....................

Being an ONS interviewer for nearly ten years has taught me
a thing or two about respondents and their wily ways. I shall try to impart to
you some of this valuable knowledge, as I’m sure it will come in useful.

If you find that over the course of say three or four visits
to an address that a) exactly the same lights are on day and night, b) the car
is in exactly the same place, c) discernable through the glass of the door is a
nice big pile of letters that does not diminish, or d) all of the above, you
can be pretty sure that the residents are away. In this case, you call on the
nearest neighbour, who is guaranteed to come to the door with a bright smile
and tell you exactly how long they are away for and probably where they’ve gone
and why. Recently I received the interesting information that, “They’re away
until March, they’ve gone to Portugal to sell their house”. People are so
helpful. This tells me a) that they are pretty well off and b) that the coast
is clear for the next month, mwahaha. Er, sorry, I mean it tells me that I
should not bother to call back for the rest of the field period (apart from a
quick glance to see if the car’s moved).

Working at some distance from your home (let’s say twenty
miles), you call at an address several times before you catch the respondent at
home, then, one day, you find them at home and willing to give you an
appointment (usually for the most inconvenient time possible). You hand them a
nice ONS appointment card and wander towards your car with a sappy smile plastered
across your face. You turn up for your appointment at the allotted time (having
fought your way through blizzards and traffic jams and past crawling tractors,
when you should really be at your kid’s parents’ evening) only to find light
on, car in drive, curtains closed, telly glow flashing through the gap and
apparently nobody at home. Your ready smile fades a little under the inch of
snow that has gathered on your eyebrows while you’ve been knocking at the door.
Never mind, they probably haven’t heard you. You go back to your car and try
the phone number that they so kindly supplied, only to find that it’s
unobtainable. Silly you, you must have written it down wrong.  You will call back many times over the next couple
of weeks and one day you may catch them again. There is a good chance, at this
point, that they will tell you that they are not really interested. You will
walk back to your car with sagging shoulders and a lonely tear trickling down
your cheek (or if you’re anything like me, your silent mouthings as you walk
away will turn the air blue).

As we get older, we shall almost certainly find that our
children (if we are lucky enough to be blessed with a brood of the little
angels) will turn into angry and despotic monsters, who, while resenting our
very existence and cursing our continued good health, will also become fiercely
protective of us and will insist on vetting everyone who wishes to have contact
with us. I once called on one of my addresses to find a charming and sprightly
ninety-five year old gentleman willing to do the housing interview there and
then. We had a lovely chat, he answered all my questions perfectly capably and
afterwards showed me some family snaps. He then happily made a surveyor’s
appointment and I left, wishing him all the best. A few weeks later (after the
surveyor had made his visit) I had a phone call from the field office telling
me that they had had an irate call from the gentleman’s daughter, saying that I
should not have interviewed him without asking her first. Well, sadly for her,
she was too late to stop my fiendish plan!

Sometimes you have to take your interviews where you can,
without care for your personal safety or consideration for basic levels of
hygiene. One of my favourite interviews is still the one conducted under difficult
circumstances in a house on Canvey Island. The respondent was helpful and
pleasant on contact, but wished to leave the interview for the time being as
her house was a bit of a mess, as she’d just moved in. I waited until the end
of the field period to call back and she made an appointment for a day or so
later (about two weeks after I first called). When I arrived, the lady (a
single mum with four or five children) invited me in, but said that the only
way we would be able to do the interview was if I sat on the stairs and she
stood in the hall. I could see that she had a point, as every other room was
filled with stuff – furniture mainly, piled from floor to ceiling. The stairs
were only barely accessible, with bits and pieces piled on either side. I
conducted the interview squatting on the stairs, hardly daring to move for fear
of dislodging something, with a delightful two year old sitting on my lap
helping me by pressing the keys on my laptop. The lady had sent the family rottweiler
upstairs after he broke a glass by wagging his tail in the hall, and he came
down to ‘help’ too, at various points during the interview - help mainly
consisting of licking my right ear. At some points the grown up daughter and
her boyfriend leaned over the banister to see what was going on and to
contribute if needed. They were good-naturedly embarrassed when they dropped
cigarette ash on my head. During the course of the interview, I had to ask when
the family had moved in; the lady replied quite casually, “Last June”.  My survey month was November!

Just remember folks, it takes all sorts to make a world, and
we intrepid interviewers thoroughly enjoy meeting a random, representative
sample of most of them.

Oh Boris!

Bit of a busy week: charging too and from Frinton in order to interview the last of my octogenarians; chasing shadows in some of the less salubrious areas of Basildon ("There are less salubrious areas in Basildon?" I hear you ask - hard to believe, I know); hanging about in town waiting for the kids to get their free Subways as the new shop opened to huge crowds of teenagers; and yesterday celebrating Will's half century at the Balti with a large chunk of the family. Only now have I found the time to write that promised blog.

It's nearly a week since we started out for Southampton to take up Virgin Radio's kind invitation to its fifteenth birthday party aboard the Independence of the Seas (the world's biggest cruise ship). Kevin won a competition on their website for an overnight stay on the ship with a Scouting for Girls gig in the afternoon and a party in the evening and all the free food and booze we could consume in between! There were four tickets, so we decided to take our best friends, Na and Steve, Na because she's always good company, and Steve because we knew he'd do full justice to the free alcohol!

We met Na and Steve near the dock in Southampton and queued for some time for a car parking space. After that it all went incredibly smoothely. It was just like going through customs at the airport to get aboard the ship - we had to get our bags x-rayed, show our passports and then walk down long corridors to get to the ship. We were allocated staterooms on the sixth floor, not far from each other on the same side of the ship (port, I think, me hearties, arrrr!). I was delighted to find that we were overlooking the water, not the dock, which gave us brilliant views of all the passing boats and ships tied up on the other side of the estuary. The staterooms were nicely decorated and very comfortable.

When we started to explore, we weren't sure whether everything was really free, so we tentatively asked for some orange juice from one of the deck bars. They gave us rather strange looks (everyone else was already on cocktails at this point), but handed over the drinks and didn't ask for any money. After that we had lunch in one of the many restaurants and proceeded to explore further (ignoring the shops where we would have had to pay - £45-£95 for a shave!), finding a coffee bar and a Ben and Jerry's shop among other things. By about half past four, Kevin and Steve were ready for their first alcoholic drink and found a space on the upper deck from which we could view the Scouting for Girls gig at five. They then proceeded to start the task of drinking the ship dry and Na and I went for a wander around the decks.

We had an excellent view when the band came on, they were on the deck below us, on a stage in the middle of one of the swimming pools. It was a great gig, not least because everyone was so happy to be on the ship and enjoying the free hospitality. The band were great, though, they really grabbed the audience, and at the end they all dived into the pool to the delight of the watching crowds. While they were playing, the QE II went past, looking quite puny in comparison to our big monster! I spent most of the gig taking photos and calling Jenny so she could hear various songs. When a helicopter came over the film the goings on, I held up the camera to take a picture of it and forgot that I had a bottle of Bud in my hand, and splashed it all down my back! Idiot!

We went back to our staterooms after the gig and showered (they even had a shampoo dispenser in the shower - oooh!) and got changed for the party (Na and Steve had a nap, which gave us time to go up and get in a couple of pina coladas (very seventies bad novelty song, I know) while we were waiting for them. When they came up, we set off to the Virgin Radio party in the Egyptian-themed Pyramid Lounge. The food was brilliant and Kevin and Steve managed to nab a poor waiter to keep bringing them drinks all evening. They were having pints and trying as many cocktails as they could think of the names of and I was on the tequila, I think Na was sneakily on half pints (I'm glad we took Steve or we'd never have had our money's worth!).

We were looking around for members of Scouting for Girls, as Jenny wanted some pictures, and Na pointed out one of the guitarists (several times before I actually spotted him). We were at the bar and Na was listening to a bloke behind us talking to what she deduced was a fan, and from this she decided that the man was in the band. He came up next to me and I asked if he was in the band. He said no, but had a nice conversation with us about the kids etc and then we went off. Later I heard someone introducing him as Joel. I was seething, I had just had a chat with a DJ that I find completely irritating! And more annoyingly he was a really nice bloke! I accosted him later (a lot more drunk by then) and asked him if he was Joel of JK and Joel ('asked' is a bit strong, perhaps, burbled incoherently might be nearer the mark) He said he was, asked my name and gave me a kiss on the cheek - I really couldn't stop him, James, it's not my fault!

Kevin managed to find the lead singer of Scouting for Girls and brought him over to us in the bar. Of course, Steve immediately decided that he needed to get him to sit on his lap, just to annoy Jenny - poor boy, he didn't have any say in the matter. Several photos (and a conversation with Jenny's voicemail) later, he effected an escape. But we had the pictures, so we let him go.

When the party was winding down (Tony Hadley had just finished singing along to 'Gold' - enough was enough) we went off in search of pastures new. We found a bar with a load of different flavours of Absolut and I got an orange one, and we had a wander through the casino (which was closed because the ship wasn't at sea). Then we came to a salsa bar where we got some great cocktails called mojitos (which, in my ignorance I'd never heard of before). I took an immediate liking to the delicious mintiness and, if events hadn't overtaken us, I believe I should have done some serious damage to my liver!

There was rumoured to be karaoke in the On Air Lounge at eleven fifteen, so we made our way slowly and meanderingly in that direction. There was a bit of a queue to put your name down (all done on computers) and I'm not sure Steve managed to get to the front (he was contemplating 'I'm on My Way' by The Proclaimers, with Kevin, but I don't think they had it). I shan't go into why, at this point in the proceedings (about one o'clock in the morning), we went off in search of coffee and cookies, and sobered up pretty quickly, but those at the party at our house will know (don't worry, nothing drastic, as it turns out)!

Anyway, I reckon it was no bad thing to finish the evening relatively early, as we all had a long drive home the next day. And judging by the state of some of the people we saw in the morning, the festivities must have gone on all night!

We had to be off the boat by nine-thirty in the morning, so we went for breakfast at eight. There was a good variety of food, but I have to say I have had better breakfasts. Still, can't grumble, it was all free!

On Saturday afternoon, Na and I had gone back to her stateroom to get a jacket and had decided to walk up the stairs from the sixth floor to the eleventh. On our way up we had a bit of a nose around on each floor and discovered a library and an internet room full of computers. It was a lovely afternoon, but of course there was one geek with his (naturally it was a he) nose stuck to the computer screen! You missed a lot travelling by lift, as there were various works of art all the way up the stairs. I don't think we got to see a half of what the ship had to offer (for instance a climbing wall, a putting green and a surfing pool), but what we saw was absolutely amazing. We all loved every minute of it. I only wish I had a spare few grand so that I could go for a proper cruise! All donations gratefully accepted!

About time I did another one of these, I reckon. Not that I have anything much to say, but then what do you expect?

Girlie road trip to Coventry last week with my friend Anna, to visit Lynda (of Kathleen and Lynda - twins from Colchester High School) - was fun. Haven’t seen Lyn for about twenty years, so it was good to catch up. Anna and I took the girlie thing a bit far by staying awake talking till four in the morning, haven’t quite recovered yet.

We went to see Coventry Cathedral the next day, and found it quite spectacular. The scale is mighty impressive, and the stained glass is amazing. Mind you, I did prefer the look and feeling of the ruins of the old, bombed out cathedral, much more calm and relaxing. James had texted me telling me to look out for a statue of a man trying to get a signal on his mobile between the cathedral and the university. Idiot! I think he’s actually holding up a scroll, but it does look a bit like he’s trying to get a signal.

Just had a good weekend, out on a major piss up on Saturday night with four of the kids and their mates (you know you’re getting old...). It was good to see Ashley and Michael, James’s best mates, out at the same time. Michael is seriously deranged, by the way!

Went to the Queen’s Head at the quay first, then onto the Carpenter’s till about half one, then Smithy (local streaker and Kayleigh’s dad - sorry Kayleigh! No, I really am!) turned up and ordered us back to his. Had a couple of drinks round there, then came home so that James and Simon could have their usual debate about films (Disney films and sad bits in films this time) and crawled to bed about three.

I think I’d been asleep for a while when I was woken up by a shadowy figure holding a glowing phone, standing by the bed. "Aaaargh!" you may say - "Scary!" Well, no, I could see by the silhouette of his afro, that it was only Louis sleep walking. He stumbled out, leaving the door open and disappeared. Apparently he went into James’s room too. He told James and Ashley that he was looking for the loo. I hope he found it before he got to our room!! No evidence to the contrary so far, I’m pleased to say. Kevin just snored on...

James is still lingering about, though he’s supposed to have gone back to work on Monday. His father persuaded him to stay another night because of the trains being full from the Cardiff game on Sunday, and I just think he couldn’t be bothered to go back, so he’s skiving work for another day. Speaking of which, I must get a move on and go to work myself, the good people of South Benfleet won’t wait forever (bless em).

I am quite annoyed at the moment (what's new, I hear you ask), as Stuart informed me that his Spanish teacher has just given back his exercise book after several weeks of making him believe that he had lost it. He was given an after school detention before last half term for having six strikes on his uniform card. One of these strikes was for forgetting his Spanish exercise book.

I phoned the school this morning and the teacher who organizes the detentions phoned me back just now. She was of the opinion that, because he had had nine strikes in all on his card last half term, this one was immaterial. I was obviously quite goaded by this, and told her that Stu probably wouldn't have got the other three strikes if he hadn't been disheartened by getting a detention, and thought that nothing mattered any more (hah!). I then reeled off all the other beefs that I have with the school, some many years old and festering. She has said that she will get Stu's head of year to phone me back. And a lot of good that will do.

I made the mistake of letting the word 'bloody' slip out during one of my sentences (oooh naughty!) and she asked me not to swear at her! I love being put down by teachers at the age of forty-six! I did kindly inform her that I was not swearing AT her, merely swearing in her presence. She offered to get Stuart's Spanish teacher to 'speak' to him - not apologize, you will note! I, of course demanded an apology. What I actually want is to get that hour back for Stuart, but I'm not sure how it could be done.

I'm sure you will be eager to hear some of my other grievances against the Plume School? You won't? Too bad!

My main ongoing annoyance is that they expect you to phone in on the morning that a child is ill. I have explained many times that my kids don't play truant, and that if they are off school it is because they are ill (or pretending to be, but I don't say that). I tell them that they should treat the children as individuals, and know the ones who are likely to be playing truant. They never agree with me and spout some crap about it being for my own good, so that I know if my child has not arrived at school. That's all very fine (if bollocks), but I then inform them that on more than one occasion when my kids have been late, the school has phoned me and scared me by saying that my child is not at school, then not phoned me back when they are subsequently found to be there. Very caring, I must say!

Another major irritation is all the bogus unauthorized absences that Rosie's teacher has given her. This has never been looked into and remains on her record. So, when I requested a term time holiday last October (in good time for the first time in my life!) and they refused to authorize it and we still went, I was pretty miffed that all three kids had the week marked as unauthorized absences. With the apparent rise of truancy, you'd think that the school would be more mindful of its statistics! Some of the people who asked for that week off were given permission. What better reasons could they have had than, "We've already paid for it", "We're going with friends" and "We didn't know about the stupid new rule when we applied and you didn't reply to the request till a few days before we were due to go on holiday, which is about five weeks after we applied!"?

Other issues that I have with the school (in brief) are: over zealous uniform police (especially Mr Hill); too much homework; rude and disrespectful teachers; changing of the school start time to eight-thirty (possibly illegal); changing lunchtime from twelve to one o'clock (thus making the kids wait an extra hour and a half for their grub!); being too busy clamping down on poxy uniforms to properly address bullying.

And that's only what annoys me about my kids' secondary school, don't get me started on All Saints! I'm just relieved that Ben is the last one there, and that he leaves in July. I bet you are, too, or the next blog might have been twice as long!

Lately I have been working on the Omnibus Survey (no, nothing to do with public transport). It's a kind of mish-mash of questions on all sorts of subjects, such as internet use, road-pricing, smoking, contraception - get the idea? Anyway, for the last couple of months there's been a section on quality of life, for over 65s only. It's asked on behalf of a research department at the University of London. Here is a little taster of some of the questions they expect me to ask the elderly:

"How afraid are you of dying?"

"How afraid are you that you won't have any control over your death?"

"How afraid are you that you will be in pain when you die?"

Well, as you can imagine, I'm not over-keen on asking these questions. One man refused to answer them, which made me feel really guilty. Most people have been pretty OK about them, surprisingly, probably because I try to make a bit of a joke of it.

I've been trying to work out what use these questions would be to a researcher, though. One man suggested that it could be to do with euthanasia. If so, I think that's a bit cheeky, using old people to get statistics on the subject without stating their purpose.

I keep putting comments in the feedback part of the admin block saying that these questions are too intrusive, but I get the impression that this falls on deaf ears - the office staff don't have to go out and ask the questions, after all, do they?

Don't get me wrong, I've asked a few personal questions before, without so much as flinching. I've asked people what time they are usually at home, closely followed by questions about their antiques and collectables and how much they're worth (pretty dodgy!). I've asked what sort of contraception people use, whether they've been diagnosed with HIV, what their sexual orientation is, how many sexual partners they've had in the last year. I've asked for details about people's credit cards, their loans, how they spent their loans, how much their cars cost. I've asked parents whether their kids are often accused of lying, cheating and stealing, and dozens of questions about their kids' hang-ups and neuroses. I've asked the kids the same questions. I've asked intricate details about people's health, whether they have a problem with bowel or bladder control, whether they have any trouble washing themselves or going to the loo. I've asked for a list of every alcoholic drink people have had over a year.

You have to be fairly brazen to do my job, a kind of friendly nosiness helps too, and most importantly, you must be genuinely interested in peoples' lives and let them know that you are, or they won't answer anything.

It's not that I'm scared of dying myself (except for a while just after turning 40, when every little ailment seemed likely to be terminal). I wonder if I'm over-reacting? I think the problem that I have with these questions is not that they are personal or intrusive, but that I can't see the point to them. I am uncomfortable with the concept of euthanasia, but at least that would have a point. If that's not what they are about, then it feels as if the University of London is just using me to torment old folk!

I think I'm going to have do some research of my own and get back to you...

No, I haven't been busted for drug use, but I was stopped for speeding! I had a really good excuse, too. I was at my cousin Patrick's wedding (good day, nice to catch up with all the rellies) and we were just leaving when Hugh and Maureen said that they couldn't get a taxi until twelve o'clock and that the venue (Hylands House) would have to chuck them out before that. I couldn't fit everyone in the car, so I said I'd take them to the station to find a taxi and drop Duncan off at his hotel on the way. I knew that if I was too long, Anna, Dave and my mum would be cast out into the freezing night, so I wellied it a bit. It didn't do me any good, because it takes ages for them to write out a speeding ticket, so I was no further forward!

They stopped me in London Road, near the church where the wedding had been (I'm sure there's some sort of irony there). They had hairdryers and weren't afraid to use them (well it was a cold night). I was resigned, but jolly, because there's no point in getting on the wrong side of them and getting locked up for the night. When I realised that my sob story was wasted on them (hard-hearted fiends!), I tried a different tack, to whit: "Did you calibrate your guns before you started to use them?". "Oh, yes," they said "we always do that, the Kent Police have had some trouble in that direction, but we're meticulous." (Damn!) "Oh, good," I said, "I was just checking that you were doing your job properly, I wasn't trying to wriggle out of my fine!"

So they finished up the paperwork (£60 fine and three points) and sent me on my merry way. I did kind of forget that they were there on the way back and was doing thirty-five as I approached them, but then I slowed down and Duncan said, "Give them a wave." So I did and he said that they'd both waved back - phew! Duncan said that the funniest thing was how Hugh and Maureen were ranting while I was getting booked. Mind you good old Hugh gave me the £60, saying that I wouldn't have been on that road if I hadn't been doing them a favour. That's true, but he didn't ask me to speed, so it was more than I had any right to expect.

When I got back to Hylands House, the remaining guests had, indeed, been slung out into the cold (quite unnecessarily, I thought, as they'd given the oldies a couple of chairs, so they couldn't have gone until they got the chairs back, anyway).

What annoyed me ever so slightly was that the police didn't breathalize me, I reckon I would only have been dangerous speeding at that time of night if I was drunk, so they didn't do their job very well after all!

All this after making the effort to go to a policeman's wedding - there's no justice in the world!

On Sunday my mum, Stuart, Ben, Callum and I went for a trip on Richard's motor boat. It's fairly large with a wheelhouse, small cabin and two showers (so I'm told)! Stuart and Ben and my mum have been on it before, but it was a new experience for me and Callum.

We went from Maldon quay to Mersea. The river was fairly crowded at the Maldon end, but the traffic thinned out a bit further down. I discovered, to my chagrin, that I'm not very good at steering a boat any more. Although this one is quite tricky, as it doesn't have a rudder, you have to move the propellor, and it's very sensitive. However, I can make any excuses for myself that I wish, but it doesn't alter the fact that Stuart was very good at steering! And Callum showed some talent for it too.

You can either steer from inside the wheelhouse, or on top of it. About halfway down the river, Richard gave the wheel to Stuart (after my miserable attempt) and he just shoved down the throttle and sped off so fast that if we'd had hats we would have had to hold onto them! Richard went back into the wheelhouse, calm as you please, and left Stuart up top. I was naturally terrified, clinging on for dear life and shouting, "What are you doing? He'll crash! He's only a kid!". But it seemed that he wouldn't crash, after all, and eventually I settled down a bit and enjoyed the ride.

Callum and Ben both took turns at the wheel, but Ben was a bit less confident. Anyway, we got there in one piece (even in spite of Richard's show-off doughnut just off Mersea).

It was an unseasonably beautiful day, and a very pleasant trip, once I'd got used to putting my safety in the hands of a twelve-year old and two ten-year-olds! I wish I had some pictures.

I know it's a long time since our holiday in Spain, but I'm in a bit of a blog-writing frenzy and one of my pictures just made me chuckle. While we were there, there was a big open-air concert in Manilva (the middle weekend of our visit). Everywhere we went for the fortnight there were posters for the gig. They were a rather fetching picture of David Bisbal (the long-awaited star) with his hand spread out above his face and a hole in the armpit of his tee-shirt. This image became burned into our consciousness, and every time we saw it, one of us would cry "David Bisbal!". We could have gone down to near where the concert was being held to have a listen, but I suspect that that would have spoiled the myth. After all, it was the anticipation that we enjoyed.

Anyway, we went to the Carrefour in Estepona at the end of the second week, and found a copy of 'Premonicion', the album that went with the tour. It was only six euros - a bargain. The boys weren't too keen, but Jenny, Rosie and I sang along merrily. On our last night in Manilva, we went out for a final drink and came across one of the David Bisbal posters, shamefully discarded and trampled by those iconoclastic Spaniards. Jenny picked it up and...viola, the picture you see below!

Well apart from Jack the Ripper, that's all the pond fish dead! I wonder where the cloud of suspicion hangs now? Unless he commits suicide from remorse, I'm afraid he's banged to rights! I just buried Jenny's 'Beast' in a shallow grave alongside his comrades, with a quiet ceremony (and the coal shovel). Strangely there are four fish still alive in the 'tank of fungus', so it's not natural causes.

When I went out this morning, the first thing I saw was Jack sneaking behind a rock, obviously leaving the scene of the crime. Then I spotted Beast's lifeless body floating round the back of the plant pot. Fair enough, he did have a little patch of fungus on his side, but one of the ones in the tank has a big hole in his back and still comes to the side expectantly whenever I walk into the utility room. (No, fish do not have a five second memory, or how would they remember that it's me who feeds them?)

Well, he's on his own now, I hope he's very happy. He's much mistaken if he thinks I'm going to pay good money for more victims for him! Solitary confinement is no more than he deserves, after all.