The joy of work: Please sir, may I have some more?

I steel myself for another day’s work; I am sure we all often do, especially on Mondays. I remember watching the grim faces on the NI ring road in Johannesburg on the few days I was caught in the 7.30am virtual gridlock. People clung to their steering wheels like drowned rats. Not many people looked happy, talk-show host Jeremy Mansfield’s efforts notwithstanding.

Slowly I put on my clothing for the day and every now and then I catch myself tensing and try to relax a little. After all, my life has more or less been a “working holiday” for the last several years. I catch myself by looking at my work clothes: a T-shirt, shorts, Adidas running shoes. There is hardly any dress code at the college where I teach. No one will notice if I don’t shave for several days. To top it all, it is a Friday and I am just going in to breeze through one 50-minute class and then the weekend is mine and my favourite pub, Oscar’s, will be beckoning. I am preparing first-year Chinese students for their first year of English at this college.

The teaching is so easy: as we often joke here all you have to do is be conscious to run the class. Really, I do not have to prepare at all. I just glance through the comprehension exercise and guide the students through the material. In terms of reading, I am used to the dense prose of Joyce (not Finnegan’s Wake), the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the poetry of my favourites, Zbignieuw Herbert and Ted Hughes. Teaching school-leaver level comprehension exercises? I just need to be conscious and make it lively and entertaining, which comes naturally.

Yet still I subconsciously steel myself for a day’s “labour”. That’s a life time of conditioning for you, isn’t it? And it has to age one. And yet, at the same time, I rather enjoy my “work”, if it can be called that. The students are pleasant, have a great sense of humour and most are eager to learn. Why do I have to put “work” in inverted commas? Is “work” supposed to be associated with unpleasant, stressful or tedious activity? What say you, the reader? Or is work, to paraphrase Steven Spielberg, something so exciting for him to go to that he can’t finish his breakfast quickly enough?

Having been unemployed several times in my life I can only say that work is a privilege and a joy. Don’t get me wrong; there are several activities I would hate to do, such as being a security guard or a waiter. I have done both, the former back in the army and that was bloody boring.

And yet, somewhere in my gut, I still catch myself winding myself up for work even though, these days, at most I go to college to do two or three hours teaching a day. I wish I had more; I am quite happy to do more as I get paid by the hour. The college I am at offered me more “work” last Friday and I gratefully accepted it. Next week I may have even more and I will happily take that on too. In fact, I am looking for some “work” for the weekends: usually that is teaching kids and I cannot wait to pick up some extra teaching hours in the new semester, which starts in a few weeks.

Which makes “retirement” a myth. Even passionate golfers I know say they can only play three or four 18 holes a week and life gets boring without something constructive to do. I am a passionate writer. But three or four hours a day is my limit. I have to get off my backside and do something else: find something to write about, I suppose.

And this is my writing for the day. It’s Sunday: the Friday I was talking about was two days ago. Time to pop down to Oscar’s and join the blokes for a jar; and, being a British pub, they do a decent Sunday roast, with all the trimmings, including Yorkshire pud and Bistro gravy. We’ll natter about the eccentric behaviour of the locals, the enormous facelift Shanghai is going through as she prepares for World Expo 2010 and I will probably moan about all the hundreds of suggestions for improvement my gifted editor (I’ve learned a lot from her) wants me to make to my memoir, Cracking China, due out end of January next year. I especially wince at all the censorship of my off-colour humour. You know, classic MacKenzie: birthday gifts to horny friends in China being bottles of Tequila with large boxes of condoms strapped to them… “Cut cut CUT! The editorial team cries. The editing team wants to market the book to schools, so keep it respectable please, Mr MacKenzie, blah blah blah … Whoops. Catch yourself Rod; enjoy your work. And what a privilege to get a memoir published. Who would ever have thought your personal life could be so interesting, old sport.

Retirement. Hmmm. I would like to explore the myth of retirement, probably in the next post. See ya. Cheers. Here’s to work. Knocks one back, sighs, lightly belches.