable us to stay in touch and check in with each other easily and helpfully. I went to visit a family recently about a funeral and when I arrived in the correct street discovered I didn't have the house number. My synchronised diaries across 'phone, Mac and iPad hadn't actually synchronised (turning my MacBook off and on fixes this problem every time!), and it was great to be able to call the Funeral directors and ask for the house number. So I'm not arguing against the mobile world.

On the other hand, life isn't going to fall into some sort of dark, scary abyss just because O2 or EE or Three isn't working for a while. Living without your 'phone isn't going to make all your friends and family forget who you are just because your Facebook status hasn't been updated in the last two hours.

We need some perspective. We need a more rational response. We need to turn our devices off and on again or just off, at least for a little while. If that doesn't fix things, then the problem might be a bit more serious. Perhaps the world has ended, perhaps the sky has fallen in. If that has happened, a lack of mobile reception might be the least of your worries!

Ooh, I've just heard my 'phone ping. A text message, must dash and check who's trying to get my attention!!

Soap and shaving!

When I was about 19 years old I decided to grow a beard. The reasoning was very simple. It was around the summer at the end of my first year at University. It wasn't just a student thing, but a response to seeing a photograph that made it look like I hadn't shaved for a day when I'd shaved a few hours earlier!

It seemed pointless going to all that effort to scrape the hair from my face if it didn't really show, so I let it grow instead. Over the years it got neater as I moved from scissors and a comb to a proper beard trimmer! Occasionally the beard disappeared, but never for long. Shaving was just too much effort.

Then, about 6 years ago I decided to try a variation and drop the full beard in favour of a goatee style. A new era of shaving began. Now, given that it had been over 30 years since I'd dragged a sharp blade across my skin, it was almost an all-new experience trying to figure out what to buy and where to get it. The opportunity of the internet presented me with a flurry of new possibilities for reducing my sensitive epidermis to a raw but smooth finish. I even bought a book!

I opted for a wet shave solution because I find the process somewhat therapeutic and relaxing, as long as it's not a last minute thing. So I set about buying a nice soap, a nice brush and most importantly a nice razor. This is where the advertising starts and stops! Meet The Shaving Shack.

It's the internet equivalent of some old-fashioned high street shop where you can browse, albeit electronically, through some amazing shaving tackle and accessories. Who knew you could buy a drip-stand for your brush in a variety of styles and colours, or that there were so many soaps and creams, lotions and potions to try.

Dragging a sharp blade across tender skin in a half-asleep state everyday is a necessity rather than a joy, so why not try and add a little refinement with something called Colonel Conk in a variety of flavours from lime to almond, whipped into a rich lather in a hand-turned beech shaving bowl! My preference is a will fat soap that produces a rich lather when the water is nice and hot.

Or you could try a nice cut-throat razor, but remember to stock up on styptic to stem the blood loss!

If you're only approach to shaving products is to grab the 5-bladed, head-swivelling, celebrity endorsed products on offer in your local supermarket then why not take a moment to check out the website and treat yourself. Or drop less than subtle hints given that Father's Day is looming in a couple of months time. You might find you begin to enjoy the experience of shaving rather than simply enduring it.

As for me, well I'm fortunate that I don't have to shave everyday to do what I do. Perhaps if I did I might have gone back to a full beard by now!!

Ah, the election and all the fun of the fair!

Do we really have four more weeks of electioneering to go! Perhaps it should be only four more weeks given that this campaign seems to have been running for a year now. I thought yesterday was a fairly low point as the day began with a government spokesperson failing to correct the misrepresentation of SATS as exams that must be passed rather than assessments to support progress. All the talk about resits just goes to reinforce the idea that it's possible to fail the assessment. As I understood it SATs were never intended to do that, but politicking requires a stick with which to beat the educators and SATS are as good a stick as any.

Later in the day, having switched from TV news to the radio, I heard a vox pops about the new requirement to check passports for people leaving the country via ferry and international railway termini. Apparently, according to many of the people interviewed, getting the wrong end of the stick is also a national pastime. How exactly checking a passport as you leave the country is going to stop "all these immigrants" entering the country has me confused, but that seemed to be the popular view. Perhaps we've become so confused over the whole immigration issue that we really don't know whether we're coming or going.

And then today I wake up to Conservative claims that the Labour party will be forced to do a deal with the SNP to remove Trident in order to form a government if they have to form a coalition with them, and that is somehow a stab in the back to nation. In all the confusion I'd clearly forgotten that to be antinuclear weaponry was to be unpatriotic! How sad that it's impossible to love your nation unless it has the capability of annihilating another country and doing significant long-term damage to the ecosystem in the process.

The reason this makes me angry and frustrated is because I think there's a fundamental issue being ignored in the kick-about of the debates and interviews. It's difficult to argue with the facts and figures that are presented about how well the economy seems to be doing now compared to 5 years ago. I know the numbers get massaged to show things in the best possible light, but even I would accept that things are in better shape as a whole. But someone needs to ask about the price that has been paid and by whom it has been paid to get us to this point.

I believe that the poorest in our communities have paid the biggest price. It's hard to argue against that when you have falling tax rates for the very richest and politicians who seem to run scared of the financial sector and big business. Unpaid corporation tax still outstrips benefit fraud by an enormous margin. Minimal wage rises in both the public and private sector have left many workers in a worse position than they were 5 years ago whereas little seems to have changed for CEO's of large companies. Bonuses are still paid while staff are made redundant.

Those on the right of politics would have us believe that paying tax is a bad thing. At least that's the way it looks when we hear rumours of reducing higher rate tax. Increasing the personal allowance to £12000 sounds good when you can put a figure on the number of people who won't be paying tax because of that. But it still means that some people are earning less than £12k a year. Dropping 5% of the highest rate of tax might only affect a small number of people, but I'm willing to bet it means more than £8 a week going into their pockets compared to the low end of the income scale.

Voting for me has always been about ideology and not personal gain. If paying more tax lifts more people out of poverty, provides a better healthcare system, and a better education system, then why would you not want to do that?

I'm sure there will be much more irritating and annoying posturing before polling day. I just hope enough people will see through it and not be swayed by those campaigners who want to make the election only about a referendum on Europe or immigration and not about the next 5 years of government.

Enough said!

Club Therapist

In about three weeks time the rugby season comes to an end and I'll have completed my first year as the therapist for a local lower league rugby club. We have one league match left and the possibility of three cup matches, the first this weekend.

We've had a good season. An understatement given that the team got promoted last year losing only one game and so far this season they haven't lost a league game. That's two seasons without losing a home game, quite an achievement. In fact the goal at the start of the season was simply to do enough to stay in the league.

I can't take any credit for the team's performance, although given the amount of tape I've put around ankles, thumbs, shoulders and knees, I made my own contribution!

I've really enjoyed the season. I've learnt a lot, dealt with a few situations I've not come across before. I've been able to apply my skills as a therapist and learn some new ones. I've watched nervously from the sidelines as the team has had to defend its line and shared the frustration of players and spectators alike when passes haven't gone to hand or scoring opportunities have been lost.

Not everyone would want to spend their time standing in the wind and rain of a cold and wet winter Saturday afternoon, giving their time either for free or for a fairly nominal fee. Clubs at this level rarely have the financial resources to offer a competitive rate. On the other hand, it's a great way to extend your skills. If you can afford to do it, then I'd say give it a go. I got involved by being asked by the new club coach whom I'd met previously.

After the end of the season the team has a couple of months off and then pre-season training starts in July. Hopefully, if I'm involved with the pre-season training, we will be able to do some work that might help reduce some injury risks. I might even do some fitness work or functional movement stuff with them if I get the chance.

And who knows where it might lead. Perhaps in a couple of years time I'll actually be making a reasonable living out of it all!!

Setting a new goal

So, yesterday I missed my 10k step goal ending a run of 188 consecutive days. The reasons were simple enough: we travelled to Nottingham for a celebration lunch and I also managed to pop my calf muscle again while coaching in the morning. Taking these two together, I decided to rest my leg and forgo my target for the day.

Now, once the calf strain is better, I need to work out whether to return to focussing on 10k or setting a different daily goal. As you know, I received an activity monitor for Christmas, the Polar Loop, and I could focus my attention on hitting my activity goal every day rather than the step challenge. The interesting this is the difference between the two.

Generally speaking, if I play tennis for an hour or so or do some interval training for an hour, I usually hit my activity goal but not my steps goal. On the other hand, I can go out and walk and hit my step goal but miss my activity goal. I think it will be interesting for a while to focus on the daily activity goal as measured by the Loop, and thereby build a picture of what the impact of doing is likely to be. As you've probably already guessed if you read some of my ramblings about health and exercise, the data fascinates me and can be part of the motivation for getting up and moving in the first place. 

So I think I'll go for activity for a while, and se how the data stacks up!

Another active day!

This is my activity report for today.

Surely I'm allowed one inactivity stamp after such an active day!

The waiting game

I decided to pick up the story of David in the Old Testament at 2Sam. 3 this morning. It begins like this:

That was the beginning of a long war between those who were loyal to Saul and those who were loyal to David.

How long, I don't know, but it had already been quite a long time since David had been anointed as Saul's successor and still he wasn't fully established as king. That got me thinking about a few other stories in the Old Testament.

Abraham, for instance, was around 75 when God called him and told him he would be the father of many nations. Yet it would be another 25 years before Issac was born. Joseph spent something like 13 years in prison and Isaiah spoke about things over 700 years into the future. Things he probably longed to see but would never do so.

So, how long is long enough to wait for God to fulfil a promise? Days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries?

It wasn't an epiphany this morning, just a reminder that things can take longer than we'd like them to, and that God moves at his pace and not ours. There are times when I wonder why I'm where I am doing what I'm doing. Days turn into weeks and months with no apparent progress and then all of a sudden something happens and God's hand is revealed. Learning to live with the wait is quite possibly the hardest part of being a disciple.