So, why was I stood standing at the famine
memorial by the burned out church in Liverpool?
The bombed out church, or Saint Lukes, was badly damaged during the Liverpool
Blitz in 1941 and is itself a memorial to those who were lost in the second
world war. The famine memorial was
created by the sculptor Eamon O’Doherty, who I never knew or met, but was
unveiled in 1988 by the then President of Ireland, Mary Mc Aleese, who used to
use me for snogging practise back in Belfast, before I knew what snogging was. She was then known as Leneghan and hung
around with my sister Carol. So as you
can see, even way back then the double top secret cabal, who were preparing me
for the throne of Ireland, were making sure that I would be intimately
acquainted with those who would one day be strolling along the corridors of power
in Ireland.
Strange that I could find such a personal link
in such a public monument, but that’s just me.
And once again I have to say that this is not just some flicker of
memory that haphazardly flashed across my mind as each and every day, especially
since the twelfth of July last year, I am reminded of the Woodvale Road, tennis,
motorbikes and side cars, the future president of Ireland snogging the face of
me and wet Sunday afternoons with the daily protest from the Orange Lodges complaining
that they are not allowed to intimidate or annoy fellow residents. But none of these were the reason or even remotely
connected to the reason why I was stood standing by the famine memorial outside
Saint Luke’s church in Liverpool. I had
a job interview on Hardman Street, which would only have been a few hundred
yards away from the memorial, and as an Irishman there was no way I could walk past
the monument without paying my respect.
I don’t know why I had applied for the job,
well; I do. It was just one of those
adverts that asked for people to work with disabled people. I had really enjoyed my time as a tutor for disabled
people at TPT in Skelmersdale and I thought that a few months helping disabled people would do me a power of good. It
was a job I was good at, a job I thoroughly enjoyed and a job where you
actually felt that you were doing something useful. I had no idea about the company I was going
to and no real idea about what they did on a day to day basis, all I knew was that
I was off to help disabled people. The
company was known as Natural Breaks and they supported people with learning
disabilities to live in their communities.
They had offices on Hardman Street and I felt a
strange sense of pride and what can only be described as a sort of historic connection
as I went in to the building as the building was the Merseyside Trade Union
Resource Centre. I know I am weird
enough with my fascination for the Beatles and Liverpool but there also seemed to
be this very proud connection with workers’ rights and Liverpool. I can’t explain exactly what it was, but it
felt really good to just be entering that building. I was warmly welcomed in the foyer and
escorted upstairs to the suite of offices Natural Breaks lived in. Having successfully passed the officer and
aircrew selection test at Biggen Hill there isn’t an interview or selection test
in existence that worries me. I was
prepared to go in, be interviewed, tell them how good I was and gracefully
accept their offer of employment. That’s
how it normally works, isn’t it?
Rather than be led in to a room where I would
be faced by one or two or even three interviewers I was taken in to a room
where small groups of people were sat sitting around. I was told that I was now going in for a
group interview, which I had experienced, successfully of course, when I
applied to become an audiologist for Scrivens in Birmingham. I knew the format and the rules, shout louder
than everyone else and keep smiling at all times. With the Scrivens group
interview twenty of us sat around a large table and one fellow managed the whole
process. Here, with Natural Breaks we were
broken up in to groups and three or four people wandered about watching and
listening. One person, a lady known as
Jan, who I later discovered was the boss of Natural Breaks, would issue each group with a piece of paper
which had a statement typed on it. The
group would then discuss the statement.
I have to admit that I was getting a bit hacked
off with civilians and their interviewing processes. I knew that at Biggen Hill there were all sorts
of psychologists and behavioural scientists involved in building their
interview process, now in civvy street I was finding that almost any old man
jack could set up and interview people although the whole process of gaining employment
was becoming more professional. Sorry, the
process was not becoming more professional; people were pretending that it was
more professional. Seventeen year old
career advisors and so called recruitment professionals would actually score below
social workers on my scale and that takes some doing. However, and if you are a social worker or even
thinking of becoming a social worker, you will be pleased because I found a social
worker who was not just capable but who I eventually came to respect and
admire. Jan, the boss of Natural Breaks,
had been a social worker but now led this motley crew of support staff at
Natural Breaks.
I still didn’t think much of their interview
process which I of course passed, was asked to wait, and was then taken in to
another office where I faced three people.
I was well aware of how unprofessional most civilian interview processes
were. In fact many of us, ex-military, knew
that success or failure could come down to how well your shoes were
polished. I remember once watching a documentary
about garbage collectors in Manchester, bin men. There were two or three vacancies and we
followed the appropriate manager placing the advert in the evening newspaper. The following week he was sat at his desk
smiling with a huge pile, somewhere in the region of two thousand applications,
for the three jobs. He began his
selection process without even opening the envelopes. He threw away any application that had been
hand written. If I had taken such a course
of action I would have thrown away those applications that had been typed, but
ever since that programme I was very wary when it came to job interviews and
the like.
I knew nothing about Natural Breaks, or the
work they did, so was quite happy to sit there and answer any question they
asked. Most of the questions were
designed to fathom your thoughts, or feelings, or attitude, to certain aspects
of disability. They suggested to me that
I was supporting a young man who had found a part time job at an engineering factory
and was starting work the following week.
In order to celebrate and wanting to look smart for his new job, the fellow
I was supporting wanted to buy a tee shirt with the image of a Teletubby
printed on the front. You were with him
in a local market when he chose the shirt and you would be with him in the all-male
engineering environment the following week when he wanted to wear it. What would you do?
You may think that the question or scenario
they present is quite clever and my dismissal of their process not valid. Well yes, it is a clever question and it
could be very effective if it were answered honestly. So how many people sit there and answer
honestly and how many think what is it that they want me to say, what do they want
to hear? There is of course no hard and
fast answer no right and wrong, I think I said that I would buy a similar shirt
and wear it myself, right or wrong, who knows at least I wasn’t saying that I
would stop him buying the shirt, for now we were getting into the human rights
side of things, something that is very common in the field of learning
disabilities. The interview went well
and they said they would contact me. I
left the offices feeling good, the process had been enjoyable; in fact it had
been like spending lunchtime in a pub with some strangers although without the
beer.
And of course you can’t finish off a day in
Liverpool without a drink. I wandered
over to my favourite Liverpool pub, The Flanagan’s Apple, and settled in for a
pint of the black stuff and a decent bit of craic. Like the rest of Liverpool, The
Flanagan’s Apple is dripping with history.
It is set in the Mathew Street area with the birthplace of the Beatles
in the Cavern Club and the centre of the social scene in Liverpool. It had been a fruit warehouse, a tea room, a
drama school and at one point a Beatles museum, they even say it has its own
ghost. Some people see it as an over the
top, rip off, sort of place with diddly diddly music and hoards of tourists
wanting to sample a bit of Ireland. I couldn’t
have cared less about the music or the décor, admittedly I hadn’t been in many
pubs in Ireland with baths as seats, or bikes hanging from the ceiling, or sheets
of music used as wallpaper, the important things were the beer and the people
and Flanagan’s had both. All I had to do
now was wait, wait and hear from Natural Breaks and wait and hear from all my celebrities
and where better to do it that Flanagan’s, so; might as well have another beer
while we’re waiting.
No comments:
Post a Comment