Dispatches From a Dilettante Read Online Free PDF Page A

make a very good living. I stood next to their bass guitarist, who was watching the Santana set, and had a very meaningful conversation about Crystal Palace’s woeful away form.
    Much like Palace’s defence my American experience went off the boil a little as work continued and my return flight date loomed. Upon my return I was reminded of this summer for months, and on a weekly basis, as the Bell Telephone Company hounded me for payment of the enormous bill I had incurred phoning home from Atlantic City. I discovered previously unknown thespian qualities of the highest order as I heard my own voice denying any inkling of my own whereabouts. They were tenacious and phoned my sister and mother. I began to think that they must have had the FBI on the case, but eventually their call frequency diminished, then finally ceased and life returned to normal.
    In order to demonstrate my continuing emotional immaturity and conspicuous lack of a moral compass, the only time I ever wore the tie I had pinched from the Harvard Co-op was at the interview for my first teaching job at a Catholic secondary school.

2.
THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL 1972
     
    The interview for the most junior of teaching posts at St Augustine of Canterbury Catholic secondary school on the tough Mosscroft estate in Huyton took place the day before the autumn term started. This should have told me many things. Firstly it was clear that talented, young and freshly qualified teachers were not rushing to get a post there. That alone should have sounded some warnings. The most searching questions at the interview were about my hairstyle and my commitment to Catholicism. Unfortunately I was committed to the former and disinterested in the latter.
    Things were going badly until I mentioned the name of my cousin who, even in those distant days, was a precocious talent in the Catholic Church. He is now head of said Church for England and Wales and, as I type these words, Archbishop Vincent Nichols is being interviewed on the BBC news with regard to the Pope’s visit to Britain. As his faith and ambition got stronger and he rose inexorably up the ecclesiastical food chain to the higher echelons of the Church, my faith was thankfully atrophying and my professional life becalmed on a sea of mediocrity. Life is mystery and relatively short. I am now proud of my atheism, free of guilt and a paid up member of the Richard Dawkins fan club.
    With the job secured my mind was full of creative strategies to make an impact. The first was to grow a beard to enable me to have a precious few extra moments in bed in the morning. The second was to negotiate an early finish to the term, claiming a booked holiday made before my late appointment. And the third was to buy a rusting sports car that I could not afford the payments or the petrol for. The only time I really needed the car to function properly was to escape an angry parent pummelling the windscreen after his son had been dropped from the football team. At the precise moment I tried to take cowardly and evasive action the starter motor gave out. Discovering hitherto unused ambassadorial skills that would have left Kissinger impressed, I placated the parent. In truth his anger had turned to pity after he had seen the fear in my eyes, so I got him to transfer his pummelling at the front of the car to pushing at the rear in order to jump start it. I mention this turnaround with pride and even now rate it as my greatest achievement that term.
    Lessons passed in a blur. Geography with the first form consisted of me doing impressions of Ken Goodwin who was a well known northern comedian at the time. His catch phrase was ‘settle down’. Despite the unerring accuracy of my impersonation they neither settled down nor indeed appreciated the cabaret act in front of them. Registration in the morning was a source of constant nightmares. The first two names on the register were ‘Cathy Anderson’ and ‘Dorothy Begley’. The routine was the