Professionalism

Billy Davies - didn't he have a couple of hits in the sixties, dressed as a girl?

[Thursday afternoon]

Here in Madrid, English teachers such as myself fall into two main categories; there are those of us who mostly work on a fixed site, in what might be called an academy, a school or even an institute, whither we repair every day to give our lessons, and those who work as independents, giving what are called 'private classes', which means they usually spend the day trailing round the city between appointments, most of which take place in offices of one sort or another.

The law of demand means that the two groups' timetables are very different. Private teachers give classes to people in their place of work, generally, and these people, top executives, government ministers and the like, not infrequently elect to start their working day with a vigorous bout of English, more often than not at eight o'clock in the morning.

Fixed site teachers, on the other hand, cater for the great majority of people who do not receive English classes at work, and for university students and kids (who often need more English than they get at school), and this means that English classes have to take place after hours, and it is for this reason that if you work at a fixed location, you will almost always be teaching from the afternoon right through the evening, sometimes until as late as 2230.

If this sounds like a dreadful prospect to those of my readers attuned to the 9 to 5 mentality prevailing in the UK, then I can only assure you that once you get used to it, it is fine. Life in Madrid doesn't stop until about two or three in the morning, so once work is over there is still time to go for drinks, dinner, even the cinema, and of course to the quiz, and be able to get home on the underground, which doesn't stop running till about 1.45 a.m. And of course we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn, either; crack of noon is more the thing in my case. So this is why, today, at 1437 local time here in Madrid, I am happily seated at my computer, finishing my second cup of coffee of the day, with an hour or so to go before I need to start moving workwards.

I have been emulating the great Alan Curbishley for a week or more, and taking a small sabbatical from the blog. It was either that or try to write something about the quiz, but this is in such a state of flux that I became discouraged (sorry David), and the alternative was to try to say something about the process of selection of Alan's successor as the manager at Charlton Athletic.

But of course, had I done so, I would have been falling into the same trap that I criticised the media for in my last blog, i.e. creating so-called news, and comment, out of absolutely nothing.

I have to say, unfortunately, that no one picked up on my attempt to start a rumour about Claudio Ranieri, so wherefore today's blog then? Well, it has been inspired by the fact that I have a couple of hours free, and by the nagging feeling that on a blog, ten days' sabbatical is probably quite enough, and now, mainly, by what the media pages and all-day current affairs stations call 'breaking news', meaning news that they want to tell you, but which might be a hoax, or full of errors, or something, but which they are terrified someone else might try and reveal to you before they do.

The breaking news is that Preston North End's chairman has this morning announced that Charlton Athletic have told them that they are not pursuing their interest in PNE manager Billy Davis.

Now if you rely for your Charlton information exclusively on me, then you won't even have heard of this guy. This is because, just over a week ago, the papers and media pages were all convinced that Peter Taylor of Hull was going to get the job, even though he hadn't applied for it and even though Charlton had not approached Hull City's directors. Nevertheless the media decided that he was our new man, and then got peeved (see last posting) when nothing had happened four days after they had decided this.

Taylor then said he wasn't going to Charlton, which the media reported as him having turned them down, though there is no evidence that he had been offered the job at all. The next thing to happen was that Preston told the Lancashire Evening Post that Charlton had asked permission to talk to Billy Davies. This was about a week ago, and indeed an interview took place on Monday. The media then told us that Davies would be appointed on Monday afternoon. This came and went; we have had three more days of reports about Davies thinking, talking to the missus, making his mind up and so forth, plus speculation about which Preston players he would bring down to London with him (I liked the idea of David Nugent), and now it is Charlton who have said they are not interested.

Of course the media have their replacement lined up. Adrian Boothroyd is obviously staying at Watford; Phil Parkinson is not being released from his contract at Colchester, but guess what? Iain Dowie has resigned as manager of Palace and Palace chairman and Charlton-hater Simon Jordan says he doesn't mind what Dowie does as long as he doesn't go to Charlton.

So now the media have stated that Dowie will become the Charlton manager on Monday (what is it about them wanting things to happen on Mondays?).

It might be Claudio yet, though, as the Charlton board have behaved with total professionalism (the chairman of PNE said so this morning) in the way they have conducted their interviews, and the media are completely in the dark.

You read it here first (I can't see why this matters, but the media are very keen on it).