Had I been fortunate enough to have Mary Beard as my classics tutor, I would certainly have enjoyed studying the subject much more than I did with the ever-scary Miss Dunbar (in those days such titles mattered), who was totally convinced that Oxford was not a patch on her alma mater, St Andrews. She had her virtues – she was liberal with the drinks at undergraduate gatherings, for instance, and had a sense of humour, albeit a rather donnish one – but as a good Presbyterian I suspect she was not much of a fan of the more disreputable classical authors.
Mary Beard, on the other hand, has been an excellent populariser of the classical world and her TV persona indicates that she would not be embarrassed to translate the naughty bits of Catullus into English, instead, as one of my erstwhile lecturers did, of rendering them into even more esoteric Greek.
I was reminded of Mary when I was channel flicking and came across the comedy series
Plebs – about the adventures of the said group of young Romans who are trying to turn a disused public toilet into a wine bar – as might well be the case today. It struck me that whoever wrote the series has an excellent knowledge of the seamier side of Roman history – we know this from the graffiti and wall art from Pompeii, amongst other sources.
To be honest, for someone of my generation, bits of
Plebs are somewhat on the crude side. For example, the episode when Marcus, the 'hero', must undertake certain painful steps in order to pretend to be Jewish so he can obtain the services of a highly sought-after Jewish accountant. You can probably imagine the rest… But the group of Roman twits are more than reminiscent of our culture's generation Z – and their misadventures are mainly hilarious. This must be a view shared by actors usually seen in more upmarket material, such as Maureen Lipman and Robert Lindsay, who have played parts in the series.
If you are a classics teacher reading this (and sadly there aren't many of you around these days) do have a look at this series if you can catch it – it may just convince young people who think the study of Latin and Greek isn't cool that these cultures have a lot more in common with our own than we might like to admit!
Moving on?
I'm going to have question marks on all my subtitles this week. I finally made the decision that I would sell the house and move to the less posh village where my son and family live, and not just because it has more SNP supporters than beautiful downtown Banchory. Having stayed in this house for over 25 years, I was surprised at how stressful I've found the process of selling. On the plus side, I've had many fascinating conversations with the long-suffering and ever helpful Martin from the solicitors' office but the business of having a home report done threw me into a state of panic.
The rather lugubrious gent who did the examination only perked up when I asked him why I had to pay in advance – apparently in the past people refused to pay up if they didn't like the selling price suggested. When his report was emailed to me, I was too scared to open it, so had to ask Martin to look first. Thankfully it was good news for me – although Martin may well be applying for a transfer to another branch of the company…
Scary as it might be for me, the process of buying and selling in Scotland is another example of the fact that things are done better here than down south – but then, at the moment, that would seem to apply to everything.
HR tactics?
And now, a sad story of organisational behaviour, which used to be my 'specialist subject' as a lecturer. After being promoted in his company, my son begged for months to have proper training provided, and to be able to visit the rest of his team, who because of the nature of international organisations were all based in the USA, six hours behind us. This meant much of his working day was spent sorting problems that he, initially at least, was unfamiliar with.
Sadly, no assistance was forthcoming, yet when he was offered and accepted a role in another organisation, openly committed to training its staff, his current company was prepared to go to all sorts of lengths to hang onto him.
When working in HR, I was ever frustrated by the process of offering a job to someone who was then persuaded to stay by their current employer. In fact, some employees would use the process of being offered a job elsewhere to obtain a salary increase – in one organisation, I recall someone who tried this technique several times. In my son's case, he was torn between as he saw it 'letting down' colleagues who were desperate to keep him, yet wanting to accept a new challenge with a company committed to training.
For me, it was ironic to witness, given that in my time as a lecturer in human resource management I had constantly stressed that training is not a bolt on issue, but should be fundamental in giving an organisation a profitable edge and should be an essential part of any business strategy. Yet still, many organisations think they can avoid costs by just buying in staff who have been trained somewhere else. And equally, many organisations will only take notice of their staff when they announce their intention to leave.
Thankfully Brown junior decided to accept the new role, after much soul-searching. But how many other employees will have to make these difficult decisions when their employer could have taken steps to retain their services, not with more money, but more career development?
Dr Mary Brown is a freelance education consultant
