DORSET - The Dangers of Excessive Moderation

As you can probably imagine, it's been a bit of a busy week. There's been a few phone calls, a bit of e-mailing, a flurry of enquiries to agencies who apparently know more than a thing or two more about me than is healthy for them (more on all this to come, I'm sure) and finally some flight booking and a big circle in the diary. Friday October 20th. Goodbye Britain day.

For this entry, though, I wanted to backtrack about six weeks ago to my train journey from York to Bournemouth. As you might remember from a couple of posts ago, this was where I had a certain moment of clarity which took Vancouver musings out of my head and put them out on paper (well, electronics) in glorious application and CV format. Today, I'm going to tell you what sparked that moment. And maybe, just maybe, it may spark something in one of you, faithful readership. Because to have even gotten to this point in one of my random constructions which I insist on referring to as 'a paragraph', you must surely share just a little of my madness.

I brought two books to read with me in York. The first was a particularly fine piece of work called Reading Angel... I know, I know. Shameless self promotion. But, actually, that was the first time I'd actually had a chance to read the darn thing all the way through. It's actually pretty good in most places. Although not in the places where the usually reliable Roz Kaveney contributed and was just plain wrong. Anyway.

The second was a book I pulled off the shelf in the lounge (we have so many books in our house now that you can find them, literally, piled in every room. My mother blames my father for his addiction to Waterstones's 3 for 2 offers) called Watching the English by Kate Fox. It's a sort of sociological study for people who don't know anything about sociology. More to the point, it has a picture of people reading a newspaper during a rain break at a sporting event. I assumed it to be Wimbeldon. In any case; it was striking and very pretty. Which are the things which influence my picking up of a random book off the shelf.

So, anyway, Watching the English. Basically an attempt to try and discover the underlying rules which make the English tick, there's a lot of very enjoyable observations about typical English conversations and behaviors and an attempt to provide an analysis of them. All the old favorites are here; why are the English so perpetually obsessed by the weather? (We're not; we just can't think of anything else to say) Why is the pub the only place where the English are truly relaxed and open? (Actually, it isn't, there's just as many behavior codes operating there as anywhere else. They're just a little more subtle) So far, so fun. Kate Fox, handicapped from the start by actually being English, attempts to unravel all these quirks and poke a little gentle fun. But rarely does she dare to make a judgment.

When I'd gotten on the train at York, I was still fairly undecided about what my next job move would be. I had a job interview scheduled in Bristol (which I subsequently attended) and, after a quick browse of the ever reliable Gum Tree, had decided that there would be more than enough housing options in the city and so was feeling pretty relaxed about it. The thing I *was* sure about was that I was probably not going to try for the Vancouver job. I'd only just gotten back to Britain, I was pretty short of money and the amount of variables which would have to fall into place for me to get the job, let alone consider a move, seemed like an awful lot of hard work. I'd just had my big world travel. The adventure was over. Back to life.

Somewhere past Darlington. I started reading the section on English work habits. And, in that, the subsection on the effect of moderation on English working ethics. This is where we get to the point (and, I believe, it's the only point in the book) where Kate Fox developed a judgment about the English. It's difficult to describe the content without quoting huge chunks. So I'm afraid you'll have to do a bit of reading. If you feel aggrieved by that just remember that (A) You've gotten through the first seven paragraphs, so really you've brought it on yourselves and (B) I'm the one who had to sit here and type it all out for you:


A quick break in all that reading; another of my recent Vancouver pictures. It's a pretty bird!

The phrase 'work hard, play hard' became popular in England in the 1980s, and you will still quite often hear people use it to describe their exciting lifestyle and their dynamic approach to work and leisure. They are almost always lying. The English, on the whole, do not 'work hard and play hard': we do both and most other things, in moderation... We work fairly diligently and have a modest amount of fun in our free time.

[And] nor are these rather staid, conventional, conservative habits confined to the middle-aged or middle-class. Contrary to popular opinion, the 'youth of today' are not feckless, irresponsible, thrillseeking hedonists. If anything both our [the Social Issues Research Centre] own research and other surveys and studies have found that the young of all classes are more sensible, industrious, moderate and cautious than their parents' generation. I find this rather worrying, as it suggests that, unless our younger generation grows out of these middle-aged attitudes as their get older (which seems somewhat unlikely), the English will as a nation become even more ploddingly moderate than we are now.

In our survey, when asked where they would like to be in ten years time, 72% of young people chose the safe, sensible options of being 'settled down' or 'successful at work' compared with just 38% of the older generation. Only 20% of the 16-24 year olds chose the more adventurous option of 'traveling around the world / living abroad', compared with 28% of the 45-54 year olds... In focus groups and informal interviews, when we asked about their aspirations in life, almost all young working people wanted to be 'financially secure and stable.'

[Insert more statistics demonstrating young people's ideas of 'fun' essentially boil down to a routine of weekend drinking, dancing and shopping. And that 70% of the young believe that 'getting ahead is down to hard work and dedication' in contrast to 53% of the older generation]

I felt like saying, 'Oh for heaven's sake, lighten up! Live a little! Rebel a bit!... All right, I did and still do, realise that many people will find these results reassuring. Even some of my colleagues felt that I was making an unsuccessfully fuss. 'Surely it is a good thing that most young people are being diligent, prudent and responsible?' they said. 'Why do you find this so depressing?'

My concern is that these largely commendable tendencies are also symptoms of a wider and more worrying trend: our findings indicated that young people are increasingly affected by the culture of fear, and the risk-aversion and obsession of safety that have become defining features of contemporary society. This trend [a 'cultural climate of pervasive anxiety'] is associated with the stunted aspirations, cautiousness, conformity and lack of adventurous spirit that were evident among many of the young people in our survey and focus groups.

... Whether I like it or not, we are a deeply conservative, moderate people. But what worried me was that these young people were more conservative, moderate and conformist than their parent's generation, that there seemed to be a trend towards even greater excesses of moderation (if one can say such a thing). And although I am in many ways very English, I can only take so much moderation. Moderation is all very well, but only in moderation.


A pretty,. and not-moderate-in-the-slightest, Canadian mountain stream.

After reading that; I felt pretty depressed as well. (This is, incidentally, not a judgment on the lifestyle of anyone who reads that and doesn't feel depressed. We're talking about me, here. Nobody else) And I identified strongly with the feeling that the only reason I was turning down the more interesting choices available in my life was this bizarre English attraction to moderation in all things. I couldn't think about going abroad again, simply because I'd only just come back from the last trip. Whereas the truth was; I could go abroad again any darn minute I pleased. It just depended whether there was a decent opportunity for adventure worth taking up. There was. And whether I could get beyond that feeling of moderation which I suffer from more than many other people (perhaps surprising news from a career traveller. But it's very true) I decided I wanted to. So, after that train journey, I decided to take the chance.

Obviously all I did about it at that point was to write a few e-mails and start putting my CV in order. You don't want to get too over-excited about these things, do you?