We managed to get together the basic three traditional teams, including our long-gone friends the Old Farts, for one final summer quiz, before everything reverts to normal in September, and we have quizzes on Mondays again. My team were almost complete; Hugh is, we trust, coping with the joys of fatherhood for the first time, but Mush; John; Sam and Tony are working on the Centre's morning summer course, and I am working on an afternoon summer course at a sister Centre round the corner, just for a change of scene, so we were all able to get along. And we got Frank, too, one of our ex-members who doesn't have time to be a regular attender, and whom I am working alongside this month.
One of the problems we have faced in education in recent years has been the attempt by those in charge to introduce performance management for teachers. We feel that what is possibly (though not necessarily) suitable for office workers cannot be applied willy nilly to all kinds of employment: you cannot talk of productivity in teaching, not really; the speed and efficiency in which students assimilate knowledge cannot be universally quantified, and thus attempts to implant performance management just cause irritation and distress. Artificial targets and objectives are difficult to achieve, and yet these are arbitrarily set by managers who manage because they are in love with management as a philosophy, rather as a means of getting any useful work done.
I mention this because since I last wrote my blog on a regular basis (and with Charlton playing Millwall in the first friendly of the season tomorrow, this time I am back and am staying), Charlton have a new manager (pictured, not as handsome as the old one, but then...) , who is increasingly being referred to as the coach; this is because there are other characters in the set-up as well, and apparently there is, or is going to be, an ex-rugby league player who is to be the performance manager, in addition to the depressing-sounding general manager - football, who was appointed almost as soon as the sainted Alan Curbishley had boarded the plane for the first leg of his round-the-world trip.
And the thing is that although it all sounds impressive, appointing large numbers of managers doesn't really work. There is a lot more "management" in English teaching than, say 15 years ago, and in my view, to borrow a neat phrase from the late Sir Kingsley Amis, "more means worse".
And I notice that for all the managerial razzmattazz, the bookies don't reckon that Charlton will end up much higher than the relegation slots, although as they also seem to be touting Middlesbrough and Newcastle for success again, that doesn't really amount to much.
And the one thing that has baffled me throughout the Curbishley departure saga is this: a Premiership club from London needed a manager; loads of well-known Italians, Dutchmen and so forth were on record as fancying a spell of management in the English league, and by that they would mean Premiership, not Halifax Town; yet none of these fancied Charlton, as far as we know. So presumably when Gianluca Vialli, or Claudio Ranieri, or Sven, or Ruud Gullit say they'd like to manage in the Prem, what they really mean is that they'd like the Chelsea or Arsenal jobs. I would have thought that a debt-free London Premiership club would have been an attractive bet, but of course with Charlton, there is always the spectre of failure lurking round the corner, and that wouldn't do for these managers. And then there's the money. Managers, they're all the same in the end, aren't they?
And the quiz? Well my old friend Mark, a television producer, also came along for a look, and within half an hour was declaring that the format had limited appeal, and what we needed were flashing lights, roulette wheels, buzzers and young ladies in tight gold lamé knickers.
But the quiz is real life, not television, and that's why we like it so much. So for heaven's sake don't let the managers get their hands on it.
Late score: Our team 143: Edu's team 132; Old Farts 118; but it was nice to have them back.